4 ms·

Real estate is a data play: figuring out which locations are going to be valuable. McDonalds famously does tons of research on locations, so much so that "be mc

by likpok 7y ago

Real estate is a data play: figuring out which locations are going to be valuable. McDonalds famously does tons of research on locations, so much so that "be mcdonalds-adjacent" is an acceptable strategy. I'm not entirely sure what a data science engineer does, but somewhere between "making it easier for the DS team to find what they need to find" and "figuring out where we should buy/lease next".

bduerst 7y ago
Precisely - Real estate boils down to financial operations on assets that have a number of factors and signals that go into predicting market prices. This also includes demand for commercial space.
tgtweak 7y ago
From what I heard they were doing some notable data engineering - leveraging 4square data to decide where to put locations based on optimisation algorithms, profiling potential lessees based on known good ones, optimizing workspace layout based on camera and keyfob data, lease price elasticity tests... Lots of interesting domains. Sadly I'm sure this was/is one of the first departments to get downsided post backdown.
- btown 7y ago
  Data science is one of the few areas where WeWork may achieve an economy of scale - your local coworking operator won't be able to have that in house, and their ops system SaaS provider probably doesn't have the margins to invest heavily in it. If they're this messy at it though, that's not a good sign...
  - ahi 7y ago
    Except the local operator will have a more intimate understanding of area dynamics than data science can provide.
notfromhere 7y ago
Burger King's strategy for the longest time used to be 'just build across the street from McDonald's'
- bengale 7y ago
  Sounds smart, let maccers do the research.
ipqk 7y ago
There's been a meme for decades that McDonalds is really a real estate company that sells burgers on the side.
- dreamcompiler 7y ago
  Ray Kroc actually said this. It's not just a meme; it's canon.

by likpok 7y ago

bduerst 7y ago

Precisely - Real estate boils down to financial operations on assets that have a number of factors and signals that go into predicting market prices. This also includes demand for commercial space.

tgtweak 7y ago

From what I heard they were doing some notable data engineering - leveraging 4square data to decide where to put locations based on optimisation algorithms, profiling potential lessees based on known good ones, optimizing workspace layout based on camera and keyfob data, lease price elasticity tests... Lots of interesting domains. Sadly I'm sure this was/is one of the first departments to get downsided post backdown.

btown 7y ago
Data science is one of the few areas where WeWork may achieve an economy of scale - your local coworking operator won't be able to have that in house, and their ops system SaaS provider probably doesn't have the margins to invest heavily in it. If they're this messy at it though, that's not a good sign...
- ahi 7y ago
  Except the local operator will have a more intimate understanding of area dynamics than data science can provide.

notfromhere 7y ago

Burger King's strategy for the longest time used to be 'just build across the street from McDonald's'

bengale 7y ago
Sounds smart, let maccers do the research.

ipqk 7y ago

There's been a meme for decades that McDonalds is really a real estate company that sells burgers on the side.

dreamcompiler 7y ago
Ray Kroc actually said this. It's not just a meme; it's canon.