The startup graveyard is full of good ideas undone by bad decisions. Most founders obsess over product, funding and hiring. But far too many overlook one of the biggest liabilities on their balance sheet: real estate.
Source: Supplied. Workshop17 in Ballito.
Let’s be blunt. Traditional office leases are a serious risk for early-stage companies. Locking into multi-year contracts before finding product-market fit can leave startups exposed to fixed costs they can’t easily adjust when things shift.
The result? Burn rates spike, runways shrink, and founders are forced to make tough trade-offs. Cut headcount or carry underused space. Either way, it’s pressure no young company needs.
Commercial real estate was built for the industrial age, not the entrepreneurial era. Lease terms that span five or 10 years might work for banks or law firms, but they’re poison for young businesses still figuring out who they are and where they’re going. Growth isn’t linear, and neither should space usage be. It's about balancing continuity and flexibility.
The pandemic exposed the absurdity of this model. Offices sat empty while companies bled cash to keep them. Even now, many founders are repeating the same mistakes, lured by shiny buildings and the illusion of legitimacy that comes with a fixed address. They forget the golden rule of early-stage business: cash is oxygen. Don’t waste it on things that don’t move the needle. That doesn’t mean that offices aren’t important, they are, but in a different way.
What’s needed is a complete rethink.
Space should behave more like cloud computing: elastic, scalable and on-demand. Need a boardroom in Cape Town for three hours? Done. A few hot desks in Sandton for your product sprint next week? Sorted. But it’s not just about drop-in convenience. Growing teams also need secure, fully serviced environments that can flex with their hybrid schedules. Whether it’s 100 people rotating through a space designed for 50, or a company expanding into a new market without the burden of underused square metres, the goal is the same—fit-for-purpose space that adjusts as your business evolves.
Flexible workspace gives founders freedom. Freedom to grow fast without overheads dragging you down. Freedom to experiment without locking yourself into fixed infrastructure. Freedom to fail, pivot and start again without a landlord breathing down your neck.
It’s also, in fact mainly, about people. Office space isn’t just a cost centre. It’s a signal. It tells your team what you value. Your team wants a great place to work, where they feel alive, valued, and feel inspired. Are you investing in flexibility, trust and autonomy? Or are you trying to recreate a 1990s corporate environment in the hope that it’ll impress investors? Spoiler: it won’t.
Flexibility fuels growth
Smart founders are already rewriting the rules. They’re ditching rigid leases in favour of flexible workspaces that scale with them. They’re mixing remote work with physical space in a way that makes sense for how people actually work now. Not how they worked 10 years ago. And they’re being brutally honest about what office space is for.
Sometimes, it’s about deep focus. Sometimes, it’s about collaboration. Sometimes, it’s just about having somewhere to go that isn’t your kitchen table. But it’s never about permanence. The old model assumed that a company would grow in one direction, in one city, at one pace. That assumption no longer holds. Neither should the lease.
At Workshop17, we’ve designed our spaces to reflect this reality. We’re not in the business of renting out square metres. We’re in the business of helping companies work smarter. That means modular solutions, not monolithic ones. Shared infrastructure not duplicated waste. And community. Not in the gimmicky, beanbag sense, but in the real sense of proximity to other people building hard things.
We’ve seen what happens when space becomes a strategic asset, not a sunk cost. Startups can grow faster because they’re not weighed down by liabilities. Teams can focus better because the space fits the work. Founders can sleep better because their burn rate isn’t bloated by empty desks.
This isn’t a fringe idea. It’s the future of work. And the startups that survive the next decade will be the ones that treat space as a variable input, not a fixed expense. They’ll build distributed teams. They’ll switch cities as opportunities shift. They’ll scale space up or down based on real need, not hopeful projections.
Of course, there’ll still be founders who sign a five-year lease and fit out an office with kombucha taps and ping-pong tables. Some of them might even raise another round before the cash runs out. But most won’t. Because a startup is not a sure thing. It’s a bet. And smart founders place that bet carefully.
So, before you commit to a space, ask yourself: is this helping my business move faster? Or is it just making me feel more like a “real” company? Because real companies don’t win because they look the part. They win because they’re lean, fast and focused.
The smartest companies don’t let real estate dictate their pace. They use space like they use capital. Precisely, with clear purpose and measurable return. And when they need a place to work, meet or build, they choose partners who understand that flexibility isn’t just convenient. It’s a strategy for long-term resilience and scale.
It’s time to stop thinking of office space as a destination. It’s a tool. Use it wisely.
