Yeah. At one point the company had over 700k paying members, almost half of which were from companies with over 500 employees. At the peak the company was the largest holder of Manhattan commercial office space.
The part the "documentaries" left out is that there was actually a really good business at the core. Giving companies of any size the ability to hire in any market globally and giving their employees the flexibility to live almost anywhere, while maintaining the amenities that tech workers have come to expect. We just had a chain of completely incompetent leaders who refused to see the company for what it was.
Adam used the company to launch his own montessori school for his children because that was more exciting and "visionary" than building a managed service provider model and leasing laptops to member companies and providing unified helpdesk/IT at every location (which would have absolutely printed money). He bought a literal glass factory (to make cool windows) instead of leveraging our network of small business owners to have almost zero customer acquisition cost for high margin businesses like managed book keeping or HR/payroll.
> The part the "documentaries" left out is that there was actually a really good business at the core.
This is a good point. Not enough time is spent on what WeWork could have been if it had been managed very differently by a completely different set of people
mike_d|2 years ago
The part the "documentaries" left out is that there was actually a really good business at the core. Giving companies of any size the ability to hire in any market globally and giving their employees the flexibility to live almost anywhere, while maintaining the amenities that tech workers have come to expect. We just had a chain of completely incompetent leaders who refused to see the company for what it was.
Adam used the company to launch his own montessori school for his children because that was more exciting and "visionary" than building a managed service provider model and leasing laptops to member companies and providing unified helpdesk/IT at every location (which would have absolutely printed money). He bought a literal glass factory (to make cool windows) instead of leveraging our network of small business owners to have almost zero customer acquisition cost for high margin businesses like managed book keeping or HR/payroll.
jrflowers|2 years ago
This is a good point. Not enough time is spent on what WeWork could have been if it had been managed very differently by a completely different set of people
aidenscott2016|2 years ago
Such as what? Beer, and coffee table books?
verve_rat|2 years ago
That is different than saying that WeWork was successful.
david_shi|2 years ago
cmcaleer|2 years ago