In early August, I made my first visit to Sydney, Australia (yes, ever), for a whirlwind set of meetings, coffees, space tours, dinners, coffees, discussions, and two-ish keynotes at Flexible Workspace Australia‘s 2026 national conference.
It’d be impossible to share every single thought and observation I had in just one place, so this week I’ll be sharing takeaways from a few different angles.
More than just one post…
Firstly, this post is about some personal observations from my 5 days of visiting Sydney CBD’s best coworking spaces, vendors, and supporters.
Tomorrow (August 18th), Syncaroo customers will get early access to my recorded keynote discussion hosted by the awesome coworking leaders and Flexible Workspace Australia (FWA) co-chairs, Jessie Glew and Andrew Rothstadt.
🦘 Syncaroo customers keep an eye on your email or ping your favorite rep.
On Wednesday (August 19th), This Week In Coworking will publish a discussion I had with Eyal Lasker about our shared observations as supporters of flex spaces, since we both flew over from NYC (in opposite directions) for the FWA conference.
🔔 Subscribe to TWIC’s Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube channels.
Then, on Thursday (August 20th), my official TWIC email newsletter will go out.
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And then on Friday (August 21st), the recording of the “In Discussion With…” podcast will be pushed out via the TWIC podcast feed.
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So, a week of unpacking some of what I learned, saw, and shared over my week in Australia.
Sounds like a plan?
Now, first thoughts…
Sydney is a beautiful place, filled with some very inspiring people, who do things… a little differently.
Not in an odd way (except that one guy, you know who you are), but just in a way that reminds us that every market is very, very different… even if we all have the same ‘things’.
Two quick examples:
1. UberX at the airport is a queue-based system that uses a code you show to the next driver available when you get through the winding queue (higher-fare rides have a separate pickup area). This may not be Sydney-specific, but it isn’t something I’d seen from Uber at other very congested venues. Given SYD’s curfew system and the resulting grouped timing of inbound flights, it is a good solution for handling large surges in demand on a known schedule.
And 2. I’ve been to a lot of cities with some form of micromobility pilot, but seeing 5-6 different brands (with, I believe, 3 main market leaders) move around 3.2M quarterly trips gives a glimpse of the level of competition in this one city market.
But nothing prepared me for the level of competition I found in the Sydney coffee scene.
On the coffee culture…
The coffee is delicious. And folks have very strong opinions about which cafe makes the best lattes or piccolos (aka cortados) and sweet or salty snacks.
But there’s SO. MUCH. CHOICE.
According to what I could find, Greater Sydney has 1,710 coffee shops or cafes, but what makes that number fascinating is that 78% of these spots are independents, with only 368ish being part of larger local or national chains.
Now, in the CBD, which is as far as I managed to explore (this time), most of these are commuter-focused espresso bars. But they are EVERYWHERE, even surrounding coworking spaces that also offer barista-served coffee on their own floors, in what I can only describe as beautifully designed lobbies and lounges.
Quick side note here: I did notice a few of these cafes offering coffee subscriptions tiered by how many coffees you’d like per week or month. This isn’t new, but an interesting juxtaposition to how coworking is marketed or positioned against x cups of coffee in many markets.
In Sydney, great coffee appears to be a deal-breaker for commutes, streets, buildings, and coworking spaces.
This brings me to another observation about coworking spaces in Sydney’s CBD… their lobbies and mezzanines.
On F&B activations…
Apart from the fact that there’s almost never a security desk as you walk into the skyscrapers, what caught my attention was how the ground and mezzanine levels are very often filled with a variety of F&B options for folks making the commute in.
Having worked from many coworking spaces where the closest place to grab a quick lunch was the corner shop-slash-deli 3-4 blocks away, I find this near-citywide approach to activating these oft-underutilized spaces brilliant.
What was also interesting was to see how many easily accessible meeting spaces there were in the lobbies of many buildings. While many of them were bookable via some form of app, most were used without the screens indicating they were booked.
Which obviously brings me to the coworking spaces themselves.
On the spaces…
Almost* every Sydney coworking space I visited oozed with three things:
- Very friendly teams.
- Expertly deployed designs for their target ICP.
- Little touches that showed each team worked as part of the community, not just in service of it.
*I did visit a space that was completely unstaffed, by design. And that was fascinating in itself.
Now, a lot of my conversations were with leaders about the critical parts of their businesses that Syncaroo could support, so I didn’t grab many photos from all the spaces I visited.
But here are a few I managed to snap in between the meetings, keynotes, and tech geekery.
On the conference itself…
So the Wednesday of the conference was amazing. Around 130 great attendees came ready to share with and learn from each other.
We started the day with an exec-only breakfast session where John Preece had me run through the attendees’ questions across categories such as macro shifts, rebuilding the digital architecture of coworking businesses, operational and market perspectives, and the clash between hospitality and the pursuit of efficiency.
After that geekery, we moved up to the conference venue, where we joined the rest of the attendees for a day of data, insights, discussions, and learnings.
To protect the majority of the conversations, only one session was recorded for redistribution: the keynote discussion, which will be made available to Syncaroo clients and via This Week In Coworking’s media feeds.
PS. Topics that came up in both my sessions and subsequent discussions were: the importance of Context and Context Debt and forward-deployed engineers within coworking businesses.
A full day of sessions and a whole bunch of selfies later, and I definitely came away with a whole raft of learnings about the Aussie and APAC markets from every single leader I got to chat with.
On what’s next…
The Australian, New Zealand, and “nearby” markets have been innovating, growing, and adapting for nearly 12 years now. I’ll be watching closely and supporting where I can as operators shift from what got them here to what will get them there.
Thank you to everyone who shared their time, insights, pain points, challenges, tech frustrations, excitement, coffees, breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and hospitality with me during the trip.
(And before anyone asks, I did manage to sneak a quick bite, drink, and selfie at the Opera House during all the coworking shenanigans. Also tried marmite and Tim Tams, and a crocodile burger, but you didn’t really come here for the touristy stuff, did you?)
I highly doubt it’s the last you’ll see of me on this continent; there’s still so much more to see and learn.
PS, in the meantime, keep an eye on this week’s schedule, and follow along as we pull together Season Two of Unpacking APAC: Australia.
Till next time!