Venture X creates coworking office spaces for businesses of any size, from single entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 companies. These coworking spaces allow for small businesses to come together, build community, and share each other’s resources. Venture X also allows small businesses to avoid the overhead of long-term leases with its month-to-month membership service.
Differentiating itself from other coworking space companies, Venture X operates on a franchise model in cities that are often underserved by allowing individuals or companies to create their own Venture X coworking spaces. After that, Venture X helps the new franchise at every stage of the development process, from finding land and signing a lease to construction and design to recruiting and signing companies for the space. Venture X is currently in Naples, Florida; San Antonio, Texas; and Toronto, and is very excited to be opening in fourteen new locations in the coming year.
Franchise model
While there are a number of coworking space companies, they are largely limited to major tech hubs like New York, San Francisco, and Seattle. When Venture X opened their first location in Naples, Florida, they realized there was a huge need for coworking spaces throughout the country for every type of business, not just tech companies. The best way to achieve this vision was to create a franchise model, where developers and companies throughout the U.S. and the world could open Venture X locations in their own cities.
Venture X teamed up with the United Franchise Group to build this model. After someone buys a Venture X franchise, Venture X helps through every stage of the process of opening the coworking space. The franchisee has access to the full Venture X team of over 200 employees which oversees marketing, real estate, legal, and everything needed to run a business.
Venture X’s in-house realtors help the franchise find property and negotiate leases. After that, the Venture X team helps with design and construction, and will even provide furniture, artwork, and televisions for the offices. When the site is under construction, Venture X will bring the franchise team to their West Palm Beach location to do training on sales, marketing, and membership. After the location opens, the franchise is in constant communication with Venture X. Better yet, once a company becomes a member of one Venture X coworking space, they have access to all of them.
Besides the flagship Venture X location, two more are already open. Fourteen are under contract and will open next year. The majority of the franchisees are real estate developers who already own property. Commercial developers are attracted to coworking spaces because they are more lucrative than renting out to single companies. Other franchisees include hotel owners, who are already in the hospitality space and want to shift to managing offices rather than rooms.
The Venture X story
Venture X was founded by a father and son team, David and Brett Diamond. The third owner is Ray Titus, the CEO of United Franchise Group. David is best known for cofounding DeAngelis Diamond Construction, one of the nation’s largest commercial construction firms, and as an angel investor of Silicon Valley and NYC tech startups.
David witnessed how coworking spaces increased the success of those startups with its lean costs, collaborative community and social environment. Inspired by that early, tech-driven coworking concept, Brett and David dove into this new coworking industry, taking day passes at some of the early coworking spaces. Brett, who had already co-founded 2 startups while attending university, took his college senior year summer off to work in one of the first co-working spaces that opened in NYC.
Venture X started selling franchises in February 2016, and soon thereafter opened their first two locations in San Antonio and Toronto.