Coworking and community: what the research shows about staying power

Founders often say that being around other founders kept them going. Shared offices, local meetups and peer groups are common advice for a first company, and an obvious reading is that community helps a company survive. That claim is harder to test than it sounds. This article reports what two published studies measured, where the evidence stops, and what a founder can sensibly take from it. The spaces, groups and programs mentioned are independent of WE, and no affiliation is implied. WE encourages founders to use them, and to keep using them over the long run.

What the evidence covers

Two pieces of research bear on the question, and neither measures survival directly.

The first is a survey study by M. Moore, posted in 2021, that used primary data from 75 organizations in 17 coworking spaces. It reports a positive interrelation between collaboration and innovation, and finds that business models are significantly affected by the level of collaboration in the space. The author describes it as among the first firm-level investigations of collaboration in coworking spaces.

The second is a study by Juanita Gonzalez-Uribe and Michael Leatherbee, published in the Review of Financial Studies in 2018. It examined Start-Up Chile, a program that gave founders funding and a coworking space and, separately, entrepreneurship schooling. Comparing applicants just above and just below an admission cutoff, the authors report that schooling bundled with basic services can significantly increase new venture performance. They found no evidence that basic services alone affect performance.

Reading the two studies together

Both results point the same way, and neither settles the question. People who collaborate more may also be the kind of founders who innovate more, so the survey cannot say that the space caused the outcome. The second study has a stronger design, but the thing that helped was teaching combined with a place to work, and its authors found no effect from the place and the funding alone. The most careful reading is that a desk is not what helps. What happens at the desk might be.

The gap in the evidence

Neither study follows firms for a decade and counts which ones remain. A founder who wants to know whether a shared space makes a company more likely to last has no direct answer here. Companies that choose a shared space also differ from those that do not, in budget, location, size and stage, so a simple comparison of survival would mislead even if someone made it. The longevity paradox article gives the survival curves that any future comparison would have to be read against.

What the research does support is narrower and still useful: interaction with other founders is associated with more innovation, and structured learning seems to matter more than a place to sit.

Why the mechanism matters more than the address

A reasonable way to think about community is as three separate things that often arrive together. The first is information: hearing how others handled a customer problem, a hiring mistake or a pricing change. The second is accountability: someone who will ask next month whether you did what you said. The third is morale: the simple relief of talking to people who understand the work. Any of the three can come from a space, a program, a counseling center or a standing call with a friend. The studies suggest that structured learning added value beyond the space itself, which fits the first of the three. A founder who knows which one they are short of can choose the cheapest way to get it.

Using a shared space or community well

If the desk alone is not the mechanism, the founder’s job is to make the rest happen.

• Go for the conversations, not the desk. Ask the space what events, introductions and working groups it hosts, and whether members actually use them.
• Pick people one step ahead. A founder a year or two further along can say what the next year will contain. The solo founders article describes how to arrange a second pair of eyes.
• Pair space with learning. If a space has workshops, use them. If it does not, add one: a course, a local counseling center, a peer group that meets on a schedule.
• Count the cost in cash and time. A monthly membership is a fixed cost that lowers runway, and commuting is time. The runway arithmetic shows how to count it.
• Protect your attention. An open room is also a source of interruptions. Keep deep work to hours when the room is quiet.

A small test you can run yourself

Because the published evidence is thin, a founder can treat membership as an experiment with a stated question. Before paying for anything, write down what you hope to gain: introductions to potential customers, a sounding board for product decisions, a routine that keeps you working, or simply company. Set a review date three months out and ask what changed. Did you have conversations you would not otherwise have had? Did any of them alter a decision? Did the routine hold? If the answer to all three is no, the cost may be better spent elsewhere, and that is a fair result.

Where community lives besides a coworking space

A founder working from home, or in another time zone, can still build community. The Small Business Administration describes a national network of resource partners that includes business counseling centers, volunteer business advisers and centers serving women and veteran entrepreneurs, and using SBA resource partners explains how to find them. Universities, local chambers and online founder groups add more. The program decision guide covers longer commitments.

Burnout is a risk that community can reduce and cannot remove. The burnout article describes warning signs, and isolation is one of them.

The coworking and founder-community sections of the ecosystem directory list independent spaces and groups by what they offer and where they run, next to incubators, cohort programs and angel groups. Visiting two or three is a cheap way to run the test above, and WE encourages founders to join the ones that fit, with no affiliation implied.

Questions to ask a space or a group before joining

1. How many members are building something similar to mine, and may I meet some of them first?
2. What is on the calendar for the next three months, and who attends?
3. What does membership cost over a year, including the notice period for leaving?
4. Can I use the space part-time, or must I commit to a full desk?
5. What do members who have been there for a year say they gained?

What this article cannot tell you

This article cannot tell you whether a shared space or a community will help your company last. The two studies it relies on measured innovation and performance, not survival; one is a survey with no way to separate cause from selection, and the other studies a single national program. It cannot say what any particular space costs or offers, and it names no space or group as endorsed by WE. It does not promise any outcome, and nothing here describes a company that works with WE.