This collaborative workspace for entrepreneurs is coming to downtown Macon next year

Whenever Christèle Parham travels to another city, she always has coffee with another entrepreneur that is in her field.

“The amount of gems that are shared in that conversation are always so valuable,” she said. “There’s so much value in putting people together that would not always be together, so that’s why the idea of creating a space for that was so important.”

Christèle and her husband, Ariane Parham, plan to open in January in Macon a collaborative workspace for digital nomads called CrateX Labs.

The digital nomad industry exploded during the coronavirus pandemic, but people who couldn’t work in an office were looking for different spaces to work and find community, Christèle said.

“We thought that it would be a great opportunity to just have a space where people can do both,” she said.

They plan to curate some events before the grand opening including a Digital Nomad Campaign. The campaign will encourage people to be a digital nomad for a day by working from co-working spaces in five different cities, including Atlanta. The last location will be CrateX Labs, at 551 Cherry St. in Macon, which will be its grand opening event, Christèle said.

The reason behind creating this workspace is because Ariane said he wished he and Christèle would’ve had such a space when they started his business, HamTECH Solutions, in December 2012. He remembers visiting similar concepts in other cities, and they had an atmosphere of collaboration, he said.

“There was like this ambiance that was created and that you felt. It wasn’t necessarily something that you verbally communicated, but it’s like this energy that you felt, when you walked in the space, of collaboration and celebration of entrepreneurship,” he said.

He wants to make sure they create a space in Macon that inspires innovation and creates a supportive community for other entrepreneurs that provides quality resources, he said.

“We’re here to collaborate. We’re here to build each other up, and it’s a space where we curate safety,” he said. “We believe by nurturing a space like that. We can build on each other’s curiosity. We can help each other with our gaps, and also when you work alone or are isolated, being in a space like that, you’re able to still be motivated while you do your thing.”

People will be able to apply for membership, and they will announce their special foundational membership fees before the grand opening for people to apply, Ariane said.

The goal is for CrateX Labs to branch out to different cities to create a wide network of entrepreneurs to receive support and resources, Christèle said.

“We wanted to build something where Macon was the first thought for digital nomads to build community as they co-work with others,” she said.

Although they are opening the physical workspace in Macon, they plan to serve people around the world with their digital memberships, which they plan to include courses, materials and streaming related events, Ariane said.

The couple has been planning this workspace for a long time, and the windows to the space have been covered with brown paper while they prepare the space.

“The brown paper’s coming down,” Ariane said, with a laugh.

Christèle and Ariane started Macon Black Tech in August 2019 to give Black entrepreneurs in Macon free resources to grow their businesses.

“We were connecting with all of these different startups, and there were no Black people. It just felt like this was a gap that needed to be addressed,” Christèle said, in a previous Telegraph article.

The couple plans to continue providing resources through Macon Black Tech and even use CrateX Labs to host events and programming.

The name for the workspace came from the idea of “solving for x” and developing your ideas to bring them to fruition, Christèle said. She wants to foster a space where everyone feels like they are not alone.

“There’s a stigma around entrepreneurship and being lonely,” she said. “Being able to be different, immersing myself in different communities and realizing that no matter how isolated I felt that other people in other parts of the country or the world actually could echo my sentiments.”