All in for WeWork and WeLive

About the client

With offices around the world and in most major metropolitan areas, WeWork designs and builds physical and virtual shared spaces and office services for entrepreneurs and enterprises. 

Opportunity

In 2016, WeWork was looking to grow exponentially through digital and identified two large initiatives:

1. A referral system for brokers to steer prospective clients with 20 employees or less to consider WeWork as an alternative option.

2. An entirely new way to leverage WeWork real-estate that wasn’t co-working. This was called WeLive and was the first large-scale co-living venture.

Solution

First, we deployed a product growth team to create a new referral system API that would allow commercial real estate brokers to refer companies to WeWork buildings. 

The referral system API interfaced with WeWork’s Sales API systems and an external Identity Provider (IdP) such as Auth0, which allowed brokers to receive incentives based on a referred client’s continued engagement with WeWork. The initiative was a success, providing a new broker commission structure for up-front monetization and a long-trail based on membership tenure.

Next, we helped WeWork launch WeLive, the world’s first “co-living” venture. WeLive applied the same principles as WeWork applied to housing, offering rental apartments grouped together with a number of shared spaces and services, such as cleaning, cooking, and laundry, as well as group activities and events.

Results

On launch day, WeLive received over 800 submissions from prospective applicants looking for housing in NYC. The press coverage of the launch was significant, including:

“Divided into ‘neighborhoods’—blocks of floors that share communal spaces like fully equipped kitchens, multi-use common areas and even stock-it-yourself whisky bars—the WeLive spaces are designed to not only lessen the burden of city living with flexible, amenity-laded housing, but also to encourage a sense of community between residents.”

Meg Miller, Fast Company

“No one ever said city living was cheap, but WeWork is betting that its WeLive spaces will be the start of a new movement. They’re perfect landing pads for people moving to a city looking for instant friends and not having any furniture. Whether those people stay (and become WeWork members) will be the crucial litmus test.”

Biz Carson, Business Insider

“McKelvey says WeWork’s core co-working concept had to prove itself as more than just a millennial mecca, too. And with a slower expansion plan than its rapidly-opening WeWork locations, the company will take its time to watch what happens with the WeLive communities to try to continually improve.”

Alex Konrad, TIME

Making remote clinical trials possible for institutions with Medikit

Re-architecting digital for Sears Home Services