Founded by 22-year-old Yash Sutaria, Fat Bear Coworking is set to open this month in the Alto Building in Dallas' downtown area. It will span across 10,000 square feet on the building’s third floor.
“We’re building a culture of entrepreneurs to be able to use our resources and each other’s resources to build each other’s brands and businesses up,” Sutaria says. “Everything that comes in goes right back to the community for networking events and for resources to help our occupants grow.”
As of now, Fat Bear is set to house recording studios, a website development company and a real estate agent. Sutaria hopes to offer other entrepreneurs and business owners professional resources and luxurious office amenities at a lower price than that of other similar coworking spaces.
Sutaria is the son of two immigrants who came from a small village in India. He was born in Canada in a brief stop in his parents’ journey to America. Sutaria believes he has been afforded many opportunities he wouldn’t have been able to pursue had his family not immigrated to the States.
“Migrating to America gave me so many opportunities,” Sutaria says.
One of these opportunities was attending Southern Methodist University, where Sutaria believes he acquired the skills and tools necessary to run multiple businesses.
“Migrating to America gave me so many opportunities.” — Yash Sutaria
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“I was never provided any sort of loan or financial assistance in order to get my businesses started,” Sutaria says. “I learned a lot of business concepts (at SMU), like business management. When you become an entrepreneur or a business owner, you need to know how to manage the people who work for you.”
During his time in college, Sutaria launched multiple startups. While some of his concepts never fully came to fruition, his big hit came at 19 years old, when he launched Greek Socials, a full-service event-planning company providing customized services for fraternities, sororities, and other companies and corporations.
Using what he learned through his setbacks from launching his previous businesses, Sutaria was able to see success with Greek Socials and his Fat Bear Agency (which predates Fat Bear Coworking), as they eventually pulled in over a million dollars in combined profit.
Now that he's generated hefty earnings, Sutaria hopes his latest venture will help foster a hard-working, product and customer-oriented atmosphere for each of his space's occupants. Fat Bear Coworking will be open 24/7 and it includes conference rooms, private offices and event spaces designated for networking. The space will also have pool tables, lounging areas and spaces suitable for guest speakers, workshops and other professional programming.
“Integrity and ethics became important to me once I started my first few businesses,” Sutaria says. “They weren’t doing very well and I was just there to make a quick buck. But once I started focusing on my products and my services and every single client, that’s when my businesses started flourishing. No matter who you are, you’re going to have failures. You have to be able to learn from those failures and move on and do better.”