Coworking Spaces and Start-ups : Empirical Evidence from a Product Market Competition and Life Cycle Perspective

We explore how coworking spaces are involved in the entrepreneurial ecosystem of start-ups contingent on the lifecycle stage of the firm and the coworking space market itself. Our study is based on a hand-collected detailed sample of coworking spaces in the seven largest regions in Germany. We find a hump-shaped relation of coworking space supply and founding activity, reflecting maturity effects of the corresponding coworking space market. In addition, we find a positive relation between the coworking space supply and funding activity of start-ups. A European study with WeWork data supports our findings and a difference-in-differences approach mitigates endogeneity concerns