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<p>Hector Kolonas is the founder of included.co who run a powerful Member Benefits programme that secures great deals by leveraging the aggregate buying-power of hundreds of entrepreneurial communities and coworking spaces worldwide.</p>
<p>We caught up with him, and chatted about Member Benefits and their often hidden value to growing coworking spaces and their members.</p>
<p>Oh and by the way, we’ve also integrated their Member Benefits programme right into Nexudus so your members can get the latest and greatest deals from right inside your whitelabel community platform.</p>
<p><strong>Why Member Benefits and why coworking?</strong></p>
<p>Before launching included, I found myself launching coworking spaces in nearly-abandoned offices after a financial meltdown on the island of Cyprus. As I got more involved with the day-to-day running, marketing and community management of coworking communities across Europe, I loved how these communities were enabling people to rebuild their work lives or even launch new projects and companies.</p>
<p>However, even though we’ve become used to sharing meeting rooms, coffee, kitchens and workspace; it dawned to me that we were leaving money on the table by not sharing other service or product providers.</p>
<p>Not only would recommendations help us save time, but buying in larger quantities would make things cheaper. It was there that the idea for included.co was born, just another idea turned into an action within a coworking space.</p>
<p>With so many spaces getting their community, office design and amenities perfect, members are increasingly looking at who can help their businesses spend less (and make more) money, when picking their workspace.</p>
<p><strong>How long has included been running?</strong></p>
<p>The first version went live on 1st October 2014 with a handful of pilot partner communities.</p>
<p>Nowdays we’re proud to be supporting hundreds of communities, and shrinking the costs of almost as many business products and/or services.</p>
<p><strong>You call coworking spaces ‘partners’, why? Is there any cost for them to join the programme?</strong></p>
<p>One of my personal drivers for launching the company was to one-day support entrepreneurship in as many local ecosystems as possible, if not all of them.</p>
<p>The best way to do this on a global scale was to partner up with the communities in which entrepreneurship is already being housed, supported and inspired.</p>
<p>For this reason, we knew that charging the workspace operators for this service would go against our global vision. Instead we knew that many of these communities were running on razor thin margins, so we built our business around charging whomever was making money through the platform, and then splitting this with the community operators.</p>
<p>So registering a community for included.co isn’t just free, it makes the space money whilst saving their members money.</p>
<p><strong>You recently made integrations possible for platforms like ours through your ‘invisible API’, why would a relatively young startup risk the brand exposure?</strong></p>
<p>Firstly, the brand of our partner communities is far more important to their local entrepreneurial ecosystem than ours should ever be. So by ‘going invisible’ we get to keep empowering entrepreneurship whilst strengthening our partners’ brands.</p>
<p>Secondly, brilliant community management and interaction platforms exist and are being used every day by both operators and members. We don’t think anyone wins by having to check yet another platform to see if there’s any savings or discounts available with their memberships.</p>
<p><strong>Any thoughts on our Member Benefits integration?</strong></p>
<p>We’re super excited to support Nexudus-powered communities, their members, and look forward to integrating even more powerful functionality right into your community platform over the next few months.</p>
<p>As we’re driving up revenue for the community, without using any of the community managers’ time, we believe this will be a big hit for both included and not-included-yet Nexudus clients.</p>
<p><strong>How can the not-included-yet get involved?</strong></p>
<p>Simply register your community via included.co/for/community-operators and when your community is approved, log into your Nexudus account and plug in your workspace ‘username’ when you enable the integration.</p>
<p>And just like that, you too, are included and your members will love you for it!</p>

We caught up with Hector Kolonas from included.co, and chatted about Member Benefits.

“Member Benefits, when done right, will drive up the business value of coworking memberships across the globe” Hector Kolonas (included.co).

<p>The term <strong>"growth hacker"</strong> was first used in 2010 by <a href="https://twitter.com/seanellis">Sean Ellis</a> to describe a professional whose main objective is to make a given product or service grow. Andrew Chen popularised the term in his article <a href="http://andrewchen.co/how-to-be-a-growth-hacker-an-airbnbcraigslist-case-study/">Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing</a>, where he explains the case of Airbnb. For Chen, a growth hacker is a hybrid of a marketing professional and a programmer. In 2013, Sean Ellis created the <a href="https://growthhackers.com/">GrowthHackers</a> community where members share knowledge, techniques and experience. </p>
<p>Examples of growth hacking are usually related to startups that experience exponential growth, obtaining millions of users, such as the cases of Facebook, Airbnb, Snapchat, Pinterest and Instagram. Although there may be big differences between their models, many of their techniques can be applied to the growth of any business and can help answer the question "how do I get consumers for my product?"</p>
<p>It's all about being creative, looking for new techniques, trying again and improving processes, while keeping costs down.</p>
<div>We've picked out some growth hacking experiences and techniques that could be or have already been applied to the coworking movement:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><strong>Product/market fit.</strong> “Make something people want” (<a href="http://paulgraham.com/">P. Graham</a>) In this sense, it's important to be aware of local conditions, understand the existing demand, and if there isn't one, try to create it. Studying factors such as <em>location, size, professional profiles in the city, etc</em>. is important so your project can take shape.</li>
<li><strong>Early adopters.</strong> Getting someone who doesn't know your product or service to trust it is a challenge. You have to put out a red carpet for the first users and pull out all the stops to make sure they have a positive experience, which in turn boosts word of mouth. One of the most important words of advice would be to start building a community long before opening your doors.</li>
<li><strong>Fake users.</strong> We're not saying to make cardboard cutouts of coworkers, but it's not going to help promote the space if there aren't any people in photos of events or the space is empty when you show it to potential coworkers. If this is the case, invite friends, family, neighbours, even enemies to use in the space as you're starting out. </li>
<li><strong>Let them love you.</strong> Apart from having a good product, one of the tools that helped Slack grow has been its eye for detail. An example of such is its <a href="https://twitter.com/SlackHQ/timelines/402603838554644480">“Customer Wall of Love” </a>where it invites users to leave feedback. Making coworker feedback visible in your coworking space can really help attract new members. You could have a <em><strong>"wall of love"</strong></em> on your website or even on one of the walls in your coworking space. Or why not invite your coworkers to share their experience on your blog? Another great example is how Nextspace creatively shared the love this <a href="http://nextspace.us/2013/02/14/coworking-valentines-day/">Valentine's Day</a>.</li>
</ul>
<div> </div>
<div style="text-align: center;"><img class="feature-image img-responsive" src="http://landing.spaces.nexudus.com/images/growhacking3.jpg" alt="" /></div>
<div><em>Examples of feedback left by coworkers on their coworking spaces. </em></div>
<div><em> </em></div>
<div><em> </em></div>
<div>Maybe you've used one of these techniques already, or maybe there are others that may not be suitable for your model. There's no magic wand, the key is to keep trying and fine tune your model until you get the product/model fit that will make your community grow more quickly. </div>
<div><strong> </strong></div>
<div><strong><em>How do you help your coworking space community grow? We would love to know your personal experience. </em></strong></div>
<div> </div>
</div>

English

The term **"growth hacker"** was first used in 2010 by [Sean Ellis](https://twitter.com/seanellis "") to describe a professional whose main objective is to make a given product or service grow. Andrew Chen popularised the term in his article [Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing](http://andrewchen.co/how-to-be-a-growth-hacker-an-airbnbcraigslist-case-study/ ""), where he explains the case of Airbnb. For Chen, a growth hacker is a hybrid of a marketing professional and a programmer. In 2013, Sean Ellis created the [GrowthHackers](https://growthhackers.com/ "") community where members share knowledge, techniques and experience. 

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Read our latest articles to catch up on our most recent updates, advice and tips for workspace operators, and news and insights from the wider coworking and flexible workspace industry.

“Member Benefits, when done right, will drive up the business value of coworking memberships across the globe” Hector Kolonas (included.co).

Growth hacking and coworking spaces

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Blog

Read our latest articles to catch up on our most recent updates, advice and tips for workspace operators, and news and insights from the wider coworking and flexible workspace industry.

“Member Benefits, when done right, will drive up the business value of coworking memberships across the globe” Hector Kolonas (included.co).

Growth hacking and coworking spaces

Company

Developers Hub

Community

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