What we are, and what we aren't.
We've had a few of these conversations lately. A company is growing, someone on the team is in Waterloo, or wants to be, and the question comes in: we want a small team here, what do we do? This is the answer we keep giving over email, written down properly.
Builders Club is here to connect you to what's actually happening in Waterloo: other founders, remote employees building for companies based elsewhere, investors, the people who know the region. Corporate Membership gets one of your people a real seat in that room, alongside the members you'll read about in the rest of this site. And if we're not the right fit for what your team needs, we'll say so, point you somewhere else, and make the introduction ourselves.
What we're not is an office. We don't host whole teams of five or more working out of our space full-time. That's not the model, and it's not what we're set up to do well.
So the split is simple. If your team needs desks five days a week, you want one of the four spaces below. If your team needs somewhere to land occasionally, a day a week, a day a month, a day a quarter, that's where we come in.
Where to seat your team.
Four places we know well. Pros and trade-offs on each, so you're not finding out the hard way.
One pattern across most of these: downtown parking adds up fast for a team, and the city doesn't offer any volume discount, so budget for it per person, per day. Catalyst 137 is the exception with easy, cheaper on-site parking, though it's also the one on this list without an easy walk to the ION LRT.
Good for: A footprint without a commercial lease. Dedicated desks, private offices, and meeting rooms, on month-to-month or flexible terms. They'll also put together custom team pricing if you ask, the published per-seat rate isn't the only option, it just takes a call.
Watch for: Downtown parking costs add up fast for a team, no volume discount from the city, though it's a short walk from the ION LRT if people can take transit instead.
Good for: Scale. A large co-working and innovation hub built to hold teams from two people to over a hundred, with easy, low-cost on-site parking, the one space on this list where that's true.
Watch for: Skews toward scale-ups and enterprise innovation teams, pricing isn't published so you'll need to call and ask, and it's not an easy walk from the ION LRT the way the others are.
Good for: Address and proximity, right in Uptown and walkable to Builders Club, plus a real perk stack bundled in: gym, wellness, podcast studio, meeting rooms. Worth it if your team will actually use them.
Watch for: It's a premium space, the most expensive per seat on this list. Two-month minimum, the floor runs close to full so lead time matters, and downtown parking costs add up here too, though the LRT is close.
Good for: Scale and visibility. The biggest hub in the region, flexible from a mailing address up to a full suite, and a building full of a wide slice of the ecosystem.
Watch for: A big tent, not a tight room, with more process than the others, ask upfront about workspace rules before you commit. Pricing isn't published either, and parking costs add up here too, though it sits right at the region's central LRT stop.
A quick note on parking: it's our hope the City of Kitchener eventually rethinks its approach to downtown parking. Right now it puts every space with great LRT access at a cost disadvantage, Catalyst 137 being the exception. Whatever you decide, let us know what tipped it. It helps us give the next team asking this question a better answer.
If you don't need a lease.
Most teams asking this question don't actually need five desks, five days a week. They need somewhere their people land when they're in town, and a way to stay connected to what's happening in Waterloo the rest of the time.
That's Corporate Membership. One membership, one person in the room, full access to what our members get, and a real window into what the wider network is building. No Slack handoff, no placement fee. Just a seat.
For an actual team gathering, a sync day, a quarterly offsite, we host that too. Venue at 165 King St W, member curation if you want it, production and logistics handled. Same setup our partners use for hackathons and demo days, applied to your own team instead.
Getting started.
1. Book an intro call. Tell us what the team actually needs, five days a week or four times a year, and we'll point you the right direction. Sometimes that's one of the four spaces above, not us. That's a fine outcome.
2. Need full-time seats? Go straight to the space that fits from the list above. We're not precious about it, and we know people at all four.
3. Want the team connected between visits? Corporate Membership puts one person in the room full-time, and makes it easy for us to help you connect into the Waterloo community, with a fantastic event venue for when it's time to gather the team.
Further reading.
Where to work, when to visit, who to know. Written for individual builders and founders, not teams, but useful background on the city.
Seven questions every new founder asks, answered at the Builders Club dinner table.
The full brief on Corporate Membership and Partner Sponsorship, including current partners.