Punspace is changing the startup scene in Asia
A Chat with the Founders
I recently sat down with the founders of Punspace, (the renowned coworking company in Chiang Mai, Thailand) to learn more about them. I personally love Punspace and now work with them doing community outreach and business development. While working here, I’ve realized there are so many things people don’t know about the founders and feel like it needs to be shared here.
Mainly, they started out with a very similar story to most of us: they grew tired of their corporate jobs and became freelancers and remote workers. They started as one of us and now they are creating amazing spaces for people like us. They want us all to be part of the story as they grow and expand Punspace.
In 2005, Euam and Peake met in Bangkok while both were working at Reuters. They were programmers (mostly using Java and C++ back then, but now they use Python, JavaScript and HTML). Peake grew up in Chiang Mai and went to college in the United States; Euam grew up in Bangkok and went to college by the beach in Eastern Thailand. They married in 2011, eventually moved back to Chiang Mai and then opened Punspace Nimman in 2013 and Punspace Tha Phae Gate in 2015. They love each other and and they love Chiang Mai, and this is the story about how Punspace was born.
B: How did Punspace come about?
Euam: We wanted something new besides corporate, so we left Reuters for consulting work. We eventually grew tired of doing client work and looked into startups. While living in Bangkok, we got the chance to visit Hubba (the first coworking space in Thailand). We loved it and the idea of coworking. When we moved back to Chiang Mai, we were looking for a place like this to work from and we searched and searched, but couldn’t find one. So, we started one.
B: Nice. What did it look like when you started Punspace Nimman?
Peake: We opened it for free for the first month. We had about 30 people come and work from it. We were really excited; we loved working in an environment of other like-minded people. Then, the first day we charged… two people came. It was a slow process getting members. People trickled in gradually. It’s good that a lot of our members write blogs; word of mouth marketing really helped people find out about us.
B: How did Punspace grow to what it is today (two lively and full locations)?
Euam: The booming of the digital nomad scene is a major factor. When the first high season came, we had to start turning down customers. The second year it grew so much that we opened a second location. We just try to give the best service that we can. Our heart is in this business. We started as programmers and remote workers. Punspace started as a place for us to work and share an office with other people. Now, we are blown away by the growing community and we grateful to be part of it.
B: We are all curious: How did you fund it?
Euam: We started it ourselves with money we’d saved up and money from our wedding. In Thailand, it’s traditional to give money to the couple so they can start their new life with it. We used it to start Punspace Nimman. Everything has been bootstrapped. We’ve gotten help from family when we opened our second location (Punspace Tha Phae Gate).
B: Where do you hope to take the business from here?
Peake: We want to be known as the startup hub for southeast Asia. We want Chiang Mai to be the place where all the startups come to bootstrap. Chiang Mai is a good place for startups because of the amazing quality of life combined with such a low cost of living. To encourage this, we plan to organize hackathons, startup weekends, and a landing package for people to come. (A landing package includes airport pickup, apartment rental, Punspace membership and a SIM card.) We want to grow to a third location and eventually have coliving locations.
We especially want to encourage the local Thai startup scene. We’ve been open for 4 years and we don’t have any Thai startups working from Punspace. We want to help the Thai startup ecosystem by providing them with a place to work and some mentorship. So, we put together a program for Thai startups (20 people for 3 month cycles). We will invite them to come work from Punspace for free. We want to help them grow here and build up the Thai startup community in Chiang Mai.
B: How do you want members to be part of this story?
Euam: We want to have weekly workshops and skillshares. We would love to collaborate with members to create this startup scene here in Chiang Mai. If anyone wants to get involved in any of these next steps, we’d love for them to reach out. We are here because of the community and we can’t take it to the next level without each one of their support.
