I Ran Three of DC's Coworking Spaces. Here Is What the Model Got Right.

I spent years running three of WeWork's coworking spaces in Washington DC, overseeing a community of roughly 1,500 members. People love to declare the model dead every few years. Having operated it from the inside, I think that misses what it actually got right.

It got community right

The thing that worked was never the desks. It was the room full of people who would not otherwise have been in the same building. A freelance designer two seats from a venture-backed founder, a nonprofit beside a law practice. That density of difference created introductions, deals, and friendships no floor plan could engineer on purpose. WAMU captured this when it covered how DC's coworking spaces were redefining the way the city worked.

It got flexibility right

Long before the rest of the office world was forced to, coworking proved that people did not need a five-year lease and a private floor to do serious work. They needed a place to land, a reason to show up, and the option to scale up or down without penalty. That idea looks obvious now. It was not obvious then. Washingtonian named me to its 100 Top Tech Leaders during those years, and the recognition was really about that bet on flexibility.

What it got wrong

The model overreached on growth and unit economics. Signing long leases to sell short ones is fragile when the cycle turns, and the push for scale sometimes came at the expense of the community that made the spaces valuable in the first place. The lesson was not that flexible work failed. It was that the experience, not the expansion, was the asset.

Why it still matters

Everything I learned there carries into how I market today. Communities and brands are built the same way, on experience and trust, not on transactions. Read more in The Future of Work or about my background. I write about the wider scene on the Washington DC page and in why Washington DC quietly became a real tech town.