In addition to expanding, Croatia’s ImpactHUB also plans to modernise its facilities.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Bernard Ivezic writes on the 17th of September, 2019, the oldest coworking space in the Republic of Croatia, ImpactHUB Zagreb, and the first coworking space for social entrepreneurship today, will double its capacity in the next month, and move from Vlaška to Zrinjevac.
Hermes Arriaga Sierra, the director of ImpactHUB Zagreb, says they are entering a new two-story space in October, with a capacity of 550 square metres and one hundred work places, which will have a garden in addition to an event space.
“When we opened ImpactHUB Zagreb back in 2013, we had almost nothing even for a coffee, nobody understood what coworking was and we hoped that the demand for such a service would grow into what it has become today, and it’s precisely because of the growing demand and the need to remain leaders in our segment, that we decided to double our capacity,” says Arriaga.
In the meantime, one of the biggest players in the coworking business has entered Croatia, Rent24, having acquired HUB385, and the City of Zagreb created the largest coworking space in all of Croatia, Zicer. Arriaga says that having healthy competition has only helped the market development and led to an increase in service quality.
ImpactHUB Zagreb, as he points out, has confirmed this with several awards. “Coworker (portal) members have named us the best coworking space in Zagreb for 2019, Nomad Capitalist has put us on the list of the best coworking spaces in Europe this year, and we’re now in the selection for the best coworking space at the Global Startup Awards,” says Arriaga.
He states that this is all due to the fact that they aren’t just renting space but creating a community and running different programs. ImpactHUB Zagreb is thus collaborating with the European Commission (EC) to investigate forms of social entrepreneurship financing in the next European Union programming period.
It is working with Hamag-Bicro on the Zalet project, and is now developing another program for Aurora, with the support of the US Embassy, the Zagreb Stock Exchange and PwC, scouting startups whose founders are women, in order to prepare them for pitches and ultimately listing on Funderbeam SEE.
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