Building Droplabs: a Business Model for the Open Source Community

Founded in 2011, Droplabs is a coworking space, classroom and makerspace in Downtown Los Angeles. Our community is made up of members who support each other personally and professionally in a positive environment.

The coworking services and developer programs we offer, like Free Coworking Days, Coders with a Cause, Mobile Device Lab and Developer Boot Camps, were made possible because of our love of open source and a passion for learning.

We'd love to see more places like Droplabs, and we're happy to talk at SCALE about how others can replicate our success — and avoid or overcome the challenges we've had over the years:

• Identifying a space to build a location-based community
• Traffic and parking in Downtown Los Angeles
• Making decisions in a consensus-based organization
• Empowering members to become leaders
• Disrupting the coworking business model
• Paying the bills (rent, insurance, staff, etc.)
• … and still having fun!