91springboard

In 2015, the concept of coworking in Hyderabad was new. 91springboard as a company was new in the city, and startups, freelancers, and SMEs were figuring out the concept of shared space.

To build the community, we did three events very regularly:
Mentor Hours - Few Every Month

Startup Open House - where startup pitched their product & got feedback - once a quarter

Big Bad Startup Bash - Informal Networking Mixer for Startups - once every quarter.

The best was the Reverse Pitch, where investors pitched to startups regarding what they were looking for while investing in the startup.

Friday Unwind - Informal Mixer for the members.

By doing these events consistently, the word started to spread that something new, interesting, & different was occurring at this place.

We enabled other tech companies such as AWS, Microsoft, Branch.io, & business organizations, to host their meetups & mixers. If some of these were relevant to our members they would get a complementary or discounted entry to the event.

Enabling the other players and hosting them at our coworking space built that vibrancy & the magic started

During the Annual Budget, we had special sessions & so on. There were events, sessions & mixers from the startup ecosystem players, social get-togethers, and social organizations, including some international NGOs & ex-pats that used the space to create vibrancy.

From celebrating festivals to providing value, that small teams might not be able to do on their own, the magic of community led the space to fill up. Just imagine volunteers of Hyderabad Runners used to meet every Sunday for a few months to plan for the Hyderabad Marathon.

Building relationships one member at a time, one organization at a time, while being involved in setting up the coworking space, running day-to-day operations, doing the firefighting, and engaging with the members to understand their needs and create a space where they found themselves enabled to scale their business and got friends.