Imagine you work for, say, IBM, and your badge grants you a desk, on-demand, at any WeWork office. Or, let’s pretend that you, still at big blue, want a dedicated space for a small project, you work with your WeWork rep to secure a secure dedicated space for the timeline.

At no time in those examples did I have to exchange funds, pass my corporate card, etc.

Speaking as a home remote worker (Salesforce/Heroku not IBM or WeWork) that likes to visit offices sometimes and travels quite a bit, having the option of on-demand access to working spaces with other humans, and a facility-access processes I can rely on, and a facility I can mostly assume will work would be a pretty great upgrade to my work experience.

Expense reports suck. It’s not just the process burden, but making that the norm rather than an exceptional process means that today’s automated-scanning systems will probably put more false-positive-powered issues onto your already full plate.

Removing the process makes it a tool that more people will use. That’s the value prop I see.

The problem is WeWork would end up being just one of a ton of possible vendors who do this. The only thing that's hard to replicate about that business model is the up-front cost of acquiring the properties, but if it turns out to be a thing people value then CBRE and every other big commercial real estate company will dive in. In that environment where your IBMs now have competing products to choose from I don't see WeWork able to pull much in the way of margins.

I agree with you. Which is why I find the companies valuations to be, uh, silly.