[noahmbarr]

IMHO, the real innovation here is 3 fold:

  - A fresh presentation on small suite / desk rental + some trendy common area space (vs legacy players like Regus which had gotten very tired) 
  - Having space that's largely built out. Companies can spend $50 - $100+/ft getting space ready for their use
  - Bridging the mismatched term expectation between landlords (desiring 5-10 year terms) and smaller tenants (desiring 0-3 year terms).

[NegativeLatency]

It’s very hard to read code formatted blocks on mobile.

[antcas]

It's hard to read on desktop too. The UI requires me to horizontally scroll in order to read the comment. Feels broken.

[luckydata]

It's very hard on a desktop too.

[mlthoughts2018]

These all seem like extremely low-hanging fruit for a building management company to do itself.

What frictions do you think gives WeWork essentially what you describe as a lease arbitrage opportunity?

[noahmbarr]

Short term, direct leases scare thee crap out of institutional landlords. It impacts the surety of the building's income stream, which is reflected in the assets' "cap rate" and therefore valuation.

Also, due to protracted lease negotiations and brokerage model (both tenant and landlord brokers get paid based on the total lease payments), there isn't motivation for shorter term leases. Just ask anyone who has a small lease requirement that is in a stable, non-VC backed company -- no tenant rep broker wants to take this work on because there is no money in that transaction, there's not that much less work than required vs a larger lease requirement, and no promise of a bigger deal with that company down the road in case they become the next Dropbox....

So 3 out of the 4 involved parties are not motivated to shorten lease term. The only one who wants shorter leases are the tenant.

[DenisM]

So what's to stop a local real-estate investor, or twenty investors, from leasing ten office buildings in downtown Seattle long term and then subletting them short term?

Where is the WeWork moat? Buildout? Reception clerk? Meeting room reservation software? Demand forecast?

At some point the VCs will stop pouring money into it, WeWork will have to charge the full price, and then any old group of people with money can build a local WeWork clone. And unlike WeWork they won't be saddled with expectations of paying a return on the multi-billion investment spent on subsidies.

[jmalicki]

One useful thing about WeWork is I can drop into any location in the world several times a month and I'm already set up, I just point and click, and I'm ready to go.

Croissant is an interesting aggregator that does this across smaller coworking spaces, but does require you spend some time getting set up each time you use a new space.

[fyfy18]

I can do the same at Starbucks :-)

[jmalicki]

Then why bother getting a coworking space at all? Yet many do... The experience is night-and-day different... sure WeWork is more expensive than Starbucks (it costs about 5 Starbucks drinks a day), but the productivity difference is worth it.

[DenisM]

Or a library.

That aside, percentage of WeWork tenants that ha e to travel is what? 2%?

[xapata]

If it's so easy, why did no one do it before? Other than Regus, who didn't do it so well.