How the First Bernie Invented Coworking

🔥Dear Substack community -The anti-conference is real. February, London, 150 people. Flash sale opens for 48 hours next Thursday — details below.🔥

So Reader,

11pm. You’re answering an email from a member asking if they can pay next month’s desk fee in two instalments because the client payment is late again. You’re saying yes because what else would you say.

The heating’s still running because someone forgot to set the timer. That’s money. The business rates letter from the VOA is still sitting on your desk. That’s more money. The lease renewal lands in January. That’s the conversation you’re not ready to have.

You run a coworking space. You’re probably the only person in your life who does this.

Your partner doesn’t fully get it. Your friends think you run “an office.” Your accountant sees numbers but doesn’t see the member who cried in your kitchen last month because they finally got the contract that keeps their family afloat.

And somewhere in the back of your mind, there’s a question you don’t say out loud:

Am I doing this right?

The industry story says scale or die. The conferences are full of sessions on “European expansion” and “asset-light growth strategies.” The success stories are always about the operator who went from 1 location to 50.

Meanwhile, you’re still in the building. Still unclogging the toilet yourself because you can’t afford to call someone. Still doing the job of receptionist, cleaner, IT support, and community therapist — sometimes all before lunch.

Here’s what I want you to know: there’s something buried in the word “coworking” that most people have forgotten. And it contains a permission you need right now.

The Word Itself

Somewhere between 1985 and 1992, a game designer named Bernard De Koven started using the word “coworking.”

Yes. Bernard. Bernie.

Different spelling. Same name. I only discovered him a few years ago — which tells you how thoroughly the industry forgot its own origin story.

De Koven wasn’t describing a type of building. He was describing a way of working together.

He called it “working together as equals” — collaboration without hierarchy, without the competitive pressure that kills genuine partnership. His phrase for what happens when it works: “deeply shared fun.”

That sounds soft. It isn’t.

De Koven saw play as a political act — a declaration of freedom against the expectation that everything must be serious, productive, optimised. He called a Frisbee in the hands of business people “a weapon against fear.”

But here’s the part that matters:

“Coworking means making your own rules.”

Not following someone else’s playbook. Not copying what worked in San Francisco. Not scaling to match the chains.

Making your own rules. Based on what works for your people, your neighbourhood, your situation.

The industry took the word and turned it into a real estate category. A consumer product. Something you rent.

De Koven meant the opposite: a practice where the players make the game as they play it.

Coworking Imposter Syndrome

I’m not bringing this up to tell you what “real” coworking is. Who has time for that conversation? It’s like arguing over what is music. 🥱

I’m bringing it up because of something I see everywhere.

For years, I’ve spoken to people who run beautiful little coworking spaces, and they say something like: “Oh, I’m not a real coworking space. I shouldn’t be here. I’m not one of those bigger coworking spaces or a genuine coworking space.”

That is the equivalent of a beautifully family-run guesthouse in Brighton — deeply connected to the local economy, deeply connected to the community — saying: “Oh, I’m not a real hotel. I can’t provide real hospitality because I’m not called Hilton or Best Western.”

I know smaller coworking spaces that are way more profitable, consistently more profitable, than bigger brands you may have heard of.

Invalidating yourself and the work you do? It’s just not on, folks. We can’t do it anymore.

You’re important to your local community. You’re important to your members.

And here’s the thing so many operators forget:

You are the person who needed this thing when you invented it.

You opened a space that you needed. You are your own customer. Somewhere along the line, you either got coworking imposter syndrome and started thinking you’re not as cool as bigger brands — or you just forgot why you started.

Go back to the person you were three, five years ago. What made you get a building and build a community? Think through that lens.

You don’t need to hire some mega branding company and create a folder you’ll stick on your shelf and never use.

You are the person that needed this thing when you invented it.

The Lie You’ve Been Told

You might be carrying a weight that isn’t yours.

The story that says you’re failing because you haven’t scaled? That’s not your story. It’s a story designed for people chasing venture capital and enterprise clients.

You don’t need to be the biggest. The longest-running. The one with “15 years of industry experience” in your LinkedIn headline.

You just need to be making it happen. In your neighbourhood. With your community. Right now.

Over half of London’s coworking spaces are independently owned or operated. You’re the majority. But it doesn’t feel like it, because the bigger companies take up all the air.

Right now, the business rates letter from the VOA is sitting on desks across London. They’re reclassifying coworking spaces in a way that strips Small Business Rates Relief from your members — and shifts the whole tax burden onto you.

The legal precedent? A Supreme Court case about ATMs in supermarkets.

Freelancers. Consultants. Three-person startups. Treated like vending machines.

If you absorb it, you go under. If you pass it on, you lose the only advantage you have over the chains.

And the big companies? The ones with out-of-town warehouses and teams of tax lawyers?

They pay less. They always pay less.

You’re not failing. You’re being failed.

The Isolation Is the Point

Here’s the thing about the loneliness you feel running a space:

It’s not a personal failing. It’s structural.

Fragmented operators can’t organise. Can’t lobby. Can’t show up at an MP’s office with fifty other operators from the same constituency saying the same thing.

The isolation is tactically useful to the people who benefit from your silence.

The chains. The landlords. The system that treats your members like revenue units and your space like a problem to be solved with a spreadsheet.

We’ve been running gatherings for 10 years. Over 100 events. The same thing happens every time:

Someone shows up carrying something they thought was their private failure. A quiet summer. A nightmare member. A month where the numbers didn’t work.

They start talking — and discover three other people in the room dealing with the exact same thing.

“When summer has been quiet and I thought everyone had taken a dislike to me, it turns out that everyone else has been quiet too — it’s called summer holidays! Great to have a peer group.” — Marella, Whaley Bridge Coworking

That’s the moment.

Not inspiration. Recognition.

You’re not crazy. You’re not bad at this. The thing you thought was your failure is a pattern shared across the whole community.

Something happens when you sit across from someone who carries the same weight. You start talking about what’s not working, what scares you, what you’ve tried. In the telling, you discover what you actually know.

Not because someone taught you. Because you finally said it out loud to someone who understood.

February 24th London

On Monday, February 24th, 2026, The London Coworking Assembly is gathering 150 coworking community builders in London.

Not a conference. Not a summit. Not a masterclass.

No keynote speakers. No panels of people who haven’t unclogged a toilet in fifteen years. No sponsor pitches. No one trying to sell you software.

BarCamp style. Open source. The agenda shaped by whoever’s in the room.

Small groups working through real problems: hybrid revenue chaos, making affordable workspace work without going broke, the business rates fight and what we do collectively, burnout, finding your niche wherever you are.

De Koven had a phrase for this: “No game is as fun as the one the players are making up.”

When you join the waitlist, we build the day with you. So when you get to the room in February, you’ve helped design what we talk about.

The format adapts to the people. Not the other way around.

This Is Not an Exclusive Coworking Club

No inner circle. No gatekeepers. No application process.

You don’t need credentials. You don’t need to have been doing this for ten years. You don’t need a certain number of members or a certain size of space.

You don’t need to be the biggest, the oldest, the most awarded, or the most followed on LinkedIn.

You just need to be doing this work — running a space, managing a community, trying to make it sustainable — and want to be in a room with others doing the same.

Street level. Low barrier. Come as you are.

• If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re a “real” coworking space — you belong here.
• If you run a tiny operation in a commuter town — you belong here.
• If you’ve never been to anything we’ve run before — you’re welcome.

More than half of London’s coworking spaces are independently owned or operated. You’re the majority. This room is yours.

“There were people on there with teeny small town spaces like mine. I think we should be a movement. We’re growing deep in our communities — like the invisible mycelium network of a forest.” — Marina Buswell

This Is the First of 3-4 Gatherings in 2026

The person you sit across from in February — you’ll see them again. In the summer. In the autumn.

That’s how peer groups form. That’s how Roland met Ewan at one of our events and ended up with a WhatsApp group of indie operators who share everything.

Between the in-person days, there’s a free monthly online call — Unreasonable Connection. The events cost money. The calls are always free.

We’re not building a one-off. We’re building a rhythm.

Our intention for 2026: meet three to four times a year. So you always have somewhere to come back to. So the connections deepen. So the isolation ends.

👍Unreasonable Connection Flash Sale Opens Thursday

If you’re on the waitlist, here’s what’s happening:

That’s why this isn’t a conference. It’s a room where your stories meet other people’s stories. Where online connections become real relationships. Where—if we do this right—you leave with your own peer group forming.

This is the first of multiple events in 2026. People you meet in February, you’ll see again.

Flash sale opens this week. Thursday and Friday. 48 hours only. Pre-Christmas. Never happening again.

If you’re on the waitlist, you get access to the First In ticket price. If you’re not, you don’t.

➡️ Join the Flash Sale Waitlist →

Full price tickets are £150. The First In price? You find out when you join the list. Miss the flash sale, and tickets go on sale at full price at the end of January.

Your Monday Domino

This week: Write down one thing you’ve been carrying alone.

The problem you haven’t told anyone about. The question you’re afraid to ask out loud. The thing you think is your failure but might actually be everyone’s.

You don’t have to share it with anyone. Just write it down.

Because when you’re not alone with the question, the question changes.

Bernie’s Picks

🎙️ The £1 That Goes Around Four Times – Yesterday’s piece on Karen, Roland, and Freddie building local

🤝 Unreasonable Connection – Our monthly free online call. No panels, no pitches — just operators talking to operators.

📖 Citizens by Jon Alexander – The book behind the framework

🎬 ACTionism – The 25-minute documentary that starts conversations in your space

Thank you for your time and attention today!

Bernie 💚🍉

🎁 p.s. Unreasonable Connection Going Live! Flash sale opens this Thursday. 48 hours only. If you’re not on the waitlist, you won’t get access to the ‘First In ticket’ price. Join here