Wild Coworking has been launched by young entrepreneur Jess Hellens as a result of being faced with an outdated system as a woman in business.
Wild is currently based in a space at Frome’s recently renovated, vibrant Town Hall with room for 8-10 women hot-desking at one time. More than just a desk, one of the reasons Wild has been launched is to provide a respite from the kitchen table – to tackle the isolation experienced amongst freelancers and other women who work from home.
Another reason is rooted in a much bigger problem that Wild aims to solve. Working in PR and marketing, Jess has attended many business networking events, investment workshops and entrepreneurial groups; it was at these events that she came to realise that the people with all the money and power neither looked like her nor did they think like her. She asked herself why would the rich, white men in suits want to back her business? She knew something had to change if the future of business was going to represent the diversity of the founders of startups that will eventually drive the UK’s future economy. Wild was born.
This need for relevance, was reaffirmed recently in the ‘Rose’ report, released on International Women’s Day which found that female-led businesses receive less funding than those headed by men at every stage of their development. Only one in three UK entrepreneurs is female, which it describes as “a gender gap equivalent of 1.1 million missing businesses”.
To accompany these statistics, PeoplePerHour predicts that by 2020, 50% of the UK workforce will be self-employed.
Wild founder, Jess Hellens said, “I think people make the assumption that we have come a long way as women in business, but when you’re faced with the stats, it’s clear we still have a lot of work to do.
“I thought I would create a space where women can feel empowered; they can come here and to our events to learn more about what it means to start, nurture and grow a business.”
Moving from Bristol to the fashionable Somerset town of Frome, Jess has set up Wild to make flexible working a reality. Currently located in a stylish, accessible space at the Town Hall, women are welcomed into a light, contemporary room where the practical access to desk space, Broadband, stationery and free refreshments is punctuated with soft yet motivational interiors.
Wild has a future vision to build a large space with added services. Plans for the future will include childcare options and space for breastfeeding/pumping. Starting small, the aim is to develop a space where female founders can expand their teams into larger office space and, although the hot-desking will remain for women only, the larger spaces will be designed to be mix gendered.
There are a number of different membership options available, ranging from Full Time Wild, Sometimes Wild and Virtually Wild as well as drop-in hot-desking. Prices start at £5 a day and most Wild memberships also includes the community networking evenings where Jess and invited speakers share and lead discussions around some of the most pertinent issues facing women in business.
www.wildcoworking.com
