Conyac で依頼された翻訳結果を公開

Co-working in Thailand? HUBBA shares on supporting startups

The HUBBA Team shares what got them started on creating one of Thailand’s first co-working space and what is needed to support the Thai tech startup community.

e27 has been working closely with Thai co-working space, HUBBA, on organizing events like Founders Drinks and the upcoming Echelon Ignite: Thailand. Taking a closer look at how the team is supporting the local startup community, we sat down with co-founder Amarit Charoenphan (Aim) to find out what it takes to run a private co-working space in a city where there is less support compared to that in Singapore. What started the idea for HUBBA, especially in a place where the idea of co-working is rather new.

We saw and studied the idea of co-working for many years and realized that everybody was talking about it but nobody was jumping in to do it. We knew that we were on to something great, a paradigm shift in the workplace culture that has enabled people to achieve their career goals independent of the confines of traditional offices, which has been made possible by the internet and digital tools to help startups and freelancers get started at a much lower cost. However, as experienced entrepreneurs ourselves, we realized that despite the technologies enabling people to start businesses easier, it has not improved the success outcomes of businesses in Thailand since the startup ecosystem that allows startups to thrive did not exist in Thailand. Taking it on as our personal mission to both improve the success of our fellow friends and colleagues who were starting up and also at the same time helping our own chances of success with our latest startup (Ascendex Consulting, a boutique startup consultancy), we believe that co-working spaces represented the first and most logical step to create Thailand’s startup ecosystem from the grassroots since without a large, accessible community of startups to begin with, any capacity building, workshop, events, or seed funding programs would be ineffective. We also love the fact that the idea was so disruptive of the mundane, hierarchical, political and uninspiring workplace and jobs that were the norm in Thailand and that if we were able to make it successful and scale it across Thailand, we would potentially change the way people work and at the same time change the way that big corporations operate and treat their employees. But most importantly and why we were able to build it as fast as could (in less than six months) was that we believe that the concept so awesome that we not only wanted so badly to work in one but instinctively knew that it would be so useful and crucial to supporting a startup’s growth and success that we had hoped it existed many years earlier and if so we would definitely join and not make the same mistakes (sometimes fatal) that we did with our previous startups. Can you share more about the people and team behind HUBBA?

HUBBA team’s profile and surprisingly non-technical yet highly entrepreneurial. Three are co-founders: Charle Charoenphan, Amarit Charoenphan and Kanadej Thamanoonragsa, while three are Partners (Chalermyuth Boonma, Ming Mahakittikun and Fasai Pongpitaksopon).

With two of our members (Charle & Ming) having starting or cofounded three companies each, Amarit with almost two years of social enterprise incubation experience, Note who is an active community builder with his TechMeetup Bangkok events, and Kanadej as our Finance Director and concurrently a Fund Manager for a Private Equity firm. Our latest partner, Fasai, who is now working with us as the Community Director for Singapore, also works as an Account Strategist at Google Singapore. Her addition will help bridge the gap for Thai startups who are looking to go regional by going to Singapore as well as connect our Singaporean partners such as e27, venture capitals, and co-working spaces to the Thai and ASEAN startup community.

How many startups/companies/projects are currently in HUBBA? Which is your favourite team?

We have over 100 registered members and currently around 50 active members. One of our favorite teams is Vachara (nickname Kuk) from Computerlogy who is a winner of Facebook World Hack 2012 in Jakarta by making Do Something in seven hours. He also has an awesome product, SocialEnable, which is a kick ass social media monitoring tool.

Another favorite is Ace Thanaboon Somboon who does Portfolios.net, Thailand’s largest online portfolio sharing website and community of over 30,000 registered creatives, designers and artists. He also does Creativemove.com, a online blog that promotes social innovation and action within the creatives, artists and designer community. What does it take to run a successful co-working space in Thailand and what other support would you need or are currently having?

Successful co-working spaces are run by great people who are passionate about adding value to the community and the ecosystem as a whole. Co-working space founders need to have an attention to detail on not just building the flashiest, biggest or cheapest coworking space.