In episode two of GCUC Radio, host, Tony Bacigalupo, talked to Manu Vega, the founder of Cuenca Coworking in Ecuador.  Here are were my main takeaways from the conversation.  

About Cuenca Coworking

Cuenca Coworking has grown from a 1970s townhouse to eight locations across the country since 2014.  Manu is also personally invested in helping local projects meet success and often provides his own resources to help them get started.

Manu sees coworking as an essential path to diversifying the economy which is so heavily reliant on oil production.  

How It All Started

Started as an entrepreneur with a stock broker software company and 20 employees.  Eventually, he needed to accelerate the way his people were working. He learned how they opened up to new experiences that pushed them further.  This made coworking seem like the obvious choice. Coworking has allowed them to have conversations that further advance their projects.

Culture

The culture of their space really started to emerge when they had brainstorming sessions about their projects about things they wanted to do.  This brought the community together as people began to contribute to the projects of others. These sessions would sometimes go after hours because people had so much experience to share.  Their community is shaped by the innovation that occurred as a result of the facilitation of ideas. People often come to the space with a certain skill set or goal that they have not had the opportunity to realize.  The development of a cultural core is founded on a community of people that are willing to actively support one another.

Government Contribution

The government was pretty active towards the promotion of coworking as the economy steers people towards more creativity dependent work.  Manu noted that the government has been open to giving money to entrepreneurs up to $50,000. In Cuenca, prices are much lower but there are still people who can contribute valuable resources.  In fact, the vice presidency currently wants to invest about $30 million in software development companies to help. The Software Association of Ecuador is mostly run by companies outside of Microsoft and other big name brands.  Cuenca created a “tech village” where they are able to set up their tech businesses close to the city as long as they have coworking spaces involved in their project.

Coworking spaces provide a way for companies to connect with larger resources while starting small in a cheap space.  While rent is required in coworking spaces, you gain the network and innovative community that is present in them as well.