Inspire9: A Corner of Melbourne Where Entrepreneurs Can Find Inspiration

After the announcement of the Asia-oriented Optus-Innov8 fund, I guess many, myself included, were pretty curious about the Australian tech startup scene. Just last week, while on a personal trip to Melbourne, I was very kindly hosted by the folks at Inspire9, who introduced me to the community over there.

Inspire9 is a co-working space located in Richmond, a suburb of Melbourne. I was pleasantly surprised when Rocket (pictured right, she’s the girl on the left), one of the community managers, told me during my visit that part of the co-working space, given that rental costs in Melbourne are exorbitantly high, is let out for free for entrepreneurs who occasionally work out of the Inspire9 space. In fact, I was also invited by them to work from there myself. Nathan Sampimon (pictured on the right), tells us more:

[W]e’ve got a model that community orientated because thats what’s most important to us. We’ve been running the coworking space for nearly [four] years now and we’ve learnt that providing a free resource is great to start with, but after a while members based in the space want to give back. So to help them do this we’ve created a payment structure which helps us pay for the space and helps them contribute.

There are [two] plans. The ‘casual residency’ is two days a week, costs AUS$230, exclusive of GST per month, and is designed for freelancers and startups who enjoy working from home, cafes or libraries and just need some time each week to escape their usual work environment. A ‘permanent residency’ is $400, exclusive of GST, per month and is designed for people that thrive in the co-working environment.

They do have customized deals for bigger teams who are interested to work out of the space.

I thought this was great because letting it out for free would mean startups can cut down on rental costs, and being in a community like Inspire9 would allow them to interact and bounce ideas off other like-minded individuals. There are over twenty startups residing in Inspire9, which makes it really easy to look for people to validate – or tear to shreds – your idea and product, or to even seek help on matters you’re unsure about. In fact, AngelCube, one of Australia’s incubators, is also based there.

So apart from providing the space, Inspire9 runs community events and meetups, including Ruby Melbourne, Python Melbourne, WordPress Melbourne, and Girl Geek Dinners. Just the weekend before, they held the Social Media Melbourne Unconference in conjunction with the Mashable Social Media Day.

Apart from these, they do have other events such as Inspire9 Running Sessions where a group of residents head out for a run, 5x5s where a community member shares what they’re working on for 5 minutes and receives 5 minutes of feedback from the group, and Inspire9 Blood Donation Drive where they organise a bus to pick them up and take a group of them to donate blood. For more information, you can check out their website here.

So why the name Inspire9? Nathan elaborates:

Here is an excerpt from our branding outline: You know the feeling you get when you see something truly incredible, when you are floored in its honesty, complexity or sheer brilliance?

We call that inspiration.