How To Get A Free Office entrepreneur how earn by blogging blog

Sup Reddit,

My name is Alfred and I started my e-commerce business one month ago. Me and my business partner have been working in cafés and at the office where we have had our internships. It has been quite stressful. Cafés always close right when you start to get into a flow state and the wifi never works. As summer is ending, our internships are coming to an end too, which means those offices will be out of reach.

It also feels like you don’t have a serious business unless you have your own office. Where are you supposed to bring your customers, investors etc. The credibility doesn’t exactly start high if you meet at Starbucks… That’s why I decided to find us an office.

Since our budget is very limited I decided to get an office very cheaply, and I managed to find one FOR FREE.

PART ONE: Where the hell do I start looking?

As many journeys, this one started with good old google. I simply searched for offices in Stockholm (the capital of Sweden. I tricked you into learning some geography ;) ). That didn’t really help. Stockholm is apparently absurdly expensive, my friend who runs a startup pays 5000 dollars a month for his small office…

Co-working spaces came up a lot. That’s an office which is shared between a few startups and freelancers. This is great because you can get inspired by other entrepreneurs and it also offers good networking opportunities. Though, this was still out of my budget range.

Partly through the search I stumbled upon something called Startup Incubators. It’s a place for startups that are just starting out. Many of them are sponsored by the government. I guess this is more common in socialistic Sweden, but I think it’s more common that most people think. Entrepreneurs are very important to the economy and many governments are realising this. Every city wants to be the birth place of the next big unicorn, so they sponsor entrepreneur activities.

PART TWO: Startup Incubators?

I thought Startup Incubators only existed in Silicon Valley. Places like Y-Combinator, where geniuses create billion dollar companies. But apparently they are popping up everywhere.

Startup Incubators are great for many things.

• Meet other entrepreneurs • Connect with the startup incubator network • Free office space

It was mostly the last point which stuck to my mind. FREE OFFICE SPACE. That would be amazing. Getting a place where meetings can be held and where we can do our all-nighters. But it must be really hard to get such wonderful perks, right?

PART THREE: APPLY, APPLY, APPLY

To get that dreamy government subsidize office space, you have to be super smart. Hundreds of companies must be applying every week. It has to be almost impossible, when the perks are so great? (spoiler: it’s not impossible and you don’t have to be a genius. If you watch my videos, you’ll understand I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed.)

There are five Startup Incubators in Stockholm. Despite of having massive imposter syndrome, I decided to apply to all of them. In the application form I had a fake it till you make it attitude. Wasn’t necessarily lying, but stretching the truth a bit, hehe (don’t judge).

What happened? It turns out that all that stands between you and a free office is five boring application forms. I WAS ACCEPTED. It felt great to get that massive affirmation on your business idea. If someone likes your idea so much that you get a free office, the idea must be pretty damn good!

However, I didn’t get into all of them. Actually, I was only accepted in one! So my big learning here is twofold.

First, governments have tonnes of help out there. I’m sure a free office is just the beginning of my usage of government subsides. Investment/loan is definitely my next big ask.

Secondly, apply, apply, and apply. It wasn’t intelligence or talent that got me this office. I write like a rake, as we say in Sweden (it means I write badly, which you can see from this post). I got this office because of one thing: persistence. I believe every business or person has a chance of getting what they want from an application. The chance of getting what you want is never zero, but it’s seldom 100%. Our chance seems to be around 20%, which means we have to apply to five things in order to get one.

Five startup incubators in one city might be abnormally high. Though if you live in a big city, I’m sure you have at least one startup incubator that you can apply to. So if you want that free office, make sure to apply, apply, and apply. I also documented this entire office journey in a vlog. I also show my how my office looks like, if you´re interested

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