The daily grind. The ol’ nine to five. Office jobs aren’t for everyone, and these days, people may want more workaday freedom than even a coworking space.
“We considered buying a coworking membership but it didn’t quite fit our lifestyle of being able to bounce around the city, changing up our environment and meeting new people,” Nisha Garigarn explained.
Garigarn is the cofounder of a new app called Croissant, which offers users access at coworking spaces in Brooklyn and Manhattan in pretty much any neighborhood they want. With an interface that looks a little bit like Foursquare, users can browse coworking spaces by location and check out photos and tips at each one, as well as the number of available desks. When you arrive at one, you check in on your phone. When you leave, you check out.
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Garigarn and her three cofounders, Dave Idell, Adam Chew and Zoltan Szalas, were all working in corporate jobs before they got together this past May. Dave and Zoltan had met when they were roommates in college, and Adam and Nisha had met playing the online game Maple Story.
“We were all living relatively normal lives until we started exploring side projects together,” Garigarn explained. “Croissant is the culmination of several ideas and a hackathon project that became our full time focus last May.”
In the beginning, the crew worked mostly out of Chew’s house in Sunset Park. Since launching this July, they’ve moved into the cofound/harlem accelerator, though Garigarn said they still have all-night hack sessions at Chew’s (who was born and raised in Brooklyn).
For now, the young company serves only the New York market. In the coming months they plan to expand to more cities.
If they do expand, their pricing will likely have to change in some way, but in New York, an unlimited membership is $299 per month, which is about average for Brooklyn coworking and a touch below the average price for Manhattan coworking. They also have a $99 per month option, which is for limited hours.
“Most spaces also have free coffee, so the $99 a month membership pretty much pays for itself in the savings you get from not having to buy a coffee and a croissant when working at coffee shops,” Garigarn said. (Particularly true if you’re into premium coffee.) “Croissant embraces the on-demand lifestyle.”
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