Last night over 70 people gathered to hear a panel moderated by Charles Hudson, a Venture Partner with SoftTech VC, talk about their experience bootstrapping, learning the importance of accountability, deciding what were the important metrics of success, and how to survive when things don’t go as well as hoped.

Christine Herron, Director with Intel Capital, Trevor Cornwell, the founder and CEO of appbackr inc., Danae Ringelmann, co-founder of IndieGoGo, and George Revutsky, the founder and CEO of MyNextCustomer all spoke eloquently about their experience.

We learned that mom can be the best angel investor when you need to get through that little hump, but be sure your arrangement has clear terms. We learned about risk, and the importance of maintaining strong relationships both personally and professionally.

Check out the photos on our facebook page, and look out for our next FailChat in the coming months!!

Company: GG Jett
Title: Copywriter
Category: Internet/Online/New Media
Job Type: Full Time
Location: San Francisco, Ca

Description:

We’re looking for hardworking, enthusiastic and talented editors / copywriters who can take direction easily and willingly.
You will be required to:

Do extensive product research, be pro-active and enthusiastic about retrieving detailed product information and present it accurately.
“Sell” products in writing without using marketing cliches and platitudes.

Desired Skills & Experience:

1. You need to be an excellent writer who can turn in clean, entertaining and informative copy at a very high pace.
2. You need to be willing to work hard (sometimes on weekends), think independently and be devoted to help create the best design sale site possible on the web.
3. You must have impeccable grammar skills.
4. You must be passionate about design.

Editorial writing experience (online or paper magazines or newspapers) is preferred.
We are particularly interested in writers with experience in the following areas: children’s toys, furniture and clothing.

Out of the 1320 co-working spaces worldwide, it is very difficult to find your best match. SharedDesks will definitively be your help of searching the best fit efficiently, and elegantly. Among of many other directory services, it stands out with its sophisticated design(click the picture below to see), enables users to find the nearest co-working space.

I had a chance to interview Mr. Kia Rahmani, the CEO of this service. So I started off with a naïve question, “why is it so cool?”. He kindly answered to me by saying “it’s not about design, it’s all about user experience”. I could feel his passion toward listening to the users since first thing he said, before even starting the interview, was “so let’s hear your feedback of our service”. Of course this stylish service can not be made only by the user’s feedback. In order to perfect it’s usability, 40% of their staffs are working on UX, UI, and design.

Kia is running co-working space of his own in Vancouver and seeing whole dynamic movement of co-workers. He claims that those nomad workers are moving one place to another, seeking for 3 values; Efficiency, sharing, and opportunity. I’m sure SharedDesks will become a platform which accelerate this movement and lead all the co-workers to optimized workplace.

I think you see the word “alpha” on upper left corner of its website. It means there is lot more to come such as exciting new features and updates! Can’t wait for the Beta version? then your feedback will surely help accelerates and sharpens its product!

Keisuke

Follow all my adventures in the US here on our Facebook page.

Co-working spaces are filled with two Ts. Tasks and Talent. What if we you could buy and sell these two Ts with all the co-workers in the world? Anew Facebook app called Coworkify is aiming to do just that. This app, developed by Japanese team, creates a job market place for co-workers, allowing users to post wills and wants.

Wills: Post your skill or talent and how much you’re charging.

Wants: Post your request for help and how much you’re willing to pay.

Coworkify will only allow access to users who are actually a using co-working space. This creates a link and trust between users.

If you don’t understand my poor English, just watch this video

video of Coworkify

I addition to those features, the owner of a co-working space can use this app as a Co-worker Relationship Management(CRM) tool.

It all started from Coworkify winning the grand prize at Startup Weekend Kyoto 2011. Now co-working spaces from all over the world are reaching out to them, waiting for its launch. Citizen Space is one of them too!

So sign up for Coworkify for more update from here! They are also looking for partner co-working spaces to test their beta version.

My first post on Coworkify will probably be … “I will teach you how to speak Japanese in Citizen Space for 10,000yen!”  um, anybody?!

Keisuke

Follow all my adventures in the US here on our Facebook page.

What does Co-working, UX design,  and Samurai’s have in common? Me, Keisuke Kajitani the new intern at Citizen Space. I’m a Japanese university student and I will start my career as a venture capitalist this coming April in Japan. Working in California is like a dream come true to me since the US is the mecca for entrepreneurship and venture capital.

Anyway, my first assignment as a intern was to give feedback on the user experience of  a mobile application. Wow, commenting on a product’s UX in the first day of my internship!? I’m not a professional on the matter at all! However, my mentor knew how important it is to get an opinion from ”non-techy” users. After all, the customers who will use the application will mainly be normal people like myself.

I believe many app developers are wondering how to effectively get feedback more efficiently. When it comes to communicating with “non-techy” users, it becomes an even more difficult task. I have one suggestion, use  a simple collaborative service like Notableapp from Zurb <http://www.zurb.com> . Why did I emphasized the  simple part? Because many of the wireframing services has too many features that “non techy” commentator like me has no idea have to use it right. Notable is one solution for you. It allows commentator to just drag the part they want to make a comment and directly write comment on it intuitively. This simple experience will definitively reduce the stress of commentator.

If you have to create wire frames from scratch, Cacoo might work better. This web service from a Japanese team allows you to draw wireframe itself and what’s special about it is that the several people can edit the wireframe simultaneously, meaning the change or comment one person makes will reflect to other person’s screen. By using this service, two or more commentators
can have discussion at the same time, improving the quality and shortening the time and cost spent on the wireframing process.

http://youtu.be/IMC2QRH_gpU (checkout the video)

“Non-techy”  users can sometimes be helpful so please use me anytime when you drop by Citizen Space.

Follow all my adventures in the US here on our Facebook<http://www.facebook.com/citizenspace>  page.

The freelance Senior Designer will report to the creative director and art director and work alongside the account team, interaction designers and programmers. The successful candidate will be responsible for brainstorming creative concepts with the project team, developing original design concepts, executing designs based on established style guides, participating in visual design presentations to clients, developing detailed design specs for production, and overseeing junior design team members.

A stealth creative services company working in Citizen Space is looking for freelance Senior Visual Designers for short and long-term opportunities.

Requirements/Qualifications:

• Strong conceptual thinking
• Intimate Knowledge of Photoshop and Illustrator
• 3-5 years of visual design experience.
• Strong leadership skills – ability to work with Art Directors and mentor Junior Designers
• A solid understanding of designing intuitive site functionality, interaction, site architecture, user interfaces, and navigation.
• Web development experience in an agency environment
• Great communications skills – both with internal teams and communicating with/presenting to clients.
• A great attitude – we value our creative talent tremendously and show it, but we operate a prima-donna free work zone.

Email us your resume, a link to your most recent portfolio, and your Linked In profile to be consider for this immediate position.

Happy Holidays, y’all!

As I’m sure you understand by now- I love social media….all of it!  So, after many “maybe so” and “ok, tomorrow” type scenarios, I have finally just skipped the writer’s block merry-g0-round and created The #Coworker, a desktop and mobile formatted #coworking digest, powered by paper.li (@SmallRivers).

Check it out, & follow us on Twitter (@CitizenSpace) to keep up with the best, and freshest variety of coworking news!

MOVE-IN SPECIALS FOR LAST WEEK OF DECEMBER 2011!!!

$999 – Lite Membership
Includes 3 months fees and deposit fee. Must pay upfront to secure this deal!

$1199 – Full Membership
Includes 3 months fees and deposit fee. Must pay upfront to secure this deal!!

$699 – Team Special
Includes 2 Tables/ 4 Memberships. Month-to-Month Deal

$425 – Café Membership Per Quarter/Receive Mail here!
Or $200.00, Drop-in Member Month-to-Month Fees

$150.00 – Drop-in Members – if you pay 3 months in advance
Or $200.00, Drop-in Member Month-to-Month Fees

So, if you’re interested in more information, or want to become a member before special ends, shoot me an e-mail! You can do that here: jhines@citizenspace.us

So how, exactly, does an idea turn into a company?  This is the road block that many entrepreneurs find themselves at when building their seedling ideas into profitable startups.  Of course there are numerous prominent and successful startups that were born overnight.  However, the problem for the average human being is that they cannot afford the time that it takes to guarantee success, and/or they lack the full range of skills necessary to build the startup entirely on their own — much less overnight.

The truth of the matter is that there is no possible way to establish a strong foundation for your new startup without a serious time commitment. Time, in and of itself, is most often one of the primary reasons that many entrepreneurs and startup enthusiasts experience complication in the execution of the necessary planning stages of idea discovery. A lack of time and planning in the initial phases of this tedious process can often spillover into the actual development and long-term establishment of a new startup.

Participants at an "Idea Accelerator" pitch their initial ideas

Let’s face it: we’re all busy and things in this day and age move at a very high speed- and they’re only getting faster. Without the personal time and work commitment necessary for having a systematic and well-planned approach to the many “idea-to-seed funding” stages of building out your plan of action, you could easily see a great idea fall through.

Citizen Space  recently had the great pleasure of hosting Startup Monthly‘s IceBreaker 3.0, which is was the third iteration of their Idea Accelerator program. The beauty of hosting events such as this in our SoMa #coworking space is that the transformation of office space by day to startup incubator activities in the evenings (and on weekends!) allows our members to participate in these types of networking and team building opportunities, with the option for doing so being literally right at their doorstep.

The purpose of these types of events is to have seamless collaboration between people that might not have otherwise met at all. It is in this type of environment that much of the discovery, planning, and development of new ideas takes place. Having both seen and facilitated the growth of brand new ideas into concepts and eventually startups in our space, we have learned the ins-and-outs of the crucial milestones that must be incorporated into the development process of new ideas, and can summarize success for many by one simple thing: teamwork.

Having said over and over again that time and commitment are crucial in the beginning stages of implementing your new idea, it is likely a very difficult thing to do it all quickly enough to keep up with the rapid development of new technology. Many entrepreneurs moonlight with their ideas, and exhaust themselves with trying to do it all on their own- even to the extent of taking on the self-teaching method to very difficult, complex coding languages.

Team Building is Essential to Creating a Successful Pitch

While this is definitely feasible for some people to do, the easier and more well-rounded option in this case is to build and foster relationships with other people who can bring something to the table as a technical, marketing, or business co-founder. Lessening the workload on each person by working with others in the teamwork approach not only increases the technical resources that the idea will have to build upon in it’s early stages, but will also decrease the amount of total time that it takes to pitch your idea to investors for seed funding.

It is important to also remember that as you build a team around your idea, it might not always be the “best” one. Having a team brainstorm together and build upon an idea can often lead to the development of brand new, even better ideas- and this is what we see often, particularly at events such as the IceBreaker 3.0.

So, when you’re at the point that you’re ready to move forward with seeing your idea come to life, remember this Japanese proverb: “None of us are as smart as all of us.”

Still have questions? Ideas? Tweet them to us @CitizenSpace!

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Citizen Space is the world’s first coworking space, located at 425 2nd Street in the SoMa district of San Francisco.  The idea of Citizen Space is to take the best elements of a coffee shop (social, energetic, creative) and the best elements of a workspace (productive, functional), and combine them to give indie workers the chance to have their own, affordable office space.  Citizen Space was built on the coworking philosophy.  Our residents (past and present) range from: software engineers, web developers, social media consultants/strategists, graphic designers, product designers, public relations specialists, and sustainable web hosting entrepreneurs.  Check us out today!