Beyond WeWork
WeWork, the once-mighty behemoth that put the concept of co-working on the map for millions around the world, has seen better days. Since failing to attract enough investor interest, partly due to questions about their leadership and business model, they’ve withdrawn their IPO filing and currently lie in a state of purgatory, sparking all sorts of questions as to what’s coming next. In any case, they’ll still probably be considered pioneers of the co-working movement, but it’s clear there’s a space for a new player to build on the foundations they have constructed — without biting off more than they can chew.
For today’s rapidly growing class of freelancers and remote workers, a monthly desk rental at a WeWork makes much more financial sense than a traditional multi-year lease on a whole office. However, the whole model has the potential to be improved, taking into account the inherent costs to the landlord of running a building, as well as increasing the flexibility for the consumer. To achieve this, it would have to work on a smaller scale, but provide a bigger volume of individual spaces than its predecessor.
On the residential side, Airbnb provides us with a great example of how this could work. It’s simple — their platform enables any landlord to list a property and rent it for a flexible period of time, and provides an interface for tenants to filter through and find what suits them best. User reviews enable landlords to make sure their tenants are safe (and vice-versa), while tenants are free from inflexible short-term leases and monthly membership or the costly alternative — overpriced hotels.
According to Savills, office take-up in London is on the decline from last year. While fears of Brexit and talk of market cycles could be contributing factors, it’s equally important to consider the ever-increasing normality of working remotely. Either way, this report indicates that there’s thousands of square metres of office space across the city, creating dust, not dollars.
It therefore seems logical to imagine that if Airbnb could enable residential landlords to benefit from surplus space, a new company could easily apply the same approach to the commercial sector too, making it even more flexible to boot. But while a few early players are already showing their heads, they haven’t nailed it yet. Breather’s approach doesn’t allow landlords to list space as their own, while Booqed, a Singapore-based solution, doesn’t yet operate outside of Asia — though their existence definitely sets the precedent for a homegrown version in London.
For this platform to succeed, the platform should focus on the landlords’ needs, rather than the tenants’. The tenant side is simpler — it’s just about solving access to supply, as before people can feel assured that there will always be a space to rent, the number of listings will need to reach a critical mass. Therefore to reach that mass, the listing process needs to be as easy as possible for the landlord to encourage them to sign up.
There are already many software platforms on the market, some stronger than others, that help with workspace management, including condeco.com, facilitiesbooking.com and optizapp.com, who focus predominantly on space management. Their software helps Corporates manage their space, simplifying anything from internal meeting room and desk bookings to flagging network issues. These features can easily be used as part of the solution and integrated into the platform, allowing them to be used by the public, instead of just the employees and visitors of the companies who have adopted the technology.
Some may say that the road to this platform is peppered with obstacles, from problems with privacy to landlords’ legal concerns about potential sublets. Airbnb’s approach has shown that implementing strategies such as user verification and the ability to list clearly defined ‘house rules’ can make the process sustainable and smooth for both parties however, not only should the listing process be seamless, it should also instil confidence into the landlord that using the platform won’t cause any legal issues.
WeWork’s journey has been a troubled one, but one that’s nevertheless opened up a whole world of debate around how urban space should be managed and accessed in the 21st century. Their story is one of massive liabilities — leasing and operating giant buildings in major cities and providing free coffee and snacks to tenants is indeed an incredibly expensive practice.
The solution proposed here avoids this problem altogether, as it’s just a platform that puts two and two together. Landlords already own excess or under-utilised space. Even with today’s flexible working arrangements, people still want to have a quiet meeting for an hour without paying hundreds of pounds a month for quirky furniture and some neon signs. It’s not to say that WeWork’s curated model is completely irrelevant, but to emphasise that for many individuals in today’s workforce, flexibility and affordability are more important.
Give the people what they want — an hour in a meeting room, booked on the spot for a tenner, a day at a desk for the price of a tube journey, and who knows what sort of amazing projects could come out of it. The framework is there, it’s simply a question of making it happen.
