Co-working might seem like a fairly regular format for work today. Many people that freelance, work from home or run startups will regularly use co-working to cut costs and enjoy greater flexibility in their work. Although this is a relatively well known business practice today, the story of co-working and the start of the process may not be a story that you have heard before.

Some of the earliest ideas regarding co-working come down to a San Francisco collective workspace started by a software engineer named Brad Neuberg. In year 2005 he would set up his first co-working space and the nature of coworking has changed considerably since.

Before coworking:

Neuberg was inspired to create his co-working space after reading about C base which was one of the first hacker spaces created in Berlin in the year 1995. Hacker spaces are considered to be one of the catalysts to a co-working space and the crucial aspect of this community and the space area is what started the idea of a coworking location.

The space again in 2005 as Neuberg was facing some type of financial conflicts. He was interested in finding a way that he could combine his freedom and independence while still working in the community. Neuberg was working with a life coach and he was able to create a three-part plan in which he could have a community and a sense of structure for coworking cohesion.

The first space that he created was founded with a feminist collective called spiral Muse. The founder Elana Auerbach agreed to rent space in Neuberg’s coworking location at $300 a month twice a week. Neuberg had the first few months of space in the San Francisco co-working area fronted by his father and would soon pick up a series of coworkers including Ray Baxter, a startup developer and a series of other entrepreneurs. Eventually the organization would move to a space called the Hat Factory which would turn into the world’s first full-time co-working space.

The co-working spaces that we see today are natural evolution of this model. We are likely to see the nature of co-working evolve further as the demand skyrockets.

This post was written by Tara Kintz. Tara is a director at Signature Workspace which is a Virtual Office Tampa. Signature Workspace, owned and operated by Cantor Fund Management, offers services and amenities such as private offices, flex space, co-working space, virtual offices, meeting/conference rooms, and more.