Coworking space

In August 2005, a software engineer named Brad Neuberg opened what he called a "coworking space" at Spiral Muse, a feminist collective in San Francisco's Mission District. He offered the space two days a week, with Wi-Fi, desks, and shared lunch.1 Neuberg had coined the term to describe a mode of working that combined the independence of freelancing with the structure and community of an office.

The concept was not entirely new. Shared creative workspaces had existed in various forms, from artist studios to hackerspaces. What Neuberg formalized was the idea that the space itself, not a shared employer or project, could be the organizing principle.

The first dedicated full-time coworking space, Hat Factory, opened in San Francisco in 2006.2 Others followed quickly. By 2007, coworking spaces had appeared in cities across the United States and Europe. The model attracted freelancers, remote workers, and early-stage entrepreneurs who needed a place to work that was neither home nor a coffee shop.

WeWork, founded in 2010 by Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey, industrialized the concept. At its peak in 2019, WeWork operated more than 800 locations across 124 cities in 38 countries and was valued at forty-seven billion dollars.3

WeWork's attempted initial public offering in 2019 collapsed after scrutiny of its financial losses and governance. The company's valuation fell to less than eight billion dollars.4 Neumann stepped down as CEO. The company filed for bankruptcy in November 2023.

The underlying idea survived the company that tried to monopolize it. By 2023, the global coworking industry included more than 35,000 spaces worldwide, operated by thousands of independent providers.5 The model that began with a software engineer offering two days a week in a feminist collective had become a permanent feature of the commercial real estate landscape.