There‘s another few positive effects from WeWork that has been overlooked so far: It‘s a one-stop shop for startups that expand internationally. When my compan

There‘s another few positive effects from WeWork that has been overlooked so far: It‘s a one-stop shop for startups that expand internationally. When my company started building an office overseas, they looked first at a new development built by a pension fund. Long story short our company would have had to have a facilities person locally for months on end to coordinate this. Lots of things lost in translation - the construction and real-estate industry have many local norms and cultures. For example, the US facilities people assumed to have many flexibilities how the office would be built out while the local landlord had more of a “take it as it us or go away” attitude - which is how real-estate deals are done in this city. Negotiations dragged on for months. Project got delayed. It was a nightmare, we didn’t know where people would be working as our team was growing. Meanwhile I figured WeWork would open their first offices in the city. I connected them to facilities. Turns out we already rent a space in NYC - so connect them to the rep, moved in within two months. Problem solved, and the product we get (AC everywhere, office design) is a few notches better than what we would have gotten elsewhere. WeWork also said once the office size gets stable they could build one out for us - with our brand and separate entrance. So, I see it more as an outsourcing shop for facilities departments, whose moat is the experience of doing this at scale - internationally and for many customers. If they get their act together this could be just as viable of a strategy as it was for KPMG, Deloitte et al. in accounting.