In our town we have at least four different coworking spaces. All apparently profitable, none of them operated by big companies. It's a simple business model:

In our town we have at least four different coworking spaces. All apparently profitable, none of them operated by big companies. It's a simple business model: commit to a long-term lease, add furniture and sublet the space in lots of small flexible short term leases. The setup also seems to be similar everywhere, with some mix of flexible desks, fixed desks and closed offices available. You mostly differentiate on location, how hip it looks, and what kind of community you can build. WeWork had efficiencies of scale on the looking hip part, but on the community building a local group can easily outcompete a multinational company.