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Not if you regularly have clients come around for meetings or colleagues for a chat. WeWork provides a good enough atmosphere to work and socialise with work re
by eyko 9y ago
Not if you regularly have clients come around for meetings or colleagues for a chat. WeWork provides a good enough atmosphere to work and socialise with work related people (it's not just the desk you're paying for).
- lloyd-christmas 9y agoHalf my business comes from other companies in the wework network. I also regularly contract out work to people in the network.
- madaxe_again 9y agoSo you're saying you've built a business 50% dependent on someone else's business. That's fragile.
- lloyd-christmas 9y agoThat's some piss poor logic. Half my current business comes from a network I belong to. That doesn't mean that it's DEPENDENT on that network. If I go to the same restaurant everyday but that restaurant goes out of business, do I starve? I just go to the place next door.
- linkregister 9y agoYou think the entire B2B business model is fragile? Only consumer-facing companies are resilient enough for you?
- BillinghamJ 9y agoRelying on a single client/company for 50% of your revenue puts you in an extremely fragile position. Very common reason for failure in B2B companies - relying on a single big fish which will make or break the company.
- lloyd-christmas 9y agoBut that isn't what I said. I said I get 50% of my clients from the network, not that I need the network to get 50% of my clients. They are drastically different things. It's client acquisition cost. Why pay to go apple picking when I have an orchard in my back yard?
- madaxe_again 9y agoNo, it's the "I feel special" you're paying for. Meetings, you can go to the client, you can rent a meeting space by the hour. Hell, I've made a multi million pound deal in a train station waiting room. Colleagues, one can communicate without meatspace. Socialising - that's not work. That's for the pub.
- yequalsx 9y agoPerhaps you are assuming your particular experience is normative. I think it is not. To attribute the demand to nothing more than “I feel special” needs more justification than what you've provided.
- gumby 9y agoI have started several companies from my home (for the first two, "home" was an apartment) and had no problem with employees working from the "office" nor with customer meetings (customers included Sun, NASA, Cisco). These have all been in Palo Alto, so perhaps its acceptability is location-specific. Each year I have some MBA students from Switzerland visit and last year it was in my home -- apparently some of them were weirded out by that. (By this year's visit we'd grown and so they came to a boring office).
- eyko 9y agoIf you pay someone to keep your home clean and tidy, have ample space, free beer, good coffee, and very comfortable furniture, then by all means. Not everyone has that luxury! WeWork (and similar co-working spaces) is a workspace where all the little details are taken care of for you. The location is also important - I don't live that close to a main train station or hotels so having a relatively centric workspace is handy for visitors. They also create an atmosphere that I wouldn't be able to create at home, with nice break out areas. The only thing I miss is not having a proper kitchen to myself, like I do when I work from home. Oh and yes, I do work from home, sometimes the entire week.