By Justine Féron
Craig Fitzpatrick, CEO of Ottawa-based software company Devshop, says Ottawa’s current hub for startup businesses is at the corner of Elgin and Maclaren – in a Bridgehead coffeehouse.
“It’s a nice way to network, in the coffee shop atmosphere, but after a few hours, you’re loitering,” Fitzpatrick says with a laugh.
By January, Ottawa startups will have a new home base at The CodeFactory, run by Fitzpatrick’s friend Ian Graham.
Graham is an Ottawa-based management consultant who calls The CodeFactory a “co-working” environment because it will allow small businesses to share both intellectual and physical resources. The building’s tenants will be able to trade expertise and ideas, as well as share office space and peripheral devices like printers.
Graham says the planned facility will help Ottawa entrepreneurs save time and money. Tenants will be able to work in an affordable and state-of-the-art space without having to sign a long-term lease or set up networks, phone lines, and furniture.
“With 12 to 14 tenants at any given time, and assuming we can save each of them about two week’s worth of setup and administrative hassles, the CodeFactory will be able to save six months of productive work time,” Graham says.
The CodeFactory will be located just west of Somerset and Preston, in a currently vacant factory. Graham has contracted a local company to completely renovate the interior. The finished building will include individual offices, meeting rooms, an event area and a lounge.
Graham says The CodeFactory will be Ottawa’s first co-working environment, modeled after such co-working offices as Indoor Playground in Toronto and TechShop in San Francisco.
At Indoor Playground and TechShop, entrepreneurs can purchase memberships to use some or all of the building’s facilities. Monthly membership fees at Indoor Playground, for example, range from $50 to $1,500.
Several Ottawa businesspeople seem enthusiastic about Graham’s idea.
Ottawa software developer Steve O’Halloran says he hopes to become a tenant of The CodeFactory as soon as it opens.
In 2006, O’Halloran sold his software company, AssetMetrics, to Microsoft. While he had 30 employees at AssetMetrics, he is now working on his own to start up a new company he calls AssetLabs.
“Sometimes you have a technology and its like, ‘Now what?’ All these nuances come into play when you’re trying to start a business, like, ‘How do I market myself or get legal advice?,’” O’Halloran says.
“There’s definitely a market in Ottawa for a kind of incubator environment where businesses can learn from each other.”
Fitzpatrick is also interested becoming a member of The CodeFactory.
“Developers have a unique lifestyle in that we’re workaholics, passionate, and all trying to be the next big thing,” he says. “It’s a good atmosphere to have a bunch of people like that in one place, so I’m definitely interested in the package that lets you access the common area.”
O’Halloran thinks The CodeFactory will help Ottawa-based technology entrepreneurs raise their profile in the local business community.
“The CodeFactory will help the tech community unite. Right now, we’re dark matter. We’re out there, in coffee shops and basements, but you can’t see us. Traditional office spaces are too expensive, and it’s hard to have serious meetings in coffee shops. The CodeFactory is the happy medium that will help the community find its voice.”