I know very little about this, but I generally have the reflex of avoiding me-too business ideas. Crudely speaking, these are ideas that come up once a certain market segment has become "hot" or is seen as a golden ticket for easy money.
I have seen this with drop shipping, coffee shops, funny t-shirts, statement socks... and now coworking seems to be all the rage.
I have issues with these models because they make you jump on a bullet train to commodification city. This forces you to compete with all the other me-toos out there by driving the price down until it no longer is a worthwhile model to pursue anymore.
Despite that, here would be my thought process before I'd even consider something like this:
- Do you own the building? If so, how much would it take the make the necessary renos to make it a decent coworking space? If not, how much would be the lease? What about utilities, coffee, cleaning, admin, reception, accounting, etc.? How much members would you need to make these numbers work? How long can you afford to bleed until you've hit your numbers? Real Estate is tough, so don't come into it ill-prepared.
- Is your area really undeserved for coworking or do you have competition on every corner? is there really a creative/freelancer pool to draw from?
- Is there any way you could niche down by differenciating your product from the weworks of the world? For example, as a lawyer, I feel underserved by most coworking spaces as I cannot work in open spaces for confidentiality reasons. I have seen a few legal coworking spaces sprout around and do believe these have an edge most do not have.
Just some thoughts. Please note I have no experience (nor desire) to get into the coworking biz, but this is just like any other business once you think of it... Just with considerably higher risk than most of those discussed here (as most do not require expensive RE investments).