The entrepreneur on co-working's social impact
When Jamie Hodari founded his co-working company, Industrious, it was from a place of genuine personal need. "I was running an experimental university in East Africa that was half online and half offline," he explains. "Our offices were in a shared space and one day, I had an extremely important meeting with the president of our largest funder." But arriving in the assigned room before the high-stakes meeting, Hodari was embarrassed by the space—some of the lightbulbs were out, and the table was sticky. "It just didn't feel professional enough," he recalls. He wanted to take advantage of the benefits of a shared workspace, but in a setting where he could be proud to bring clients.
So, in 2013, he and his cofounder Justin Stewart (who was running the U.S. arm of a Chinese real estate company at the time), created Industrious, which Hodari calls "a highly amenitized, thoughtfully designed workplace experience." Industrious has more than 90 locations in the U.S., including a new Hudson Yards outpost in partnership with Equinox. He talked to Furthermore about his path to the company, the co-working industry, and his fitness routine.