How informal spaces are bringing the hardware community together

Hello everybody! Kyle Valiton here, fellow informal member, design engineer, and now cofounder with Nate Padgett on this next initiative — which we’re calling informal spaces! 

You’ve heard Nate talk about Studio 45 in San Francisco, and many of you worked from Port Labs with me back in the day. Both spaces were founded to support the hardware community with the one key ingredient that makes hardware unique in tech: physical space to build. 

The team at Raise Robotics was able to raise their first major round of funding while building in Studio 45.

Studio 45 started as a clubhouse for informal members and the broader SF community. Port Labs was a hardware-friendly extension of the Port Workspaces, themselves longtime fixtures of the Oakland coworking scene. I had the opportunity to acquire Port Labs last December, and partnering with Nate to bring that same clubhouse energy to the East Bay community was the obvious next step. 

I dig building in community — sometimes together directly, sometimes adjacent, but never isolated. It’s been an incredible change of pace cocreating the Hardware Collective, Oakland Hardware Meetup, and now this network of physical locations!

Nate and I have been collaborating for years and informal spaces is the natural next step.

Now informal spaces is a network where people and teams building hardware can find the tools, resources, expertise, and connections they need to launch and scale. We’ve started in the San Francisco Bay Area, and you better believe we’re working on bringing informal spaces to your region!  

The communities are aligning. We have volunteer-run meetups to showcase what we build through Hardware Meetup; we have the space to build through informal spaces; and of course we have the best talent to build through the informal collective.

Hardware Meetups happen in 50 cities around the world, reaching 50k hardware pros every month.

The spaces aren’t just a service for members. They also give location operators the resources they need to not just run a workshop, but use and grow their workshop. These ambitions of location operators to support hardware companies exist in all major cities. But they’re disconnected, uncoordinated, and often competing with each other — inevitably spread thin. As location operators ourselves, we know how overwhelming balancing community and facilities management in a professional hardware space can be. Adding to these challenges, most operators lack the experience or expertise in manufacturing that hardware teams desperately need as they start to grow. 

Embedded within informal spaces is access to experts, contractors, mentors, and more.

By joining informal spaces, each operator gains our ecosystem playbooks, deep hardware development and manufacturing expertise, facilities team, and marketing engine — elevating it from a workshop, makerspace, or coworking space into a professional hardware node. Members benefit from shared access to all locations, unified pricing, and on-demand access to the informal collective for all hiring, advisory, and project needs. The spaces themselves remain independently owned and operated, benefiting from the network while preserving their own brand identity.  

There are four locations across the San Francisco Bay Area. More coming soon!

informal spaces is starting with four locations operated by Nate Padgett (SF), me (Oakland and Jack London Square), and William Chapin (Mountain View). We’re actively recruiting spaces in Marin, San Francisco, and the Peninsula, but are open to exploring informal spaces anywhere.

If you’re an informal collective member or client actively engaged in an informal project, you get a free Quarterly Workshop Membership ($1800 value). Reach out to spaces@informal.com to learn more and take advantage of this free perk!

Looking for hardware space for you and your team? Fill out our application and we’ll be in touch to learn more about you. 

If you’re a space operator and interested in joining the network, we’d love to hear from you! Email spaces@informal.com and we’ll be in touch. 

informal is a freelance collective for the most talented independent professionals in hardware and hardtech. Whether you’re looking for a single contractor, a full-time employee, or an entire team of professionals to work on everything from product development to go-to-market, informal has the perfect collection of people for the job.