14 ms·

Please save Hacker Lab

262 points by pkdpic 4y ago

dmitrygr 4y ago
> If you are able to help in any way please reach out directly to the Hacker Lab team. Why not instead name a number? What is needed? I am sure crowdfunding the proper sum is easier than finding a benevolent millionaire
- Alupis 4y ago
  Probably not... they will need ongoing funds, not a one-time cash injection through some GoFundMe campaign or similar. Corporate Sponsorships are likely their best bet. I'd wager their membership fees don't even come close to breaking even for operations and equipment maintenance, let alone new equipment. Consolidated Communications was generous enough to provide a free symmetrical gigabit fiber connection to their Sacramento location. They need money though, from the sound of it... not free gear and services. I wonder if they explored or approached Intel, who has a significant campus in the Folsom area. VSP is another major player in the Sacramento area.
  - dmitrygr 4y ago
    we need $xxxx per month is still better than "contact us" "contact us" is good for when you have a high pressure sales tactic to use, or want to gauge how much money you can extract from a client, not when you are (De facto) begging for a reprieve from death)
    - deleted 4y ago
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    - ifvictr 4y ago
      The author is merely a new member of the space and not representative of staff. I’m sure the staff would know better what that number is!
    - stjohnswarts 4y ago
      Yeah you think they would simply have a "donations" page on their website like 99% of the other nonprofits do?
      - Alupis 4y ago
        HackerLab is a for-profit corporation. Which isn't the norm for these types of places.
flaque 4y ago
You should open a kickstarter or gofundme while you have the spotlight.
- 3np 4y ago
  Also a BTC address (and maybe ETH and/or XMR if you can bother) for crypto donations.
  - websap 4y ago
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      Or, more plausibly, because it introduces additional middlemen and tax obligations to a straightforward donation drive?
      - thepasswordis 4y ago
        Why would a non profit be paying taxes? edit: turns out they're not a non-profit.
        russh 4y ago
        It's the law.
        woodruffw 4y ago
        Where do you see that they're a 501(c)(3) non-profit? I don't see that on their site; given the services they offer for sale, I would have expected them to be a B-corp or something similar. Either way: 501(c)(3) status exempts a nonprofit from Federal income tax, but not necessarily state taxes. I don't know enough about California taxes to say whether or not that matters for them, but it's plausible that they'd have tax obligations from accepting securities. Edit: Based on this search[1][2], there's a Benefit Corporation, not a 501(c)(3). [1]: https://rct.doj.ca.gov/Verification/Web/Details.aspx?result=09d53687-f123-43cb-92d6-2cc26db07be2 https://rct.doj.ca.gov/Verification/Web/Details.aspx?result=... [2]: https://rct.doj.ca.gov/Verification/Web/Details.aspx?result=0dd03861-3b09-4201-81c7-5eb10d12351d https://rct.doj.ca.gov/Verification/Web/Details.aspx?result=...
pvg 4y ago
Few days ago, 118 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32197708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32197708
YeBanKo 4y ago
iirc they have only one location in Sacramento. I would love to support them, but I don't live anywhere close, looks like one time donation thing won't help them anyway and becoming a member not being able to attend does not make sense. However, it would be nice to know why they failed from financial standpoint. There were couple of tech shops around me that closed their door over the last few years(even before pandemic), but I think there was enough/some interest. And eventually I would be interested in starting/helping with something like this at a smaller scale in my area. This is why I am curios what could have been done differently to make it sustainable? My theory is they were more ambitious with the variety of equipments, programs and space they have, but would live if someone has more insights?
- Alupis 4y ago
  The thread linked to by PVG has more details from the CTO of HackerLab. The basic take-away I gathered was they relied too heavily on donations, grants and sponsorships instead of revenue-generating endeavors, and once the "free money" dried up, they were left with few-to-no options.
  - samtho 4y ago
    This has been the tune for many years now. They’ve botched deals, failed to set boundaries with “investors”, and went after easy money with strings attached. The founders were still learning the ropes of running this sort of operation. I think they would have benefited from someone to handle financials and someone else to handle community building and management.
  - lelanthran 4y ago
    > The basic take-away I gathered was they relied too heavily on donations, grants and sponsorships instead of revenue-generating endeavors, and once the "free money" dried up, they were left with few-to-no options. Not sure if that take-away is true or not, but it's almost always a bad idea to run a business that relies on charity[1] to stay afloat. There's some outliers, sure, but if you are planning a business, make sure the plan includes getting people to give you money in exchange for something they value more than that money[2]. [1] That includes investment for current operational expenses. [2] I was, in 2009, on a panel once, distributing seed money to startups. I remember the one pitch we had from a pair of founders. They brought charts, graphs, all their numbers, current and projected. They had launched with a single investor and a runway of maybe 6 months. They were in month 3, IIRC. It was a labour intensive business (Tourism, so each customer just bought their ticket once, and may never want to go on that tour again.) They needed more money to keep their operation going (mostly just paying themselves and a few staff members). I asked about what happens after month 6. They replied that they were actively pursuing investment to make sure that they had another 6 month runway. I looked at their income and mentally divided it by the number of customers. I asked about how they were planning to get to profitability after 12 months (after all, the purse holders wanted some possibility of return). They replied that at the 9 month mark they would pursue further investment. I double-checked my figures; each customer was costing more to service than the customer was paying. Okay, so at the 12 month mark? "We'll actively pursue further investment". After 5 years? "We assure you, we'll be continuously getting new investment". At which point do you raise your prices? "We can't do that, we're already so high that there aren't enough tourists willing to pay anything more". How do we get a return on this? "It's an investment, you don't get it back. It's in everyone's interests to have more tourism. We will all benefit eventually". The most surprising part of all of this is that both were extremely recent university graduates. I know this, because they proudly presented their humanities credentials at the start of the pitch.
rtpg 4y ago
It really sucks how basically real estate pricing seems to be determinative in what communities will have, especially in the US where restrictive zoning makes it even more fragile. I don't know how you could make something as spacious as what is shown in those pictures work with my understanding of US real estate. No matter what you do, sticking a donut chain in there would probably be more profitable, and thus the rents will show that. Small cynic in me: when I saw the size of the desk area, my immediate feeling was "chop that in half". Do you really need to be paying a bunch of rent and offering a subpar coworking space along with your hacker space? But I imagine that staff costs are also an issue.
- Alupis 4y ago
  The new Golden 1 Arena was built a few years ago and has driven all the surrounding real estate prices through the roof. A great many businesses were driven out of the area by increased rents or just plain kicked out for a demolish/rebuild. A hackerspace like this might be able to find cheaper rent in a more industrial area... but then convenience and safety for members becomes an issue.
- deleted 4y ago
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- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  Is it the same with artist studios? I have no idea. Reading a book about the art-music explosion from Athens, Georgia a few decades ago — someone in the book suggested that art needs cheap rent. A sleepy college town in the dirty south was just the ticket. Maybe maker spaces need to find their home in the low-rent areas.
  - rtpg 4y ago
    I do think that you want to seek out low-rent areas, but if you're setting up shop way out in the sticks then you're simply too far away from people. Doesn't help that in those areas people will have huge houses anyways so will be less in need of a separate workspace, so to speak. Though really you need a good-sized community, and for rent to not absolutely destroy a place. There is a local bar in my area, its customer base is (roughly) the same 50 people that cycle through it on a regular basis. It's a small enough place, and it's run by 2.5 people. But rent can be cheap cuz it's on the first floor of a multi-floor building. The fact that Hacker Lab is next to a tramway line, and there are not even any 3-story buildings anywhere within view in that area, and yet rent is probably a component (though tbf staffing is also a large cost I bet) probably makes this issue even more acute.
sen 4y ago
While the place looks impressive, it also looks ridiculously excessive. The amount of wasted space, the running costs and maintenance required for all that space, etc etc… a hackerspace just doesn’t need that. They clearly got over-excited about being “fancy” rather than concentrating on being sustainable financially. People use these spaces for the equipment and socialisation, it doesn’t need to look like an Ikea.
- deleted 4y ago
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- chrismartin 4y ago
  Can downvoters please explain why you disagree? Disclaimer, I've never been here, I don't know what it's like, don't know anyone involved. But I do see four 3D printers nearly touching each other on a benchtop. If you're setting up a printer and you accidentally bump into another while it's running, you misalign it and ruin someone else's long-running print job. This crowding, compared with what appears to be an expansive and sparsely furnished co-working desk area, raises questions of how effectively the space has been managed for its community's needs. If each desk gets a lot more use than each printer, someone please tell me I'm wrong. I aspire to start a simple, affordable, FLOSS-oriented co-working space someday, so I want to learn from cases like this.
  - stjohnswarts 4y ago
    I think if I were you. Lots of these places get capital equipment as a donation and that doesn't come with FLOSS software most of the time. I think FLOSS as a first choice when available as a good replacement, would be a better policy.
TaylorAlexander 4y ago
Heart breaking to see places like this close shop. I’ve seen first hand how many people learn new skills from the kind of hands on community learning that these places can offer. If anyone has the finances to turn this around I encourage you to do it. I can’t offer that, but this situation reminds me that things don’t have to be this way. There are alternative land use strategies that hold land in trust for the use of communities so that land use doesn’t have a monetary cost associated with it, or costs are managed as a community. Most prominent in my mind is the way the city government of Vienna Austria buys land and builds housing to keep prices low. We absolutely should have community spaces for our communities, but our notion of land as a private investment makes land super expensive, and in an unequal society regular people can’t afford commoditized land prices. Instead we all end up working as hard as we can to meet ever rising rents. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
thepasswordis 4y ago
It sucks, but they're not going to find that benevolent millionaire. Hackerspaces all over the place have gone through this exact cycle. There's always some hope of "well we're all the grassroots of the tech cycles. Surely the ultra wealthy in our tribe will toss us a few scraps!" But no, they won't, and it breaks my heart.
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- geerlingguy 4y ago
  It's rare, but not unprecedented. Here in St. Louis, we have a very similar Makerspace that basically rose out of the ashes of a failed TechShop. It's called MADE and one of Square's founders funded its move and reopening/rebranding: https://hecmedia.org/posts/made-makerspace-opens-in-st-louis-with-help-from-silicon-valley-giant-jim-mckelvey https://hecmedia.org/posts/made-makerspace-opens-in-st-louis...
  - JKCalhoun 4y ago
    Stay safe. The wife and I were just in St. Lou a few weeks back — passing through on a road trip. The arch is amazing — bigger than I remembered it.
  - pkdpic 4y ago
    OP here, thank you for sharing! Really interested in concrete success examples here, rare as they may be. I think we're all aware that there's bo shortage of reasons to be hopeless about the viability of makerspaces, positive outlooks are valuable commodities : )
    - thepasswordis 4y ago
      I think the biggest hurdle is that you're a for profit business. Bluntly: your business failed. That really sucks, but also: why wouldn't you run this as a 501c3? If I'm a benevolent billionaire, those yearly 990 filings actually matter to me because I want to know how you're spending the money.
karmicthreat 4y ago
I'm always amazed at how Noisebridge seems to survive. It's grimy, chaotic and in an expensive city. But it always survives somehow.
- pkdpic 4y ago
  That's a great point, I wonder what their secret sauce is...
  - rexreed 4y ago
    Noisebridge is a registered non-profit California corporation, with IRS 501 charitable status. The secret sauce for non-profitable Makerspaces and such is to not be profitable, and structure as a charity, because that's what it most likely is. Noisebridge is volunteer-led, so no one is on salary. Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noisebridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noisebridge Running a hackerspace for profit is most likely a dead-end.
    - ValentineC 4y ago
      > The secret sauce for non-profitable Makerspaces and such is to not be profitable, and structure as a charity, because that's what it most likely is. Noisebridge is volunteer-led, so no one is on salary. It might work in the US, where it's possible that donations to charities get huge tax breaks, but I don't think it matters as much in other parts of the world. One problem with being volunteer-led is that if your core is allowed to weaken, or if there aren't policies in place to "manage" or exclude bad members of the community, one or two bad eggs could be enough to cause people to get tired of their antics and quit (which, as I've read, is a problem that Noisebridge has time and again). I think this post [1] sums it up quite well: > Ask anybody who served on the board of our nonprofit hackerspace HeatSync Labs over the past 2 years, and they'll tell you they spent approaching 0% of their time envisioning and executing on what kind of awesome nonprofit we should be and instead spent all of their time babysitting and psychoanalyzing a CONSTANT (albeit minority) population of angry members. > Why are they so angry at this person, their project, or the way they they were spoken to? Have they tried talking to them? Have they tried not yelling at them? Have they offered to help? Were they broken up with recently? Are they having problems at work? Volunteer-led ones would work better if more of them had a constantly-renewing team of 2-3 volunteers specifically trained in community management and dispute mediation, but unfortunately most spaces might not have such privilege. Source: I'm involved in one such struggling non-for-profit hackerspace myself. :) [1] https://citizengadget.com/toxicity-inclusivity-and-community-size/ https://citizengadget.com/toxicity-inclusivity-and-community...
MrDunham 4y ago
"There's no money in maker spaces." I so wish this wasn't true. I want to open my own to inspire young inventors to learn and build (because I wish it had existed for me). A few weeks ago I was talking to the founder of a wildly profitable coworking chain in Ohio. He broke the code... don't sell memberships, sell the foot traffic to towns (and malls). A few local towns even gave him $1 rent on beautiful buildings because the downtown needed more foot traffic. Or $750k non recourse loans for remodels. In short, he's a damn fine businessman... and he's the one to say that he can't figure out how to make a maker space profitable. It truly breaks my heart to see maker spaces go under again, and again, and again. Clearly the standard business model of memberships + classes + fees doesn't carry enough margin. I just wonder what might as I'd love to see a makerspace in every city.
- ncallaway 4y ago
  Are libraries profitable? I wish these could exist and didn’t need to turn a profit. These seems like spaces with significant public benefit, and I’d love to see public funding for these kinds of spaces (maybe even folding into the mission of public libraries)?
  - mdavis6890 4y ago
    Can you imagine a service whereby the government provides table saw for use by the general public? I just do not think the government is equipped to manage this kind of risk.
    - qbasic_forever 4y ago
      Plenty of community colleges are run from state funding and have all kinds of adult education shop classes. You can learn to weld, do carpentry, etc.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
        Providing an education is utterly different from providing access to the tools to use more or less anytime you need them. Both are valuable, but they are quite distinct.
dosman33 4y ago
I added a late response to the last thread on this issue that outlined a detailed process to recovery. No one is going to throw money at a ship that's actively sinking. They need to have a plan that communicates how they will turn the ship around before any angel donors will step up. I hope they are working on this behind the scenes.
rexreed 4y ago
Take it from my personal experience, Hacker Lab won't be saved. There are no mysterious philanthropists or charities that throw their money or resources behind unsustainable hackerspaces or startup community resources. So many tech spaces and even meetups died in the past 5-6 years, and no white knights came to save the day. Indeed, in many cases, no one could be bothered to lift a finger to help, even those who were supportive in the past, when it suited their own needs. Hackerspaces and coworking spaces were all the rage, fad, and a dime a dozen in every city in the 2012-2019 pre-COVID startup cycle. But post-COVID, and even with a few frauds that poisoned the well, these fads go as all fads go. [0] https://www.al.com/news/2021/05/kyle-sandler-explains-how-he-conned-opelika-out-of-19-million-on-hbos-generation-hustle.html https://www.al.com/news/2021/05/kyle-sandler-explains-how-he...
- culi 4y ago
  There's actually a real-time API tracking all hackerspaces world wide. There's currently 2,454 total with 846 marked as active and 360 planned. I couldn't figure out a way to get historical data but I'd be really curious to see if your hypothesis can be validated by this API https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_Hacker_Spaces https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_Hacker_Spaces
  - ValentineC 4y ago
    > There's actually a real-time API tracking all hackerspaces world wide. There's currently 2,454 total with 846 marked as active and 360 planned. While it may be "real-time", I wonder how many of those "active" spaces are now dormant or struggling to stay afloat no thanks to the pandemic, and how many of those 360 "planned" ones are actively being discussed.
    - culi 4y ago
      Yes I don't doubt there's major challenges to cleaning up the data. Still though it could help illuminate some of the major trends
seabird 4y ago
No snark intended; what does this place offer? Is it largely a "community" thing? I'm looking at the equipment they have listed and it's oddly deficient. There's absolutely no electronics or 3D printing equipment you wouldn't be able to field yourself if you can afford the $125/month subscription. There's some metalworking basics that might be worthwhile if you have no space and no way to get any (highly likely in Sacramento), but with single machines for a given role and no comment on the available tooling and other support, there could be pretty serious issues with reliably using any of it. If I read the website correctly, they have at least 3000 square feet dedicated to gussied up co-working space, but no lathes currently available. Is this not checking out for anybody else that's hearing about this place secondhand?
- arlcode 4y ago
  I don't know that place either but with our local (very small) hackerspace, it's also the dedicated working space that is a major selling point. I would probably be able to afford most of the tools and machines I use on a regular basis but there's simply no place in my appartment to put any of these not to speak of dust and other debris when working with wood for example.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  I worked in workshops that had much fewer machines. Not from the US and perhaps they are organized differently, but it was also about community. Others did the work you were not familiar with. If the lathe was in use you had to wait or come by another day since work here takes long. But for most machines it doesn't take that long and this already seems very luxurious to me.
ta988 4y ago
I heard that one of the two hackerspaces in Chicago is handling money really well and for more than a decade. It is possible you just have to put someone that doesn't dilapitade or steal the money in charge of it and allow members to voice their concerns and have access to financial records. All the places I've seen failing they were kept hidden either by the institution or dishonest administrators.
langsoul-com 4y ago
Why do people insist on begging and pleading? Something like a hacker space ain't no charity. Look at the books, at the numbers, make some form of concrete or possible plan for recovery. Don't just beg for assistance from governments or mysterious angels. Even places that went through renovation or were funded by an angel happened for a reason. Maybe that was for good PR, because they had some personal memories there. Or it was funded via their charity for a tax break. People beg too much these days and don't think for themselves. Why?
- runnerup 4y ago
  Makerspaces are very much like schools. They really fill the gap left by the loss of shop classes in many K-12 programs. Sure, many 'students' find them after they become adults, but it's still filling that gap.
  - samtho 4y ago
    A lot of makerspaces have a very high age minimum, sometimes 18, due to insurance and other requirements some jurisdictions put into place if you intend on catering to minors.
- pkdpic 4y ago
  I hear you I guess but definitely wasn't intended as begging, or insisting on begging. Just a hopeless last ditch effort to save something that I care about. If I had the money I'd pay their rent in a heartbeat. If I had the time I'd volunteer for them 5 days a week. I was just bored at work with a text editor open and feeling bummed out.
  - sanjayio 4y ago
    Fwiw, thanks for sharing this. This thread is full of insights on hacker spaces as a business model in general.
- boneitis 4y ago
  Please be kind. They are most certainly trying to think and do what many of us have too much pride to do. It brings a twinkle to my eye that our gem of a sanctuary compels them to do so much in such a short amount of time. That said, I can concede all the criticisms I'm reading in the discussions here, but again, _please_ don't take a shit on our fellow's efforts. Thank you!
imroot 4y ago
I'm a former president and board member of a makerspace in Ohio (hive13). We thrived on donations (a lot of donations from members who had extra to give to help support the space and help students or those who couldn't afford our membership), and didn't receive much local help. A few years ago the hive grew to the point where we couldn't expand it any more, and we moved locations. We're still going strong. We spend money by voting on project, and even when projects aren't funded, the community finds a way to make it happen anyway. We didn't try to run it for profit: memberships are $50/month or $100/month (if you can afford it) or $13.37 (if you're a student or can't afford it). The hive is still on great footing, financially speaking, and it competes with maker spaces from the Cincinnati Public Library as well as a commercial makerspace in Sharonville. Maker spaces do work, but, it takes a lot of time, effort, and quite literally blood to make them work well.
- pkdpic 4y ago
  OP here, thank you so much for your comment! This is amazingly helpful concrete wisdom / perspective and I'm excited to read more about your space, its inspiring already : )
- dugmartin 4y ago
  I love the $13.37 price point - I’m wondering how many times you have to explain why it’s that exact amount.
samtho 4y ago
I was at Hackerlab at the beginning in 2012 when it was still on I at 17th. The community has always been lovely and Gina is very sweet and passionate. One of the biggest reasons why I’ve seen it struggle is the fact that so many people wanted it to be/to do different things for them. Coworking, private offices, event space, but also a makerspace with metalworking, woodworking, laser cutting, electronics, and more. A robust system of classes took years to get off the ground. Nobody wanted to do anything that wasn’t pleasant or interesting, but this is exactly what is needed to keep a space up and running. Coworking area was boring, but this comes with the territory. Private offices make the bulk of their revenue but also consumed the bulk of their space. This was not a community, however. Everyone did their work and left - which is fine, but this was the front-of-house thing that everyone saw and was not super impressive until you saw the back. The Coworking area did serve as a meetup space which was nice at least. In the makerspace area, at the beginning, a ton of people brought their tools into the space and made their own little dens and nobody was really allowed to touch those tools. Early members often did not pay membership but monopolized so much space with their clutter and tools that were useless to anyone else. This was a huge drain on the ability to get up and running but nobody wanted to have the hard conversations with these “foundational” members. This created a lot of social debt that had to be repaid/reorganized that, quite frankly, held them back a tremendous amount. A few “members” that seemed to be there all the time but we never saw working or making things, were actually homeless people just sleeping on the couches after everyone left. Also, HackerLab is a B-corp, but not a tax-exempt nonprofit. I firmly believe getting tax-exempt status under 501(c)(3) is the only way to run a successful community space as we can align the organization’s mission with what makes communities great to be apart of. I was part of a small group that splintered off in 2016 to form our own smaller makerspace focused on desktop fab. We suffered a similar fate in that everyone on the board/admin side of things were makers. We didn’t want to do stuff like fundraise, go after members, equipment, or organize periodic events. We still did fine but made the decision to cease operations when the stay at home order started. Now, I’m involved with Shop Class on Stockton Blvd at 14th ave. The guy who started it is my across-the-street neighbor. I found out what he was doing and helped him get connected with some people who were interested in this sort of thing. I’ve helped him organize as a nonprofit org and we just found our education coordinator, operations manager (myself), an (interim) events coordinator, and a community manager, but we’re still looking for a treasurer/ accountant. I’m helping Chad do everything right here from what I’ve learned over the years. We are current getting funding to build out the facility and possibly purchase the building.
tmaly 4y ago
I looked at the photos on the post. The first thing I saw missing was sponsorships. Why not bring in some of the big companies like Homedepot to sponsor the hacker labs?
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  They seem to have sponsors that are linked on their page.
jabelone 4y ago
Heya, as a regular hacker news reader I stumbled upon this thread. In response to a lot of the comments here, I thought I’d mention that I just started a commercial makerspace in Brisbane, Australia about 9 months ago. You can read more about it here: https://brisbanemaker.space https://brisbanemaker.space I was part of another volunteer run hackerspace for nearly 5 years but decided to leave and start my own after experiencing several issues. We’re focused on digital fabrication and may eventually expand to include a woodshop and/or metalshop. The most important things I’ve found is that you need to focus on what tools etc actually matter to people and keep them working well. Most non profit makerspaces seem to focus on acquiring as many “new toys” as possible rather than focusing on the important “core” stuff like keeping tools working well and the culture/ongoing member experience. This combined with a great on boarding and tool induction process is essential and where I feel so many spaces do poorly. We’re not profitable yet, but on track to cover all operational costs in about 2-3 months. It was important for me to be fully independent so we don’t rely on any grant money or discounted rents etc. It’s hard work, but I feel like our current trajectory can be summarised as growing slowly but consistently. My gut feeling is our business model is sustainable and I may end up being able to quit my full time software engineering job in a couple years. So it’s not all doom and gloom everywhere. :) P.S. I also maintain an open source membership portal with integrated billing, payments and RFID access system built by me specifically for makerspaces: https://github.com/membermatters/MemberMatters https://github.com/membermatters/MemberMatters
gwbas1c 4y ago
> According to the staff, barring any major financial assistance offers or opportunities they will begin closing at the end of July. Big question: Why? I remember when I canceled my hacker space membership. What triggered me was a poorly-planned expansion. The expansion was triggered because the hacker space was essentially turning into a below-cost co-working space, and the whole thing smelled unsustainable. A few months later I got a "save the hacker space" email. Turns out that, with their expansion, the city they were in decided they were too big to exempt from ADA. They couldn't use the new space that they needed more memberships for, and they couldn't afford the renovations to meet ADA. I didn't like being put on the hook for poor planning to subsidize what was turning into a below-cost co-working space, so I just lost interest in the community.
cr3ative 4y ago
I'm a bit taken aback that it's a for-profit company. These spaces are generally community driven.
awiesenhofer 4y ago
I dont know the place unfortunately, but maybe turning part of it into a coworking space would work? Here in Vienna people easily pay ~300$/m for a desk and they sell like hot cakes. You have the desks just add a printer and coffee machine and you are good to go ;) With lets say 10 desks this gets you thousands in MRR additionally to the memberships quite fast.
perryizgr8 4y ago
If it's so good then why don't they just charge an appropriate price for their services? It looks great in the pics, I'm sure people will support it with their money if it is useful and valuable for them.

262 points by pkdpic 4y ago

> If you are able to help in any way please reach out directly to the Hacker Lab team. Why not instead name a number? What is needed? I am sure crowdfunding the proper sum is easier than finding a benevolent millionaire

Alupis 4y ago
Probably not... they will need ongoing funds, not a one-time cash injection through some GoFundMe campaign or similar. Corporate Sponsorships are likely their best bet. I'd wager their membership fees don't even come close to breaking even for operations and equipment maintenance, let alone new equipment. Consolidated Communications was generous enough to provide a free symmetrical gigabit fiber connection to their Sacramento location. They need money though, from the sound of it... not free gear and services. I wonder if they explored or approached Intel, who has a significant campus in the Folsom area. VSP is another major player in the Sacramento area.
- dmitrygr 4y ago
  we need $xxxx per month is still better than "contact us" "contact us" is good for when you have a high pressure sales tactic to use, or want to gauge how much money you can extract from a client, not when you are (De facto) begging for a reprieve from death)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ifvictr 4y ago
    The author is merely a new member of the space and not representative of staff. I’m sure the staff would know better what that number is!
  - stjohnswarts 4y ago
    Yeah you think they would simply have a "donations" page on their website like 99% of the other nonprofits do?
    - Alupis 4y ago
      HackerLab is a for-profit corporation. Which isn't the norm for these types of places.

flaque 4y ago

You should open a kickstarter or gofundme while you have the spotlight.

3np 4y ago
Also a BTC address (and maybe ETH and/or XMR if you can bother) for crypto donations.
- websap 4y ago
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    Or, more plausibly, because it introduces additional middlemen and tax obligations to a straightforward donation drive?
    - thepasswordis 4y ago
      Why would a non profit be paying taxes? edit: turns out they're not a non-profit.
      - russh 4y ago
        It's the law.
      - woodruffw 4y ago
        Where do you see that they're a 501(c)(3) non-profit? I don't see that on their site; given the services they offer for sale, I would have expected them to be a B-corp or something similar. Either way: 501(c)(3) status exempts a nonprofit from Federal income tax, but not necessarily state taxes. I don't know enough about California taxes to say whether or not that matters for them, but it's plausible that they'd have tax obligations from accepting securities. Edit: Based on this search[1][2], there's a Benefit Corporation, not a 501(c)(3). [1]: https://rct.doj.ca.gov/Verification/Web/Details.aspx?result=09d53687-f123-43cb-92d6-2cc26db07be2 https://rct.doj.ca.gov/Verification/Web/Details.aspx?result=... [2]: https://rct.doj.ca.gov/Verification/Web/Details.aspx?result=0dd03861-3b09-4201-81c7-5eb10d12351d https://rct.doj.ca.gov/Verification/Web/Details.aspx?result=...

pvg 4y ago

Few days ago, 118 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32197708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32197708

YeBanKo 4y ago

iirc they have only one location in Sacramento. I would love to support them, but I don't live anywhere close, looks like one time donation thing won't help them anyway and becoming a member not being able to attend does not make sense. However, it would be nice to know why they failed from financial standpoint. There were couple of tech shops around me that closed their door over the last few years(even before pandemic), but I think there was enough/some interest. And eventually I would be interested in starting/helping with something like this at a smaller scale in my area. This is why I am curios what could have been done differently to make it sustainable? My theory is they were more ambitious with the variety of equipments, programs and space they have, but would live if someone has more insights?

Alupis 4y ago
The thread linked to by PVG has more details from the CTO of HackerLab. The basic take-away I gathered was they relied too heavily on donations, grants and sponsorships instead of revenue-generating endeavors, and once the "free money" dried up, they were left with few-to-no options.
- samtho 4y ago
  This has been the tune for many years now. They’ve botched deals, failed to set boundaries with “investors”, and went after easy money with strings attached. The founders were still learning the ropes of running this sort of operation. I think they would have benefited from someone to handle financials and someone else to handle community building and management.
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > The basic take-away I gathered was they relied too heavily on donations, grants and sponsorships instead of revenue-generating endeavors, and once the "free money" dried up, they were left with few-to-no options. Not sure if that take-away is true or not, but it's almost always a bad idea to run a business that relies on charity[1] to stay afloat. There's some outliers, sure, but if you are planning a business, make sure the plan includes getting people to give you money in exchange for something they value more than that money[2]. [1] That includes investment for current operational expenses. [2] I was, in 2009, on a panel once, distributing seed money to startups. I remember the one pitch we had from a pair of founders. They brought charts, graphs, all their numbers, current and projected. They had launched with a single investor and a runway of maybe 6 months. They were in month 3, IIRC. It was a labour intensive business (Tourism, so each customer just bought their ticket once, and may never want to go on that tour again.) They needed more money to keep their operation going (mostly just paying themselves and a few staff members). I asked about what happens after month 6. They replied that they were actively pursuing investment to make sure that they had another 6 month runway. I looked at their income and mentally divided it by the number of customers. I asked about how they were planning to get to profitability after 12 months (after all, the purse holders wanted some possibility of return). They replied that at the 9 month mark they would pursue further investment. I double-checked my figures; each customer was costing more to service than the customer was paying. Okay, so at the 12 month mark? "We'll actively pursue further investment". After 5 years? "We assure you, we'll be continuously getting new investment". At which point do you raise your prices? "We can't do that, we're already so high that there aren't enough tourists willing to pay anything more". How do we get a return on this? "It's an investment, you don't get it back. It's in everyone's interests to have more tourism. We will all benefit eventually". The most surprising part of all of this is that both were extremely recent university graduates. I know this, because they proudly presented their humanities credentials at the start of the pitch.

rtpg 4y ago

It really sucks how basically real estate pricing seems to be determinative in what communities will have, especially in the US where restrictive zoning makes it even more fragile. I don't know how you could make something as spacious as what is shown in those pictures work with my understanding of US real estate. No matter what you do, sticking a donut chain in there would probably be more profitable, and thus the rents will show that. Small cynic in me: when I saw the size of the desk area, my immediate feeling was "chop that in half". Do you really need to be paying a bunch of rent and offering a subpar coworking space along with your hacker space? But I imagine that staff costs are also an issue.

Alupis 4y ago
The new Golden 1 Arena was built a few years ago and has driven all the surrounding real estate prices through the roof. A great many businesses were driven out of the area by increased rents or just plain kicked out for a demolish/rebuild. A hackerspace like this might be able to find cheaper rent in a more industrial area... but then convenience and safety for members becomes an issue.
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JKCalhoun 4y ago
Is it the same with artist studios? I have no idea. Reading a book about the art-music explosion from Athens, Georgia a few decades ago — someone in the book suggested that art needs cheap rent. A sleepy college town in the dirty south was just the ticket. Maybe maker spaces need to find their home in the low-rent areas.
- rtpg 4y ago
  I do think that you want to seek out low-rent areas, but if you're setting up shop way out in the sticks then you're simply too far away from people. Doesn't help that in those areas people will have huge houses anyways so will be less in need of a separate workspace, so to speak. Though really you need a good-sized community, and for rent to not absolutely destroy a place. There is a local bar in my area, its customer base is (roughly) the same 50 people that cycle through it on a regular basis. It's a small enough place, and it's run by 2.5 people. But rent can be cheap cuz it's on the first floor of a multi-floor building. The fact that Hacker Lab is next to a tramway line, and there are not even any 3-story buildings anywhere within view in that area, and yet rent is probably a component (though tbf staffing is also a large cost I bet) probably makes this issue even more acute.

sen 4y ago

While the place looks impressive, it also looks ridiculously excessive. The amount of wasted space, the running costs and maintenance required for all that space, etc etc… a hackerspace just doesn’t need that. They clearly got over-excited about being “fancy” rather than concentrating on being sustainable financially. People use these spaces for the equipment and socialisation, it doesn’t need to look like an Ikea.

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chrismartin 4y ago
Can downvoters please explain why you disagree? Disclaimer, I've never been here, I don't know what it's like, don't know anyone involved. But I do see four 3D printers nearly touching each other on a benchtop. If you're setting up a printer and you accidentally bump into another while it's running, you misalign it and ruin someone else's long-running print job. This crowding, compared with what appears to be an expansive and sparsely furnished co-working desk area, raises questions of how effectively the space has been managed for its community's needs. If each desk gets a lot more use than each printer, someone please tell me I'm wrong. I aspire to start a simple, affordable, FLOSS-oriented co-working space someday, so I want to learn from cases like this.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  I think if I were you. Lots of these places get capital equipment as a donation and that doesn't come with FLOSS software most of the time. I think FLOSS as a first choice when available as a good replacement, would be a better policy.

TaylorAlexander 4y ago

Heart breaking to see places like this close shop. I’ve seen first hand how many people learn new skills from the kind of hands on community learning that these places can offer. If anyone has the finances to turn this around I encourage you to do it. I can’t offer that, but this situation reminds me that things don’t have to be this way. There are alternative land use strategies that hold land in trust for the use of communities so that land use doesn’t have a monetary cost associated with it, or costs are managed as a community. Most prominent in my mind is the way the city government of Vienna Austria buys land and builds housing to keep prices low. We absolutely should have community spaces for our communities, but our notion of land as a private investment makes land super expensive, and in an unequal society regular people can’t afford commoditized land prices. Instead we all end up working as hard as we can to meet ever rising rents. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

thepasswordis 4y ago

It sucks, but they're not going to find that benevolent millionaire. Hackerspaces all over the place have gone through this exact cycle. There's always some hope of "well we're all the grassroots of the tech cycles. Surely the ultra wealthy in our tribe will toss us a few scraps!" But no, they won't, and it breaks my heart.

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geerlingguy 4y ago
It's rare, but not unprecedented. Here in St. Louis, we have a very similar Makerspace that basically rose out of the ashes of a failed TechShop. It's called MADE and one of Square's founders funded its move and reopening/rebranding: https://hecmedia.org/posts/made-makerspace-opens-in-st-louis-with-help-from-silicon-valley-giant-jim-mckelvey https://hecmedia.org/posts/made-makerspace-opens-in-st-louis...
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  Stay safe. The wife and I were just in St. Lou a few weeks back — passing through on a road trip. The arch is amazing — bigger than I remembered it.
- pkdpic 4y ago
  OP here, thank you for sharing! Really interested in concrete success examples here, rare as they may be. I think we're all aware that there's bo shortage of reasons to be hopeless about the viability of makerspaces, positive outlooks are valuable commodities : )
  - thepasswordis 4y ago
    I think the biggest hurdle is that you're a for profit business. Bluntly: your business failed. That really sucks, but also: why wouldn't you run this as a 501c3? If I'm a benevolent billionaire, those yearly 990 filings actually matter to me because I want to know how you're spending the money.

karmicthreat 4y ago

I'm always amazed at how Noisebridge seems to survive. It's grimy, chaotic and in an expensive city. But it always survives somehow.

pkdpic 4y ago
That's a great point, I wonder what their secret sauce is...
- rexreed 4y ago
  Noisebridge is a registered non-profit California corporation, with IRS 501 charitable status. The secret sauce for non-profitable Makerspaces and such is to not be profitable, and structure as a charity, because that's what it most likely is. Noisebridge is volunteer-led, so no one is on salary. Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noisebridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noisebridge Running a hackerspace for profit is most likely a dead-end.
  - ValentineC 4y ago
    > The secret sauce for non-profitable Makerspaces and such is to not be profitable, and structure as a charity, because that's what it most likely is. Noisebridge is volunteer-led, so no one is on salary. It might work in the US, where it's possible that donations to charities get huge tax breaks, but I don't think it matters as much in other parts of the world. One problem with being volunteer-led is that if your core is allowed to weaken, or if there aren't policies in place to "manage" or exclude bad members of the community, one or two bad eggs could be enough to cause people to get tired of their antics and quit (which, as I've read, is a problem that Noisebridge has time and again). I think this post [1] sums it up quite well: > Ask anybody who served on the board of our nonprofit hackerspace HeatSync Labs over the past 2 years, and they'll tell you they spent approaching 0% of their time envisioning and executing on what kind of awesome nonprofit we should be and instead spent all of their time babysitting and psychoanalyzing a CONSTANT (albeit minority) population of angry members. > Why are they so angry at this person, their project, or the way they they were spoken to? Have they tried talking to them? Have they tried not yelling at them? Have they offered to help? Were they broken up with recently? Are they having problems at work? Volunteer-led ones would work better if more of them had a constantly-renewing team of 2-3 volunteers specifically trained in community management and dispute mediation, but unfortunately most spaces might not have such privilege. Source: I'm involved in one such struggling non-for-profit hackerspace myself. :) [1] https://citizengadget.com/toxicity-inclusivity-and-community-size/ https://citizengadget.com/toxicity-inclusivity-and-community...

MrDunham 4y ago

"There's no money in maker spaces." I so wish this wasn't true. I want to open my own to inspire young inventors to learn and build (because I wish it had existed for me). A few weeks ago I was talking to the founder of a wildly profitable coworking chain in Ohio. He broke the code... don't sell memberships, sell the foot traffic to towns (and malls). A few local towns even gave him $1 rent on beautiful buildings because the downtown needed more foot traffic. Or $750k non recourse loans for remodels. In short, he's a damn fine businessman... and he's the one to say that he can't figure out how to make a maker space profitable. It truly breaks my heart to see maker spaces go under again, and again, and again. Clearly the standard business model of memberships + classes + fees doesn't carry enough margin. I just wonder what might as I'd love to see a makerspace in every city.

ncallaway 4y ago
Are libraries profitable? I wish these could exist and didn’t need to turn a profit. These seems like spaces with significant public benefit, and I’d love to see public funding for these kinds of spaces (maybe even folding into the mission of public libraries)?
- mdavis6890 4y ago
  Can you imagine a service whereby the government provides table saw for use by the general public? I just do not think the government is equipped to manage this kind of risk.
  - qbasic_forever 4y ago
    Plenty of community colleges are run from state funding and have all kinds of adult education shop classes. You can learn to weld, do carpentry, etc.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
      Providing an education is utterly different from providing access to the tools to use more or less anytime you need them. Both are valuable, but they are quite distinct.

dosman33 4y ago

I added a late response to the last thread on this issue that outlined a detailed process to recovery. No one is going to throw money at a ship that's actively sinking. They need to have a plan that communicates how they will turn the ship around before any angel donors will step up. I hope they are working on this behind the scenes.

rexreed 4y ago

Take it from my personal experience, Hacker Lab won't be saved. There are no mysterious philanthropists or charities that throw their money or resources behind unsustainable hackerspaces or startup community resources. So many tech spaces and even meetups died in the past 5-6 years, and no white knights came to save the day. Indeed, in many cases, no one could be bothered to lift a finger to help, even those who were supportive in the past, when it suited their own needs. Hackerspaces and coworking spaces were all the rage, fad, and a dime a dozen in every city in the 2012-2019 pre-COVID startup cycle. But post-COVID, and even with a few frauds that poisoned the well, these fads go as all fads go. [0] https://www.al.com/news/2021/05/kyle-sandler-explains-how-he-conned-opelika-out-of-19-million-on-hbos-generation-hustle.html https://www.al.com/news/2021/05/kyle-sandler-explains-how-he...

culi 4y ago
There's actually a real-time API tracking all hackerspaces world wide. There's currently 2,454 total with 846 marked as active and 360 planned. I couldn't figure out a way to get historical data but I'd be really curious to see if your hypothesis can be validated by this API https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_Hacker_Spaces https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_Hacker_Spaces
- ValentineC 4y ago
  > There's actually a real-time API tracking all hackerspaces world wide. There's currently 2,454 total with 846 marked as active and 360 planned. While it may be "real-time", I wonder how many of those "active" spaces are now dormant or struggling to stay afloat no thanks to the pandemic, and how many of those 360 "planned" ones are actively being discussed.
  - culi 4y ago
    Yes I don't doubt there's major challenges to cleaning up the data. Still though it could help illuminate some of the major trends

seabird 4y ago

No snark intended; what does this place offer? Is it largely a "community" thing? I'm looking at the equipment they have listed and it's oddly deficient. There's absolutely no electronics or 3D printing equipment you wouldn't be able to field yourself if you can afford the $125/month subscription. There's some metalworking basics that might be worthwhile if you have no space and no way to get any (highly likely in Sacramento), but with single machines for a given role and no comment on the available tooling and other support, there could be pretty serious issues with reliably using any of it. If I read the website correctly, they have at least 3000 square feet dedicated to gussied up co-working space, but no lathes currently available. Is this not checking out for anybody else that's hearing about this place secondhand?

arlcode 4y ago
I don't know that place either but with our local (very small) hackerspace, it's also the dedicated working space that is a major selling point. I would probably be able to afford most of the tools and machines I use on a regular basis but there's simply no place in my appartment to put any of these not to speak of dust and other debris when working with wood for example.
raxxorraxor 4y ago
I worked in workshops that had much fewer machines. Not from the US and perhaps they are organized differently, but it was also about community. Others did the work you were not familiar with. If the lathe was in use you had to wait or come by another day since work here takes long. But for most machines it doesn't take that long and this already seems very luxurious to me.

ta988 4y ago

I heard that one of the two hackerspaces in Chicago is handling money really well and for more than a decade. It is possible you just have to put someone that doesn't dilapitade or steal the money in charge of it and allow members to voice their concerns and have access to financial records. All the places I've seen failing they were kept hidden either by the institution or dishonest administrators.

langsoul-com 4y ago

Why do people insist on begging and pleading? Something like a hacker space ain't no charity. Look at the books, at the numbers, make some form of concrete or possible plan for recovery. Don't just beg for assistance from governments or mysterious angels. Even places that went through renovation or were funded by an angel happened for a reason. Maybe that was for good PR, because they had some personal memories there. Or it was funded via their charity for a tax break. People beg too much these days and don't think for themselves. Why?

runnerup 4y ago
Makerspaces are very much like schools. They really fill the gap left by the loss of shop classes in many K-12 programs. Sure, many 'students' find them after they become adults, but it's still filling that gap.
- samtho 4y ago
  A lot of makerspaces have a very high age minimum, sometimes 18, due to insurance and other requirements some jurisdictions put into place if you intend on catering to minors.
pkdpic 4y ago
I hear you I guess but definitely wasn't intended as begging, or insisting on begging. Just a hopeless last ditch effort to save something that I care about. If I had the money I'd pay their rent in a heartbeat. If I had the time I'd volunteer for them 5 days a week. I was just bored at work with a text editor open and feeling bummed out.
- sanjayio 4y ago
  Fwiw, thanks for sharing this. This thread is full of insights on hacker spaces as a business model in general.
boneitis 4y ago
Please be kind. They are most certainly trying to think and do what many of us have too much pride to do. It brings a twinkle to my eye that our gem of a sanctuary compels them to do so much in such a short amount of time. That said, I can concede all the criticisms I'm reading in the discussions here, but again, _please_ don't take a shit on our fellow's efforts. Thank you!

imroot 4y ago

I'm a former president and board member of a makerspace in Ohio (hive13). We thrived on donations (a lot of donations from members who had extra to give to help support the space and help students or those who couldn't afford our membership), and didn't receive much local help. A few years ago the hive grew to the point where we couldn't expand it any more, and we moved locations. We're still going strong. We spend money by voting on project, and even when projects aren't funded, the community finds a way to make it happen anyway. We didn't try to run it for profit: memberships are $50/month or $100/month (if you can afford it) or $13.37 (if you're a student or can't afford it). The hive is still on great footing, financially speaking, and it competes with maker spaces from the Cincinnati Public Library as well as a commercial makerspace in Sharonville. Maker spaces do work, but, it takes a lot of time, effort, and quite literally blood to make them work well.

pkdpic 4y ago
OP here, thank you so much for your comment! This is amazingly helpful concrete wisdom / perspective and I'm excited to read more about your space, its inspiring already : )
dugmartin 4y ago
I love the $13.37 price point - I’m wondering how many times you have to explain why it’s that exact amount.

samtho 4y ago

I was at Hackerlab at the beginning in 2012 when it was still on I at 17th. The community has always been lovely and Gina is very sweet and passionate. One of the biggest reasons why I’ve seen it struggle is the fact that so many people wanted it to be/to do different things for them. Coworking, private offices, event space, but also a makerspace with metalworking, woodworking, laser cutting, electronics, and more. A robust system of classes took years to get off the ground. Nobody wanted to do anything that wasn’t pleasant or interesting, but this is exactly what is needed to keep a space up and running. Coworking area was boring, but this comes with the territory. Private offices make the bulk of their revenue but also consumed the bulk of their space. This was not a community, however. Everyone did their work and left - which is fine, but this was the front-of-house thing that everyone saw and was not super impressive until you saw the back. The Coworking area did serve as a meetup space which was nice at least. In the makerspace area, at the beginning, a ton of people brought their tools into the space and made their own little dens and nobody was really allowed to touch those tools. Early members often did not pay membership but monopolized so much space with their clutter and tools that were useless to anyone else. This was a huge drain on the ability to get up and running but nobody wanted to have the hard conversations with these “foundational” members. This created a lot of social debt that had to be repaid/reorganized that, quite frankly, held them back a tremendous amount. A few “members” that seemed to be there all the time but we never saw working or making things, were actually homeless people just sleeping on the couches after everyone left. Also, HackerLab is a B-corp, but not a tax-exempt nonprofit. I firmly believe getting tax-exempt status under 501(c)(3) is the only way to run a successful community space as we can align the organization’s mission with what makes communities great to be apart of. I was part of a small group that splintered off in 2016 to form our own smaller makerspace focused on desktop fab. We suffered a similar fate in that everyone on the board/admin side of things were makers. We didn’t want to do stuff like fundraise, go after members, equipment, or organize periodic events. We still did fine but made the decision to cease operations when the stay at home order started. Now, I’m involved with Shop Class on Stockton Blvd at 14th ave. The guy who started it is my across-the-street neighbor. I found out what he was doing and helped him get connected with some people who were interested in this sort of thing. I’ve helped him organize as a nonprofit org and we just found our education coordinator, operations manager (myself), an (interim) events coordinator, and a community manager, but we’re still looking for a treasurer/ accountant. I’m helping Chad do everything right here from what I’ve learned over the years. We are current getting funding to build out the facility and possibly purchase the building.

tmaly 4y ago

I looked at the photos on the post. The first thing I saw missing was sponsorships. Why not bring in some of the big companies like Homedepot to sponsor the hacker labs?

raxxorraxor 4y ago
They seem to have sponsors that are linked on their page.

jabelone 4y ago

Heya, as a regular hacker news reader I stumbled upon this thread. In response to a lot of the comments here, I thought I’d mention that I just started a commercial makerspace in Brisbane, Australia about 9 months ago. You can read more about it here: https://brisbanemaker.space https://brisbanemaker.space I was part of another volunteer run hackerspace for nearly 5 years but decided to leave and start my own after experiencing several issues. We’re focused on digital fabrication and may eventually expand to include a woodshop and/or metalshop. The most important things I’ve found is that you need to focus on what tools etc actually matter to people and keep them working well. Most non profit makerspaces seem to focus on acquiring as many “new toys” as possible rather than focusing on the important “core” stuff like keeping tools working well and the culture/ongoing member experience. This combined with a great on boarding and tool induction process is essential and where I feel so many spaces do poorly. We’re not profitable yet, but on track to cover all operational costs in about 2-3 months. It was important for me to be fully independent so we don’t rely on any grant money or discounted rents etc. It’s hard work, but I feel like our current trajectory can be summarised as growing slowly but consistently. My gut feeling is our business model is sustainable and I may end up being able to quit my full time software engineering job in a couple years. So it’s not all doom and gloom everywhere. :) P.S. I also maintain an open source membership portal with integrated billing, payments and RFID access system built by me specifically for makerspaces: https://github.com/membermatters/MemberMatters https://github.com/membermatters/MemberMatters

gwbas1c 4y ago

> According to the staff, barring any major financial assistance offers or opportunities they will begin closing at the end of July. Big question: Why? I remember when I canceled my hacker space membership. What triggered me was a poorly-planned expansion. The expansion was triggered because the hacker space was essentially turning into a below-cost co-working space, and the whole thing smelled unsustainable. A few months later I got a "save the hacker space" email. Turns out that, with their expansion, the city they were in decided they were too big to exempt from ADA. They couldn't use the new space that they needed more memberships for, and they couldn't afford the renovations to meet ADA. I didn't like being put on the hook for poor planning to subsidize what was turning into a below-cost co-working space, so I just lost interest in the community.

cr3ative 4y ago

I'm a bit taken aback that it's a for-profit company. These spaces are generally community driven.

awiesenhofer 4y ago

I dont know the place unfortunately, but maybe turning part of it into a coworking space would work? Here in Vienna people easily pay ~300$/m for a desk and they sell like hot cakes. You have the desks just add a printer and coffee machine and you are good to go ;) With lets say 10 desks this gets you thousands in MRR additionally to the memberships quite fast.

perryizgr8 4y ago

If it's so good then why don't they just charge an appropriate price for their services? It looks great in the pics, I'm sure people will support it with their money if it is useful and valuable for them.