

WeWork – It’s Not About Office Space - kaelswanson
http://svsg.co/wework-its-not-about-office-space/

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_delirium
This post fits WeWork into two commonly discussed trends—greater urbanization
and a shift towards freelancing. One problem is that evidence for these trends
being real is weak, even though many thinkpieces take them as starting points.
That doesn't necessarily spell trouble for WeWork, but I think if it succeeds
it will be for reasons other than riding nationwide, macroeconomic trends.

On urbanization: the proportion of Americans living in urban vs. suburban vs.
rural areas is not really significantly changing. NYC is growing, and so is
suburban Dallas. Even among millennials the trend is weak to nonexistent. [1]

On freelancing: Despite much discussion of the "1099 economy", the data
doesn't show, at least for now, any shift towards freelancing. The proportion
of Americans working full-time jobs for a single employer is actually on an
upwards trend at the moment, as hiring has picked up following the economic
recovery [2].

[1] [http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/think-millennials-
prefer-...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/think-millennials-prefer-the-
city-think-again/)

[2]
[https://www.economy.com/dismal/analysis/datapoints/255258/We...](https://www.economy.com/dismal/analysis/datapoints/255258/We-
Are-Not-a-Nation-of-Freelancers/)

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cfield
My sense is that, by definition, evidence of ways the future will be different
than the present is always weak, particularly if the evidence you're looking
at is data.

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tibbon
I worked in a WeWork for about a year. Their biggest gap, which they are
nowhere near overcoming, is culture.

The culture at WeWork is incredibly artificial and made everyone there feel
disconnected and unhappy. A huge focus on sports and drinking events. Art
everywhere, but not that reflected the values of the people there; but rather
art that was speaking _at_ the people there.

Management was constantly changing out, and it was impossible to have a
relationship with the people in charge and they often seemed not listen to the
concerns and needs of the people renting space there. I felt _zero_ connection
to people at other companies there.

There was always this weird vibe from them trying to do a political song-and-
dance too, like having the mayor come by for press events, and way too many
suits running around acting like they were important.

This is in stark contrast to coworking at small, truly community driven places
like betahouse (Central Square in Cambridge, now defunct due to difficulty to
find new real-estate), which fostered deep and long lasting connections
between its members. Even 5 years after we disbanded, we still all keep in
frequent touch and rely on the connections we made there.

I'd make the comparison/analogy of culture-rich dormitories at places like
MIT, and mega-corporate hotel-like dorms at Boston University (or just a
hotel). WeWork is the soulless corporate hotel where you'll never get to know
anyone.

Maybe I'm just too punk for WeWork. There's no way to have a soul/culture in a
place like that. I shudder to think about living in a place run by them.

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poslathian
Betahouse sounds familiar but I don't think I ever visited. Cambridge is home
to a number of culture driven coworking spaces, which are excellent. Pirate
ship is a good example of a tight nit group. Perhaps the biggest is Industry
Lab, which I would best describe as a 20k sqft hybrid between the media lab
and the east campus dorm.

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tibbon
Right, and things like the media lab and EC have culture. WeWork doesn't even
know the meaning of that word.

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fiatpandas
Some US corporations already supply housing, food, and of course jobs for
their workers. It will be interesting to see how much WeWork abstracts these
concepts into life-as-a-service, as publicly available resources in urban
living are further squeezed.

Day care, schools, primary care clinics, semi-private green spaces. We_____

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impostervt
Google Cached link:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://svsg.co/wework-
its-not-about-office-space/)

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spl7387
Thanks! View with "text-only".

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melindajb
Fascinating take on this valuation. Love when people look past the knee jerk
headlines and offer a different approach. I wonder how he came up with that
insight?

