Welcome to the Hard Problems coworking space
Situated in East London, our coworking space is open to anybody working on the world’s most pressing challenges.
By Kane Lincoln
When Daniel Burka and Elyce Cole started Hard Problems, they wanted a physical office. But, sitting on their own in the middle of one of the most international cities in the world seemed underwhelming. What if the office could double as a node for this new community of designers and technologists who are working on the world’s urgent challenges? So, they found a great space in the middle of the tech-friendly Shoreditch neighborhood, they invited health tech and climate-related technologists to join them.
Today, we’re inviting you to join us too.
Do your best work here
Tucked inside the building at 1 Rivington Place, our intimate coworking space has already welcomed a range of ambitious teams solving big, complex challenges. We also use the space to facilitate events and workshops for the wider Hard Problems community. For example, we celebrated International Women’s Day in March with a dinner that brought together 20 exceptional women working to make the world more equitable. (You can learn more about the events we’ve recently organized at the bottom of this page.)
The space itself is filled with natural light and kitted out with private meeting pods, desks, and a big communal table. Top-notch coffee is a given, and you’ll find on our bookshelf a collection of works that have helped inform our collective worldview. If you’re working on an urgent issue related to climate change, public health, health care, education, or poverty, or are addressing any of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals through your work, get in touch.
The intersection of technology, community, and impact
The neighborhood we occupy is steeped in history, culture, and invention. 1 Rivington Place is also home to Autograph Gallery, a photography gallery and nonprofit that has celebrated “representation, human rights, and social justice” since its inception in 1988. Opposite us stands the award-winning Black & White Building, London’s tallest mass-timber building and a paragon of sustainable development. Given the success of Tech City, Shoreditch and its surrounds remain a focal point for technological innovation.
For almost a decade, Google Campus on nearby Bonhill Street operated as a key hub for London’s fledgling startup ecosystem, attracting technologists from across Europe. It successfully combined a belief in technology with the collaborative spirit of community and accelerated the development of Britain’s now-burgeoning tech industry. Today, the coworking space at Hard Problems incorporates and prioritizes a third quality: impact. Over the past 18 months, we’ve built an environment that reflects our values, centered on knowledge-sharing and relationship-building, because coworking with us should feel uplifting and purposeful.
Get involved
If you’d like to work from our space, you have two options: drop in for a few days, or rent a desk (starting at £200 a month). For those for whom £200 a month is too much of a stretch, get in touch and we might be able to work something out. Typically, desks are reserved for relatively short-term (3–12 month) use, and we operate on a first-come, first-served basis. To find out more about how to reserve a desk, visit this page. Whether you’re a freelancer or part of a small team, visiting the city for the first time or live in London, we want to hear from you.
It’s also worth noting that our coworking space isn’t for everyone. It’s small, so we prioritize tight-knit teams with a modest physical footprint. If you need lots of meeting rooms or require a conventional office setup, then our space may not work for you. To get a better sense of who you might find here, meet some of the teams already working from our space:
- Joey connects parents to child-specific health and wellness expertise.
- Greene helps regulated care providers maintain a clear, compliant, inspection-ready evidence trail.
- Elyfia delivers personalized, one-to-one health coaching to fibromyalgia patients.
Events at the office
Our events are usually themed and open to all members of our community, not only those working from the Hard Problems coworking space. Over the last few months, we’ve organized:
- Zero-to-Coder Workshop — In a single afternoon, an engineer taught a group of health tech, public health, and climate entrepreneurs and designers to create software using the latest AI tools.
- International Women’s Day Dinner — Twenty women working on hard problems spent an evening discussing their recent wins, challenges, and aspirations for the future.
- Why are public health experts looking for technologists? — We hosted a panel discussion with global epidemiologists on the role of technology in public health.
- Design leaders dinner — Twenty design leaders talked about how effective design can be used to impact the world’s most intractable problems.
- Fireside chat on design agencies for good — Design agency ASquared joined us to discuss how design agencies can make space to work on hard problems.
If you want to be notified when we host events in the future, subscribe to our free newsletter.
Find us
1 Rivington Place, London EC2A 3BA, UK