WeWork needs no introduction. And so do WeWork Competitors. We all know how the trend of coworking has gripped professionals. It has changed the culture of office spaces all across the world. The coworking trend might not be started by WeWork but the company played a very crucial role to make it popular. Coworking has become so popular that many companies are now competing with WeWork in this space. There are hundreds of WeWork competitors in many countries and some of them are giving serious competition.

WeWork was founded in the year 2010 and in just 8 years of its presence it has grown to over 90 cities in the world. One of the biggest competitors of WeWork i.e. Regus (IWG plc) was founded in the year 1989. They still have the early advantage but it is WeWork vs Regus as of now. Let us dig deeper into WeWork competitors and know what’s cooking. But before that, go through the next section explaining the company in numbers.

Interesting Facts about WeWork

• Founded in the year 2010.
• WeWork Founders = Adam Neumann and Miguel Mckelvey.
• Current Valuation = Over 20 Billion (As of the year 2018).
• WeWork has got a total funding of $12.1 Billion till date (Nov 2018).
• The total number of spaces stand at a whopping number of 471.
• WeWork is present in 90 cities of the world.
• They have over 5000 employees.
• Some successful startups from WeWork Spaces include = Consumr, HackHands, Whole Whale, Coupon Follow, Turf, Fitocracy, Reddit and New York Tech Meetup.
• Other brands = WeLive, WeWork Labs and WeGrow.
• WeWork might go for IPO in September 2019.

WeWork Competitors

WeWork is a huge company but with greatness comes competition. Let’s browse through competitors of WeWork and understand some stats about these companies.

Regus (IWG plc)

Regus was the first company that built fully serviced office spaces for travelling entrepreneurs. These spaces soon came to be known as coworking spaces. Founded in the year 1989 in Belgium, Regus today has over 8788 employees and is present in more locations as compared to WeWork.

Regus is now known as IWG plc. It is, without a doubt, one of the greatest competitors of WeWork. Both Regus and WeWork are eyeing the massive population of entrepreneurs, startups and freelancers who use or would be interested to use coworking.

WeWork vs Regus

1. WeWork is present in 90 countries while Regus is present in 106 countries.
2. WeWork has a total of 2600 coworking spaces while WeWork just has over 500 spaces.
3. The clients of Regus include top corporates like Google, Toshiba while WeWork has more of startups and small enterprises.
4. Services offered by WeWork are limited to coworking including hot desks, dedicated desks & private offices. In the case of Regus, the company deals with a wide variety of services including mail handling, calls handling and fully managed private office spaces.
5. When it comes to WeWork vs Regus then you should also know that WeWork is still a startup that runs on equity funding while Regus (now IWG plc) is registered at London Stock Exchange as a public company.

The revenue of Regus was $2352.3 Million in 2017 while WeWork got $3 Billion in equity funding from Softbank in the year 2018.

The above points suggest that IWG plc (International Workplace Group) formerly known as Regus is much larger than WeWork. But I guess WeWork is more popular. The reason for this is that WeWork got much hype among youngsters with its vibrant spaces while Regus is more on the serious side of the business. Hence the biggest WeWork competitors begin with Regus on the top.

Servcorp

This is another well-known WeWork Competitor. Servcorp was founded in the year 1978 in Sydney. Being a competitor of WeWork, Servcorp operates over 160 spaces across the globe. They have a good hold in Australia from the beginning. Servcorp entered the United Kingdon and the United States in the year 2009 and 2010 respectively.

Compared to WeWork and Regus, Servcorp has lesser number of spaces. In numbers, Servcorp can be explained as:

• Operates in 52 cities around the globe.
• They operate over 160 business centres.
• It has got a few Fortune 500 companies as its clients.
• They are known to have premium spaces.
• Just like Regus, Servcorp is also a public company registered at the Sydney Stock Exchange.

Servcorp is not as huge as WeWork or Regus. They have a lesser number of spaces but have a hold in Australian cities. To compete with Servcorp, WeWork recently opened 5 coworking spaces in Melbourne, Australia.

Knotel

Knotel is yet another office space provider which was founded just 2 years back i.e. in the year 2016. Knotel currently has over 50 spaces but what is interesting is that they have reached this milestone in just 2 years. Knotel is giving a tough competition to Servcorp and is one of the most rapidly growing WeWork competitor.

As per a news source, Knotel has recently overtaken WeWork in terms of coworking spaces in NYC. It also needs to be mentioned that New York is the headquarter city of WeWork. Knotel taking over WeWork in their own city is a big news and this shows the competition between WeWork and Knotel. So, if we talk about WeWork competitors in NYC, Knotel is the biggest name that comes up. Knotel founder was quoted saying that they will overtake WeWork in 2020. Let’s see how things move for them.

Some other WeWork competitors include MindSpace, SpacesWorks (Acquired by IWG) and more. They have a presence in over 20 cities of the world including London, Washington DC, New York etc.

Then there are country-specific competitors of WeWork that are more focused in a particular country. For example in India, there are Awfis and Innov8 that are giving a tough fight to WeWork coworking spaces. In Indonesia, there is GoWork which is again a serious WeWork competitor that is looking forward to expanding in South Asia. Many of these space operators have raised funding worth Millions of dollars are launching new spaces.

One major reason for WeWork’s success is that it has been heavily funded. The second reason is the launch of innovative concepts like WeWork Labs. The company has grown rapidly and in their case, it has not been one country at a time but many locations in one go. Apart from the companies listed above, if you feel that there is a startup that is giving major competition to WeWork in any geographical location, please get in touch with the author of this article. We’ll be glad to list all potential WeWork competitors over here.