Kate Dezarnaulds penned an interesting piece as the founder of WorkLife about a recent email she received regarding the WeWork Affiliate Network, and what this very strategic move could mean for other indie brands.

While Kate makes the case that this isn’t a moment to panic, "it is a moment to stop sleepwalking".

Further listening: This TWIC Discussion from 2024 with John Santora (CEO, WeWork), Anant Yardi (Founder, Yardi) and Jason Anderson (CEO, Vast) about the formation of this affiliate network. And this TWIC Discussion with Sam Rosen and William Sandford about the acquisition of Deskpass, Breather and Hubble.

Melanie Jones chats with Sam Rosen from Deskpass about the Breather merger, and the shift towards hybrid work models on CORT‘s Workplace Talks.

Codi, who continuously insists "it’s not a coworking platform" but always positions itself as a "rival to WeWork" have announced that they’ve opened 36 flex offices across greater Los Angeles. The platform notes that they have leased 93k sqft for running private offices across Santa Monica, Culver City and Los Angeles with another 50 locations in the pipeline.

A reminder, Codi leaned heavily into "offices in other peoples’ houses", but seems to be pivoting back to managed private offices. Seems similar to Breather’s original model.

Sam Rosen joins Jamie and Gio on the Flex Uncensored podcast to dive into the Deskpass story, what’s changed in coworking tech since 2007, the merger with Breather and who from Industrious has joined their board.

Sam Rosen shares that the news is finally public about the Deskpass, Breather, Industrious (and CRBE-kinda) deal.

In short here’s what’s happening. Deskpass and Breather will merge, but both platforms will continue to be operated by Deskpass as separate brands (for now). What about Industrious? If you remember back to Week 22 of 2021, Industrious acquired Breather for $3M. Well what this post doesn’t share, but other press releases did is that "a spokesperson for Industrious said it would own a 40% stake in the merged subsidiary". How about CBRE? Well… remembering even further back, to Week 8 of 2021, CBRE invested $200M into the firm, and obtained 35% ownership, when they merged their Hana brand into Industrious.

So what does this mean? For operators – technically more bookings through two platforms managed by Deskpass. For Deskpass – two markets of customers to service and connect to spaces. For Industrious – offloading tech which may have been eating into margins. For CBRE – a more valuable/profitable Industrious? Let’s see.