Real estate isn't SaaS where you have to pay a lot of developers to build a usable product and then scale your customers to pay for it, you can make money owning one unit.
One would think they are profitable on a per location basis. But just losing lots of money overall due to huge growth.
SaaS economics are much easier since marginal costs are $0. WeWork has to commit to very large lease expenses and then find tenants to move in at higher rates.
Even with the rates being inline with competitors and cost of real estate, they have an incredible amount of corporate overhead vs a localized management company. Honestly I can’t see this business model ever working out as short of travel locations there’s nothing they’re bring to the table vs the added costs. It’s a shell game and the third shell is being lifted.
Very concrete example of growth over profits - am not sure what the profitability timeframe would be on that model if we even try and look at it logically.