- November 26, 2024
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Years ago, Ky Ekinci, Lisa Schenone Ekinci and Sim Taing held vastly different jobs. Taing worked as a software engineer, Schenone Ekinci was a consultant and Ekinci worked in the travel industry.
Despite that, the three had remarkably similar professional lives. All of them traveled often for work, and between trips, they worked remotely. They had all recently moved to Palm Coast. And they all started to miss belonging to an office community.
That’s how Office Divvy was born.
“We wanted to create a community of the kinds of folks in progressive businesses who are working from home,” Ekinci said. “We wanted a place for them to get away from the isolations and distractions of home.”
The three started their business in 2008. Since then, their vision has evolved. Now, the company is also an incubator for small businesses and start-ups. It also co-sponsors the monthly Entrepreneur Nights held in Palm Coast.
Office Divvy celebrated its five-year anniversary March 15. Ekinci and his co-founders are still working in their respective industries, but Ekinci is less so these days now that Office Divvy is big. But Ekinci seldom dwells on his success. He is focused on his future, which is tied to the future of his business.
He has always been focused. Originally from Turkey, Ekinci moved to Boston to pursue a master’s degree in management to complement his undergraduate degree in hospitality. He was alone in a new city, but it didn’t faze him. He was too focused on being a student, in both social life and academic pursuits.
He’s taking the same approach to Office Divvy. He, Tain and Schenone Ekinci hope to open a second location next and ultimately run what Ekinci describes as an “entrepreneurial amusement park,” which would operate on the same co-working model as his current location does, but with fully curated exhibits about innovation and entrepreneurship. An exhibit that tells the story of former professionals would be motivational to aspiring entrepreneurs, Ekinci said.
Palm Coast is the perfect place for his business, Ekinci said, as well as the perfect place for him. After Boston, Ekinci moved to New Jersey. He’d already traveled to New York City several times for work, and during his visits, he decided that if he ever moved to that area, he would live in Weehawken, N.J. That’s where the best view of the New York skyline is, Ekinci said.
And so, he moved to Weehawken. One day while walking his dog, Ekinci met Lisa Schenone, who was walking her own dog. They later married, and Schenone Ekinci eventually became one of Office Divvy’s co-founders.
When the couple decided to move to Palm Coast, it was for a change of pace. They were both accustomed to metropolitan areas and decided to try a smaller city for a while. At the time, they guessed they would be in Florida for about five years.
Now, they aren’t going anywhere. They met Taing, who had recently moved to Palm Coast for similar reasons, started Office Divvy and fell in love with their new city.
And for professionals who have traveled so extensively, when they say they like a place, they know what they’re talking about.
Ekinci estimates his total number of countries visited at 65. His five favorites, in no particular order: Turkey, Japan, Peru, Morocco and Greece.
“In my opinion, there are a few criteria for a great travel experience,” Ekinci said. “Food, absolutely. When you travel, you come back with memories always around food. Well-preserved history is also important, and also, some kind of loyalty to the roots of the country’s culture.”
A place like Peru, for example, is deeply cultural. The country is prevalently Catholic, but Ekinci attended mass services while visiting that were indebted to Peru’s Incan roots. Theirs is a more shamanic brand of worship than other Catholics, Ekinci said.
“One thing that’s very nice about traveling is to get away from everything familiar,” Ekinci said. “We all live in this comfort zone, and you get used to your life. But when you get out it helps, I think, for learning. You learn so much when you travel. But it also gives you an interesting space for thinking, not being in your familiar settings.”
Despite that, Ekinci’s penchant for international travel has diminished recently. His travel experiences shaped his approach to business, and now he’s ready to focus on Office Divvy and Palm Coast — with one exception. He hopes to travel to Rio, a place he’s never visited, for the 2016 Olympics.
In a way, the Office Divvy team’s journey started the same way his clients do: with an idea and a lot of legwork to promote a business that was largely unknown. Five years later, Ekinci can think only of expanding his services to more potential entrepreneurs.
“It’s been very rewarding,” Ekinci said. “Where we are today is, we are honored and humbled by the attention, but we don’t want to be distracted with that. We want to get to the next step, and the one after that.”
