Do You Have Coworking Space Imposter Syndrome?

I’ve been talking about this for years, and I keep hearing the same thing from owner-manager coworking operators:

“We’re not a real coworking space.”

“We shouldn’t be at this conference, it’s for real coworking spaces.”

“We can’t compete with the big brands.”

It’s coworking space imposter syndrome.

And it’s bollocks.

Here’s what it sounds like: a beautiful, locally connected, family-run guest house saying, “I’m not a real hotel because I’m not a Hilton.”

You’re invalidating the very thing that makes you valuable.

The Lie You’ve Been Sold

The corporate coworking model tells a simple story:

Scale. Polish. Premium amenities. Friction-free transactions. The more you look like a hotel, the more “professional” you are.

So you look at your space—the scuffed floor nobody’s fixed, the slightly cramped kitchen, the fact that you know everyone’s name and their dog’s name—and you think: We need to be more like them.

You hire a branding company. You buy better chairs. You worry about your Instagram aesthetic.

And slowly, you sand off the very things that made your space matter in the first place.

What Irene’s Research Actually Proves

Our friend Irene Manzini Ceinar, PhD is an architect, urbanist, and researcher. She spent years studying coworking spaces in London and Milan for her PhD, trying to answer a question the industry ignores:

What’s the actual difference between a space that builds community and a space that just sells desks?

She identified two fundamentally different models:

Service-Led Spaces prioritise efficiency, services, and aesthetics. Clean desks, fast Wi-Fi, friction-free transactions. The hotel model.

Community-Led Spaces prioritise social interaction and local connection. Messy. Human. Relational.

I’ve written about her data before—the numbers showing that community-led spaces measurably strengthen neighbourhoods.

But here’s the part that matters for your imposter syndrome:

The Service-Led model views a member as a wallet.

They pay for a desk. You provide the desk. If the Wi-Fi works, the transaction is complete. If it doesn’t, they leave.

No loyalty. Only price and convenience.

The Community-Led model views a member as a neighbour.

The relationships inside the space spill out into the neighbourhood. Members spend money locally. They get involved in civic organisations. They stay because they belong.

Irene calls this the “Local Anchor” effect.

Your messy, human, “unprofessional” space isn’t a weakness.

It’s the anchor.

Why You Can’t Win the Hotel Game

You cannot beat a venture-backed giant on price and convenience.

They will always have better chairs. They will always have cheaper coffee. They will always have shinier apps and slicker marketing.

If you try to play their game, you will lose.

But they can’t do what you do.

They can’t know everyone’s name. They can’t build the trust that comes from years of showing up in the same neighbourhood. They can’t create the conditions for people to actually meet one another.

Think about your favourite local café. The one where they know your order before you say it.

It’s probably cramped. The lighting might be off. There’s a weird stain on the ceiling nobody can explain.

But you go there because it’s yours. Because the person behind the counter asks how your week went. Because you bumped into someone there once who became a collaborator.

I worked in a five-star hotel in Mayfair, London, when I was younger. We had amazing systems in place to remember guests and their preferences.

This was before apps, AI, and even the internet—but it relied on human beings caring more than on automation.

The systems supported the care. They didn’t replace it.

That’s what your “unprofessional” space signals. It tells people: This is a human place. You can be human here.

The corporate spaces can’t replicate that.

They’ve optimised the care out of existence.

What Bernard De Koven Understood

I spoke about this recently with Dean Connell on the Coworking Values Podcast. We kept coming back to Bernard De Koven—the man who coined the term “coworking” in 1999.

• Not Brad Neuberg. (Sorry Brad!)
• Not the tech bros in San Francisco.
• A game designer!!

Dean calls De Koven’s original vision “Coworking 1.0”—and it looked nothing like what we have now.

“It was people working together as equals,” Dean said. “Congregating around the table in a non-hierarchical way to solve a particular problem or develop a project. Breaking down hierarchies and corporate structures. That’s 1.0.”

No premium amenities. No scaling strategies. No competing on price and location and aesthetics.

Just humans around a table, figuring something out together.

Dean’s argument—and I think he’s right—is that looking at this history gives us clues for what comes next. “Where did the term originate from?

Thinking through that to see if any clues could help us create the next generation of spaces.”

Corporate coworking killed De Koven’s vision. They turned coworking into a product you purchase, not a community you participate in. That’s what Dean calls “Coworking 2.0”—the mid-2000s version focused on shared spaces competing on price, location, and aesthetics.

But here’s what De Koven understood that the corporate model forgot:

The “together” is more important than the amenities.

Your space doesn’t need to look like a hotel. It needs to feel like a place where people can build together.

That’s Coworking 1.0. That’s what you have.

That’s what they can’t copy.

What Urban MBA Just Proved

Two weeks ago, our favourite cash-strapped, world-changing charity near Old Street - Urban MBA hosted a screening of ACTionism, the 25-minute documentary about finding the others and taking collective action.

Kofi Oppong gathered the current Urban MBA cohort, friends like Samia Tossio and people from the community. Jon Alexander was in town and joined in too!

They watched it together. They ate together - no Pret a Manger sandwiches here; it’s always African or Caribbean food at Urban MBA events. Then they talked about it.

No fancy venue. Just people in a room, paying attention to each other.

Watch Rafal Skorzewski‘s video from the day here - and look for all the other posts with Urban MBA on the Londi London Instagram channel.

That’s what Irene’s research looks like in practice. That’s what De Koven’s philosophy looks like when it actually happens.

Not scale. Not polish. Just humans meeting one another.

I know owner-managed coworking spaces that are more profitable than the big chains you’ve read about in the news.

You just don’t have the marketing budget to tell everyone about it.

The Permission You Already Have

If you’ve ever looked at a corporate coworking space and thought, “I should be more like them”—

You are essential to your local community and your members.

You don’t need permission from a branding company. You don’t need to copy the hotel model. You don’t need to feel like an imposter at industry events.

The guest house that knows your name, remembers your anniversary, and recommends the restaurant down the road? That’s not inferior to the Hilton. It’s an entirely different thing. A better thing, for the people who need it.

Go back to the person you were when you started this. The person who needed a space like yours and couldn’t find one. The person who built it because nobody else would. This clip will help you.

That’s your superpower.

Not the chairs.

Your Monday Domino

Here’s the smallest thing you can do this week:

Watch the 2-minute ACTionism trailer.

That’s it. Two minutes. Watch it here