Ha, cute, but no, very different. Wework is a tenant, and does significant buildouts. This would be "you can use the space for a few days or weeks".
I've seen companies provide some moveable furniture in a space like this - some desks, some extension cords - but it has to be up to the temporary user to configure and put things away when they're done.
Came here to say the same thing... A "building-sized financial product that incentivises extend and pretend" is fertile ground for an organised player like wework to "lease and sublet, except on a subscription basis".
viz. wework could apply the "single-use low-priced shampoo sachet" model [0] to SaaS-style rent-seeking of long-lived infrastructure. Infra. that is guaranteed to be always under-utilised... even in boom markets, because nothing functions at 100% capacity.
Adobe, as another example of (software) infrastructure --- i.e. traditionally, lifetime licence and ownership desktop software --- figured out their own "shampoo sachet" pricing. viz. how to make and ship desktop software product but kill-switch them with metered SaaS subscriptions.
The monthly price is just high enough to make gobs of cash for Adobe, while causing the typically-feast-and-famine freelancer to take the capitalist shellacking because it's just convenient enough. They can align software spends with active projects, and avoid the anxiety of cracked software doing nefarious things to their computers and data.
But over a long enough time, they pay Adobe a (presumably) huge premium over up-front priced software. And they stay locked into a planned obsolescence cycle controlled by Adobe... "The new version of your beloved editing software will only work with the latest Windoze which means hardware upgrade and oh, you have to do it because well we are soon kill-switching the current version you are dependent on."
Wework like operators can do exactly similar shenanigans with access to commercial infrastructure. Crowd out competition by aggressive long-term leasing on their buy-side, and on their sell-side build daily-subscription-dependency (buying ease, google-ish facilities which feeds into cult-and-status-signalling games), and convert a percentage of that into routine-subscription-dependency. Meanwhile also run rent-seeking games inside the main rent-seeking game... now you have a captive wallets who will buy the add-ons and extras because it's easier than walking two blocks for some cheaper and better alternative (e.g. food, coffee, lovely meeting space etc.).
edit: add reference for "daily sachet pricing".
[0] Buying less, more often: An evaluation of sachet marketing strategy in an emerging market
Ha, cute, but no, very different. Wework is a tenant, and does significant buildouts. This would be "you can use the space for a few days or weeks".
I've seen companies provide some moveable furniture in a space like this - some desks, some extension cords - but it has to be up to the temporary user to configure and put things away when they're done.
Gosh... someone finally explained the WeWork business model that is more reasonable than "walk barefoot and expect money to rain from the sky".
Came here to say the same thing... A "building-sized financial product that incentivises extend and pretend" is fertile ground for an organised player like wework to "lease and sublet, except on a subscription basis".
viz. wework could apply the "single-use low-priced shampoo sachet" model [0] to SaaS-style rent-seeking of long-lived infrastructure. Infra. that is guaranteed to be always under-utilised... even in boom markets, because nothing functions at 100% capacity.
Adobe, as another example of (software) infrastructure --- i.e. traditionally, lifetime licence and ownership desktop software --- figured out their own "shampoo sachet" pricing. viz. how to make and ship desktop software product but kill-switch them with metered SaaS subscriptions.
The monthly price is just high enough to make gobs of cash for Adobe, while causing the typically-feast-and-famine freelancer to take the capitalist shellacking because it's just convenient enough. They can align software spends with active projects, and avoid the anxiety of cracked software doing nefarious things to their computers and data.
But over a long enough time, they pay Adobe a (presumably) huge premium over up-front priced software. And they stay locked into a planned obsolescence cycle controlled by Adobe... "The new version of your beloved editing software will only work with the latest Windoze which means hardware upgrade and oh, you have to do it because well we are soon kill-switching the current version you are dependent on."
Wework like operators can do exactly similar shenanigans with access to commercial infrastructure. Crowd out competition by aggressive long-term leasing on their buy-side, and on their sell-side build daily-subscription-dependency (buying ease, google-ish facilities which feeds into cult-and-status-signalling games), and convert a percentage of that into routine-subscription-dependency. Meanwhile also run rent-seeking games inside the main rent-seeking game... now you have a captive wallets who will buy the add-ons and extras because it's easier than walking two blocks for some cheaper and better alternative (e.g. food, coffee, lovely meeting space etc.).
edit: add reference for "daily sachet pricing".
[0] Buying less, more often: An evaluation of sachet marketing strategy in an emerging market
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233676293_Buying_le...