Good for Business, Latvia, Real Estate, Technology

Having outgrown the 400m² space TechHub Riga occupied for the first two years of its existence, Latvia's leading co-working and startup community organization will move into brand new, modern premises in the old city in Riga on Kalku Street in September. The rapid success of teams like Infogr.am, Cobook, Sellfy and Froont, all of which started at TechHub, has helped inspire a new generation of startups to conquer global markets from Latvia. The official launch of the new  co-working space will take place on November 21st.

The non-profit foundation TechHub Riga opened doors in February 2012, with a launch attended by a pan-Baltic startup crowd, international guests as well as the Latvian Minister for Economics and ambassadors from the UK and USA. Along with the launch, TechHub organized the first ever TechCrunch Baltics conference. Starting with about 20 members, the TechHub Riga co-working space has since grown to over 100 members from over 30 startup teams, many of which are members of full-time resident teams working from the premises. TechHub Riga organizes the central regular startup event of the eco-system – the monthly TechHub meetup – as well as  the annual TechChill Baltics conference (which replaced TechCrunch Baltics), office hours and mentoring, and also hosts many other developer meetups.

During the last 2 years, many of Latvia's most successful fast-growing startups have emerged from TechHub Riga. These include Infogr.am, Sellfy, Froont, Cobook, Fastr Books, MaxTraffic, and Reach.ly. They have inspired a new generation of entrepreneurs to follow in their footsteps and as a result TechHub has  expanded a number of desks available for resident members. The new premises will also provide more drop-in space for Flex and Lite members who do not have their own dedicated desks 

TechHub Riga also faced an unexpected challenge: teams that grew larger wanted to stay at the co-working space. As Uldis Leiterts, CEO of Infogr.am puts it: “We did not want to leave TechHub, even as we approached 20 team members, because our team and new recruits loved the community”. To address this, in the new space TechHub Riga will provide glassed-off team spaces for more established 4-8 member teams that want separate space where they can work together, but still remain in the co-working space and mix with the rest of the community.

In total, almost 800m² of space is available, including a full kitchen and dining area, space for small developer meetups, multiple meeting rooms, rest areas, Skype call booths and outdoor terrace. Artist drawings of the new space are available here. On another floor of the same building a large meeting space will be available for monthly meetups and larger events.