I love WeWork's idea, but think it could be even better. While the company as a whole is wrapped in controversy, that's not what I'm referring to here, but rather the core value proposition WeWork brought and continues to bring to the table. The main benefits of working at a WeWork office include:

• Environment
• Amenities
• Community

Let's talk about each of them, and why they're severely undermined by the fact that WeWork was always built with particular physical locations in mind.

Environment

WeWork spaces were designed with modern, ergonomic furniture and stylish decor to create a professional and inspiring work environment. While they succeeded at this from the start due to Miguel McKelvey's influence, when trying to please everyone you end up playing it safe and not truly pleasing everyone in the end.

This leads to a soulless working environment, where little to nothing of your surroundings are things you love or that you chose yourself.

When you try to please everyone, you please no one.

Given your environment has a big impact on your ability to perform, working from home has the advantage of everything around you being yours, or picked by you in some way.

Note: this doesn't really apply if anyone you live with loves interior design. In this particular case I suggest imagining you had a say in picking the things surrounding you.

If you work from home, you likely have a better, more stable, setup you have improved over time that matches your needs. You probably have a keyboard and mouse you love using, and more comfortable chair, and a better desk.

Amenities

WeWork offices offer you free coffee and beer, an internet connection, printing services, and kitchens and lounges.

This seems like a great idea, but these amenities are priced-in to your subscription with WeWork. Much like with the working environment, if you try offering coffee and beer for free, you end up making choices that are safe, leading to people feeling like little or none of the options available are what they'd want.

Everyone has an internet connection at home anyway, so paying for one indirectly via the WeWork subscription feels redundant. Your home probably also has a kitchen and places where you relax, so this is yet another thing that feels unnecessary.

Printing services seem to be the most compelling offer out of all of these, but if you need a printer quite often you probably already have one, and if you don't, you can always use on-demand printing services.

Community

WeWork aimed to create a sense of community among its members by organizing networking events, workshops, and social gatherings. This provides opportunities for collaboration, knowledge sharing, and networking.

The community of like-minded people is, in my eyes, the most valuable part of WeWork. The problem is, the community you meet is limited geographically.

You're only ever meeting people that live near you and can go to the same WeWork office you do. This limits the connections you can make, and more importantly, the variety of people you meet.

As I hinted at the start of this article, this is, by far, the biggest problem with WeWork: its physical locations work against its ultimate vision. The company realized this and tried to build a social network, but ultimately failed, because their existing user base was sold on the idea of going to physical office, not a virtual one. The company ultimately decided to roll with the punches and pivot the app to act more like a window into physical locations, essentially limiting social connections (again) to physical locations.

The Future of Work: Remote and Connected

While WeWork offers a glimpse into the future of work by bringing different people together that motivate each other and collaborate, it's all tied to physical spaces. Despite the company's best efforts to bridge physical and virtual offices, the idea failed and the virtual implementation became a shell of its past vision.

I started working on Knowmads because I believe the future of work is largely remote, yet deeply connected. I'm building a platform that fosters a vibrant online community where you can share knowledge, collaborate with like-minded individuals, and network with professionals from across the globe – all from the comfort of your home office or favorite coffee shop - to bring people together and optimize the way we work by leveraging each-other's skill sets.

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