It's literally been a problem for several years. The company even acknowledged the problem on Twitter at one point, but didn't bother fixing it.[1] It shouldn't be that complicated to provide non-rancid milk for the coffee. Even in my home fridge milk lasts two weeks after being opened, and that's several degrees warmer than it would be if milk were the only thing being stored in it.
I used to work at a VC funded company that had a $10,000 custom couch (which sucked, totally uncomfortable, the custom dollars went into the shape/making it fit) and prolly 10x that spent on custom lighting fixtures (also terrible, ridiculously dim for a work space, but looked nice). In a super high rent urban area. I assume they make up the difference with glass walls and giant open spaces. This is (unfortunately) how offices are built these days.
It's so much better than traditional offices that it'd be a shame to lose it. Hopefully there's a sustainable business model.
What would you say are the pros/cons of moving to your new office?
The West Loop WeWork is nice because it's about a 3 minute walk from the redline subway to the front door. That matters during winter -- Chicago winters blow. So I was wondering if you managed to get a spot close to public transit too. (And if so, how'd it end up ~cheaper than WeWork? Prime locations tend to come at a premium.)
I should be clear: it's hard to compete with WeWork for the 4 people we have in this office (I think we pay slightly less here than we'd pay for 4x WeWork berths) --- but having our own office is a phenomenally better deal as we hire more people, since we'll be paying the same amount of money in rent but can easily park another 10 people in this space comfortably.
So I should clarify that I think WeWork is an amazing deal for very small companies and, in particular, for solo worker locations. Part of the problem with WeWork is that it's precipitously less of a good deal as your company grows.
So are the plastic chairs you get at Walmart. This is a fixed cost. Custom design them once, order a million of them and leverage economies of scale.
> Free beer
Beer by the pallet is $2.30 a can, rent is around $2200. Even if you drink 2 cans a day, its still only about $350 a month in costs. Even if it's a loss, it's a good loss leader and the economies of scale will eventually work out. Their potential for profit is when people start saying, WeWork, feed us! and they charge such and such to manage the whole food delivery and make a nice premium on that, and whatever other services you guys would want.
But that's not the critique being leveled at WeWork here; the critique is, WeWork can't in the long run be profitable at these rates. In a lot of their spaces --- maybe all of them? --- they're overstaffed. They're premium-everything (I wanted the couches from the first floor at WeWork West Loop and asked where they got them; they were custom-designed!). Free beer on every floor (this turns out not to be a win, but it's still part of their cost basis). Most importantly: they site these things in marquee locations that they have to be paying a mint to lease.
I'm happy to take full advantage of the largesse of Investor Storytime Economics, but unless you're Amazon, the music has to stop playing at some point. WeWork is not Amazon.