These is a new trend in the Bay Area. Renting an office from professional setups like Regus is becoming very passe. After all, who wants to deal with all of their rules and the year long or 3-months long contract? The new wave of the future for startups is flexible work spaces like Plug and Play and SandBox Suites.

Plug and Play is pretty old by Silicon Valley standards. They were established in 2006 and is growing by leaps and bounds. I attended their open house on their new Redwood City facility. They have already filled their Sunnyvale and Palo Alto offices with startup companies. Judging by their progression north, I would guess that they will be in San Francisco proper any day now.

These are just a few places where startups can work. More are springing up almost monthly. Mitch Denny put together a chart showing the variations between the facilities at three different work areas.

One important piece that he has not included anything is about networking. Networking is the key to the success for many startups. Networking can help an entrepreneur get fresh ideas, solve problems, find partners and find funding opportunities. The networking opportunities would depend greatly on the startups in each office and if the facility scheduled any events to get the entrepreneur out of their cubicles to talk to each other and maybe a VC or angel.

Some of these workspaces seem focused mainly on the short term revenue, like collecting monthly office rent. Others like Plug and Play seems to be focusing on the incubator portion of their business. Personally, I would think that the long-term outlook of helping startups would be a better business model than just another work area rental place. Time will tell.