WeWork was created to provide entrepreneurs and small companies with the space, community, and services necessary for them to create their life’s work. Over the past eight years, we have reinvented the modern office space and the ways in which people approach work every day for creators and mission-based companies of all sizes.
In 2017, we launched Powered by We, an operating system that brings our design, tech, and culture directly to companies. Powered by We leverages WeWork’s expertise to help companies find, build, and operate their own space while providing services that strengthen culture and employee experience.
As we look to the future, we are examining more broadly the ways individuals interact and connect with one another beyond the confines of buildings to include cities as well. We are reimagining the way people work and live and looking toward creating an operating system for life.
Having seen WeWork grow and knowing our potential, one thing I am sure of is that our ability to build community is more important now than ever. We need a fresh approach to how we think about space and how we utilize it as a force for good. Building community can have fundamental benefits for city populations, and its potential takes us well beyond walls and buildings.
At the center of it all is the power of human connections. And making a connection with another person is about treating them as they would like to be treated. The golden rule.
In that regard, good hospitality, technology, and design are the pillars of the future.
That’s why we are joining forces with naked Hub, which is part of naked Group, a leading hospitality, design, technology, and lifestyle brand that was founded in China in 2007 and has hosted over 1 million guests from China and around the world. naked Hub launched in 2015 and provides 10,000 members across 24 locations with the community and services they need to make a life, not just a living. Founders Grant Horsfield and Delphine Yip-Horsfield and the entire naked team have built an amazing business on the back of great hospitality.
When WeWork opened our first location in Shanghai in 2016, our goal was to give Chinese businesses of all sizes the community, culture, and services to start and scale their operations and provide an environment that promotes innovation. Today, we have 10,000 members across more than a dozen locations. By the end of this year we’ll serve more than 40,000 across 40 locations in Greater China. Together we will have a community of 80,000 people this year, and it will grow to 1 million by the end of 2021.
In naked Hub, we have found an equal who shares our thinking about the importance of space, community, design, culture, and technology. Together, I believe we will have a profound impact in helping businesses across China grow, scale, and succeed.
