American Entrepreneurship Today is pleased to present our Q&A series with key participants of the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Cowerks.com is an co-working office space based in Asbury Park New Jersey It is was co-founded by entrepreneur Bret Morgan who is owner of Bands on a Budget.
Your Asbury Park Coworking Office Space. From private offices, to workstations, to conference room space, we’ve got you covered. Our modern facilities & professional community include everything your company needs to grow. Our common area space includes a workstation or desk, WiFi, printing, and fax services available by the day, week, or month. There are never any leases or long term obligations.
Cowerks also has four private offices for individuals and companies looking for something a bit more long-term. All private office plans come with 24/7 key access, a locking door, WiFi, printing, and fax services, and 15 hours per month of conference room time.
Our flexible office solutions are perfect for start-ups, freelancers, or small teams looking to join a community of other entrepreneurs. Some of our coworkers include web & mobile application developers, graphic designers, photographers, videographers, event marketing coordinators, content producers, and other creative types.
1. Co-working spaces have become popular in the last few years. Why is that? and what is special about cowerks?
Coworking merges office space with a built in professional network. Mix in a healthy dose of monthly meetups, workshops, and events specially tailored to help entrepreneurs and freelancers grow their companies and you have much more than a typical office space.
Far too many freelancers and entrepreneurs are isolated in the confines of their own home and are forced to organically build their network from the ground up. Coworking solves this problem by offering a built in professional network. Through the experience of informal collaboration and an abundance of resources, you can look forward to growing as an individual, a company, and a community each and every day at Cowerks.
2. How would you describe the technology community in your part of New Jersey?
We consider Asbury Park one of the greatest places to live and grow a business. Located less than two hours from NYC and Philadelphia, it is situated perfectly to be the epicenter of technology and entrepreneurship in Monmouth County and the Jersey Shore.
The first Cowerks was started in June of 2010 with the intention of providing a community hub for entrepreneurs, programmers, designers, and tech enthusiasts to turn to, outside of New York City. Since our inception we have helped to cultivate a community of over 500 members and gone on to launch satellite events such as Asbury Agile, Hacking Asbury, the NJ Spark Summit, as well as meetups and events outside of Asbury Park.
In April of 2013 we outgrew our original location on Mattison Avenue and relocated to the newly renovated Lakehouse Building in Asbury Park’s central business district. This expansion will allow us to grow upon our mission to provide a viable alternative to NYC or Philadelphia for the next generation of entrepreneurs to start and grow their business in a unique, organic, and vibrant manner.
We are quickly approaching a positive inflection point for technology and entrepreneurship in both New Jersey and at the Jersey Shore. What we are building is bigger than any one individual or business and that is evident in the community that has grown in and around Cowerks these past 3 years.
Great strides have been made towards gaining the critical mass needed to attain the credibility top tier communities such as San Francisco, New York, Boston, and Boulder possess. Our mission is to keep supporting the New Jersey community and do our part in bringing this vision to fruition.
3. What is vital to make a technology community grow?
Providing a common ground for entrepreneurs, hackers, designers, and other like minded individuals looking for a community to engage and feed off of is essential to growing tech/start-up culture here at the Jersey Shore as well as New Jersey.
4. Technology and entrepreneurship are often intertwined. What part of your community are entrepreneurs?
I like to think of technology as a tool and entrepreneurs as the men or women with the ideas. Sometimes they can be intertwined (i.e, the developer or designer with an idea) so they are by no means mutually exclusive. Throughout history, technology, whether it be the cars, modern aviation, or the transistor has always paved the way for innovating new companies to launch and grow into household names. We currently are in a “golden age” where the cost of entering the start-up game is accessible to anyone with an idea, some basic skills, a enough $$ for dinner and a few drinks at any decent restaurant. I think the idea of technology and entrepreneurship is a very old concept but the tools constantly change. 500+ years ago it was a printing press and a popular religious text that launched a revolution, now it’s a Macbook Pro bootstrapped with Ruby on Rails or XCode that continues to pave the way for innovation.
5. Tell us something about the Meetups you run and what a new attendee might expect at his or her first meetup?
Jersey Shore Tech Meetup: http://meetup.com/jersey-shore-tech
Jersey Shore Entrepreneurs & Investors Meetup: http://meetup.com/jersey-shore-entrepreneurs-and-investors
Asbury Agile: http://asburyagile.com
Jersey Shore Entrepreneurs & Investors Meetup: http://meetup.com/jersey-shore-entrepreneurs-and-investors
Asbury Agile: http://asburyagile.com
I just encourage people to come with an open mind and the intention of meeting someone new and learning something.
See the full New Jersey Entrepreneurial Ecosystem (http://newjersey.americanentrepreneurship.com/map.html)
