After several coworking spaces you have finally settled at the place that suits you. Why have you chosen OfficeMe?
Yes, we have worked in several coworking spaces in Belgrade, but this one suits us best primarily due to flexibility that allows business expansion. Other spaces in which we worked could not support a company of over five employees, since their capacities were insufficient. Currently they are eight of us working here, and we have the setting that will allow us to employ additional employees if needed without any problem. In OfficeMe we are not concerned about the current issues of every company, such as cleaning, Internet, electricity, etc.
You have been here for a year. What are your impressions?
The moment we entered the space, we sat at our computers and started working, and that was just what we needed.
We are used to a fluctuating atmosphere, which suits us best, I am glad that the working space is expanding, and we can change the place once we get bored. The location near the Airport City is ideal for us, we have parking spaces, which was the decisive element, especially when we were looking for flats in the city centre, where it was almost impossible to find parking spaces. Here we have representative business premises, a security guard and video surveillance, and it really leaves an excellent first impression on clients or investors, which is very important.
How does it look like when foreign clients suddenly call in the morning to say that they are arriving the same day?
We had a situation when our colleagues from Athens called one morning and said: “Well, we are here in Belgrade and we would like to come to your company.“ We sent them the address of our office and provided two workstations for them in 20 minutes. They came, they were impressed by the environment, and unbelievingly they put their laptops on desks and started working without any problem. We left an excellent impression.
It seems that most companies working here are from IT sector. Who would you recommend OfficeMe to?
I would recommend it to startups that are not too casual. All startups are swaying, not knowing where they will be at the end of the year. It is counterproductive to work in an atmosphere like in your friend’s house. This is ideal for startups that wish to look profitable in a short period of time. Owing to this atmosphere we seem more serious even to ourselves. When we tell clients where we are, it seems very representative. One cannot tell whether the entire floor is ours, whether the entire building is ours. We did not send an address of a loft in the city centre, but there is a hotel nearby, parking, I can provide accommodation and workstation to people by sending one email, and everything looks professional, from the location to the representative building itself.
Do you socialise with people from other companies here?
Eight programmers with earphones on their heads eight hours a day are not interesting to people, they may even seem arrogant to others, but essentially, in our experience, there are many people here who come and go, which does not bother us, but we simply don’t have a need to socialise with them. However, it does not mean that others do not socialise with other people.
It sounds very interesting to live and work in the business centre of London, the famous City of London. What is your experience?
We worked in the City of London, in the co-working space called WeWork, in the very centre of London. To us it was too formal, because people were wearing suits and that’s why they chose that location. We had to take care about our outfit, who should we say hello. All the others were startup companies like us, but the atmosphere was too businesslike. We do not need to present a certain image, apart from the one we have online. And when somebody comes here, we are what we are - programmers.
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Ivan Goloskoković
