{"id":42392,"date":"2023-10-20T15:20:51","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:20:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/wework-would-be-welcome-in-sydney-say-other-co-working-sites-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:20:51","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:20:51","slug":"wework-would-be-welcome-in-sydney-say-other-co-working-sites-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/wework-would-be-welcome-in-sydney-say-other-co-working-sites-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"WeWork would be welcome in Sydney, say other co-working sites – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Australian startup community is welcoming news that global co-working giant WeWork may soon be setting up shop in Sydney.<\/p>\n
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The collaborative workspace company is worth more than $US10 billion ($14 billion) and has 29 locations in 10 cities around the world.<\/p>\n
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It now seems that it has set its sights on the harbour city.<\/p>\n
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A real estate source told the Australian Financial Review<\/i> earlier this week that WeWork has been on the hunt for a premise in Sydney.<\/p>\n
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In a statement to StartupSmart,<\/i> a WeWork spokesperson neither confirmed, nor denied a Sydney launch.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWeWork does not have information to share about expansion plans in Australia at this time,\u201d the spokesperson says.<\/p>\n
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The likely arrival of a giant global player speaks to the growing strength of Australia\u2019s startup community according to Murray Hurps, the co-founder of Sydney co-working space Fishburners.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s incredibly flattering to see them here,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
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\u201cSydney couldn\u2019t hope to have supported them five years ago, so it\u2019s really a testament to the advances we\u2019ve made.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt was pretty much inevitable. There are over 100 co-working spaces around Australia, and demand has never been higher.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Pete Cooper, the founder of another Sydney co-working space iCentral, agrees, saying it shows WeWork giving Australia a tick of approval.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s great to see one of the global players endorsing our local ecosystem,\u201d Cooper says.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI welcome their investment in the market.\u201d<\/p>\n
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But Cooper says he isn\u2019t concerned about any possible threat to iCentral from WeWork, saying they offer a very different service to entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe do curated community and they do co-working. They do desks, we do professional peer learning,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe are highly curated and WeWork is not, so people just won\u2019t get the same community quality vibe.<\/p>\n
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\u201cSo I say bring it on.\u201d<\/p>\n
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As opposed to many co-working spaces in Australia which focus solely on tech startups, WeWork opens its doors to entrepreneurs, freelancers, startups and small businesses.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019ll be interesting to see their take on what to target in Australia,\u201d Hurps says.<\/p>\n
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\u201cStartups here are extremely price conscious, and if they\u2019re trying to fill a very large space quickly they\u2019ll need to diversify their target market a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Cooper puts it a bit more bluntly.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThey\u2019re targeted at generic small business and large firms that want to get a sniff of innovation and be close to people they sell to,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
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WeWork shouldn\u2019t be viewed as a potential competitor to local co-working spaces, Hurps says.<\/p>\n
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\u201cFishburners\u2019 only competition is anything that takes Australian talent and resources and applies them to anything other than startups,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI do feel their expansion will be redirecting that demand from local spaces to their space, rather than increasing total demand.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI can\u2019t help feeling though those spaces with fewer resources than Fishburners could be badly affected by the new competition.<\/p>\n
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\u201cLots of incredible people have worked incredibly hard to build these spaces, and the startup industry will be badly impacted if something happens to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
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