betahaus – Pioneering Coworking and Events in Berlin (+video interview)
betahaus is one of Berlin's oldest coworking spaces – three locations across Berlin running over 1,000 events a year and open to external visitors alongside its core membership. They have been running on Cobot for 16 years.
Favorite Cobot Features:
The Story Behind betahaus
In 2009, Madeleine Gummer von Mohl and five co-founders (Tonia Welter, Gregor Scheppan, Stephan Bielefeldt, Maximilian von der Ahé, and Christoph Fahle) met at Sankt Oberholz – one of Berlin's oldest and most well-known coworking spaces and Cobot customer – and wrote a business plan for a different kind of workspace. The financial crisis had pushed a lot of creative people out of steady employment, and they needed somewhere to find new clients, new projects, and co-founders. betahaus was there.
Sixteen years later, betahaus has grown into one of Europe's largest coworking spaces, with locations in Hamburg, Barcelona, Sofia, and Bucharest alongside three locations in Berlin. The Berlin locations draw a broad membership – creative freelancers, early-stage founders, small agencies that gave up their own offices, and employees of larger companies who wanted a more creative environment than a corporate desk.
The community side is just as active as the workspace. betahaus runs over 1,000 events a year across four event spaces: betabreakfast brings the Berlin startup scene together every Thursday morning, betaeve is the recurring evening event, and a constantly rotating program of meetups, tech conferences, and expert sessions fills the calendar year-round. Community members also run their own expert sessions, offering their services to each other throughout the month.
The name "Beta" was deliberate. Madeleine and her co-founders imagined a space that would keep changing, shaped by the people who used it. It still does.
External Booking and Billing Challenges for a Multi-Location Coworking Space
When betahaus started, Madeleine tracked every member in an Excel sheet. That worked at the beginning, but wasn't scalable. Mid-month sign-ups were the first crack: if a member joined on the 3rd, the 4th, or the 27th, calculating a prorated invoice was manual work. Mistakes happened. Invoices had to be corrected, reimbursed, reissued. Cancellations came in by email, were often misunderstood, and had to be tracked manually alongside any contact or billing detail changes.
Meeting room bookings ran on Google Calendar, and double bookings were routine. betahaus also had no easy way to open its event spaces and meeting rooms to outside bookings – anyone who wasn't already a member had no clean way to reserve a space. That revenue wasn't being captured at all.
There was also a self-inflicted forecasting problem. Over time, betahaus ended up with five variations of the same "Pro" membership in the system – different capitalization, different spacing – which meant the forecast showed five separate lines instead of one. Getting a clear picture of cash flow required working around the data rather than reading it.
"I cannot envision my daily life at betahaus without Cobot. It has been instrumental in helping us manage our community and streamline operations, allowing us to focus on growing the business and empowering our members."
How betahaus Uses Cobot to Keep 1,000+ Events and External Bookings Running Smoothly
betahaus adopted Cobot in 2010, shortly after opening. Invoicing was the first thing Cobot solved. Cobot's Automated Invoicing and Payments handled mid-month start dates without manual intervention, and automated payment reminders took the back office out of the chasing loop entirely.
Meeting room double bookings stopped when betahaus moved to Cobot's Bookings and Calendar. The same system also handled a recent construction phase, where the blocker feature let the team mark parts of the building as inaccessible – keeping bookings clean without any manual coordination.
The bigger shift came with the External Bookings and Event Bookings and Tickets features. With over 1,000 events a year and four dedicated event spaces, betahaus has a lot of capacity to fill – and not all of it comes from members. Cobot's External Bookings and Events features lets betahaus open its meeting rooms and event spaces to outside visitors directly, with a checkout and instant payment handled through Cobot. Non-members can find a space, book it, and pay without any back-and-forth with the team. Since enabling external bookings through Cobot, betahaus has increased meeting room revenue by around 25%.
🇩🇪 For a space operating in Germany, it also helps that Cobot is fully available in German (as we are a German company), removing any language barrier for local members signing up or managing their own accounts.
Results with Cobot:
- Meeting room revenue up over 25% after enabling External Bookings
- Double bookings eliminated after moving from Google Calendar to Cobot's Bookings and Calendar
- Automated invoicing removed manual recalculation for mid-month sign-ups
Advice for Other Spaces Considering Cobot
"Don't overlook external bookings and day passes – they bring in solid revenue and double as a pipeline. All the contacts are listed in Cobot, so if a day pass guest comes back, you can convert them into a member easily."
