EXCERPTS
For all the little problems entrepreneurs have solved in their community, they have yet to crack one of the biggest - providing affordable, accessible child-care to young workers who desperately need it.
It's a notable omission as new work models promise more flexibility but also demand constant engagement, and entrepreneurs are seen as key to job creation but must sacrifice financially while they build their businesses.
Kate Marie Grinold Sigfusson, founder of Chicago e-commerce startup Babies4Babies and mother of an infant son, said an affordable coworking and childcare option with flexible hours could be hugely significant for parent entrepreneurs juggling children and fledgling businesses.
"We're leaning in," she said. "We're leaning so far in we're going to face plant. And what we need is something to lean on."
Same goes for Gule Sheikh, co-founder of electronic prescribing startup Eazyscripts, which recently moved into healthtech incubator Matter. Sheikh, who is six months pregnant, said she has been scouring River North for affordable childcare.
"This would be so much easier if there was something that was on-site, even in the building," Sheikh said. "I don't want my business to suffer - it's my bread and butter. I don't want my child to suffer either."
More than a million people in the world will be working in coworking spaces in 2018, small-business consulting firm Emergent Research partner Steve King estimated. King estimates between 20 and 25 coworking spaces have attempted to launch with childcare since 2008, the year pioneer Cubes & Crayons opened in Silicon Valley.
"There's always been a ton of interest, but when they start digging into it, the issues and problems quickly become apparent," he said.
He ticks them off: Regulations for licensed childcare are tricky. Branding a coworking facility as a daycare might rule out those without kids. Locations that work well for coworking might not be ideal for daycare. And there's the very nature of coworking: King said most coworkers don't work full-time at a facility.
"When the stars align, these make a ton of sense," King said. "It's just very hard, for all these reasons, to get the stars to align."
Nor has on-site childcare flourished in corporate America. The percentage of companies with childcare at or near the worksite was 7 percent in 2014, down from 9 percent in 2008, according to the Families and Work Institute's 2014 National Study of Employers.
A tough model
Jill Salzman, founder of The Founding Moms, which offers offline meetups and online resources for mom entrepreneurs, is trying to open a coworking space with daycare in Oak Park. But it hasn't been easy.
"Until there is serious market demand, the market won't provide," she said. "People are so used to separating children from business. The two just do not go along in our culture. If there was more chatter about it, people would get more used to the idea."
A year ago, Blue Sky wrote about Salzman's plans to start a coworking space with childcare. She said she encountered "so many complexities" surrounding finding the right space and getting landlords to sign on.
"If I owned a building, it would be happening yesterday. I've had such a great experience with coworking. I so wish that I could gift that to other parents."
Entrepreneurs outside Chicago have also struggled to combine the two concepts.
In mid-2012, Amy Braden opened Plug & Play, a coworking space that included licensed daycare, in Austin, Texas. The opening came during a time when "Lean In" was flying off the shelves, Anne-Marie Slaughter's "Why Women Still Can't Have It All" rapidly went viral, and work-life balance was the subject of panels, thinkpieces and tweets around the country.
"We got a lot of very positive press. However, locally, that didn't translate to sales," Braden said. "The interest is there. The demand, I don't think, is there. It's not if you build it they will come ... I reached a great many people in the Austin area with my concept. But they still didn't come."
Braden pointed out that parents can work for free at home, or at a café for the price of a coffee. If they don't buy into the value of a coworking community and the connections therein, she said, they likely won't be willing to pay. Plug & Play closed in 2013.
Adela Yelton opened Bean Work Play Café in Decatur, Ga., in 2011. Yelton found, like others, that combining coworking and childcare relied heavily on marketing and letting parents know what was possible.
"Childcare in general is a low-margin, high-volume business. You have to scale in order to make it work as a financially lucrative venture," she said.
Making it work
A couple women have success stories. Founders point to Third Door, a coworking space in London with childcare that has been open for nearly five years and is working towards a second site, managing director Shazia Mustafa said.
In the U.S., Diana Rothschild began NextKids, an offshoot of coworking chain NextSpace, which has nine locations, including one in Chicago. She came aboard NextSpace to launch coworking and daycare business NextKids in 2013 and is now the CEO of the parent company. NextKids doesn't operate in Chicago, at least not yet. Rothschild said she hopes to include NextKids in a third to a half of future coworking locations.
Other founders are drawing lessons from Rothschild and from the spaces that have closed.
Deborah Engel, who opened Work and Play on Feb. 2 in New Jersey, offers drop-in babysitting services at her new coworking space. But she also has harnessed alternative revenue streams - birthday parties and events, classes and open play - "in order to subsidize what could be a very costly amenity, childcare, which we want to be able to offer our members," she said. She'll see how the babysitting works out before she decides whether to seek childcare licensing.
Engel said she has drawn lessons from women around the country who have opened coworking spaces or who have had delays or troubles in doing so.
"It's so new, so you have to see what works," she said.
"Some of that is throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks."
The next generation
One night at Free Range Office earlier this year, strollers leaned against walls, toy computers beeped and children snacked on fruit pouches. Children played a room apart from parents working on laptops and under earbuds in the trendy Wicker Park coworking spot.
Early this year, Free Range partnered with Collide Coworking, which provides babysitting at play spaces while parents work. Collide founder Nikki Ricks hires sitters and brings toys and organic snacks while parents work out of Free Range Office's facility. Parents pay $30 for an hour and a half and $45 for three hours.
"Nikki and I are kind of doing this to solve our personal problems," said Free Range founder Liane Jackson. "Our problems and other moms and other dads - but mostly moms - who find themselves involved in the care but also wanting to pursue a career."
Jackson, who originally hoped to open a coworking space with childcare, hopes to build a sturdy base of clients who will come for babysitting events on off-hours multiple times a week.
Ricks said she plans to continue building a list of people who would patronize a space with childcare. She has fewer than 200 now and wants 500 or 700 names before she'll entertain getting a space.
"A lot of people are interested; a lot of people think it's a great idea," she said. "And then you actually do it and it's a whole different story."
She said she's emphasizing caution - and patience.
"I think that there's going to be more and more of a demand for it, and more and more awareness," Ricks said. "But it's going to take time