I still remember the day I walked into the ADGM coworking space for the first time, suitcase in one hand and a half-finished pitch deck in the other. It was 2023, and my fintech startup had exactly three employees (including me). I had to choose between a sleek private office with frosted glass and the buzzing energy of a hot desk right in the middle of the floor.

Private Offices vs Hot Desks in ADGM – Which One Suits Your Business

I chose the hot desk. Big mistake—at least for the first month.

Every morning I’d stake my claim at 7:30 a.m., headphones on, trying to look like I belonged among the crypto traders and hedge-fund refugees. The energy was electric. I overheard a conversation about tokenising real estate that literally became the seed of our Series A. But by week three, I was exhausted. Client calls got interrupted by someone’s victory dance after closing a deal. Confidential documents lived in fear of the guy next to me, who loved spicy shawarma for lunch.

One rainy Tuesday, I cracked. I marched to the community manager, Maya, and begged for a private office. Two days later, I moved into a corner suite on the 18th floor overlooking the Emirates Towers. The silence felt almost criminal after weeks of chaos.

That’s when everything changed.

With a door I could actually close, my co-founder and I finally built the risk engine we’d been procrastinating on for months. No more “shushing” investors on Zoom. No more packing my monitor every night like a nomad. We hired our first compliance officer, who needed a secure location to store actual physical files (yes, some regulators still prefer paper).

Six months later, we outgrew the private office and took a custom 8-desk suite. But here’s the funny part: we still kept one hot desk membership. Every Friday, the whole team rotates onto the hot-desk floor. We call it “field research.” Some of our best partnerships started because our junior developer sat next to a random lawyer who turned out to be from the regulator we were terrified of.

So which one suits your business?

If you’re a solo founder still validating an idea, chasing serendipity, and keeping overhead low—grab a hot desk. You’ll meet mentors, co-founders, and even your first customers over coffee at the pantry.

If you’re handling sensitive data, taking regulated client calls, or you simply want to stop apologising for breathing too loudly—get the private office. Your sanity and your NDA will thank you.

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Most of us end up doing both at different stages. ADGM’s beauty is that you’re never locked in. You can start hot, go private when the lawyers arrive, then scale into your own floor when the funding hits. I’ve watched it happen a hundred times.

The space didn’t just give me a desk. It let me grow at my own pace without ever having to move out and print new business cards. And honestly? That’s the best deal in Abu Dhabi.