How Waterman is trying to build a co-working community into an Australian business empire

Neville Waterman might have his name on the building, but he doesn’t have an office. Not in the way you or I would have an office, at least. The space he’s chosen for our conversation is a plush boardroom, one of several break-out spaces, training rooms, and private working areas dotting the 7000-square-metre Waterman business complex in Scoresby, Melbourne. For now, the boardroom is his domain, but it could just as easily belong to any of the dozens of architects, lawyers, accountants, or startups who call the co-working site their base of operations. 

Such is Waterman’s goal: providing businesses with the spaces and communities they need, when they need them. And today Neville Waterman needs a place to explain his company’s journey, from one accidental co-working venture in suburbia, to his dream of providing Australian businesses with everything required to meet their full potential. 

The boardroom is optional. Still, it’s not the worst place for Waterman to lay out his vision, and explain why he believes his model can empower businesses across Australia.

From accounting firm to co-working contender

Waterman is an Australian co-working company with five business centres across suburban Melbourne, plans to open another this month, 11 over the next two years, and in Waterman’s dream scenario, “a couple of hundred of them” through city fringes and semi-regional sites in the decades to come.