Week 38, 2024

Anant Yardi, the programmer who founded and owns Yardi Systems, shared A LOT during his GWA keynote interview with Jamie Russo (Everything Coworking) and Laurent Dhollande (Pacific Workplaces). Waaay too much to fit into a single short summary here, so we luckily had Mike LaRosa at the conference to summarize the whole panel for us all.

Key things to look out for: what actually happened with the WeWork acquisition, a new model for that firm, empowering other operators, hinted at a partnership with Vast, a reassurance to integrity and security, and a vision of space anywhere – but flex everywhere.

Ever wondered why WeWork India succeeded where many of their international expansions did not? Jeremy Bamberg, shares some facts behind the JV’s success.

The crib notes: WeWork entered India in 2017 via a 50/50 JV with leading property developer Embassy Group. The firm appointed a local CEO Karan Virwani, who also happened to be the son of Embassy Group’s founder. Leaning on local contacts, insights and a sizeable ready-to-flex office portfolio, the brand grew rapidly servicing enterprise clients. They hit profitability and explored their own IPO, having remained out of the global firms IPO. During CH11 proceedings, WeWork sold it’s 50% stake in the JV to Embassy, retaining the regional rights to the brand. Rumours are they’re once again exploring an IPO of their own.

In 5 words: landlord partnership vs rent arbitrage.

When planning marketing activities and initiatives for your flexible workspace, incorporating influencer marketing might seem intimidating. Alliance Virtual Offices shared during our recent Hot Seats panel that they leverage influencer marketing campaigns to drive leads from new sources to their partners’ spaces.

In this video they share how by engaging influencers to promote their brand, Alliance drives revenue to operator partners without having them engage with influencers directly. I love seeing how demand-generating aggregators are exploring new and creative ways to reach new flex space customers.

It’s been over three years since the GSA first announced a contract vehicle – essentially green-lighting five vendors that are approved to bid on flexible workspace contracts for the GSA; and a full year since the US government opened their own network of six coworking spaces that any federal agency employee can access and there’s a lot of data to review.

The only problem? Trying to get those workers to actually check in so they can track how the spaces are being used. The General Accountability Office’s report states that “while the pilot thus far has focused on gathering input from coworking space users, GSA has not developed scalability criteria that would enable it to assess whether a coworking service would succeed in a broader, non-pilot setting.”

Jamie Ellis shares how DeskLodge has been offering part-time or fractional offices for some time now, now hosting 25+ teams who share offices for just 1, 2 or 3 days a week.

Love seeing more examples and success stories of coworking spaces providing fractional offices.

There are so many different terms used to describe flexible workspace. There’s coworking, serviced offices, executive business centers, conference centers and more. And they all seem to be the "future of" the office. Workbox CEO John Wallace recently spoke with Commercial Property Executive on recent market moves, and his take is on the state of flexible workspace.

One highlight of this discussion is the focus on differentiation on the market. Much like hotels have luxury, business travel, long-term stay, all-inclusive and budget brands that focus on their target audiences, coworking and flex is starting to follow suit. Meaning, all office is becoming essentially flex by default, but what type of flex is dependant on who they serve. Enterprise-grade, events and meetings focused, small business focused, content production specific, or even warehousing for logistics and fulfilment.

Leveraging Google Ads for a single-location coworking space is one thing, but doing it across multiple locations requires a different kind of approach. How do you go about allocating your available ad dollars? How do you measure success? And how do you prioritize one space over another? Check out these four considerations from Reuben Lau at Spacefully for how to optimize Google Ads for multi-location coworking spaces.

We all know that referrals are some of the best leads across the flex space industry. But if you’re struggling to increase your coworking space’s NPS score, you’re not alone. Asen Stoyanchev from OfficeRnD shares a useful guide covering 5 strategies (or business areas to look at) that can improve how likely your members are to recommend your business to others.

Michael Dubicki from Flex Engine shared why companies considering flex spaces should weigh out the pros and cons of chasing big discounts from flex space providers. In short: big discounts usually mean either moving every 12 months, or seeing a big increase as prices normalize to where the new target desk price is.

It’s an interesting look behind the curtain (especially highlighting how brokers are actually disincentivized from putting their clients in communities for terms longer than 12 months) and where some operators may be able to leverage lower discounts to build longer member relationships. At least that’s the angle I took from it.

Interviewed at Forbes’ Future of Work summit, new WeWork CEO John Santora reinforced the company’s belief in the role flexible workspaces play in companies of all sizes. In addition to the role that flex spaces have, and continue to play, in the overall innovation of how workers access and use workspace.

Items of note from his appearance: He doesn’t care where the office is that you’re working out of, as long as it is an office; the majority of companies who are increasing workspace are choosing flex over traditional; and most importantly? WeWork is now debt free.