Ucommune geared up to overtake WeWork's hold on the sector

The offices have been described as something out of a sci-fi movie, sporting facial recognition and Bluetooth-enabled door locks, IoT tables, Printers connected to WeChat and a mobile app.

In the time of lofty valuations and messianic rhetoric surrounding the business of tech, it’s getting hard to make out the real processes that go into building a healthy company. Sadly, it was WeWork’s abrupt failure to list on NASDAQ that woke us up to this flawed trend, not the old-fashioned critical thinking. And now, as one of Asia’s biggest office space providers, Ucommune is preparing to repeat its rival’s miscarried feat, the question arises as to what it can offer that WeWork couldn’t.

The American co-working giant seemed to have it all, charismatic leadership, hip work culture and huge piles of cash at its doorstep – all the prerequisites for a quality Hollywood biopic and a bestseller paperback. Yet, under these gauds, WeWork’s credentials mostly comprised of disproportionate debt, mismanagement, and hollow optimism. 

Ucommune has been following in WeWork’s mischievous footsteps, taking on debt, struggling with profitability and now eyeing an IPO. However, in one important domain that WeWork disregarded, Ucommune excelled – tech. 

Some of the most outspoken critics of WeWork have been incessantly pointing fingers at a seemingly obvious fact that somehow escaped the attention of the general public and certain investors who regarded the co-working operator as a tech company thus inflating its valuation. In truth, WeWork is tech adjacent at most, and real-estate in essence. 

Read more here

Join us February 26-27 for the Property Portal Watch Conference Bangkok 2020.