Reimagining the HIVE Co-working: What if a Co-working Space Can Give You Everything You Need to Grow Your Business?

by Messay Derebe

My Search for an Entrepreneurial Home 

Here are some of the things I didn’t know when I started a business six years ago:

• Where to get a business license
• How to apply for a business loan
• The difference between an LLC, C-Corp, and S-Corp and the implications of choosing one over another
• How to allocate shares between co-founders
• Where to find a developer and what a developer should cost
• How to navigate doing business across DC, Maryland, and Virginia

And then there were the things I didn’t expect: how isolating and emotionally all-consuming building a business can be or how suddenly I would find myself seemingly overnight needing to be the accountant, lawyer, salesperson, PR machine, and sometimes delivery driver. Or how painful it would be when it didn’t work.

I could write nothing else except the number of things I didn’t know when I started my business. 2000 words. 5000 words. 10,000 words. That could be the whole blog. A whole book, even.

I didn’t know all these things. But most importantly, I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

This is the experience of many first-time founders. When my co-founders and I were building our business, we knew plenty about our respective industries, but we knew little about entrepreneurship. I was fortunate to have great co-founders, which made the journey less isolating than it often is. And we found other entrepreneurs where we could, at workshops, pitch competitions…but those connections were fleeting and never consistent.

What we really needed was a place where we could make sense of a fragmented system, under one roof. Not just a place to work, but a place where we could find knowledge, consistent opportunities to build relationships with other small businesses owners, resources, and access to capital as our business evolved.

And now, as the Washington Area Community Investment Fund (WACIF) reimagines The HIVE the Co-working space at the Anacostia Arts Center, this vision is shaping the redesign of the co-working.

Founded in 2009 The HIVE has always been rooted in the needs of local entrepreneurs and small businesses, long before co-working became a mainstream trend. But the next chapter of The HIVE isn’t just creating a nicer workspace with better amenities, though we are certainly doing that, it is about building a fundamentally different model for what co-working can and should be.

What makes this model distinctive is that the HIVE isn’t being built by a traditional coworking company. It is being reimagined by WACIF, an organization that has spent nearly 40 years supporting underinvested entrepreneurs. We are bringing that full entrepreneurial infrastructure into the building.

From a Coworking Space to an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

One of the biggest challenges facing entrepreneurs, artists, and community-based small businesses is fragmentation.

One organization provides training…another provides workspace…another offers networking…another provides funding. And entrepreneurs are left trying to figure out how all these pieces fit together, while simultaneously trying to grow a business, build an audience, generate revenue, and sustain themselves. And for the majority of founders, especially those from low-and-moderate income backgrounds, working full-time jobs to fund the businesses without equitable access to capital.

The HIVE will connect entrepreneurs to a support that can grow with them: from the questions they have when they are just getting started to the resources they need when they are ready to grow.

What Does that Look Like? 

At the new HIVE, entrepreneurs will have access to expertise without having to navigate the entire city to find it. It means workshops offered in-house on a myriad of topics. It means regular free expert open-hours with WACIF’s Small Business Advisors. It means being able to access the resources and network of the Women’s Business Center [LINK] right in the building.

That means finding immediate answers to questions around licensing or obtaining a Certified Business Enterprise certification without leaving the building. It might mean getting ready to pursue a contract, understanding your financials, or simply figuring out what your next step should be along with a trusted and experienced system.

The goal isn’t to make every entrepreneur an expert in everything. It’s to make it easier to find the people who can help when you don’t know what you don’t know.

This work is being strengthened even more with the Small Business Support Initiative, (launched in 2026) where WACIF convenes entrepreneur support organizations, financial institutions, and community partners to better coordinate services, share insights, and strengthen the overall small business ecosystem serving underinvested communities. 

When your business is ready to grow, capital should be more readily accessible.  

Access to capital is another area where entrepreneurs are often forced to navigate a fragmented system. WACIF will provide HIVE members with a direct and easy connection to an organization with a lending arm and nearly four decades of experience financing entrepreneurs who have historically been overlooked by traditional financial institutions. Since 1987, WACIF has built an ecosystem designed to help local entrepreneurs turn vision into impact. Through more than $100 million in grants and loans, 6,900+ hours of business counseling and technical assistance, and support that has helped create and retain 22,400+ jobs, WACIF continues to invest in the people and businesses shaping stronger local communities. 

That doesn’t mean every business will qualify for a loan, or that capital is the answer to every challenge. It means that when a business reaches a point where financing could help it grow, capital is already part of ecosystem in the building rather than a completely separate system entrepreneurs have to discover or navigate on their own. 

And entrepreneurship shouldn’t have to be lonely. 

One of the things we hear repeatedly from business owners is how valuable it is to meet other entrepreneurs, and how difficult it can be to do that consistently. And multiple studies have found feelings of isolation being an occupational hazard for most entrepreneurs. We’re designing The HIVE to make those connections and community creation more frequent and lasting.

Members will have regular opportunities to get to know each other, benefit from each other’s knowledge and even identify potential pathways for becoming each other’s clients, a metric we will closely monitor as a measure of success. This will take the form of monthly HIVE networking events, some focused simply on building community and others bringing in resources, experts, and information that can help businesses grow as well as opportunities for members to learn what the businesses around them actually do. Through informal gatherings like “Pitch Your Business” member evens, members will be able to introduce their businesses to each other.

We want these connections to extend beyond networking for networking’s sake. The goal is to create a community where members know who is around them, understand how they can support one another, and have more opportunities to hire one another, refer one another, collaborate, and actually grow together.

Why co-working inside of an Arts Center? 

The location of The HIVE within the Anacostia Arts Center is a critical part of what makes the model different. Environment has a direct impact on creativity, innovation, well-being, and stronger business outcomes. Entrepreneurs deserve spaces that feel vibrant, welcoming, culturally resonant, and alive. Unlike sterile office environments, The HIVE exists within an active cultural ecosystem where members are surrounded by art exhibitions, performances, wellness programming, festivals, networking events, and community gatherings all in the same building.

We are intentionally designing the Arts Center as a true “third space” where work, creativity, culture, and connection coexist rather than operate separately.

After all, just because you’re building a business, you shouldn’t have to do it alone.

Stay tuned for the next installments on AAC Beyond the Build Series Retail at the AAC and the New Arts and Culture Collaborative Model

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