Hacker Lab Is Closing
hackerlab.org
hackerlab.org
It's one of the best things about Sacramento. My only regret is that I didn't join sooner.
It's basically a library for makers with a plethora of equipment I would never justify purchasing for myself, or even have the space for. A co-working space. An event space. There were weeks I spent 50+ hours there.
Sacramento library does have a "library of things" and its own makerspace, both showing the library is on the same page, but Hacker Lab is/was a 24 hour space and was light years ahead of any other option in town. Makerspaces are a natural extension of libraries.
I learned lots, built lots, started many projects and made many friends.
I don't have many photos handy, but here's:
* Adding LEDs to my mudguard in the electronics room: https://imgur.com/a/VU7mupx
* Building a sidecar for my dog with the welder etc: https://imgur.com/a/BeM8MFg
[] Sacramento Public Library - Books are just the beginning
https://www.meetup.com/Sacramento-Public-Library-Makerspace/
https://www.saclibrary.org/Books-Media/Specialty-Checkouts/L...
Not that I'm against such spaces being self funded and organized, but apparently it's not working well financially, so public funding could make it work and I can only think of net positive returns for the public.
(Our local library just got one though :) )
One of the members is probably a lawyer and can provide further advice.
Maybe form a non-profit organization.
My local incarnation, BARN[0][1] is a financially sustainable nonprofit. However, we wouldn't be sustainable as a for-profit company, certainly not if we had investors chasing a return.
[0] bainbridgebarn.org
[1] Disclosure: I'm the executive director and deeply in love with this place. Happy to connect to share our experiences with anyone seriously considering a similar path.
We are also a financially sustainable nonprofit. I'm convinced that's the only long term viable way to do a makerspace that targets hobbyists and small businesses/craftspeople.
Yeah I share that conviction. This space is less about creating value and capturing a part of it than creating community (though done well the value created by a thriving community _is_ substantial). And for reasons I've only partially grokked, many people are willing to contribute to a community backed by a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) corporation but not a regular corporation.
2. It makes them feel that they have done something good by donating to an educational foundation.
Note that not all tax-exempt nonprofits are 501(c)(3) educational foundations. You need that for the donation to be deductible for the donor.
It seems most people start them because it sounds fun. And from the people I’ve talked to, for a while it is fun. The community swoops in the provide free labor and support and it all feels magical. But once this fades and the reality of the challenge sets in, it becomes less fun, less community-centric, and requires serious business chops. You are essentially running 3 businesses. Customer service, manufacturing, and education. You really need to understand the fundamentals of business to make this work. Even then it might fail.
If I remember right, tech shop was well into the 8 figures in debt when they went under. Many other spaces have come and gone, too.
I also just moved to Sacramento and toured the Hackerlab 1 week before this announcement. It’ll be back in some way, shape, or form, so keep an eye out for that. I’ll be talking with the community over the coming weeks and trying to sort out what the opportunity is.
If anyone is considering starting a space or has questions, feel free to reach out. My contact info is in my bio.
If this thesis is true, I wonder why so many hacker/maker-spaces struggle to make ends meet.
Is it that the people who are receiving this value don't see (or can't correctly estimate) the value? Or that they see it but due to circumstances can't currently pay for it?
I disagree that people leave to guilds or build out their own space, except when they’ve outgrown the current space (which is so rare I can count the number of people on 1 hand). I can’t recall anyone leaving to a guild. A few people did go into the trades and took good jobs, eventually leaving.
The cheap trinket market is saturated and tough to crack, making it difficult for small makers to get a footing. It is possible, but it takes a fair bit of marketing/sales knowledge to get it rolling. I coached many early stage entrepreneurs who thought their stickers and laser etched boxes would make them a living. Unfortunately, they were usually not able to capture the long term value of the space and we’re gone within 2 months.
I think there’s a quality to price ratio problem for makers. Their specialized skillset which takes years to master is simply not worth that much to most clients. It is hard for clients to justify paying $1500 for a desk when you can get something that works and looks okay for $200 from IKEA or target.
Maybe I’m wrong, but these are the things I’ve noticed.
FWIW though, I think it's unfair to compare community-organized makerspaces to TechShop. While they have similar look and feel, no community-run makerspaces open their doors with $1M in equipment on the floor, it's a different business model. TechShop was propping up numerous unprofitable locations with a very small number of profitable locations. Those money sink locations sunk the entire enterprise in time.
My understanding is that the Makerfaire brand was also propping up TechShop. Early on we went with our own branding rather than use the Makerfaire name for one simple reason: at that time it cost ~$700 to use the name for our event and we got nothing in return other than getting to use the name. Our own maker fair event has been extremely successful, and the cost to use the name has only gone up. The Make brand certainly was a boost to the Makerspace/Hackerspace movement, but it also had drawbacks of its own.
Curious, what event do you run?
I've been tinkering with electronics projects all my life, since I was a kid with Sam's Kits and Heathkit. I have an absolute ton of discrete components, soldering gear, power supplies, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, microcontrollers, PCB etching kits, breadboards, etc, to contribute. Also, plenty of machine tools: lathes, drill presses, CNC platforms, etc. Not to mention, a fair bit of knowledge.
There is a local hackerspace near me. I emailed them, with no response. Went to knock on their door, and they told me to get lost and only show up at a specific time. I subsequently did so, and nobody was there.
The taste left in my mouth of "hackerspaces" is therefore quite sour, and my personal anecdotal read on the situation is that these places deserve their fate. It seems that they don't actually want to succeed.
As a member, when you stop in to spend an hour working on a project in your space during non-public hours it can be hard to accommodate unexpected interruptions. There would be times I'd drop in for a 5 minute project and end up there for 2 hours helping other members use the space, etc. I'm happy to help folks, but it takes a toll after a while to the point when you avoid using a space because it uses you more than you use it.
During public hours there may not necessarily be a single person who's job it is to greet non-members for tours. If a member of the public drops in and there's a lull in members present or a particularly anti-social member is all that's left to greet new people then it doesn't put the best foot forwards to the community. Hopefully it's just a momentary lapse in outreach as bad introductions like this are what get communicated much more than good introductions. I can certainly understand not wanting to return with things working out like this for you.
What are the barriers to operating a maker space as a non-profit?
Source: Hacker Lab CTO here, somehow missed this thread until now.
By "not a non-profit", does that mean that Hacker Lab had full-time paid staff, or were they just incorporated as a for-profit entity?
I have no experience organizing and my free time is unfortunately very limited right now but this seems very much like a place that is worth saving somehow...
It's pretty clear that they no longer have enough money to continue operations and were too reliant on non-revenue based sources (grants/partnerships) to keep the doors open which seems to have run dry:
The reality is, our organization is unsustainable in its current form. Our revenue streams over the years have been a mix of membership, ticket sales, and office rentals, but heavily reliant on grants and partnerships. At present, without a significant investor, major partnership, or direct injection of funds, our runway is not long enough to make the changes necessary for building long-term self-reliance.
It's a shame, looks like a really interesting spot for tinkerers and hackers. Let's hope they do get a chance to come back as they say it will remain in some capacity. Sacramento is a long drive from the bay area, where you'd think most of the target demographic resides, but I'm guessing the rent prices on a space make it untenable.
I looked into joining NYCResistor a while back and the membership fee was quite high (I don't remember it and I don't want to give wrong info). It was the kind of fee that would exclude a lot of people who this kind of space was meant to benefit and undercut the ethos of hacker/makerspaces generally. On the other hand, rent in downtown Brooklyn is really high. It sounds like this space was using grant funding to keep individual fees down and thereby promote accessibility. That's really cool. I am sad to see that they're closing, but this might be better for the community than multiplying membership fee rates or other "revenue" to stay open. It's a hard call and I don't envy them.
Given the location, and looking at pricing of comparable west coast makerspaces, this pricing model seems pretty fair.
Without daily active users a makerspace or hackerspace will usually stop growing in membership, leaving it in a lurch where rent is going up, tools aren't getting upgraded, and the space is becoming less viable by the month :c
That seems like a good idea until you've been through some of the courses I've seen people run at hacker spaces. You need a committee to vet the courses and fire instructors that are terrible.
There's quite a bit of industrial space at... let's call it "not entirely unreasonable" prices in e.g. Oakland or other areas further out. As a result, there's really no shortage of makerspaces in the Bay Area. (https://makernexuswiki.com/wiki/Maker_Spaces_In_San_Francisc...)
I don't agree the government should just hand out indefinite free money for these spaces to operate though because it would also kill them in due time. If a space doesn't have people with the drive to keep it running it would likely consume tax payer funds and provide less and less value over time from mis-management. I'm not suggesting grants are not a good thing though, grants have specific goals in mind and start and stop windows of operation.
Hopefully they get some angel donors out of this posting to HN ;-).
Just to clear up some confusion, we are a for-profit. I wholeheartedly agree with the catch-22 nature of grants. We survived for quite awhile with a significant portion of our funding coming from them, and while they helped, the overhead that came with hitting their specific goals & reporting metrics ate way too much of our (paid) staff time. Grants we're just enough to survive, but pulled a lot of time away from developing in core-business areas. If done again, I would definitely be a proponent of running as a non-profit.
Absolutely agree with your take on grants though, I get why these stipulations exist.
A sidenote on staff vs volunteers: Volunteers are great, and heck I started out in the space as one (some 7 or so years ago), but pretty quickly we transitioned into paid roles for space critical ops.
While having paid positions was definitely one of the contributing factors into the high costs of the space, in my opinion its also the primary thing that allowed us to operate as smoothly as we did at times (not saying without a large number of hiccups).
It's easier to clearly define boundaries and expectations on individuals without souring relationships when there is compensation for someone's time.
Re: Angels: Yes, we included a hail-mary clause in that letter, and even had a couple parties (from the more philanthropic side) reach out, but to put it bluntly the hill is steep, even if we transitioned to non-profit.
If you have any specific advice on ways to seek out angel investors or any general advice on things members could potentially do to help please shout it out or reach out!
Thanks again :)
Step 1: Assemble a squad of folks with energy to push the project forward. How this works depends on what the mood of the board is, and you'll need to work with them on this of course. If they are burned out or don't have the time, you still need to get them on board with the plan and also provide a support plan to get them unburdened. If you are serious about saving your space, start by beating down the door of all current and former members who were better connected in the Makerspace community. Connect with them to build a list of other members who care about your space and get them engaged. Use the phone, email and IM is easy to ignore. You need folks who have the energy to lead the space out of the current rut, so some fresh blood is also important. Connect with anyone involved in non-profit work in general as well. If it's just a matter of the current board being lost on how to fund-raise, then connecting them with people who know how to network within your local non-profit arena is important. Networking with other non-profits in your area is important but it's a little late to start that now. Hopefully your space already has connections, even old ones that have been lost to time that could be revived (by reconnecting with members who maintained those connections in the past). But, if you can't get a team of three or more people energized to save the space then you are very unlikely to move to step 2.
Step 2: Once you have a squad, create a plan for financial success for the current year. Assemble a plan of what needs to change with your finances to pull out of this dead-end. You'll have to work with the current treasurer and crunch some numbers to know your monthly expense total. Once you know your monthly shortfall you can attack it (plus the amount to create a cushion of savings). Create a multi-pronged approach to close the gap. Raise dues, create a list of simple workshops than can launch immediately (soldering, anything, and you need instructors ready to run them), and use any other method you've used in the past to cover overhead. Does your state allow non-profits to run raffles? Raffles can be a great way to raise money, but they can take time to setup if your space doesn't already have "raffle infrastructure" in place (in our state it takes ~100 days to process the paperwork to allow non-profits to run a raffle, plus it requires a separate bank account to hold the proceeds). Again, use ANYTHING that has worked before and run it in parallel with new stuff. It's going to be a lot of work.
Step 3: The big ask: a member fundraiser in parallel with the above. Identify a funding number that gets your space out of immediate danger, probably three months of overhead expenses. From your squad formed in step 1, identify your most sociable and well connected member('s) and work with them to do a fund drive from members and former members. Go WAY back and find former members who might still be fond of your space even after moving away. Beat the pavement and call these folks on the phone, preferably by people who knew them when they were still active in your community. Call current members who still pay monthly but don't show up. Mainly think of folks who are more well off, be careful to not put off members who their dues represents more of a burden than others. If you can locate a whale who is willing to make a relatively large donation, make it "if we raise $xxx so-and-so will match the donation!!". Usually these folks are happy to donate even if a matching contribution is not met, but it helps drive urgency.
Step 4: Follow through. This is the hardest part, if you pull things out of the ditch this month you can't stop. You didn't put all this energy into the space this month only to let it die the next month. Maby a periodic fundraiser for the public. Writing grants takes experience, connecting with folks who have experience is good, but it can be learned. Networking with other non-profits pays a lot of dividends though. Co-hosting workshops with other non-profits is a great way to integrate (or re-integrate) into your community. This can spark interest from other people with experience who may want to help your space with leadership and fundraising experience.
Addendum: The way you communicate is important. Once you have a recovery plan that works on paper announce it to the members via your usual communication channels, then start reaching out via the phone. Be positive with a path forward out of closure, marketing is important. You don't want to make people feel shame, but you do need to communicate the seriousness of the situation (which is already communicated at this point). Shame in a volunteer-oriented community just drives people away. It seems strange to say these things but one never knows what the level of communication experience one is walking into when making suggestions like these.
Good luck!
The perennial problem with relying on charitable grants to make budget is that (usually) such grants eventually dry up. Thus, they should only ever be thought of as a short-term launch boost. Fortunately, unlike ten years ago, there are now quite a few local machine shops and other vendors who will do prototyping and short-run manufacturing using CAD, 3D printers, CNC mills, laser cutters, etc. They aren't as cheap as a grant-subsidized charity but the ones I've used are efficient and focused on getting my small jobs done right.
In my experience, hack spaces, like most of the best things in life, are better when they’re not a for profit business.
When I founded ALTSpace, in Seattle, back in 2011, there were at least four other public makerspaces in the city, all of which have since closed. A few more have opened since then; some of them have since gone under. Makerspaces are heavily dependent on the energy and involvement of the community which sustains them. You have to be able to turn over your management every couple of years.
I don't really know why you would try to run a makerspace like a business. They are fundamentally community-oriented resource and activity spaces. It's much easier to make things work in a bottom-up, volunteer-supported, community-focused non-profit style. It keeps your overhead lower and your potential membership larger. You have to think of it as more like a public library than a machine shop.
The utility of a makerspace is strongly related to proximity: the less time it takes to get there, the smaller a job you can reasonably undertake there; the smaller the jobs you feel comfortable doing there, the more often you are likely to show up; the more time you spend there, the better the community works, and the more likely you are to spend time cleaning and maintaining the space.
There is therefore a kind of anti-scaling economics at work. A big, well-funded, well-equipped makerspace has to draw people from a large area to support its running expenses. But if it takes you an hour to get to the makerspace, you're only going to go there when you have multiple hours of work to do. How many times a month do you have a big project needing multiple hours of work? That is a single-digit number and for most people a small one. So you have to cast a wider net to support a larger makerspace, but you also have to charge more, which reduces your potential member base. It is a tricky balance to find, and it's even trickier to find much surplus value that could be extracted as profit.
We have publicly paid for workshops here for wood working in many cities and towns. You pay a tiny fee to use the equipment but the rest is paid for by the state. These places are also used to teach "shop" to kids etc. I would love to see the maker spaces get classified as such as well.
Just wondering why governments or companies wouldn’t fund these.
I haven’t been to the new location after their landlord kicked them out earlier this year, but it’s community-run by nice people. It’s a really affordable ($20/month for occasional access) way to have access to equipment without having to own it yourself. The woodworking and sewing stuff have been handy for me. The equipment isn’t super nice or super specialized; just practical things.
Hackerspaces generally aren't swimming in money, most don't have any employees and operate due to members donating their time to help the space survive and thrive.
Too far to be practical for Sacramento folks, but the Curious Forge in Grass Valley, CA is still doing well. They're a lot more scrappy and have a long history in the community. https://thecuriousforge.org/
I am speaking in hyperbole, of course, but in general if you're a techie and think Sacramento is just a cheaper Bay Area, you're in for a rude awakening.
Tech meetups in general have lacked but non-tech related meetups have always been good - board games, etc.
I think people are more well rounded and realistic about work / life balance than Bay Area tech and that's what makes Sac seem a little sleepy.
https://www.maker-works.com/operations-bootcamp
Appears it was pricey though at $2000 per person.
Here’s an old course outline: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a2b3cad8a02c7aa57ce3...
If anyone has seen blueprints, guides, etc for starting maker spaces, I would be curious to see them.
Author also doesn’t disclose they work for Formlabs; not a significant issue, but nothing less important to me.
DM me on matrix[1] @cj:hackerlab.in or email me on cj@hackerlab.in
[1] matrix is a chat protocol. Like XMPP but better. Check out matrix.org and element.io. Also checkout beeper.com
[1] https://www.meetup.com/hackernights/events/286560187/ https://github.com/eatonphil
I still remember in the 1980's and 90's when I was a kid where we had a lot of repair shops especially for TV and radio/transistors. It was back when things were costly and people used to repair stuff. Now people don't have the skills to repair any more.