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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

There are no real players in the coworking space, and any interest for startups in the field was destroyed by WeWork. So no, this is not good news, just a nail in the coffin for the industry.

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Yes there is, they've been around for decades and are huge:

https://www.regus.com/en-us/united-states

There is also codi and several others

I personally don't visit coworking spaces as I prefer to work from a local coffee shop or go to the library. But why does there need to be a big national chain of coworking spaces? WeWork doesn't care about my mid-size town, but there's an independent co-working space here. You get access to some coffee, a good desk and chair, and Internet. I think they have some spaces for calls or little meetings, too. What does WeWork offer besides, I guess, locations in multiple areas?

Smaller coworking spaces ought to develop partnerships with other small spaces in other cities, to allow their customers the same “I can work from any city” perk that WeWork does. Fancy social clubs do this—e.g., if you have a membership at the Alta Club in Salt Lake City, it gets you access to the New York Athletic Club, etc.

A lot of people who use coworking spaces are small companies or digital nomads. Digital nomads like to travel and have a consistent working environment.

As a former coffee-shopper, I can definitely tell you the experience working from there vs a coworking space such as wework is night and day. It might be fine if you manage to find a good coffee shop and consistently abuse their space, but doing that in random new locations is tough.

"Executive suites" have been around for decades. IWG/Regus, probably the biggest player has been around for 24 years.

I went to Regus a few times several years ago when they had a promotion in Toronto. Even for free, it sucked. Bad atmosphere, claustrophobic, etc.

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