betapitch is coming to Barcelona and we are very excited to be hosting it at betahaus. Short before the betapitch | global will be in Barcelona on June 13th, 2013. betapitch is a business idea competition where local startups will have the opportunity to compete with other international ventures to make a pitch about how they think their startup can make a difference in the world.

10 finalists will make a pitch about their idea in front of a jury and an audience. The 2 startups with the most potential will win 6 months of free workspace in our  betahaus | Barcelona coworking, as well as a prize package which includes services that will help to give your project a boost. These 2 startups will also have to opportunity to travel to Berlin in July to compete against the other winners from other local events for the grand prize, a 7 month trip to all the coworking spaces from the betahaus family including travelling over to the Silicon Valley where spending 1 week at the blackbox mansion, having meetings with Google, Bootstrap Labs and many others.

We are looking for the ‘rockstars’ of the startup community, with ideas we can believe in. Ambitious ideas that just might make the world a little bit better, a little more interesting, or a bit more fun. If you think your startup fits this profile or you have an idea and a team or a prototype in place and are looking for a environment that can help you take it further, come and join us on June 13th, 2013 at betahaus.

For more information about the prizes, jury and other information please visit betapitch or to apply directly please visit the application page.

What’s waiting for you after winning the betapitch | global? Check out the video!

Though the betahaus | café will be closed this Saturday, the following Saturdays there will be a small surprise for those of you who venture to Prinzessinstr. 19-20 looking for a sweet snack. . .
And we will be seeing you all the following Saturdays with a full selection of pastries and plenty of coffee

Who are you?!

We are an online magazine that covers all topics related to coworking. We conduct our own surveys, which help people to understand this specific workstyle and also to build their own coworking spaces. In our last survey, more than 2,000 people participated from spaces all over the world. We cover stories for members of coworking spaces, which are comprised mainly of freelancers, small companies and start-ups who work in the creative industry. We also make comparisons between the different types of workspaces of these people.

Why do you think coworking is worth writing about?

Coworking is changing the way we work. In essence, it is a self-directed way of working together. You can choose your colleagues without the drama sometimes found in traditional or small shared-offices. For people who worked mainly from home before, it’s the end of unproductive isolation and messy workspaces.

In 2006, a year after the first official “coworking space” opened, there were less than 30 worldwide. Today, we count more than 2,500 of them, serving more than 110,000 members, and that number is still doubling each year. By the end of 2013, we expect to have more than 200,000 people in coworking spaces. This industry is booming, and it is because these spaces are absolutely needed. It also has an impact on the design of other workspaces, such as traditional offices, or incubators.

However, many people still haven’t heard of coworking, or the term is just used as trendy label. That is why it is important to write about the movement.

Who is a part of your team?

Deskmag has a core team of three people hailing from Germany, France and the US. We also work with freelance writers from all over the world, which brings a wide variety of perspectives to our publication.

What difficulties have you overcome to get to where you are now?

Deskmag started out of an interest and became a much bigger project than expected. But in our first team, we tried out several ideas. We also started Deskwanted, an online platform for coworking spaces, and organized the Social Media Week Berlin, which is Germany’s biggest free web conference. All three projects became successful until a certain point. As we got funding for Deskwanted! we mostly focused on Deskwanted.

In that time, Deskmag remained a successful side-project, but the difficulty was found in its status. On the one hand, it brought valuable traffic to our funded company and on the other hand, Deskmag is only of value when it is an independent magazine. The funding shouldn’t affect the editorial part. For this reason, the magazine was not part of the funding, however, the core team was. The editorial difficulty was solved after one year, when a new team was set-up, which could work independently, while the non-editorial part of Deskmag (the advertisements) could continue to promote Deskwanted. Ultimately it was a win-win for both sites and their readers. However, against any economical logic, the investor then tried to damage this concept by presenting some irresponsible demands. Yet there was also another difficulty we faced. I was still responsible for Deskwanted, while the investor often created financial problems for Deskwanted causing deficits by not paying the agreed budget on time. This behavior made the option to leave the company during this time unrealistic, and the investor tried many times to get rid of me, even by taking unethical action and other stories that would remind you of soap operas. However justified, in the end, the investor cancelled the contract with Deskwanted. We will soon publish the details of what happened, since it is of public interest for many people who want to know more about how this part of the start-up scene works in Berlin. But for now, this story has been said enough.

The experiment of working with a bigger company obviously failed, at least with this one. And, of course, it also can affect the work for Deskmag, because it is very time-consuming to clean up the mess that the investor created. However, we are optimistic about the future. And we also gained more experience when comparing workspaces, still having coworking spaces ranked #1.

What are Deskmag‘s future plans?

We often publish stats on coworking, so we are also often asked for more insights. Thus, we plan on creating a Coworking Library, where people can upload and download scientific work done in this field, which would otherwise only gather dust in libraries or institutes, especially master theses. Surprisingly, even in 2013, we find that only a few of these published works are available online. We want to make them accessible for everyone who is interested in this subject.

Another plan is to update our non-English content more frequently than in the past. We are looking for people who would be interested in managing the Spanish and German versions of Deskmag. In addition, we will introduce more categories that will include more interviews and more features. Focusing only on coworking sounds like it could be restrictive, but there are so many stories out there that are waiting to be covered.

Recently we partnered with betahaus to host the “Coworking Casino”, which will take place this Thursday at the betahaus |café. Participants can win products and services that are developed specifically in coworking spaces. We want to show the people from outside and inside, what coworkers and coworking spaces create in an entertaining way. The casino works on win-win base. For people who buy a Bingo sheet, there’s also free beer and pizza included.

What made you choose betahaus as the hq?

We’ve chosen betahaus because we have never worked at such a big coworking space for longer. It’s interesting to see how it has development over the past four years. We’ve visited betahaus several times since it opened in 2009, and they have become more comfortable, more professional and more diverse in reflecting the different needs of their members, without losing the beta atmosphere. And it’s great here, nice people, plus a good working environment.

What do you think are the best features of the coworking movement?

It is simply a nice way of working together independently – out of a classic hierarchy. It’s a good opportunity to increase a social and business network for freelancers, small companies and start-ups. These people need to care for everything on their own: clients, updated knowledge, and so on. But when you work independently, you don’t need to be alone. In coworking spaces people can improve your productivity, creativity, knowledge and you can also have a more relaxed life after work. It might be not the workspace for everyone. For example, some people don’t like the noise, which is major sign of interaction. However, most of people who work at coworking spaces are able to focus more on their work.

You may have noticed that we are currently on a mission of NOT giving people a chance to launch a TV-watching-weekend-session ever again.

And we are moving further with that! Here comes a new perfect reason to stay pleasantly busy! – MAKER WEEKEND # 3 on the 18th and 19th of May.

During last weekes we got too many new awesome workshop ideas. And just could´t keep it only for ourselves, had to let you join in!

Over 20 creative betahaus minds, professional designers and tech experts got together to make it happen! We will introduce you to the latest inventions and the oldest techniques. Meet us, get to know all the skills and tricks and directly go hands-on! There is more knowledge than you already have: Weaving, Pattern Cutting, Window Gardening, Arduino, Coding, etc. etc. etc.

Here is our lineup of workshop and seminars:

BUILDING NATIVE APPS FOR WINDOWS USING HTML5

SCREEN PRINTING

INTRODUCTION TO 3D PRINTING

LEATHER JEWELRY

BUILD YOUR OWN ARDUINO

BUILD A BERLINER HOCKER

CARDBOARD UP-LIGHT LAMP

CARDBOARD (FURNITURE) DESIGN

FILM MAKING STOP MOTION

FABRIC CREATION(WEAVING) 

MELT-A-BAG

PATTERN CUTTING

WINDOW FARMING

And, of course, there is a time and place to meet over beer and keep experimenting!

An Open Experimentation Session will launch at Open Design City at 7pm Saturday. It is a festival version of our weekly DIYBAUSTELMONTAG and the best time to bring over your own projects or join one of existing ones.

Keep making awesome things !

Yours,

Eli & Tom

Hey, you interested in new startups?

Check out a newest startup in the house, Dutch MoneyBird who helps out freelancers to get rid of the paperwork! Some of the freelancers in the house can tell… This is the interview with Niek, co-founder:

Who are you?

Hi, I’m Niek ten Hoopen, co-founder of MoneyBird Germany. MoneyBird offers an online platform for freelancers and small businesses that allows them to easily create and send their invoices. We believe that entrepreneurs should be able to focus on their core business, instead of worrying about sending their invoices and keeping track of the payments they need to receive.

How did you get to this?

We founded MoneyBird because we were struggling with creating invoices ourselves. When I worked as a freelancer, I created my own invoice template in a Word-document. Everytime I had to send an invoice, I had to look-up the client address, change the invoice number, invoice date, calculate the VAT, etc. After I sent the invoice to the client, I had to register the invoice in Excel and some difficult formulas would tell me how much revenue I made that year, quarter and month. Every quarter I had to rely on my own Excel-formulas when I had to do my VAT-declaration. Allthough I really liked my work, I really hated doing bookkeeping and creating invoices.

While traditional bookkeeping software and Excel are way too complicated or don’t provide the overview that is required, we decided to create a solution for this and started MoneyBird in 2008. Over 40.000 Dutch entrepreneurs are currently using our online application. Since I moved to Berlin recently, we decided to launch MoneyBird in Germany.

What are your future plans with MoneyBird?

We recently launched our German website and the MoneyBird iPhone app is available in the German AppStore. Our next step is to expand our team in Berlin. Providing our customers with great support is important for us, therefore we are looking for a (native German) intern. Our focus lies currently on marketing, communication and customer services.

Any big challenges when entering foreign market?

The greatest challenge is to make sure our software is suitable for German entrepreneurs. With five years of experience in the Netherlands, we know what Dutch entrepreneurs need and how we can help them with their financial situation. We believe that German entrepreneurs are looking for the same control over their financial situation. Feedback from our German customers is very valuable as we are just starting here, therefore we closely listen to the comments and new ideas of our German customers.

Why are you here?

You can find me regularly in betahaus because I love the atmosphere here and it is a great place to interact with our customers. I would love to help betahaus| members with questions about invoicing. Also, I am happy to collect the feedback about MoneyBird anywhere where it is possible.

“6 people like this” are six students from Berlin University of the Arts studying Communication in Social and Economic Context. On their search for a project to prove their skills and knowledge for the Bachelor’s degree, they met Jan Kreutzberg.

Jan Kreutzberg worked for several years for a pharmaceutical company in South-East Asia. During this time he found out about natural ingredients that help to regenerate after exhausting activities of any kind. Fascinated by the power of the natural agents he decided to bring them to Germany and to create a drink containing them. Now he needed to find a way to enter the market. And that’s what “6 people like this” have been working on for the recent six months. 

“6 people like this” are convinced that a community driven approach is the best way to build a brand. Since the people are the market, a brand has to referrer to the people in a personal way.

That’s why “6 people like this” joined the betahaus coworking-community.

That’s why they developed and played a research game in betahaus and included the community’s stories into the brand’s world.

That’s why they incorporated the “always in beta-spirit” into their work.

After getting in touch with the communities’ life and wishes they developed a brand-name, corporate and product design, revealed the brand’s story and identity and wrote concepts for the communicational surrounding.

In the end: Kreutzbergs Rezeptur – Regenerativum was born.

The drinks journey started in betahaus. So we are proud to be the place exclusively offering it even before it hits the market. 

“6 people like this” want to say ”THANK YOU FRIENDS FOR THE INSPIRATION AND HELP” and will give away free drinks at beta-breakfast on May 2nd.

It’s time for making, it’s time for getting to know new technologies and techniques, because it´s Artisan Weekend! Woo-hoo!

We’re teaming up with General Assembly and Esty to bring in the best.

This weekend kicks off on Friday morning with workshops and lectures to turn you into a lean, mean creator. Textiles, electronics, 3D printing, cardboard, concrete.. we truly tried to bring in as much of crafts and technology as a weekend could squeeze.

One of the workshops we really present top proudly is a Crash Course on Fabric Dyeing. It´s held by a betahaus NY-fellow Shabd who´s simultaneously a world-wide known fabric artist. Her works were featured in Vogue, ELLE and New York Magazine.. well, to make long story short – she´s truly amazing and ready to teach you the holy magic of fabric colouring.

But once you´ll get crafty. After a ws and couple of years of hard practice. .. There will be still a lot you´ll need to know. This part is covered by GA and Etsy who brought in lectures on all the practical business skills which you would need to succeed as an artisan. Well, the lineup of lectures and workshops is pretty packed as always, so to make it easier for you – just SEE IT ALL AT ONCE.

But if all kickass workshops aren’t enough to get your engine running, we’re stepping on the gas Saturday night with the Artisan Party !  Our Dj´s (already almost in residence) – Milan Hermess and Lazercat (LIVE, Snuff Trax/Canada) will blow up the dance floor just the way they do it! From 10 pm on we promise DIY sessions from our How Do Fellows and lots of fun all around you.

So join us at any point of the awesome weekend, we´ll be there.

Besso,

yours betahaus team.

P.S. Oh, by the way, if you wanna learn some deco DIY designs – join us today (Wednesday 7pm) at Open Design City for an arty Pre-Party.  Entrance free even if you are banana-handed.

The countdown has almost ran out, hurry up startups! Applications for the first Axel Springer Plug and Play accelerator program can be submitted until tomorrow, April 19, 2013 at www.axelspringerplugandplay.com.

And why do we write about this?!

Because all the founders participating in the program will get the status of betahaus| member, which allows them to participate on the community events such as betabreakfast and attend our workshops. After the intense 3 month program all the participants will spend one month working from betahaus for free!

New startups in the house, more fun on the business workshops! Another great feature of participating in the acceleration is an opportunity to be selected to gain fame&fortune by participating at our global startup competition betapitch. Here the selected startup will pitch among the winners of all the six local betapitch competitions which are happening right now in the Europe. betapitch|global takes place on the 6th of July 2013 in Berlin, don’t miss it! 

Want to know more about the accelerator?! Check out their Blog axelspringerplugandplay.com!

The low-cost car-sharing for you!

All the beloved betahaus members  can drive their citee car  almost for free!

100% discount on the citee car one year membership fee and no time charges during the workdays 9am – 5pm! The only thing you pay is some change for the km (gas included)!

Does that mean you can make a trip to Muggelsee just for 10eur? Yes!!! And you can get your membership card right this Thursday the 18^th of April on the betabreakfast or anytime in the citeecarstore. Come to the betabreakfast to meet cool people, get to know about new startups and projects and get your citee car member card right at the same spot!

Here’s the process how to get it:

1)    Join CiteeCar on www.citeecar.com at or before the breakfast.

2)    Come to the betabreakfast on April 18th and bring your drivers license for a quick check.

3)    Your personal CiteeCard will be issued immediately…

…and you’re ready to drive!

It feels good to be part of the CiteeCar Community.

Low-Cost car sharing is growing! With over 110 stations in the city, you can pick up a car right in front of betahaus or most probably in your district elsewhere in the city.

The new stations are being open in Hamburg too!

Giving it a try is worth it! True story!

Betapitch is coming to Bulgaria! For the first time you can experience it on the 30th of May 2013 in betahaus | sofia.

betapitch is the startup contest of betahaus in which promising teams get a head start and get a chance to work in lively home-like environment. The winning team will stay in betahaus for 6 months and will get everything needed for launching and further development of their ideas and products. Our mission is to make the stay of the top teams the most enjoyable and useful, therefore we’ll connect them with partners, mentors and investors to meet all the needs of start-ups.

We search for 8 – 10 best startup projects who will be invited to present on the betapitch. First, the startups will go through an intense pitch training after which they will present upfront the handpicked jury, outstanding guests and Bulgarian media. Besides motivating stay in betahaus, winners will be rewarded with the right to participate in betapitch global, where they will compete with winners from across the Europe for prizes just as cash money, trip to Silicon Valley and a 7-month tour around the Europe. Let’s see it will be proven that Bulgarian entrepreneurs are the most passionate, ambitious and creative ones who have guts to show that they are the best in Europe.

Stay tuned and find more details here:  http://www.betapitch.de/sofia/.