Open Letter to David Tolley, Interim CEO, WeWork

Dear David, 

You don’t know me, but the world’s spotlight is certainly on you right now. I’m in the coworking industry and as you can imagine, my feed is filled with news about WeWork’s demise. Sadly, no one is rooting for you and although the odds are certainly stacked against you, I do believe that you have a clear opportunity that no one is talking about to come out on top.

Sure, you need to restructure your leases yet again, move into managed contracts, go through with your reverse stock split, raise more capital, and increase your revenue. But none of these strategies may be enough in the short term to avoid a potential bankruptcy or even a future delisting from the stock exchange, that is, of course except one: increasing your revenue. 

That’s easier said than done considering the current competitive landscape in the industry. Raising prices is unlikely to cut it. But launching a new product offering that leverages your prime business addresses globally can be just the hail mary you’ve been looking for. 

Virtual Offices represent a $40 billion global market that is growing at 16% CAGR. I happen to know quite a bit about this market, since it is how we were able to make our own coworking business profitable, with 40% EBITDA. They are by far the most profitable and scalable product offering that coworking spaces can offer. In my opinion, rolling out a Virtual Office strategy is your best shot at increasing your revenue quickly beyond your square footage cap.

However, there are a couple of caveats to implementing a Virtual Office growth strategy successfully, with compliance being one of the most challenging. I often wondered why WeWork hadn’t offered up its prestigious business addresses through a true Virtual Office offering in the past. When we started scaling our Virtual Offices across our relatively small operation, I realized it was likely a liability issue. Compliance in the US alone requires a USPS designation per location, form completion, identity validation by member and reporting. 

This process is simply not doable at scale guaranteeing 100% accuracy, and the risk of your addresses being used for illicit purposes is positively correlated with an increase in Virtual Office memberships. 

Having experienced this firsthand, we decided to set out to automate this compliance process. And that’s one of the main reasons why we created PilotoMail, our postal mail management platform that allows coworking spaces and mailroom operators to increase their revenue by creating virtual mailboxes for their clients, while reducing their liability by automating compliance. 

There’s no denying that WeWork pioneered the coworking business as we know it today. If there’s a chance that I can help you turn this ship around by helping you roll out a Virtual Office offering, I’m more than happy to have a chat. 

In your corner,

Sofia Stolberg,

CEO Piloto 151 & PilotoMail