Q&A - New to WSO Forum w/ Experience at Westfield & WeWork
About
Worked for Westfield DD&C and WeWork - Real Estate over the last 4+ years, most recently part of the WeWork mass layoffs. Living the semi-retired life here in LA while that WeWork oil continues to burn, looking for new opportunities but also willing to answer any questions about either firm to the best of my ability, to kill some time and meet some new folks. Fire away!
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Welcome! When did you join WeWork and when did you recognize the first inklings its time to gtfo?
No questions, but please tell some WeWork stories - especially from near the end. I'm sure it will be a documentary someday, but I would love some info first-hand.
Haha, I wish I had some juicy stories for you but I dont. The stories youve heard out there are mostly true about Adam and how he conducted himself, but thats also how he schmoozed Jamie Dimon and Softbank so eloquently; hes a huge personality and some folks get rubbed the wrong way with that.. We personally had a couple more questions about how Rebecca was conducting herself and why she was so involved in major decisions but ill digress on that ...
Best guess at the chance WeWork survives this without another huge capital infusion (from Softbank)? I bet a good portion of start-ups are going to be wiped out in the next 60 days and there goes WeWork's revenue stream.
Great question. I think a lot of what youll think depends on how you think the negotiations with landlords will be if locations truly do lose a bunch of memberships, but I am fairly confident WeWork will be fine and will flourish coming out of this, just like I thought they would when they fired me and most of the Real Estate team.
For color: The way WeWork negotiated and funded each space was a traditional office lease, not a management agreement. In a sense, this provides a degree of separation between the space and the parties, allowing WeWork to hold more leverage than if the landlord funded the build out. Within that, build outs and expansion to this point were equity funded, and their public filings showed a heavy CapEx / Straight Line rent, non-cash, burden on Operating Income. The reason I bring that up is because most WeWork locations are cash positive after the first 18-24 months with strong industry level IRRs/Contribution Margins, and once theyve made their money back from their equity investments by selling shorter term membership agreements at those locations, they are cash positive and self sustaining. If things start to tumble and they are cash positive, it all becomes a game of cat and mouse with the landlord. If a landlord that has a decent chunk of their space leased to WeWork, theyd be a fool in todays times to let a corporate giant like that walk away. Not only that, if the shift of WeWork to have at least a 3rd of all revenues, and growing, come from Enterprise clients, they are going to have much stronger, more creditable, tenant base they are dealing with and not thousands/millions of sole proprietary journalists and instagram influencers trying to get out of their memberships.
I think that predicting what will happen isnt possible, but I am fairly confident that WeWork is in a great position in troubling times, not the opposite that most media and talking heads think (which I never truly understood). WeWork backing out or trying to back out of having to pay that $3B in lost value to equity share holders is because the value has literally deteriorated - why would they pay for something that isnt there any more?
Happy to have healthy discussion and be proven wrong, though, if I am and I have no ties to them anymore besides the name on my resume : )
P.S.: URWestfield on the other hand, different story and less confident, ATM.
Happy to BUMP this for any further discussion. Nearly exactly one year later from my OP. Happy Friday y'all!
good to have you here
Hey, appreciate that!
Interviewed with Westfield last year right after the Merger with Unibail. Such a weird process and was only phone interviews as they were in process of building out the NYC office.
Made it to final round but thankfully now didn’t get it because I’m sure it’s lay off city there right now.
Couldnt imagine what the process was like. When did you apply and for what role?
NYC office is actually pretty cool. Middle floors of 1WTC. Knew a handful of peeps there, but not like the LA office.
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