An encounter with WeWork co-founder reveals a tussle between money and mission

WeWork co-founder Miguel McKelvey. Photo credit: Tech in Asia.

Co-working giant WeWork has been busy lately. How to stay in tune with its ethos even as it expands fast in global markets with local partners is a question that pops up more and more.

It announced an investment of US$4.4 billion from Japanese giant SoftBank last month, brought on board a Chinese consortium led by Hony Capital, and acquired Spacemob in Singapore to drive its expansion across Southeast Asia. It partnered Bangalore real estate billionaire Jitendra Virwani’s Embassy Group to enter India in July, and redesigned a relic from the past – movie theater Galaxy – into a 145,000-square-foot co-working space.

An even larger space of 190,000 square feet came up soon afterwards in Mumbai’s business hub of Bandra Kurla Complex, even as two more locations at Embassy Golf Links IT park and Koramangala in Bangalore are being readied for launch later this year. And in early 2018, the tech hub of Gurgaon near Delhi will have a WeWork too. The goal is to build up 6 million square feet of WeWork space in India over the next four years, says Virwani.

When you have a company like Microsoft which moves in with 400 members, that has an impact on the community, and you want to figure out how to manage that.

But WeWork co-founder Miguel McKelvey, who calls himself the company’s chief culture officer, wants to stay focused on first principles amid the dizzying growth of the US$17-billion unicorn.

“We’re not measuring ourselves by how much money we’ve raised, or how much we’re investing, or how many buildings we have, but by the impact we can make,” he says in Bangalore, during his first visit to India.

The tall McKelvey, sporting a t-shirt with Kannada characters on it, grew up at a commune in Oregon, northwest USA. He shares that community living experience with his co-founder Adam Neumann, whose formative years were in a kibbutz in Israel. The idea of community was central to the launch of WeWork’s co-working spaces in 2010.

“When we started the company, it’s because we believed there was something changing in the world, and certainly India is a perfect example of that – where there’s a shift in what people are looking for out of the time they put into work,” says McKelvey. “That’s the change we’re looking to support. That’s how we measure ourselves, and we’ll continue to invest until we get to that.”

The challenge in doing that becomes apparent during an interaction where McKelvey is flanked by Jitendra Virwani and his son, Karan Virwani – WeWork’s partners in India. It’s easier said than done to balance financial objectives with what it takes to build a vibrant, interactive, and diverse community in India’s Silicon Valley.

WeWork cofounder Miguel McKelvey flanked by Jitendra Virwani (right) and Karan Virwani of the Embassy Group in Bangalore. Photo credit: Tech in Asia.

Enterprise skew

Most early stage startups in India would be hard put to rent a desk in WeWork Galaxy. And Embassy Golf Links – the next WeWork location in Bangalore – is where the likes of IBM and Microsoft rub shoulders with Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. Many of the world’s largest corporations have large workforces – second only to their home bases – in this tech hub.

Increasingly, it’s the large global enterprises that are attracted to the ambience, services, and flexibility that WeWork provides – and can afford it too. Even the likes of Amazon and Microsoft, which have an established presence in the country with their own facilities, are keen to take up hundreds of seats in WeWork because of the convenience of working out of different locations or the new office dynamic it could provide to creative teams.

Global playbook, local strategy

Philosophical moorings