Martijn Roordink is at pains to stress that he is not “cool”. Neither, the 48-year-old Dutchman emphasises, is Spaces, the fast-growing office company he set up a decade ago in Amsterdam.

It is a strange declaration, as Roordink well knows that co-working spaces have benefited from being seen as fashionable. His reluctance to be seen as “hip and trendy”, as he put it, may have come from observing rival co-working companies that face increasingly sceptical investors. Japan's SoftBank Group recently downsized its planned investment in WeWork, the US giant in this industry, from $16bn to $2bn.