STARKVILLE — When Jeremy Murdock and Jenn Gregory were working from home earlier this year, they started looking for Starkville-based office space for their company, Retail Strategies, to use.
After hearing about the Mississippi State University Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach’s new Hub Cowork business space, they found a new home for the retail recruitment business.
“There’s a huge need for small square footage office space in Starkville,” Murdock said. “… I felt like we needed that because we have two to three staff members here in Starkville that are working from home remotely, but really wanted to offer space to build and grow our presence here in Starkville.”
The MSU E-center is looking for local businesses to locate offices in its new Hub Cowork space. This project aims to bring startups and businesses into a communal space, Director Eric Hill said.
“This project is part of our overall strategy to build out infrastructure and a sense of community for local entrepreneurs,” Hill said. “While there is office space available, coworking gives extreme flexibility that startups need. It also allows one-two person teams to feel part of a bigger movement.”
Tenants share resources such as Internet connection, a conference room, communal desk space, printers and even miniature electric vehicles for use downtown.
Hill told The Dispatch the E-center worked with the MSU Research and Technology Corporation in 2022 to house seven individual offices and a shared workspace for businesses in the Innovation Hub building — formerly Cadence bank — on the corner of Main Street and Jackson Street downtown.
A $1.5 million grant from the Small Business Administration funded the renovation of the space.
Director of Outreach Jeffrey Rupp said the project will significantly benefit new companies looking for affordable workspace.
“Cowork in this sense really has more to do with sharing resources and making things less expensive (for new companies) just getting started, like sharing a conference room, that sort of thing,” Rupp said.
Since memberships became available in May, Retail Strategies is the only company to locate inside the building. Murdock said the business has been active in the space for about two weeks.
Membership prices vary. Companies looking to use the space intermittently can pay between $9 and $79 for shared space, while companies looking for dedicated space will pay between $149 to $429, depending on the size of the office and the length of membership, Rupp said.
Hill said money earned from the project will be put back into maintaining the space and other E-center operations.
“The goal is to get the coworking space self-sustaining long term and the grant helps during the startup period,” he said.
Hill and Rupp said the new spaces will also benefit student startups graduating from MSU who are looking for cheap offices to use next to downtown.
“It serves as a place when startups “graduate” from our campus programs to physically move downtown,” Hill said. “It provides a way for community entrepreneurs to plug in with campus efforts. We hope to pull some of the area freelance or moonlight developers and other service providers valuable to the startup community into a physical place.”
Rupp added that E-center student startups could also choose to locate their business inside the Cowork space even before graduation.
For those interested, companies can sign up for memberships by contacting the E-center at 662-325-3521 or by emailing [email protected].
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 33 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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