Coworking in San Diego has been on the rise, with many new spaces offering their rooms and services to budding entrepreneurs. But are you confused about the variety of co-working spaces? Baffled as to which one is the best for you? Here are some recommendations to get you started, based on what you’re looking for in a space:

For the Startup: Ansir Innovation Center

For the Enterprising Female: HeraHub

For the Networking Professional: Co-Merge

For the Seeker of Inspiration: 3^rd Space

For the Urban Creative: HiveHaus

For the Social Networker: Kohwork’n

Click on any of the links above to read more, or you can find a map of the locations and a full directory below.
View Coworking spaces in San Diego in a larger map

3RDSPACE
4610 Park Blvd, San Diego CA 92116
619-255-3609

Looking for a space with a “chic industrial vibe”, where you need to exercise your creative muscles? Look no further than 3RDSPACE, a dynamic hub located in University Heights. Coworkers can join a unique community in an interactive, relaxed environment, emphasizing creativity and connectivity.

Rates: Cost of membership starts at $100.
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ANSIR INNOVATION CENTER
4685 Convoy St, San Diego CA 92111
888-882-8833

A relatively new co-working space that’s been on the rise in San Diego, AI Center targets startups and provides them with a variety of accelerator services beyond the average co-working model. Great for the fledging startup, who are invited to weekly events and to join the growing community at the center.

Rates: Day passes are free, flexible monthly options available.
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CEDROSWORKS
444 South Cedros Ave, Suite 175, Solana Beach, CA 92075
619-922-3398

Cedros Works is a flexible space that is centered in Solana Beach, and targets creative self starters. Their membership includes a 3G network, notary services and a roster of experts ranging from product development and business to IP law.

Rates: Starts at $375 a month.
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CO-MERGE
330 A Street, San Diego CA 92101
619-255-9040

Need a fresh, brand-new environment to get some work done? Co-Merge is a new, co-working space that is located in the Financial District. Along with the variety of co-working options, both indoor and outdoor, they also provide conference rooms, virtual offices and event space for networking events. Ideal for professionals who need a productive workspace, Co-Merge begins with its grand opening on July 28^th.

Rates: Hourly rate starts at $10 a hour, or membership at $500 a month.
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ECOHUB
4542 Ruffner Street, Suite 170, San Diego CA 92111
888-277-6304

If your business has the environment’s needs at heart, then you’ll easily find solidarity within Ecohub. The main services that EcoHub offers are innovation space, start-up solutions and a diverse community. Ecohub’s main distinction is that they focus on green and clean-tech entrepreneurs, and offer flexible membership plans.

Rates: Starts at $25 a day.
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EVONEXUS
3398 Carmel Mountain Road, Suite 200, San Diego CA 92121
858-546-4150

EvoNexus is an incubator connected with CommNexus, a non-profit high-tech organization in San Diego. In order to be considered for selection, applicants must apply and pass a rigorous application process. However, the benefits are tremendous, as fledging businesses in the program are given exposure, sponsorship, and access to an exclusive network.

Rates: By application process only.
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HERAHUB
3422 Tripp Court, Suite C, San Diego CA 92121
619-889-7852

HeraHub, the “Workspace for Women”, is designed with the accomplished, entrepreneurial woman in mind. Instead of working home, or from a coffee shop, women can come to this spa-like environment and get connected to resources and a like-minded community. In addition, membership will also give ladies access to exclusive networking events. HeraHub will be moving to a permanent location in Sorrento Valley on August 15^th.

Rates: Memberships start at $49 a month.
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HIVEHAUS
770 11th Ave, San Diego CA
241 14th St., San Diego CA
619-702-6211

When you think of co-working, the first thing to come to mind is probably HiveHaus. With two locations (one in downtown San Diego and another near Petco Park), HiveHaus offers flexible rates for creative, contemporary workspaces that are fresh alternatives to the traditional office.

Rates: Daily rate starts at $35 or $45 a day.
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KOHWORK’N
375 Rancho Santa Fe Rd., San Marcos, CA 92069
760-576-4564

Kohwork’n brands itself as North County’s first co-working space for startups, and features relatively low rates for a shared office environment. Designed with community in mind, the space serves as a medium where startups, individuals and organizations can interact with each other and share ideas.

Rates: Day passes start at $20 a day.
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PBC CARLSBAD OFFICE SPACE
2173 Salk Ave, Suite 250, Carlsbad CA 92008
760-579-7300

PBC Carlsbad is perfect for those that are looking for a more conventional office space without having to pay the high fees associated with it. Office spaces come with secretarial spport, copy services, and various administrative, legal and accounting services.

Rates: Virtual Offices start at $74 per month, while Private Offices start at $399 per month.
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VISIONPULSE CREATIVE
5945 Pacific Center Blvd., Suite 510, San Diego, CA92121
858-605-6262

VisionPulse offers CEOs, or creative executive offices, where members can have access to offices or conference spaces without paying a long term lease. In addition to space, they offer design services, consulting and event resources.

Rates: Enrollment starts at $149, with $25 monthly dues
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This is not a comprehensive list of coworking spaces in San Diego; if you have or are developing a space for entrepreneurs to connect, please leave a comment, so we can add yours to the list!

And how is not this the most reprehensible ignorance, to think that one knows what one does not know? But I, colleagues! in this, perhaps, differ from most marketers; and if I should say that I am in any thing wiser than another, it would be in this, that not having a competent knowledge of the lead scores of our leads, I also think that I have not such knowledge. -Socrates, Marketer

So you have a marketing automation system, and you’re implementing a multi-model system covering implicit and explicit data. Your sales team is going to spend less time chasing cold leads, they’ll know everything about their prospects, and your revenue is about to triple.

Not so fast.

If your lead scoring model is like most, it will fail in the worst possible way: sales will see great leads with low scores, bad leads with high scores, and conclude “this score means nothing.”

Looking Deeper

To understand this, lets consider how most models work.  Jon Fortune searches for widgets and clicks on your ad(+5), registers on your landing page for a whitepaper (+5), and downloads the whitepaper from the email you send him (+5).  You ask about company industry and he’s in the right industry (+5).

So far, you’ve collected demographic information(industry) and behavior information(actions on website) – good work!  But your threshold for marketing qualified leads is 30, so Jon will remain in your marketing nurturing queue for awhile, hopefully consuming your content and eventually raising his hand and asking to talk to sales.

Heres the problem: Jon Fortune is the CEO of a construction company in Nevada.  Construction isn’t your top niche, but your sales guy in Nevada (Mark) prefers construction leads, because he has experience in the industry and closes them easily.  Being a busy CEO, Jon doesn’t use a lot of email (he has an assistant for this) so he doesn’t open your nurturing emails.  He has a pressing need for your widgets, the authority and budget to purchase, and wants to buy soon.  While sitting in your nurturing cycle, your competitor cold calls and reaches him, setting an appointment and eventually gets the deal.  Mark learns of this deal through acquaintances, searches the database and finds out Jon was in marketing being nurtured.  Mark then threatens to quit unless he gets all leads in his territory, without qualification.

What happened here?  Your scoring model assumed it knew everything, so it didn’t qualify the lead properly.  Perhaps 70 percent of the leads in construction are scored correctly, but the system didn’t know Mark is great at closing these leads.  Result: Sales loses confidence in nurturing, thinks the scores are wrong, and your marketing automation investment is considered a failure.

Another scenario: Jane visits you at a trade show and enters her business card for your tschotske(+10).  Jane has no authority or budget to buy your widgets (she was just laid off), but she desperately wants to work for your company.  So she goes to your twitter and follows you (+10!), likes your Facebook page (+10!!), and visits 20 pages on your website to learn more(+20!!!).  She applied through an external website so she never visits your careers page, but in a short span she now has 50 points, enough to label her a marketing qualified lead.

This time, Mark calls Jane, excited to get a qualified lead from Marketing.  The number he has from her business card goes to an office voicemail, but he doesn’t despair: this one is clearly interested.  He calls back, ten times, and never receives a response.  Finally, he gets a response from her former boss:  ”Jane doesn’t work here anymore, and we have no need for your widgets.”  Rejected.

This time, your scoring model failed because it was too sensitive, quickly judging a lead to be qualified based on actions that didn’t matter.  It doesn’t ask the question “is Jane still employed?” because its too difficult to answer.  Instead, it makes assumptions and hopes for the best.

Score the Prospect Upside and Win

The first step is to mentally acknowledge the problem and account for it: understand the limits of lead scoring, and acknowledge these to sales.

The next step is to make the limits explicit.  Each lead should have a score based on known demographics, but it should also have a “potential score”, indicating the maximum demographic score the lead could ever have.  In contrast to the behavioral and demographic scores, this potential score will actually decrease as you learn more.  The difference between the demographic score and the potential score is the “prospect upside” and this should be a calculated field, visible to sales and marketing.

Now that you report the data for the problem, you can minimize it and measure the improvement.  For example, you could look at a quarter of data and see the average “prospect upside” is 50 points, and make it a goal to decrease this to 20 points.  You could then look at the fields with the biggest impact and purchase the information.  Using Salesforce?   Jigsaw would fix this.

While you’re working to improve the data, you can educate sales on the different scores.  They intuitively know a lead with 5 points could be more valuable than a lead with 50 points, so giving them these new data points will improve their confidence in you.  Rather than holding back leads from sales, consider passing all of them over immediately, while only showing qualified leads in the default views.

Bottom Line

Marketing automation systems are quick to tell you data, and slow to tell you what data is missing.  As a result, sales can lose confidence in marketing if their expectations of scoring aren’t met.  By admitting your level of confidence in the data, you can improve their trust in marketing, and over time measure the improvement in the quality of your data.

Manny Ramirez retired this week amid reports of a second positive drug test.  Although some reports portray his stupidity for testing positive, I’m more interested in cleverness of his retirement.

Examine this chart:

In 2009, he… somehow retained his phony image as a fun-loving, dreadlock-wearing, batsmith/comedian.

2,574 hits, the 555 homers, the .585 career slugging percentage, the .996 OPS… Just three players in history have ever assembled those numbers  (Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds and Ramirez.)

The theme from my trip to India was how quickly they are modernizing certain parts of their society.  Here are a few trends I see in the next few years, based on observations in Delhi:

• Reverse migration. When the recent recession started, many American engineers responded to layoffs by returning to India.  This reflects some of the economic successes there in the last decade, and where the economy stands now .
• Housing. From my understanding, India is in a real estate boom/bubble in many markets: this is only increased by the reverse immigration of educated citizens.  Though they don’t flip houses as much as Americans, expect the equity pulls to artificially prop the economy, and with it an eventual readjustment.
• SUVs. The roads are filled with a mix of compact cars, bicycles, auto rickshaws, dogs, goats, pedestrians, and camels.  A few companies are beginning to sell SUVs, and in a city this noisy and bumpy they will be well regarded for safety.  Provided the prices drop (2x US prices right now), the roads could quickly be more impacted by SUVs.
• Tuner cars. No one seemed to have their cars customized, and the auto shops only sold stereos and seat covers.  One easy sell: louder exhausts would make drivers feel more powerful in a crowded street.  Expect to see more of this.
• Coffee. In two weeks, I went to at least seven cafes, but none offered drip coffee.  Starbucks has been trying to enter the market since 2007: I expect their status will encourage more drip coffee consumption, because its easier to make.
• 3G internet. There were a lot of smartphones, but no one seemed to be using 3G.  This will be a market to watch for truly social mobile apps.

Some notes from my trip to India:

• Customer Service doesn’t include a smile. Very few service providers smiled at customers, and at first this was unnerving; but I began to realize families still smiled at each other.  This could be because many of the service providers were of a different class, while families are on the same level.  I’m not sure.
• The infrastructure is strange. For a trip to Taj Mahal, we chose a bus tour that was competitively priced.  In order to catch the bus, however, we had to take an auto rickshaw to an unmarked location (the driver got lost three times), then get picked up by a cab, and then catch the bus.
• You get what you pay for. As for the trip itself: what should have been a 12 hour complete trip became a 22 hour trip, including an hour at a gift shop no one cared for.  It was far less comfortable than a similar trip in Costa Rica costing a tenth as much.  And the actual tourist attractions cost 10x more for foreigners.
• Class level is more apparent. Going to a liberal university, I see America as a society with a lot of poor.  But in India, the difference is more striking. A true mix of rich and poor, new and old.  The Metro in Delhi is very nice: rfid coins, clean trains, and many stops.
• The concept of personal space doesn’t exist. Metro passengers would sooner push into a train than wait 2 minutes for the next one.
• The concept of lines is not appreciated. It was completely normal to jump lines, whether at the Metro or in traffic. This is true in the US, but at the Delhi Metro they actually had door guards to manage the chaos.

In another post I’ll highlight some future trends I saw for Delhi.

Recent headlines show Borders filing for bankruptcy, and Barnes & Noble is facing its own issues. It seems the era of large bookstores is nearing an end.  What can they do to survive?

Here, I think, are the major problems facing these retailers:

They scaled up. These companies expanded at a time when the economic paradigm was economy of scale: if you are bigger, you can spread the fixed costs (like the rent) over more customers, and each customer returns a slightly higher margin.  At the same time, a large store means the average customer is more likely to buy more (think Costco versus 7-11.)  Based on this paradigm, mega bookstores can win over small stores because they can sell at lower prices.

But they lost in their own game. The internet is the ultimate economy of scale, because many of the costs are already fixed on the consumer (like your internet connection) and the other costs are spread over a larger nationwide scale (like the Borders.com website.)  In other words, these stores were beaten at their own strategy by Amazon.

So what can they do to regain prominence?  There are two basic options:

1. They can try to win in the same game. Using borders.com, they can try to compete with Amazon and win the online book wars.  Trouble is, Amazon has already expanded to other products, making their economy of scale stronger than the combined book sales of Borders and Barnes & Noble.  In other words, they can’t win this way.
2. They can make the offline experience better. Instead of competing with internet retailers, Borders can focus on competing with small bookstores, their classic nemesis.  At the same time, they can grow the offline buying segment by exploiting the weaknesses of the internet.

Thats right, the internet has weaknesses.

Borders should compete with the high tech approach by applying a high touch approach:

1. The stores should orient themselves around the cafe. The internet can share ideas but it can’t give you the feeling of meeting someone in person.
2. The stores should add servers to the cafe and charge more. Generally speaking, cafes with waitstaff don’t make for inviting places to study with a laptop.  Instead, they invite people who want to meet.  It seems counterintuitive, but increasing the customer service will increase the purchases.
3. The stores should hire experts to curate their local collections of books. If Borders behaves like any other mega retailer, it purchases inventory based on projected demand and then tries to manage inventory to limit costs.  Instead of following demand, Borders should create demand, by hiring local experts to curate the inventory.  Imagine you have a new interest in Psychology.  Would you rather buy a book on Amazon, or go to a bookstore where a local college professor of psychology offers his recommendations?
4. The stores should store local reviews of  books. Logically, the 500 reviews of a book on Amazon are better than the 10 from locals.  But emotionally, I may actually know the locals, so I care more about their opinions.  And I know they aren’t fake accounts.  The authenticity of someone living nearby commenting on a book is worth a lot more than the unknown masses.

What would this look like?  Imagine browsing the shelves, picking up a book, scanning it with your phone, and learning three other people in the cafe have read the book and commented on it.  How would this change your perspective?

Bottom line: You can’t out-Amazon Amazon.  High touch can win over high tech.  Curate your books, become hyper-local, and lead the tribes of voracious readers.

“Maybe you’re reason why all the doors are closed
So you could open one that leads you to the perfect road”

-Katy Perry

Yeah I just quoted Katy Perry.  Maybe because this song is a mechanically engineered earworm.  But I digress.

Everyone seems to love to say “when one door closes, another one opens.”  But its also true “when one door opens, another one closes.”  Every time you say yes to something, you are saying no to a nearly infinite number of alternatives.

This scares me.  How can you know which door to take?  Most people seem to ignore the doors they can’t see, as if they don’t exist.  Aren’t you curious what’s behind those other doors?  Don’t you want to know the weight of your choices?  Or is it easier to ignore these because you can’t undo your choice?

On January 17 I decided to change three habits:

1. Eat more protein
2. Call more people
3. Sleep whenever

Almost three weeks in, I’d call it a success and a failure.  I’ve changed my diet and this led to strength PRs so that has been great.

For calling people: I haven’t kept this goal everyday, although I’ve talked to at least three unique people I care about all but one day.  I realized I didn’t frame this well enough: phone calls aren’t necessary (I saw a lot of people in person) but strictly business calls shouldn’t count.

For free running sleep: this has been the worst one, as my schedule quickly became booked early morning more.  On the bright side, I’ve experimented with siestas more and they seem to help a lot.  But after reading Sebastian’s post on “How to Live 24 Hours a Day” I’m going to take a slightly different approach, and try to avoid sleeping until tired, rather than worry about when I have to wake up.

Bottom line: I started three habits, and so far I’ve kept one and better understand my goals with the other two.

As I’m about to graduate from the Founder Institute in San Diego, here are some of the takeaways I’ve had:

• Unparalleled productivity. I’ve started a company before, I’ve purchased online courses, and I nearly completed my MBA, but the Founder Institute was as productive of a semester as any I’ve had.
• Access to mentors and investors. This is easily the best access I’ve had to CEOs and investors with relevant experiences and the willingness to provide feedback and meet to help with specific problems.  This alone is worth the price.
• Support from peers in the same situation. Unlike many incubators, the Founder Institute allows you to keep your day job.  While this makes for some inconsistencies in execution, and creates its own challenges for the entrepreneurs, the group of peers struggling with the same issues makes this a lot easier.
• The cost is trivial. I’m used to getting grants and student loans for tuition, so paying the $900 fee initially caused me some hesitation.  Now that I’m nearly done, I can say I would do it again without a doubt.

Bottom line: If you live in San Diego and you are interested in starting a company, apply for the next semester.  There is nothing else quite like it in the county.