By Sonia Schnee | Updated Friday, September 2, 2022
Plainfield, NJ entrepreneurs can now get the help they need to make their businesses grow and thrive, thanks to “The Queen City Innovation Hub: Accelerator Program” which will be providing free tools, resources, and other forms of assistance to accepted businesses. The program will run from September 2022 through August 2023. For more information, visit www.fromhere.today/accelerator.
I recently spoke with Sneh Kadakia, the Founder and CEO of ‘from HERE’, “Your Neighborhood Workspace.” ‘from HERE’ has two locations: one called “The Queen City”, located at 108 Watchung Avenue in Plainfield, NJ, and the other called “The Junction”, which will soon open at 2107 Goldfinch Boulevard in Princeton, NJ.
In August, the city of Plainfield partnered with ‘from HERE’ to launch the Accelerator Program. The program itself will take place at “The Queen City” Plainfield location, hence the title, “The Queen City Innovation Hub: Accelerator Program.” On September 27th, there will be a free event to welcome the inaugural group of entrepreneurs who have been selected for the program.
To learn more about the Accelerator Program, as well as all the services and amenities that ‘from HERE’ has to offer, check out my interview with the brilliant Sneh Kadakia, below.
What's your name? Where are you from and what do you do?
My name is Sneh Kadakia. I am the Founder and CEO of ‘from HERE’, Your Neighborhood Workspace, and a proud New Jersey resident. Our two workspaces are located in Plainfield, NJ and Princeton, NJ.
Tell us about your business, ‘from HERE.’ What inspired you to start it? Who do you serve?
We serve anybody and everybody that is looking for a place to work, study, meet, or connect, and as we continue the conversation, I can add “innovate, create, and really do anything… from HERE.” Our guests are all those individuals that are out there, from the hybrid or remote workers that have been displaced or no longer need to go into the office to those working from home and looking for a community “internet cafe”. Our guests range from professionals that are seeking a couple of hours of productivity and change of scenery, all the way to the solo entrepreneur or the business owner that wants to connect with their customers or clients or the team that they are building in a virtual post-pandemic environment.
Then, on our venue side of the house, we host team-building events, private events, and even 50th birthday parties. We've seen the gamut. We also serve those that are looking for a space to conduct their own businesses. So everything from juice making, creating music, doing beauty makeovers, filming music videos… Let me tell you, we've seen it all! So when someone asks me, “What's your ideal customer, the people you're attracting?” it truly is just anyone that needs the space, both physically, mentally, even emotionally, to do their best work and to live out their passions.
Sneh Kadakia (Founder & CEO) and Scott Sussman (Head of Operations & Business Development) of from HERE, Your Neighborhood Workspace.
What inspired the name ‘from HERE’?
We went through a branding journey and thought long and hard about what we wanted people to experience, what we wanted people to do from our workspace, and the obvious one was, “work from here.” But, we've quickly realized that we wanted people to do so much more “from here” and in the process of trying to identify what that was, we decided to leave it open-ended and not put a cap on our mission and goal of serving the larger suburban population of professionals, entrepreneurs, and students. We want to allow people to put whatever that verb or quantifier is in front of “from here” to make it their own. It is a really wonderful way to capture the spirit of what's happening here.
I love that! It keeps it open.
Tell us about your Plainfield location, called “The Queen City” — which, as I learned, “Queen City” is actually the name that Plainfield was given back in the 1880s.
When people walk into your Plainfield location, what do they experience? What do they see? What kinds of amenities do you offer?
We're located in the heart of downtown Plainfield. If you were walking down the street, you'd pass the New Jersey Transit train station, to the post office — that beautiful old building right at the corner — and then you'd see that we're among a sea of small businesses, restaurants or professional services or the tailor across the street or the former cupcake shop next door. I believe someone told me today that there are over 21 different cuisines that are being served within the downtown area. You see this really incredible mix of old historic buildings and newer ones like ours that we've taken the time to renovate, to signal that there is something different and exciting happening here in Plainfield.
As you enter our building, you'll notice that we chose a very bold black brick color (for the exterior). We wanted to start a conversation of “What's over there? What is that new place? What have they built? What have they designed?” There tend to be a lot of people looking into the windows and really curious about what's happening inside.
When you do come inside, you're immediately greeted by our community manager, Derrick. We've taken a very hospitality approach to our neighborhood workspace. There's an opportunity for us to really help shape someone's day and figure out exactly what they need to be productive or collaborative, or maybe just find some calm.
Once you come in, you'll notice immediately the tin ceilings that are over 100 years old that we've also painted black. We've tried to figure out a way to create different work spots and a variety of work experiences that are tailored to your daily needs. So that might be sitting at our high-top table in a really casual format and busting out a couple of emails over an hour, which includes wi-fi, a power outlet, and a good cup of coffee. It might be checking out our daily workstations and hunkering down for the day on the height-adjustable desk, a secondary monitor, a charging station and every dongle known to mankind. That way, you never have to worry about whether you left your charger at home.
One of the personal spaces — that I'm sitting in right now — is what we call our private office. Think of it as a space that you can, “take a really important interview (like this), have a conversation, a virtual meeting, or secretly binge-watch Netflix for an hour and have nobody bother me.” These spaces are available by the day or by the hour. We also have 2 to 6-person meeting rooms.
What we found is that people will come in and they'll start in one work spot and then jump into a private office to take a call, and then connect with a customer or a team member in another space.
As you make yourself all the way to the back of our workspace, you'll find a communal kitchen, and that's really the heart of our community and conversation. Then all the way in the back we have our restrooms and a wellness room. It’s somewhere to go if you're a new mom where you can pump and store your milk in the refrigerator, or if you just need 5-10 minutes to yourself, or to take your medicine — whatever it might be. We have the comforts of both home and the office during the time that you're here to maximize your workday.
The space is beautifully designed. Did you work with a specific company to come in and design it, or was that all you?
It was mostly us. Scott and I had a vision for what we wanted the space to look like and feel like. We also had a very limited budget. A large part of why we were able to design such a beautiful space is the partners in the brands that trusted us early on. We partnered with designers and furniture companies like IKEA and HON and Poppin. We partnered with technology companies like Best Buy and BARCO and Logitech to ensure that all of our conference rooms were equipped and able to connect with any type of interface.
There was a lot of thought and design that went into what we wanted our brand to look like and feel like. We feel very fortunate that we continue to have a group of sponsors and partners that are helping us execute on our vision of creating a very beautiful, comfortable, and safe space that is also extremely functional.
This sounds like the spot to be in. Thank you for bringing this wonderful space to Plainfield!
Thank you so much. I think one of the biggest differentiators for our business is that we are a no-commitment workspace. Yes, we have monthly plans, but many of our customers enjoy are what we call “a la carte.” So, depending on their work day or their workweek, they'll come and they'll pay by the hour or by the day and maximize the time that they have with us. Really, what brings you back is the hospitality, the loyalty, and the customer experience.
People will walk in and they're like, “Oh, I booked 4 hours, but I finished what I needed to do in 2 hours” because they have the place to focus and have all the amenities and services that they need. Things just happen a lot faster and better here. I think that's a really big part of why we want to serve this community, in a way that matters to them and in a way that is truly flexing with what today's work style and lifestyle, post-pandemic, is turning out to be.
It’s great to offer that flexibility. People really do appreciate that.
Tell us about the Accelerator Program. How did this come about? What inspired you? What do you hope that people will learn through doing it?
The first iteration of our mission and vision is our physical workspace, giving people the space they need to do their best work — or their best “whatever-that-might-be.” What we found in Plainfield, through our conversations, is that many of our guests are small business owners/entrepreneurs, and they had a lot of questions for Scott and I — everything from “What's an LLC?” to “Do I need legal support for X, Y and Z?”, “When's the right time to hire somebody?”, and “Do you have a person in your network that provides X, Y and Z product or support?”
We started just giving out free advice, support, and help because we had literally been going through it ourselves. Why not go and help our peers and help someone else meet their personal and professional goals faster and better? Through that, we were like, “Well, maybe we should do an event and go through some of the information that we've collected over time and share it with people.” That event turned into, “Maybe it's more of like a bootcamp over the weekend because there's so much information that we want to share.” It finally turned into a full-blown Innovation Hub/Accelerator Program in partnership with the city of Plainfield. The whole point was that outside of giving people the physical space, we also wanted to give them the resources, the community, the tools, the education, and the knowledge to be able to do anything “from HERE.”
We realized that if we can provide this to this community of entrepreneurs within the city of Plainfield, we can support the city's vision and mission of supporting economic development and entrepreneurial activity within their city, and we can also demystify this idea that you need to go into one of the major cities or be in a specific industry like tech to be considered an entrepreneur or to get those type of resources.
I think there's something special about a homegrown accelerator program that is open to all industries and all types of entrepreneurs, whether you're working in your business full-time or part-time or on evenings and weekends, or even if it's just an idea. This program can be home to everybody and anybody that has the willingness to learn, and has the passion and ambition to figure out whatever it is they're solving for, and they want to be a part of a larger community that's doing the same thing. We believe that if we can do this here, we can replicate it in all the other municipalities that we join and really create this incredible culture and network of suburban entrepreneurs that are making a difference in their community.
That's a beautiful mission. As you mentioned, it's not only tech companies. There are all sorts of ways to go about being an entrepreneur. I’m sure people in different industries will appreciate that.
Yes! We have a true opportunity here to showcase New Jersey entrepreneurs and the folks in Plainfield. When we look at the applications that have come in so far, we have everything from beauty companies, to health care companies, consumer packaged goods, media, art, education, consulting, food and beverage, you name it.
These are basement warriors, people that are doing it from their homes, from their cars, or they might have brick and mortar spaces that they've built, but there's some challenge or some obstacle that they realize that they can get help or support from, from a community of their peers. There's something really powerful about learning from each other, as well as our ability to provide them with support and education.
Too bad I don't live in Plainfield, or else I would be applying to be part of your accelerator program!
You know what? The accelerator program is open to anyone that's 21 years of age and is either a resident of Plainfield, already has a registered business in Plainfield, OR is willing to actually have a registered business in Plainfield. So part of the benefits of being in the program is if you don't already have a residential address or business addresses, we'll GIVE you a virtual mailbox address here and that enables to qualify you for the program and establish your digital presence here, with the hope that you're going to come in and take advantage of the community and all of the educational aspects of the program as well.
That's fantastic to know about the digital address! That opens it up to so many more people. Good to know!
On September 27th, you're actually hosting an event where you're going to introduce the inaugural class of this program. What can you tell us about that event?
Every opportunity we get to showcase all of the incredible things that are happening in Plainfield, we are going to double down on it. I think just as important as it is to establish an initiative like this, it's important to tell the stories of the people that have put their names out there and risk what might be worth risking to — in some way, shape, or form — benefit themselves and their communities. To put a face to a name and to know where they're starting their journeys from, the impact that this program had directly and indirectly on that journey, and what the outcome of them being in the program is.
More importantly, it ends up inspiring others who can look at somebody and say, “Hey, that could be me. I have a photography business that I'm building on the side. Maybe I should apply to the program and get my business off the ground.” It also signals to friends and family that, wow, this person has actually taken the time to invest in themselves and their dreams. The September 27th event is for that — to showcase the stories, passion, ambition, and creativity that is bubbling in the city, to make sure that not only the folks in the city know about it, but the state of New Jersey and anyone that might be listening or watching you can see it, too.
So in that event, it'll be presenting the inaugural class, and we'll have a panel of a few of the folks that are excited and willing to share their stories, as a way to just start the discussion and the conversation around why they applied to the program, where they need some help and support, and to set the tone for the rest of the year. We’ll have the city of Plainfield Mayor Adrian O. Mapp there as well. Of course, an ode and a thank you to all of our sponsors — educational, marketing, and financial — who were able to provide us with the resources to actually get this program up and running. It takes a village, literally, and much of that village has either come from Plainfield, Union County, or the state of New Jersey.
I'm very excited to see who ends up being in your program.
It’s a beautiful idea, to help people in New Jersey. Thank you for what you're doing, and for everything that you do for all of these businesses and everybody who comes to “The Queen City.”
Thank you. You know, Plainfield has this incredibly rich and diverse history. It's gone through some very interesting phases in its journey of becoming a city. There's something to be said about the beauty of where it was in the 1800s, and there's something to be said about what's happening now in the present day. I think that's an ode to looking back, but also a way to look forward and to continue to invest in the city that continues to surprise us every day with its innovation and the way that it's thinking about itself.
There is something incredibly special about the city and something incredibly special about a government entity that is looking to make an investment like this and support its residents. It's been very unique, and it's something that we hope to revisit over and over again with the other workspaces that we have. We give a lot of credit to Plainfield for taking an idea and helping us turn it into a reality.
Shoutout to Plainfield!
Is there anything that you'd like to add that I haven't asked you about yet?
We're opening up our second workspace in Princeton, NJ. That'll be a 5,000-square-foot workspace with a coffee shop. We're testing this idea out about having a full-service coffee shop to set the tone for the day and give people a different, exciting experience outside of what we already cover. So we're very excited about that second location, with the hope that we're able to make the same impact on that community.
For those who are listening, who are thinking about the accelerator program or want to in some way, shape, or form help and support the entrepreneurs of this community, we are always looking for opportunities to have conversations and to take the help and support. So, if you are listening and you know you're willing and able to help, please don't hesitate to reach out to us.
Excellent. I'm sure people will be doing that and will spread the word about it.
Finally, how can people connect with you online, with your business, and with the Accelerator Program?
Our website is www.fromhere.today. There, you can find more information about our services, our locations, the Accelerator Program, and any upcoming events that we have. So definitely check us out online. Also, we are on social media, on Instagram and Facebook. Our handles are @fromhere.today, and we're also on LinkedIn as well.
We invite you to Plainfield, and we invite you to come and take a tour and see if there's an opportunity for you to also do anything ‘from HERE.’
We'll be opening our Princeton workspace hopefully by the end of September, and so the same applies there. We're really excited to open and welcome that community, professional students, and entrepreneurs as well.
