A WeWork office is opening in a building which is directly connected to Kyoubashi Station at November 1st. This is where bellFace’s next office will be.Tokyo Station would be a few minutes’ walk away.

Moving into a new office is an exciting event for a startup company like us.The improvements in office conditions may be regarded as an indication of company growth. The environment will change completely. Since we all love new things, I can’t wait to start at the new place. According to Mr. Akaura of Incubate Fund, it is not bad idea to change offices frequently if the company is growing although it may seem costly.

As for bellFace, we have been changing the offices 3 times in the past 3.5-year since the establishment. This will be our fourth.

1. Office of Hakata in Fukuoka
2. Cheap rental office in Shibuya, Tokyo.
3. Multitenant building with loud neighbors
4. Current office
5. WeWork

A keen discussion was held focusing on the condition of our next office. Various ideas were suggested as such as an office in Gotanda area with a room big enough to hold seminars or rather small place somewhere in a high class building near Sinjuku Station.But we all together, decided to go for WeWork at the end.

With the same amount of money spent on WeWork, we could have rented a space four times bigger compared to what WeWork is offering. Then, why bellFace with size of 40 members has chosen a shared office in its growth phase? This is a good chance to share the ideas behind this decision with both, the blog readers, and the members of bellFace team.

What is WeWork?

WeWork offers a network of community style shared offices expands all over the world. Their offices are located in 280 places of 77 cities across 23 nations. Once registered, you can use any of WeWork offices on earth while having your business trips. More than 260,000members are participating.
 Although it is used widely by numbers of start-up companies, Well-known companies like Microsoft, American Express, Red Bull, Guardian, Airbnb, Uber, Yelp etc. are also listed as WeWork office users. In addition, it became a hot topic that Mr. Masayoshi Son; the chairman of Softbank Corp, made a prompt decision of investing $4 billion in WeWork.

Reason① :To Increase the Employments of The Creative Tech Professionals

As it is imagined, WeWork is expensive! Just like everyone else, I , too, was shocked, and somewhat upset at WeWork cost when I heared it for the first time on a TV. It was introduced to be one of the "Rich Shared Offices".

However,

WeWork offices do provide work environment worth the expense. The 43 private desk spaces signed up this time, of course, come with the numbers of awards winning office design, and environments enhanced by the amenities listed below;

The Included Amenities
・Super-fast internet
・Business-class printers
・Unique common areas
・Bike storage
・Micro-roasted coffee
・Front desk service
・Private phone booths
・Community managers
・Daily cleaning
・Craft on draft
・Fresh fruit water
・Office supplies
・24-hour/7days building access
・Professional & social events
・Mail & package handling
・Global network
For more information

It would be quite a cost if we were to prepare to run them all by ourselves.

Wait a minute!?  Craft on draft?Beer? Do I see alcohol for free, unlimited on the list?

Well, I guess it is the NY style alright! But this is Japan, you know!? Though I have no privilege of enjoying this service, for I’m a nondrinker in the first place, what shall I tell my teammates about this?
It’s too dumb to say no! to those folks since we chose this office to seek a new working style. But I can’t just sit, and watch them meet customers with a glass of beer in their hands? Let’s not talk about it for a while, observe in silence, believing we are born “modest” in nature.

There are 8 WeWork offices located within Central Tokyo; Kyobashi, Shibuya, Shinbashi, Roppongi, Hibiya, Nogizaka, Marunouchi, Ginza.
A new place is opening at Yokohama Minato Mirai followed by the new starts of Osaka, and Fukuoka offices.

As a WeWork office user, you can use any WeWork bases around the world.

A flexible scheduling, and remote working style is welcomed at bellFace.
Anyone joining bellFace in the future can just check in to one of the offices nearby and work. I assume that the office environments and the brand image of WeWork is well-received by most of workers, especially by those in creative jobs like IT engineers, and designers. In fact, when I told about it  a few of the engineers I’ve known, they really liked the idea of moving into WeWork

With an Inside Sales system specialized for B-to-B sales as our main product, bellFace naturally, has an advantage of recruiting skilled business personals. Hiring engineers and designers in creative positions in IT, on the other hand, is what we are struggling with. The creative skills are vital to an IT startup whose growth depends heavily, on the products qualities.

People with such talents, and skills have numbers of options to choose their jobs from.

How could we make those creators turn to us beside other major IT companies like Mercari, and Google? This a tough issue we face but must overcome for our stronger buildup in business.

To appeal to the well-trained creative professionals; designers, engineers, and marketers as such, it is worthwhile to pay a suitable rent to obtain an ideal office environment so that they can perform at their best.

Reason ② : WeWork rent budget was reasonable after all when examined thoroughly

"For the precious creators"
I said, but I'm not about to overspend the fund. I want to point out that this move is taken upon a solid consideration, and calculation.

The office rent per WeWork user in a month would be ¥150,000.
There are 40 of bellFace members at this point of Oct 2018, making the total of the annual WeWork rent approximately ¥ 70-million. Such a rent budget  per year is almost like making a skydive from high above for bellFace; a startup with only history of 3 years. 

However, WeWork is a shared office after all, in other words, we only need a small amount of security deposits for the office. 

A two-month deposit will be returned in time of contract cancellation.

Let’s say we had rented an office with ¥3 million rent per month.

The deposit would be around 10 times the rent fee in average, therefore, it would roughly be ¥30 million. If an interior furnishing is needed for size of 330 m2 to 660 m2 space, then it would cost about ¥20 million including the office equipment purchase and others. It already adds up to ¥50-million in total as an initial cost for renting an office!! Not to mention the monthly ¥3-million rent fee required along with it. Therefore, another ¥36 million would be added annually as rent fee. We have to expect an annual cost of somewhere around ¥86 million (approx.$760,000) at least for renting an office for ¥3 million per month independently. And moreover, please note that the gas, electric, and water bills are not included to this ¥86-million.

WeWork, in the other hand, the gas, electric, and water bills, office equipment and other expenses are all included in the annual cost of ¥70 million（approx.$620,000）WeWork is less expensive, at least, for the first year compared to an office in average although the exact cost may change depending on how many people you are planning to register. But you can always deal with the increase of users by spreading the people out to several different offices. Ok, it’s not that bad as it looked at first.

In addition to all the good things mentioned above, we can move out from WeWork any time we like. Unlike the office renting in general, there is no need for an advanced notice of contract cancellation. Restoration of the rooms is not required either unless you scribble on walls or something.
Users won’t pay for any interior furnishing. Instead, all the desks, and chairs come with the offices for them to use from the beginning. These sorts of flexibilities are too good to miss! 

Taking all above into count, I came to a conclusion that choosing WeWork is nothing costly. The cost of using a normal office, and WeWork would be about the same in the period of 2 years or so. Not only that, but I'm considering WeWork to be the strong reinforcement which empowers the employments branding of bellFace also.

MRR of bellFace as a SaaS providing company is growing.
If I am to believe in our further grows in the future, then, it is worthwhile to invest the MRR of couple months for our best working environment in advance.

Reason③ : Because We Are Aiming for a Global Expansion for Real

Although many enterprises talk about developing their business out to overseas, few actually, take action to achieve it. Even if some did take a step forward to overseas, most of their products, and services will be out dated for the global market by the time the PMF (Product Market Fit) is achieved domestically due to the complexities and unique features of Japanese market.

bellFace, a service of an Inside Sales system specialized for B-to-B sales, on the other hand, is quite simple, a strongly supportive tool meeting the general needs of all business around the world, I think. Interviewing with the test users of our system in Silicon Valley, and India, Berlin, last year, I gained confidence that there will be chances for international business development for our remote sales system. Why not go for the world if leading a business in this era of globalization! There is no reason not to.

However, if there is no connections, or bases to start with, it will be a heck of labor to  build up a business from a scratch in foreign country. Sitting in a hotel room overseas, I've done that myself, and believe me,  it's  not productive at all. But this time, we have offices all round the world already! WeWork! Being  WeWork users means we can go anywhere in its offices located 280 places in 77 cities of 23 different nations worldwide, and WeWork is currently, increasing its bases in astounding speed.

That is, all these networks WeWork has could be within our reach. We can sit at the desks of any WeWork office around the world, and start from “Hello, I am from Japan.” Then, at least, someone in the office will turn to us. It’s like having a nightmare at first to walk up to a stranger, and start a sale talk in English face to face in overseas,  It is much better than building everything up from nothing indeed.

In addition, there will be WeWork staff members called “community managers”. Their job is to make matches among the companies within the WeWork communities both in, and, out of countries. This system can be a great help for us! How helpful? It is yet to be found out. Though I don't  intend to rely on them, I am looking forward to finding about the service.

By the way, we have a gentleman named Charles from Canada working with us as an engineer. He is my English teacher too. With him, we are thinking about visiting WeWork office in Vancouver, Canada.

Visiting the Vancouver office isn't just for the network development, but it will be a start of employment branding as mentioned in Reason 2 section. The office will be our actual business base for Canada in the future.

Wouldn't that be fun to see people joining bellFace worldwide and working at Wework offices in their own countries. This is something I am to realize in the near future!

Summary :The Three Reasons for bellFace to choose WeWork 

Reason ③:To increase the employments of the creative tech professionals   Reason ②:WeWork rent was reasonable after all when thoroughly,      examined.                                                                                                       Reason ③:Because we are aiming for a global expansion for real.

I haven’t seen the office interiors of WeWork yet though since the building will be opened in November 1st. Hopefully, it will be just as I’ve expected. Please look forward to the tenants’ reports issued by our public relations section soon.