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Analysis: A Business Evaluation of WeWork
Kaan Over
Department of International Business, Marconi University
MBA660: International Business Administration Capstone
Professor Chee Piong
February 2, 2021
Proposal
WeWork is a company that provides shared co-working spaces
to small and medium enterprises that are not in a position to
afford them. The company provides a shared workspace to
companies that are starting up at relatively lower costs then that
they would spend while looking for a space of their own. The
company has been able to increase its profits with shared
workspaces being valued to as high as $47 billion. The company
was founded in 2010 and currently has its headquarters in NYC.
This paper will analyze the international operations of WeWork
and strategies that it has employed to ensure competitive
advantages and increasing its market share. In addition, this
writeup will analyze the grave mistake that the company made

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that saw it lose its value in the year 2019. The international
operations of the company will also be analyzed understanding
how its operation within different locations increases the
profitability of the company.
Shared workspaces are gaining popularity because of an
increase in the number of small and medium enterprises. What
the company does is it leases office or desk spaces to companies
that are starting up at relatively lower costs than what such
companies would have to spend on spaces of their own. This
way, the company is able to again profit by renting office
spaces to various startups. After entering a deal with real estate
companies, it leases various office spaces and desks that are
fully stocked with all the required resources to partake business
process. WeWork was operating in 848 worldwide shared
workspaces until the year of 2019 (Meredith,2019). The
business has expanded its operations in about thirty-seven
countries within 10 years. Currently the company is operating
on an international scale with over 800 locations worldwide. It
operates in 40 cities in North America including Atlanta,
Houston, Detroit, Miami and other cities the United States,
Toronto and Montreal in Canada, Costa Rica, Mexico, 10 cities
in South America including Peru, Colombia, Brazil, Chile and
Argentina, 22 cities in Europe, 8 cities in the Middle East, 33
cities in Asia and two cities in Africa. It also has four locations
in Australia (WeWork, 2021).
The company decided to go public in the year 2019. On the 14th
of August 2019 it revealed its initial plans by stating a public
offering (Boyte-White, C. 2020). The company attempted to
raise an approximate amount of 4 billion US dollars to upscale
its businesses to different global locations thus increasing its
market share through IPO. The company reported a revenue of
about 1.54 billion US dollars for the period that ended in June
of 2019. However, it incurred a loss of more than 900,000,000
US dollars. As a result, the company indefinitely postponed
plans for its IPO in September the same year. The revenue of
the company dropped from the high value of $47 billion as a

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result of the losses that it suffered that year.
References
Boyte-White, C. (2020) How WeWork Works and Makes
Money. Investopedia.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/082415/how -
wework-works-and-makes-money.asp
WeWork (2021) WeWork Locations.
https://www.wework.com/locations
Meredith, D. (2019) What happened to WeWork?. Equity.
https://www.coworkingresources.org/blog/the-wework-business-
model