It worked for a remarkably long time, WeWork was founded all the way back in 2010. Back then coworking was somewhat new (the wikipedia article called it "an emerging trend" in the first revision in 2007). And WeWork did a lot to popularize it.
In hindsight it seems obvious that the company was way over-valued, there aren't many efficiencies of scale or entry barriers; anyone with enough money to furnish an office and commit to a five-year lease can open a coworking space. Lots of people said so at the time too. I wonder if they would have been more successful if they hadn't gone the tech-VC route and become a "boring" real-estate business.
what was baffling about wework's valuation is that it wasn't anything new at all: the product and business model already existed and was well understood, and well understood to not be worth anywhere near that much. The only new thing was the founder managed to convince a bunch of VCs that it was a tech company somehow.
