Building a Members-Only Coworking Empire for Deep Work Founders

Members-Only Coworking For Deep Work Founders

The first time Leo walked into the empty floor that would become his flagship space, the only sounds were the hum of the old elevator and the echo of his own footsteps. No kombucha taps. No neon slogans about hustle. Just raw concrete, bare brick, and a question he could not shake:

What if coworking was built for founders who did not want to talk all day?

For almost a decade, Leo had been that founder pacing outside loud open-plan offices, trying to take investor calls from stairwells. He loved community, but he hated noise. The more time he spent in “cool” coworking spaces, the more he saw the same pattern. People came for focus and left because of distraction.

"Every space claimed to be about community, but the moment you sat down to work, you put in noise-cancelling headphones and prayed no one tapped you on the shoulder. That felt backwards for people doing the hardest work of their lives."

The idea of a members-only coworking empire for deep work founders did not start with a grand vision. It started with a private Notion doc titled: “The Anti-Coworking Coworking Space.”

Early Days: From Notion Doc To First 12 Desks

The trigger moment

Leo had just exited his second product startup. He had money in the bank, a small audience on X, and an uncomfortable realization. The times he had done his best work were always the same: long, uninterrupted stretches of focus, usually alone, occasionally with one or two other equally obsessed founders sharing the room.

After a year of working from home and hopping between coffee shops, he saw two trends colliding. Founders were tired of fully remote isolation, but they did not want to go back to corporate-style offices or chaotic shared spaces. They wanted a serious place to build, surrounded by people who cared deeply about their craft.

"I started asking friends: if you could design a workspace only for founders who live for deep work, what would it look like? The answers were weirdly consistent: quiet, small, curated, and rules that everyone actually follows."

The first experiment

Instead of signing a huge lease, Leo ran a tiny experiment. He found a sublet: a single floor with 12 desks, decent light, and a flexible 6-month term. No branding. No launch party. Just a simple offer to a small circle of founders.

The offer was brutally clear: no day passes, no drop-ins, no sales teams, no loud phone calls in the main room. Membership was invitation-only and capped. The promise was focus, not networking.

The early challenges showed up fast.

First, convincing people to pay more for less. There were cheaper coworking options a few blocks away, full of amenities and events. Leo’s space had basic chairs, fast Wi-Fi, and a strict quiet policy.

Second, balancing “members-only” with “we are not profitable yet.” Turning down people who did not fit the profile felt reckless when rent was due in 30 days.

"I had to decide early whether this was going to be a desk rental business or a membership club. Every time I got nervous and thought about relaxing the bar, I remembered why I was building it in the first place."

The first month, only four desks were filled. Leo questioned everything. Friends urged him to make it more flexible. Add hot desks. Open it up to remote employees. Throw events. Anything to get people in the door.

Instead, he doubled down on the founders he already had. He asked them what was working, what was not, and what would make the space indispensable.

Key Milestones On The Way To A Deep Work “Empire”

Milestone 1: The first fully booked room

The first breakthrough came not from ads or a big launch, but from a single tweet thread one of the members wrote about “the only coworking space where my productivity doubled.” It was not sponsored. It was not planned.

Within 48 hours, Leo had 40 applications for 8 remaining desks.

• He created a short application form that filtered for current founders or post-exit builders.
• He introduced a trial week where both sides could opt out with no hard feelings.
• He hosted a single, simple ritual: Monday morning 15-minute check-in with three prompts: focus, friction, and one ask.

By month three, the 12-desk floor was at 100 percent occupancy with a waitlist. For the first time, the numbers looked like an actual business rather than an expensive social experiment.

"The first time I saw the space at 9 AM with every desk taken and complete silence, it felt like walking into a private library for builders. That was the moment I knew we had something defensible."

Milestone 2: Saying no to a quick expansion

As word spread, a landlord approached Leo with a tempting offer: three floors in a nearby building at a discount, if he signed a multi-year lease. On paper, this was the chance to scale fast and lock in a “mini-empire” before anyone copied the model.

On the whiteboard, the math worked if occupancy stayed above 80 percent and prices held. In reality, Leo had not proven that the deep work model would translate beyond one tight-knit room.

He turned it down.

"Everything in me wanted to say yes. It felt like the kind of opportunity you are supposed to jump on as a founder. But when I played the tape forward, I saw a version of the business I did not want to run: constantly selling, constantly filling empty desks, slipping on the curation that made it special."

Instead, he chose a smaller step. He added a second, nearby location with just 20 desks and one extra meeting room. The rule stayed the same: no more members than seats. No corporate teams larger than three people. No virtual memberships.

Milestone 3: The quiet pivot from “space” to “system”

By the second year, Leo had two fully booked locations and a repeating pattern of members asking the same question: could he open in their city?

This pushed him to rethink what he was really building. Was it a real estate play or an operating system for deep work communities?

He started documenting everything:

• How members were selected and onboarded.
• How quiet hours, phone booths, and “deep work blocks” were enforced without feeling authoritarian.
• How to host events that did not break the focus culture the next day.

The quiet pivot was from operating spaces himself to creating a licensing and partnership model. Local operators who believed in the philosophy could license the playbook, brand, and tooling, while owning their local P&L.

There was no big announcement. The first partner space opened in another city under the same name and rules, and most people assumed Leo owned it outright. But the model was different: less capital-intensive for him, more aligned with preserving the culture city by city.

"Calling it an 'empire' sounded ridiculous to me at first. Then I realized empire did not have to mean owning all the land. It could mean protecting the standard for a certain kind of place founders could rely on, no matter where they were."

Milestone 4: First revenue beyond rent

For the first 18 months, 95 percent of revenue came from membership fees. There was no merch, no paid events, no virtual products. This kept the model simple but also fragile.

The turning point came from listening carefully to member friction. Founders kept asking for three things that were not strictly “space” features: vetted service providers, investor intros, and structured deep work retreats.

Rather than building a pseudo-accelerator, Leo did three focused things:

• Created a vetted partner list for legal, finance, and product services, taking a small referral fee only when members were genuinely happy.
• Introduced low-key investor days where investors booked a desk for the day and simply worked from the space, meeting founders organically instead of pitching.
• Launched quarterly offsite-style deep work retreats at rural properties with the same rules as the city spaces, priced separately from memberships.

The result was a healthier revenue mix and a stronger value proposition that still revolved around the original promise: a serious environment for serious builders.

Lessons Learned For Founders Building Niche “Empires”

Lesson 1: Defend the culture with uncomfortable clarity

The success of the members-only coworking model came from the rules as much as the real estate. Enforcing those rules was often awkward.

"The hardest part was telling great people 'no' because they did not fit the profile or could not commit to the norms. Every time I compromised, the space felt a little less sharp."

For early-stage founders, this translates into a simple principle: if your advantage is cultural, you have to protect it even when it hurts short-term revenue.

• Write down the behaviors that make your product or community work and be explicit with new customers from day one.
• Design your onboarding process to select for people who want those constraints, not people who tolerate them.
• Give your team permission to enforce the norms consistently, including with your highest-paying customers.

Lesson 2: Prove intensity before you chase scale

It is tempting to declare you are building an empire before you have nailed a single location, product, or customer segment. Leo’s choice to fully saturate one room and one micro-community before signing bigger leases was less glamorous but deeply de-risking.

For founders, this looks like:

• Finding one narrow use case or customer profile and making your product non-optional for them.
• Measuring not just user count, but depth of usage and willingness to recommend.
• Letting demand outgrow your current capacity for a while before you add more capacity.

"I did not realize how valuable the waitlist was until I saw how it changed the psychology. People valued the membership more because they knew it was scarce. If I had rushed to open three more floors, that scarcity, and the behavior it encouraged, would have evaporated."

Lesson 3: Build the playbook even if you are not franchising yet

The shift from operating a couple of spaces to enabling a network of deep work hubs only worked because Leo had been writing down how decisions were made from the beginning. The systems were not polished; they were living documents and checklists.

For founders, even outside of physical spaces, this matters more than it seems:

• Document the small, non-obvious choices that make your experience feel different, before they become invisible habits.
• Create simple, repeatable scripts for the highest-leverage interactions: onboarding, support, renewals, conflict resolution.
• Assume that future partners, employees, or even your future self will need a way to recreate the magic without you in the room.

"By the time someone asked about opening in another city, the question was not 'can we do this?' It was 'can we teach someone else to do this exactly the way we do it here?' The only reason the answer was yes is because we treated our little 12-desk room like a lab from day one."

Where The Story Meets Your Own

Leo’s members-only coworking empire did not appear overnight. It emerged from a narrow obsession: building a serious place for serious builders to think and work without friction. The empire part came later, almost reluctantly, as demand and documentation caught up with conviction.

If you are at the stage where your idea feels “too niche” or “too rigid,” this story is an invitation to dig deeper instead of diluting it. Because the more specific your promise, the more likely it is to matter deeply to the right people.

What is your biggest takeaway from this journey? Share your thoughts in the comments below!