Where the coworking movement was born
In 2006, a handful of San Francisco freelancers and open-source developers were wrestling with a problem: how do you have both the freedom of working for yourself and the community of an office? Their answer was The Hat Factory — a converted live/work loft at 801 Minnesota Street that became the first full-time coworking space in the world.
What started as a $170/month desk in a shared room quietly sparked a global movement that today encompasses tens of thousands of spaces and millions of workers worldwide.
"It seemed I could either have a job, which would give me structure and community, or I could be freelance and have freedom and independence. Why couldn't I have both?"— Brad Neuberg, inventor of coworking & Hat Factory co-founder
Software engineer Brad Neuberg opens the world's first coworking experiment at Spiral Muse, a feminist collective in San Francisco's Mission district. He calls it simply "coworking" — two days a week, shared desks, shared lunches, meditation at 12:15 and bike rides at 5:45. For the first month, nobody shows up.
Neuberg teams up with around ten others — including Chris Messina, Tara Hunt, and Schlomo Rabinowitz — and moves into Schlomo's live/work loft at 801 Minnesota Street in Potrero Hill. The group assumes a $1,000/month tenancy on June 1st. They christen it The Hat Factory. Unlike Spiral Muse, this is full-time: open Monday through Friday, every week. Schlomo — a video maker, Vloggercon organizer, and friend of the founding circle — filmed the move-in day and provided the physical home the movement needed. It becomes the first permanent coworking space in the world.
Chris Messina — who would later invent the Twitter hashtag — creates the Coworking Wiki and evangelizes the concept at BarCamp unconferences across the Bay Area. The Hat Factory becomes a gathering point for tech community events: Creative Commons salons, EFF meetups, DorkBot, SFDrupal gatherings, and music/tech nights.
Messina and Hunt depart to co-found Citizen Space, the first purpose-built coworking facility. Hat Factory alumni and inspiration spread across San Francisco and beyond. From this point forward, the number of coworking spaces worldwide approximately doubles every year for the next seven years — what historians of the movement call "the coworking revolution."
The Hat Factory closes its doors, its work complete. By this point, there are roughly 160 coworking spaces worldwide. The New York Times covers the movement; the word "coworking" enters Wikipedia. The lofted warehouse at 801 Minnesota Street passes into history.
There are now over 35,000 coworking spaces globally, with millions of members. WeWork, Industrious, Regus, and countless local spaces trace the lineage of their entire industry to this unassuming Potrero Hill loft. hatfactory.net — this domain — was the original web presence of that place.
Software engineer who originated the coworking concept at Spiral Muse in 2005, then co-founded The Hat Factory. Later a Developer Advocate at Google.
Creator of the Twitter hashtag (#). Co-founded The Hat Factory, built the Coworking Wiki, and later co-founded Citizen Space. A central figure in the early open-source web community.
Author of The Whuffie Factor and digital culture influencer. Co-founded The Hat Factory and Citizen Space. Later shaped the social media strategy for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Schlomo lived at 801 Minnesota Street and opened his Potrero Hill loft to the coworking group in June 2006 — the physical act that made it all possible. A video maker and Vloggercon organizer, he filmed the move-in day and remained a co-founder through the space's final days at the end of 2009.