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Comment by MrDunham | Hacker News Reader

"There's no money in maker spaces."

I so wish this wasn't true. I want to open my own to inspire young inventors to learn and build (because I wish it had existed for me).

A few weeks ago I was talking to the founder of a wildly profitable coworking chain in Ohio.

He broke the code...

don't sell memberships, sell the foot traffic to towns (and malls).

A few local towns even gave him $1 rent on beautiful buildings because the downtown needed more foot traffic. Or $750k non recourse loans for remodels.

In short, he's a damn fine businessman... and he's the one to say that he can't figure out how to make a maker space profitable.

It truly breaks my heart to see maker spaces go under again, and again, and again.

Clearly the standard business model of memberships + classes + fees doesn't carry enough margin. I just wonder what might as I'd love to see a makerspace in every city.

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Are libraries profitable? I wish these could exist and didn’t need to turn a profit.

These seems like spaces with significant public benefit, and I’d love to see public funding for these kinds of spaces (maybe even folding into the mission of public libraries)?

In germany some libraries started to have makerspaces attached to them with good tooling (3D printers,cnc etc) and they host repair cafes weekly but without the voluntary help of a lot of CCC folks it wouldn’t happen . Still I am glad the state is sponsoring the environment for it.

Yup, got some of this in the USA too.

In Norway libraries lend tools, 3d printers and even cargo e-bikes…

New Jersey, too.

My father added a deck onto his home using power tools he checked out of the library.

In a city where I lived recently, you could check out wifi hotspots for a month at a time, with free service.

Which county? I would love to try that out.

Sussex.

There's one of these near me in the US. It's run by anarchists, on donations, but is used and beloved by the multi cultural working class neighborhood.

Our local library has a maker space attached to it, though it’s pretty mundane. I’m glad for its existence, and I’m hoping it will heroes into something spectacular.

Would libraries be allowed now if they weren't already an established tradition? I may be cynical but this seems like a pretty clear "no" at least in the US.

Sadly I think libraries are a product of a past time

Along with a lot of other public services.

Can you imagine a service whereby the government provides table saw for use by the general public? I just do not think the government is equipped to manage this kind of risk.

In Berkeley, the public library will lend you a table saw, circular saw, power drill etc. The inventory is right there in the online catalog: https://catalog.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/?section=home

Maker-oriented kids can also go to the city-run Adventure Playground (https://berkeleyca.gov/community-recreation/parks-recreation...) and hammer or saw away to build their own play structures (though they just have hand tools, no power tools that I've seen).

Wow! Adventure Playground is still around! I went there in the 80s! <3

This kind of comes close, with sewing machines, a heat press, and a fabric cutter.

https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/using-the-library/comput...

Yes, it seems pretty straightforward, and would work the same way it works with a maker space.

We trust the general public to operate a table saw unsupervised, so I think it would be completely imaginable for the government to offer a supervised space and equipment (and safety training).

It’s absolutely not hard for me to imagine that at all.

On the other hand, due to sovereign immunity, the government is uniquely positioned to completely ignore the (legal) risk associated with this kind of scheme. I don't think our government (at basically any level) is capable of actually doing something this useful anymore though.

Speaking at a local level of a library board, school board, planning board, and working with a conservation commission, or a health commision, or municipal council on aging or even public works and roads department...

...funding and implementing operations of a municipal school system, making a community space for learning and meeting (libraries), and other outcomes that go with education, or revising zoning, reviewing proposals for building and housing development, protecting wetlands and land (conservation commission), or guiding proper installation of septic systems, placemment of wells, inspection of food production, or for elders providing community resources from meals on wheels, to social workers, and another kind of community space and service (council on aging), or maintaining roads and streets (and in winter causing them to be plowed for snow)...

...your views on capability and actual work of government are nihilist compared to what they actually do accomplish towards making municipalities personally growthful (educationally), safe, and acceptable even vibrant locales to live in.

Plenty of community colleges are run from state funding and have all kinds of adult education shop classes. You can learn to weld, do carpentry, etc.

Providing an education is utterly different from providing access to the tools to use more or less anytime you need them. Both are valuable, but they are quite distinct.

> "Plenty of community colleges are run from state funding and have all kinds of adult education shop classes. You can learn to weld, do carpentry, etc."

Once you are done learning the basics which takes about a week, you still have to participate in class and do "class" projects. These classes are not convenient to begin with and access to the shop ends when the class is over. You could buy a small contractors table saw or cheap flux core welder for the price of one class in my area. Not worth the price of admission imo.

I am sure there are ways to deal with this. Home Depot sells table saws to the general public and somehow manages the risk. I don’t see why a library couldn’t provide table saws.

Library of Things are becoming more and more common. The library in Orange County recently started one. Though I doubt they have table saws (yet)

I must confess that I still see makerspaces as much more commercial and vacuumed hackerspaces, so I cannot be very sad they are not that profitable (as I think it exists only to profit off of the idea of a hackerspace without any of the culture). Am I missing some crucial context that makes them good to have around?

Making physical stuff using modern techniques requires access to several machines that cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars each. It would sure be nice to rent & share.

How do companies do it? They either CAD up the work and contract it out to a machine shop (expensive and unfulfilling) or they are a machine shop (and understandably don't want to moonlight the same thing as their day job). Occasionally a university or corporate R&D lab will have decent machines on site. When this happens, it is magical. If you have access, you are a very happy person, and when you lose access you become a very sad person who wishes they could rent access again.

In my area, hackerspaces are full of broken machines. I assume because they have loads of beginners (a good thing) who make beginners' mistakes causing problems they can't fix (which is to be expected) and the skilled volunteers couldn't fix things fast enough (again, understandably).

Places that can afford full-time employees have someone keeping the machines and equipment in fair condition.

> can't figure out how to make a maker space profitable.

Maker space membership and other charges come during the most cash sensitive period - the very beginning of an idea, the period where angel investment is required instead of charges. I.e. maker space acts opposite of incubator, and thus it is no surprise that while incubators are profitable the maker spaces aren't.

May be with the growth of all the massive condos around people lacking garage workshop would provide maker spaces a second chance, though i'd bet more on the people just losing the habit and skills of making instead.

A shared garage is an interesting idea. Back when Orchard supply hardware existed in the Bay Area they had started moving towards places where people could do some making/building on site.

Perhaps as a loss leader towards eventual sales/services if people find success.

Somewhat out there, but what about:

a) by using the equipment you commit to providing a small percentage of profits from the job(s)/products/services that wouldn't have happened if the space/equipment/services didn't exist.

b) attracting foot traffic proportionally subsidizes the rates in (a).

The current model provides open-ended access to equipment for a fixed monthly rate. So any measurement of the value the equipment provides in terms of learning, experience, etc is basically being discarded. This makes a lot of sense from a purist "here's a giant pile of lego, go see what you build with it without any strings attached" perspective... but is it really the end of the world to wind the boundary on that margin back a few millimeters? For example Unity only imposes fees once revenue/funding is over $100K/yr - and (last I checked) this is only the case for interactive content, you can render (and profit off of) as much noninteractive video as you like. There's a recognition of the value of the product in there, alongside some *very* generous margins that arguably provide more than adequate "here's a pile of lego, go have fun" room to get lost in. Perhaps the argument is that the flat-rate subscription only works at eg Spotify's scale.

> by using the equipment you commit to providing a small percentage of profits from the job(s)/products/services that wouldn't have happened if the space/equipment/services didn't exist.

I can't think of a decent way to calculate or enforce this. If I use a drill press at a makerspace to help build a prototype that I pitch to investors and start up a million dollar business, do I pay the makerspace a portion of my million dollars, a portion of the ~$100 I would have had to spend to get my own drill press, a portion of the $15 I would have had to spend to rent one, or a portion of the scummy feelings I would have gotten from buying one at home depot and returning it when I'm done for no cost to myself?

If you just expect people to self-report how much value they feel they derived from the makerspace after the fact, then there's no real "commitment" happening and the whole situation is pretty identical to the current situation of good-will charity. If you don't, then you need some mechanism of reliably determining the outcome of the future given different conditions in the past.

I guess I was defaulting to imagining the percentage would be based on published earnings. I can see how that wouldn't realistically work in this case on second thought.

That will just encourage the people doing more serious work to either buy their own equipment, setup a shared professional workspace or rent from another business off hours. In all cases they'd stop coming to the maker space. which robs the maker space of the most experienced mentors. If they're a small business with income then they can even take out a small business loan for the equipment. Unity's model works because you can't swap out Unity without a lot of time investment. That's not the case for commodity equipment.

Hmm. I think I assumed the existence of some sort of captive interest/leverage opportunity and was digging around blindly to try and find a path that leads there. I think that's called wandering when it works :) but this is a bit more nuanced :/

It is really frustrating that there isn't money in it. People pay millions for tits on the internet and these projects have to scrap by. In this instance it really seems like they have an awesome location with a lot of machines, far beyond the common workshop. Really hope they can find some assistance. This is where a state or city could invest too in my opinion.

Why should there be money in it? A makerspace is a public good in itself; it doesn't need to be profitable to be worth doing.

I agree, it could also be a sensible public infrastructure investment.

Unfortunately, the supply and demand curves do not cross. I wonder how much of the operational cost is insurance.

At the Sacramento makerspace we ran from 2016-2020, it was $1800 per year for a $2MM policy. Really not super cost-prohibitive, as it comes out to ~$135/mo.

Im confused. You are saying his rent is $1 and hes still not profitable?

Crazy but might not be that unusual, I know the Exploratorium in SF had a $1 a year rent from the government for a long time and still managed to struggle financially.

It's a good point though, if my rent was $1 I feel like it'd be hard to f that up but these institutions are clearly more complicated than they seem like they should be from the outside : /

I think the GP is saying:

friend is successful at "co-working" space, and believes that "maker" space business is hard to make profitable.

You nailed it. Thank you for clarifying for me

I read that as he convinced towns to lease to his coworking spaces for $1 but in his opinion maker spaces are not viable.

Correct. The owner of the co-working space was able to get rent for one dollar (for the co-working space, because it drives tons of foot traffic with meetings and such) and the coworking space is wildly profitable. However, his opinion on maker spaces is that they are wildly unprofitable and even he couldn’t find a good business model there

This is an excellent comment / example but just to clearify, the quote here isn't from the original post text. I definitely believe there's a theoretical financial model somewhere out there that could make makerspaces sustainable. Sounds like this is one of them.

Seriously thanks for sharing this, would love to know the name of the chain. Ohio seems like it's got a lot of excellent stuff going on.

Thanks for the kind words, friend! The chain is CoHatch and they are predominantly in Columbus but I believe they’ve expanded to at least Cincinnati, Cleveland, and I think several other cities in the surrounding states now

I feel the same way. I’ve been carrying the stream of opening my own makerspace for over a decade. I still look longingly at buildings for lease, and do I the math of how close it is to public transit and potential makers.

Even a very successful space I used to visit closed doors back in 2018, as some of the exotic tools became more commonplace.

I feel for you, friend. they just don’t seem very viable outside of a subsidized university setting like when I was getting a mechanical engineering degree.

crazy enough, they let me and everyone have full access to the shop with minimal to no formal training on the tools

Why don't they become the YCombinator of hardware-based startups?

They could use business-centric projects to subsidize service to the others. But this is long-term capital gain, not revenue. Now this idea might be too late for Hacker Lab...

As someone who helped launch two start up accelerators, one for Singularity University, I can say that the economics of accelerators are actually pretty garbage outside of the top few ones. Pareto (80/20) and such I guess

So, buy a larger area than you need and rent out surrounding areas for other businesses as if you are an attraction? That actually makes a lot more sense. I noticed some new stadium deals actually work that way.

So, be a landlord and use that money to subsidize a hackerspace? It could work, but it would be less profitable than just being a landlord and pocketing the money. It's still effectively being funded on the basis of passion.

The football stadiums that went that way don't view football games as a passion project. Attraction plus entertainment complex is not an unknown concept.

You need the government to step in and run them (they could be used by schools too!). The government will get more tax $ later from the makers when they get high paying jobs.

They could be sponsored like meetups by big employers too.

Chicago Public Library has a maker space

Sounds like trying to focus on profit isn't the way to go

Sustainability makes more sense. Maybe more of a co-op model?

$1 rent sounds like a good start to sustainability.

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