Welcome, again, to the power of $WE
I’ve been asked multiple times over the last couple of days how the $WE IPO was making me feel. It’s been hard to capture it in words.
Matt Shampine (차민근), Adam, Miguel, and I launched WeWork Labs back in March, 2011. It was a tiny idea in what, at the time, was a small business — WeWorkNYC.com. Adam and Miguel had only opened a single floor at the time, the second floor, at 154 Grand Street or NY01 (IFYKYK), and we worked together to develop the fifth floor that would become the very first WeWork Labs. The intention was simple and pure — we’d make a space that enabled early stage startup founders, our friends, to work together as a community as they laid the building blocks for their own ventures. Think: 1+1=3. And it worked. From those early founders, many went on to do big things but something else happened the day we opened WeWork Labs — Matt and I became a part of the WeWork family.
Adam, Miguel, Matt, and I went on to do so much together along with so many other incredible people. WeWork grew from a few people to nearly 15,000 at one point, and from that one building to over 800 in nearly 120 cities! Holy crap, that’s insane to think about.
It wasn’t always easy but it was almost always fun. We got to work every day on something that we loved with people that we loved. They weren’t blood relatives but many of those people are just as close as if they were. We are a family. And that family really transcended the organization.
Over the last few years so much has happened to WeWork and most of the original team have gone off to all corners of the earth to work on things that they’re wildly passionate about. But last week, on October 21, 2011, something special and magical happened. No, it wasn’t the IPO. While that was cool, lucrative for some, painful for others, and the close of chapter for so many, what happened on Thursday was truly special. More than 100 of the earliest members of our family got together in NYC to celebrate that moment as one incredible group of creators.
I got to see so many people that I haven’t had the chance to see IRL in years. For some it’s been more than 5 years! We got to laugh together, cry together, hug each other, and simply smile with each other. We got to watch WeWork become $WE. We got to go from being connected, in part, because of a corporation and entity — the business of $WE — to being purely and authentically connected as a family. It’s hard to describe how that felt to me.
When asked, over the last few days, how I felt I had a hard time putting it in to words. The clearest way to describe it was that my feelings were like the flavor of umami. It wasn’t salty (sad) or sweet (happy), it was the “essence of deliciousness,” as described by some. It was the close of a chapter and the start of the rest of an enormous book that most of us are only beginning to write. We have all learned so much and yet have so much more to learn.
WeWork was only founded 11 years ago and 11 years from now I’m looking forward to getting together with a similar group — our WeWork family — to share stories, feel all of the feels, and to celebrate together, again. For now, we can all keep on doing what we love.
