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Step inside real founder conversations: raw, unrehearsed, and honest. No playbook. No polish. Just ambitious entrepreneurs uncovering the answers that were there all along. Because every business hides something valuable trapped under the weight of success and chaos of growth.
The Hidden Value podcast is hosted by David Sherry. David works with early-stage founders to grow professionally and personally. He founded, sold, and advises Death to Stock – a media company and newsletter that serves brands like Unfold, Figma, and Spotify.
David (00:00)
All right. Welcome to hidden value. This is David. I'm here with Charlie, who has a great community online business as well as a coworking space business, a physical coworking space business. And we're here to discuss that a little bit. Charlie and I do have some history together. We've worked together in the past, so I'm excited to, to dig in here. Uh, yeah, Charlie, you doing?
Charlie Ward (00:15)
hehe
Great. It's great to be here, David. Appreciate the invite and I'm excited to get into things, you know.
David (00:27)
great. You know, I thought a good place to start is just the two minute background bio. How did you get into what you're doing today? And just what are the nuts and bolts of your current your current business?
Charlie Ward (00:39)
first off my career was actually in creative agencies then about halfway through my career, but it's six, years ago, I got interested in, tech and products started and a meetup for indie hackers, SAS founders in London, called IndieBeers still going six years later, that free meetup evolves into an online community called Ramen Club for, SAS founders, like Slack events, discounts, workshops, you name it.
And the most recent iteration is called ramen space. We launched a physical coworking hub in London for, for builders, SAS founders, creators. so it's super focused on that niche. And that was six months ago. had 95 % capacity. So it's almost sold out. So that's gone super well. So my background is a kind of a weird mix of like community products, a little bit of brands, little bit of growth, that kind of thing. So I'm a little bit of a generalist, but, been figuring things out.
As I've gone and learned a lot and had a lot of fun and looking to take it to the next level kind of thing.
David (01:36)
I love that you're taking a unique set of different skills and combining them together to make it kind of manifested in these different products. let's kind of hone in on, you know, what does...
Charlie Ward (01:45)
Hmm
David (01:48)
making the shift to the physical co-working space business to now having it almost be full, what questions does that start to bring up for you in your business?
Charlie Ward (01:54)
Hmm.
I think the first one is just like, okay, where is this all going? Like what are we actually trying to achieve here in the next like three to five years and working back to where we are now. Also on a lot more tactical level, how might I kind of, what's the best way to scale like a physical business versus an online business in terms of, hiring people, processes, removing stuff you don't really need that kind of thing.
Then also just like what areas in particular to focus on and how to sequence things. Cause I think honestly, just the order you do certain things is like some, so important sometimes and like so much more effective to do what do this thing first and then do that thing cause it will unlock that thing and make it easier. So yeah, these are the kind of big things I'm asking myself at the moment. And within the context of like, obviously a shifting landscape with technology and community and culture and work.
And being, being a founder is very, very, obviously very interesting time.
David (02:51)
Yeah.
you're in a unique spot because you have two different businesses. My sense is each with the same mission, the same kind of purpose, And so what is kind of coming to mind to me now about what you're bringing up is.
which one of those two to scale up, which one is next and what are the trade-offs focusing on physical or focusing on digital? I'm curious, do you see these two businesses as the same symbiotic business or do you see them almost as their own entities with their own needs? How do you look at these two?
Charlie Ward (03:28)
what I say is like they, overlap heavily. There is a symbiotic relationship between them. There are also parts of them, which are like separate, with, try and do things where we've always been interested in hybrid stuff. I've always done in-person stuff and I've always done online stuff. And if I can combine them in some way, I find that that stuff can be really interesting.
David (03:49)
Yeah. So the growth opportunity seeking to scale, I can imagine there being a question. Do I add more spaces physically? Do I scale up more members digitally? There's trade-offs to the business model potentially with the two of those. And I'm curious how this feels to say.
Charlie Ward (03:55)
Hmm.
Mm.
David (04:10)
The route to scaling is a hybrid approach that even though my business has these two business lines, I actually think that the most leverage is in the hybrid approach. What do you, what do you think about that?
Charlie Ward (04:21)
it's something that we do really well and I'm personally just very interested in. so, you know, it's something I don't technically have to do. I could just say, okay, I'm just going to open spaces. and not do the online thing, or I could just say, I'm just going to make a purely online community. But
Ultimately, we want to create the community, the content and the tools to help product builders, task founders to be super successful And, a bit more focused on the bootstrap side of things because they have less stuff like this for them. in 2025, you have to be thinking both online and offline because both matter.
and both have their own benefits and drawbacks. And there's some people where they live in a rural area. So in-person is not an option. So you want to offer something for those people. But there's something about in-person where people just build really strong bonds, really easily. And it's a really great experience for people. So I think it's important to offer that to people as well. And I think it just makes you stand out because a lot of people can't be bothered to do it.
David (05:11)
Mm-hmm.
Charlie Ward (05:15)
or they, they, the people who do know how to do co-workers business, they don't know how to do an online community. So I think we're in a quite unique position in doing that. So I think that's a way that we can really stand out.
David (05:28)
I love it. You've, you've noticed what your unique interest combination is, what your business does uniquely. You've combined it, bringing this to this question of, what is the right step in the next order? What I'm wondering now is the step that needs to be taken, might need to include both strategies. Like one way of looking at it is saying what
What is the combination approach step forward that bolsters both the digital side and the physical side of your business? what strategy kind of comes to mind with that. If we, if we were to combine them, So let's talk about scaling that way.
Charlie Ward (06:05)
Yep.
if we just look back historically, the first thing we ever did was in person, then COVID happened. We went fully remote. That ended, we came back hybrid and it was just here and there. Occasionally we'd meet up to co-work. But now we have a full on space and we have the online community I've had, I basically completely focused for six months on the in-person co-working just because
it's so sticky. People seem to really like it. I also have this like giant commercial rent bill hanging over my head every month. So I just have to fill this as soon as possible, like no matter what. it's just about the ratios and thinking about where those are at that time. So it went from like, 90 % online community to 90 % the coworking space. And as that becomes full and also I learn how to delegate. So context for those.
who don't know this, who are watching is I have a broken leg right now. So it sped up this delegation process I was planning where one of my members, Solomon, who's been amazing is now running the day to day at the space. So when as the space gets full up, I think I'm going to be trying to delegate more and more to him in terms of taking over more and more of the operations. And then for us to grow.
the next 10 X let's say to go from at that point, in U S dollars, call it 200 K a year or something. How do we get to like 1 million ARR in the next year or two and the main options are do we just focus on opening more spaces? Do we try and grow the revenue from the existing space to try and grow the online one?
I think basically we need to solidify what we have at this space, which is going great. and focus on like 10Xing the online community basically, because We haven't truly led into content and educational content.
David (07:35)
Yeah.
Charlie Ward (07:50)
And when I look in the market of like, what's doing super well, like you see like stuff that starts a story has been doing all, all sorts of great info products you see out there, combined with community. think when you combine something, a really great offering like that with our community, you could have something really compelling. And so that's kind of where I'm starting to think. This is quite a recent thought, but this is where I'm starting to think now,
David (08:12)
it's so interesting the way in which having this injury, kind of forces you to think a different way. Think about delegating and now the space, You've maximized capacity and you have someone else who's running it. It's kind of maximized delegation. And so where do you look next that has that scale opportunity? It sounds like content education.
And so in this combo mix, Does that digital direction for you have
Charlie Ward (08:34)
Hmm.
David (08:39)
a large scaling potential, what does that look like? How much scale can you find? And I actually like what you said earlier too, around there's all these SaaS founders who can't come into these physical spaces yet. maybe it's about reaching all of them. Where are all these people? How do you support them? Like that's maybe that's the TAM in a way, right?
Charlie Ward (08:59)
keeping in mind that we do want to both have a bunch of great spaces, physical spaces for builders and a strong online community. it's back to that question on sequencing, right? And I'm now thinking, okay, we now got this great London space. We've got a great online community, which could be a lot bigger and there's a more we can do with it.
the next, option is opening a space specifically, probably in Lisbon, because we have a lot of people that already all kind of focusing on the online community or kind of doing half and half. But I've just seen what it takes to do a physical space in a place where I live. Right. And like getting that off the ground. And I've also had like a really great landlords in the UK, Tom who's been really helpful, get it off the ground. And I'm just thinking the difficulty of.
doing that in Lisbon and like having to travel there all the time, might not have a great landlord trying to keep the London space going. Also doing the online one. It's one of those things where like that can't afford to go wrong in that situation. And it's like, if that fails, that could be bad. Right. Whereas if like the online community, turns out that's the wrong move. It's kind of easier to reverse. Like you're not on the hook for some like commercial rent. Right.
David (10:00)
That's it.
Charlie Ward (10:09)
And also the upside is much more uncapped than the Lisbon space. And so we've got this, these two great assets, right? Let's like go all in on just like 10Xing, 20Xing, 100Xing, the online community. And it will just mean like, if we want to run an experiment, a space in somewhere like Lisbon or like Berlin or Barcelona, it's like, we can afford it to go badly. We'll try and make it succeed obviously, but like if it goes tits up, as we say in England, ⁓ then.
David (10:34)
That's it. That's it.
Charlie Ward (10:36)
It's not the end of the world. Right. And so that's kind of where I'm coming around to. I've seen a bunch of the, cohort courses or like, AI building courses or marketing courses. Some of them just do so well, honestly, they make so much money and people find them so valuable. like, I can't believe how easy it is to build this stuff now. Right. And so.
It feels like a good time to lean into the stuff. still think people think it's late. it's still, it's only just become possible for regular people to like build integration, to build simple tools in the last couple of years. So I think it's still a really good time And we're well positioned for that, you know.
David (11:12)
And I think it's a great clear framing. Where is there more upside? Where is there more risk? And I think the double-edged sword of the digital space is it's very unknown.
The digital community, even though you have it running, I think could expand so much. hard to know what the direction is. so let's imagine that you say, I got this space to a good level. Now I'm going to focus on the digital, which then de-risks me launching spaces in the future because there's more community members, because there's more capital. So it's less of a risk to the business.
is the key piece here that is being held back in the digital direction?
Charlie Ward (11:52)
I think we're going to have enough revenue and my time available soon. So like that will not be a blocker. so in terms of who are target audiences, it's usually like quite early stage builders who
can already build stuff but like they're not, they're, they're less well-versed in how to find really good ideas is one, how to talk to users and get a good feedback loop going and how to do marketing. But our sweet spot is usually people who can kind of already build stuff, but they don't know about the other stuff around it.
So I don't know if we're going to teach people like to code per se, but like within these worlds of research, finding ideas, marketing, AI, there's obviously a lot of things. So we need to think about what is like the smallest thing we can build that's going to have the most impacts for these people
David (12:37)
I love the phrase, what's the sweet spot. also
What's, what's minimum success need to look like, you know, and, could making just a little bit more actually be sort of a failure here? I'm not sure. I'm curious what you think about that.
Charlie Ward (12:41)
Hmm.
Yeah, I actually think it could be a much bigger business than, we see courses and cohort courses and, you piece content, community plays where people spend 500 bucks, a thousand bucks a year. Sometimes at the most extreme end, you get stuff like Hampton where people spend like, I think it's at least 5k a year or something like that.
that's not our positioning, we're kind of more working with people who are capable, but like just getting off the ground and, learning certain skills.
David (13:17)
And I'm sort of wondering about minimum revenue, uh, because it needs to be more attractive. And also maybe it's like where opportunity is. Let's, explore the sweet spot then. what, does the sweet spot mean to you?
Charlie Ward (13:23)
Hmm.
Mm.
Yeah. from the perspective of,
the user, like if they can like find a good idea, build it, and then get the first few customers within a, like a short time period.
So we're going to teach you how to find the idea, build a simple V1 and grow out of SEO, for example. Right. So there's this thing, my podcast cohost Sabah says he runs V which is make something people search for. He's like, if people are not searching for something, then chances are it's not, they're not going to ever like buy it or like click on your thing, you know? So
A sweet spot could be just like, really focused on one marketing channel, one type of products, but there's bit, it's a big enough time that like, you know, you can get thousands of people, tens of thousands of people interested and like maybe paying for it, I think this is something you can make between 250 to a million ARR. think if you do this really well.
David (14:20)
yeah, we're talking about the sweet spot for the business, the sweet spot for the customers. And now I'm kind of wondering about the sweet spot for you. Meaning, you know, what, what is the, the course of the content that only Charlie is able to create?
Charlie Ward (14:26)
Mm.
Yeah. when it comes to the marketing side of things, Like I know SEO pretty well. I've grown a site to like 8,000 organics a month. my friends have grown it to like hundreds of thousands a month, So like, kind of understand it well enough to feel comfortable talking in those ways.
the validation stuff I'm, I'm actually that in-house validation mentor at my own community at Ramam Club. like I talked to people about this a lot. And for example, I think a lot of people make huge mistakes when they're looking for ideas in that. I don't think people should start with user research or interviews.
or surveys when they're looking for ideas. I think it's a huge mistake. I think you should do market research to find what industries to look at or, areas where people there's proven demand and then user research to teach you like, okay, how am I going to like compete? what problems do people have with the incumbents or what is a platform where, okay, this plugin does really well on web flow, but frame is just launched.
their own marketplace, maybe I should build the same plugin on frame it. Do you know what mean?
David (15:35)
I love the strong perspective because I think that jumps out to people when you say, Hey, don't do it this way. This is actually what I've seen works. so now I'm imagining, what a next step might be. Is it a landing page where it's market research and validation course?
test sign up, you know, to see gauge interest from Charlie or, or you run your own playbook that you're about to teach for this idea, sort of dogfooding it. Like, if you feel clear on what a next step could be, what that would be.
Charlie Ward (16:03)
Yeah. if you, you would say, okay, what is one thing that like you feel most comfortable creating a course for, or educational content, would be on finding ideas, like finding startup ideas and validation is something I could do myself without much help at this stage.
that could very easily be like stage one of like the info product for our community. And it might be that we sequenced after that, it's a bit more, a bit more on building, then a bit more on growth. And maybe we just focus on like,
Funnels conversion SEO or something like that. So yeah, that feels like it could be kind of stage one.
David (16:35)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah. I think given your skillset here, I think maybe just one more next step. in the order of things you can do to scale it's on the digital side of the business.
Charlie Ward (16:40)
Hahaha
David (16:48)
what's the first step of validation that you might seek in this direction?
Charlie Ward (16:52)
So like, I need to think about this more, but it's valid enough. think you could actually just make it and launch it to be honest.
David (16:58)
Love that. Amazing. Yeah. Love
Charlie Ward (17:02)
This is just like this first stage, right? when you add on the build stuff and the growth stuff, it gets more and more and more valuable, right? And the time increases because some people already have like what they think is a good idea and they want to get to the other stuff. So your time increases and the overall value increases with each kind of bit you add on.
David (17:22)
love it. Just build it so I have two kind of wrap up questions for you. ⁓ the first is like, how does that feel to you as is it an interesting next step?
Charlie Ward (17:26)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, it does. it definitely sounds exciting to me. It's something that like I've been wanting to do for a while. I think, between myself and the insights.
from the community that I've learned from our members. I think we have something which would be quite unique. so I think that could be a super interesting first step.
David (17:49)
Just any reflections, that you have from today's conversation, just as a place to wrap anything that stood out to you or.
Charlie Ward (17:50)
Yeah,
I think the sequence thing is very important and I think to unlock being able to like open up spaces, I think having a really great content play and education is really great for our members and future members, it could be a great way to drive increased revenue and it'll give us more options with doing things like opening more spaces and stuff. So that's definitely like a big thing to take out of it.
David (18:20)
Mm-hmm.
Charlie Ward (18:21)
And then, what kind of education we're going to focus on. which is like validation research and finding ideas. So yeah, I think those are two great takeaways.
David (18:30)
That's
a great question to leave with because then you can go find support tools, direction that match. Then you've got a strategy for the course matched with the broader strategy for your business and aligning those two, I think will create a lot of growth.
Charlie Ward (18:34)
Hmm.
Yeah, I think so for sure.
David (18:50)
Awesome. Well, thank you so much and we'll, we'll be in touch. I'll send you some, some resources after this, to, continue to, help in any way with this direction.
Charlie Ward (18:59)
Awesome. Look, thanks a lot David, as always. I'll talk to you soon, all right man?
David (19:03)
Sounds good, thank you.
Charlie Ward (19:04)
Cheers mate, bye.