Yeah I think you're right, my analogy is bunk. I'll leave it up for context.
For the benefit of others, here's the founder of WeWork himself explaining WeWork:
WeWork takes out a cut-rate lease on a floor or two of
an office building, chops it up into smaller parcels and
then charges monthly memberships to startups and small
companies that want to work cheek-by-jowl with each other.
Also, wow, you work in a WeWork office? I'm surprised. Surprised because you seem like a smart guy who'd have made a really great company that could afford to get the swankiest office available. Or maybe, you have a company that's doing well but you just choose not to spend big money on office space?
Sorry for being intrusive, I'm really just surprised is all! I was visiting some startups in Chicago not too long ago and I saw many spending a lot of money on office space -- some that I felt probably should not have been.
1. We had office space in Oak Park, blocks from where we live, for a cheap 1-year lease, but we rarely used it; we might as well just work from home. But working from home hurt our productivity and quality of life.
2. The WW space we're in is in one of the best and most accessible locations in Chicago --- west loop --- this is a strategic thing with WW: they can buy space in bulk and for long-term commits and thus get reasonable prices in places where we can't.
3. Crucially: WW offers m-t-m leases. The 1-year lease for OP space wasn't a great use of our funds, and a 1-month lease de-risks it for us.
4. There are only two of us actually in Chicago. Matasano would never have used WW space; we had a series of offices in The Monadnock Building in south loop.
5. We have a private office in the building.
6. Office space in Chicago is extremely cheap. The WW space is nicer than any SFBA office space I've been in, includes utilities and Internet, and is price-competitive with the crappy space we leased in Oak Park.
Long story short: WW is much swanker than anything we could rent at the same price. That could change, especially if the space fills up.
The downside of WW is that it's incredibly douchey (ours seems to have a Kanye West theme). I can get over than in exchange for comfortable couches and fast Internet.
So WW comes and buys up space in bulk... and manages that space and gets a nice profit.
And they do indeed seem to be making a nice bit of profit.
Don't you think though that real estate moguls are seeing this and getting tempted? I think pretty soon they will learn and decide to "push out this middleman" and take on some of the responsibilities that WW is doing. Or maybe not, because most real estate moguls are too oldschool and will fail to successfully do what WW is doing.
Serviced offices have long been a thing. I think WW's big advantage is that they're part of the same culture as their clients, so understand what they want much better than your typical office manager.
For the benefit of others, here's the founder of WeWork himself explaining WeWork:
Also, wow, you work in a WeWork office? I'm surprised. Surprised because you seem like a smart guy who'd have made a really great company that could afford to get the swankiest office available. Or maybe, you have a company that's doing well but you just choose not to spend big money on office space?Sorry for being intrusive, I'm really just surprised is all! I was visiting some startups in Chicago not too long ago and I saw many spending a lot of money on office space -- some that I felt probably should not have been.