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How it started
2008–2015
In May 2008, Adam Neumann and American Miguel McKelvey established GreenDesk, an "eco-friendly coworking space" in Brooklyn. In 2010, Neumann and McKelvey sold the business and founded WeWork, renting its first location in SoHo, Manhattan, which opened in April 2011. Manhattan real estate developer Joel Schreiber purchased a 33% interest in the company for $15 million.
In 2011, PepsiCo placed a few employees in the location, who acted as advisors to smaller WeWork member companies, making the location a startup incubator.
By 2013, WeWork customers included 350 startups such as Fitocracy and HackHands.
By 2014, WeWork was considered "the fastest-growing lessee of new office space in New York" and was on track to become "the fastest-growing lessee [lessor] of new space in America." WeWork investors as of 2014 included J.P. Morgan Chase & Co, T. Rowe Price, Wellington Management, Goldman Sachs, the President and Fellows of Harvard College, Benchmark, and Mortimer Zuckerman, former CEO of Boston Properties.
In February 2015, WeWork was named to Fast Company’s 50 Most Innovative Companies list. On June 1, 2015, Artie Minson, former chief financial officer of Time Warner Cable, joined the company as president and chief operating officer. In August 2015, the company acquired CASE, a real estate and construction technology company, in its first acquisition. According to its founder, the speed of the transaction damaged the organizational culture of CASE.
From Wikipedia’s article on WeWork, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3