“If the entrepreneurs actually have some choices about where they go and why, it’s forcing us to be honest about delivering good quality content and good quality support,” he says.
Ascender tends to host earlier-stage startups more than others in town. The startups aren’t in the space for a specific time period; it’s more a matter of whether they’re making progress.
In addition, while the organization takes a small ownership stake in its for-profit startups, it’s not counting on any payoff. Zappala says that allows them to be more candid.
A deeper change
The rebranding last year was a chance to step back and refocus. Zappala says Thrill Mill was just a name thrown together. The organization hadn’t gone through a proactive branding exercise.
“Our goal with this space is to create a diverse community where everyone can play together, regardless of venture tract … or male or female, or whatever the case may be,” he says. “We want diversity of thought and we want open-mindedness in the space.”
While many people assumed the new name was because of the new space, Zappala says the change went deeper than that. In order to become a place for all entrepreneurial activity rather than just incubated companies, Ascender has had to realign the community’s expectations.
The staff had little marketing experience, so trying to build a strategy around that was difficult, he says.
In addition, Ascender is now in the real estate game. From the time it started its expansion to now, 75,000 square feet of coworking space came online. Zappala welcomes the healthy competition and is interested to see when the market will reach capacity.
Pittsburgh’s coworking isn’t utilized just by early-stage startups like in New York or Boston. Instead, entrepreneurs who founded previous companies, service providers and corporations who want to be in a startup environment are interested in these spaces.
Ascender’s community has been a differentiator, while other coworking spaces have found their own niches.
“I wasn’t cognizant of how quiet other coworking spaces can be,” Zappala says. “Some of them are like libraries, and that’s not what we wanted this to be. We wanted it to be a place that’s productive, but also engaging for the members. That’s made a big difference for us in terms of our ramp up of membership.”
Trying to force community is a hard sell, he says. People want more than a desk and coffee.
Early-stage entrepreneurs come into Ascender for the programming, which gets them engaged with the service providers and corporations that are more willing to pay for space.
“Changing our thinking around the way that we’re marketing and to whom we’re marketing has been an evolving process,” Zappala says.
