Good morning. I’ve long been fascinated with companies that fail, often spectacularly, only to be reborn in a smaller but profitable form. Remember when Lego slapped its name on so much stuff that it almost went bankrupt? Companies like General Motors, Delta Air Lines, Starbucks, Apple, and Ford all had to pare back and refocus to get healthy. A more recent example: WeWork.
It’s launching a private office pod today that’s emblematic of a more focused and asset-light direction for the brand. Normally, I’d pass on getting an ‘exclusive’ on a product launch. But that changed when I saw ‘WeWork Go’ emblazoned on the side of what looks like a transparent phone booth, the company’s first new product since July 2022, when WeWork was still trading for around $5 on the New York Stock Exchange.
Of course, you’ll remember that the coworking company once had a $47 billion valuation and cult-like CEO in Adam Neumann who promised to “elevate the world’s consciousness.” That iteration of WeWork became a bankrupt cautionary tale with $18 billion in debt in 2023, when Neumann was ousted. (He later tried unsuccessfully to buy the company back.) It’s now a private firm with a penny stock that trades for around a nickel and a CEO named John Santora, who spent the first half-century of his career at Cushman & Wakefield.
It’s also, as Santora told me, a profitable company with 550,000 members in more than 600 locations. But many of those locations are now franchised and WeWork now has more than 2,000 third-party coworking partners in its network.
WeWork’s new “private office pod” offers models for single users and a larger pod for up to four people. Santora says you’ll see them in airports, convention centers, hotel lobbies or other high-traffic areas visited by “busy professionals on the move.” Not a breakthrough technology, perhaps, but a smart move from a man who’s navigated the realities of real estate his whole career.
WeWork today is a data-driven real estate platform catering to people who work on the go. In that respect, WeWork Go “expands the ability for our people to access our spaces and our technology,” says Santora. He says WeWork still has “that entrepreneurial spirit,” and in the company’s new, slimmed-down era, transparent pods will test whether that culture can thrive on a smaller scale.
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
Top leadership news
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Intuit was the worst performing stock in the S&P 500 as this year opened; investors were suddenly gripped with the fear that AI would annihilate software companies of every kind. For Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi, the stock’s plunge was painfully ironic. He had made AI a centerpiece of his company’s strategy years before most CEOs, seeing it as a powerful tool, not a competitor.
Housing market suffers historic reversion to the mean
Formerly sizzling metro areas have gone cold, and the unsexy plodders are back in vogue. You could almost cut and paste the “best” performers on home price appreciation from February 2022 into the current “worst” column, and vice versa. Topping the laggards: Cape Coral, Fla. at a 9.6% drop; the biggest winner was Kansas City at +8.6%.
U.S. to blockade the Strait of Hormuz
President Donald Trump announced Sunday that the U.S. Navy would impose a blockade on the Strait of Hormuz after talks with Iran failed to produce a peace deal. That move would turn the tables on the Islamic republic, which has halted global supplies while letting its own oil exports through the strait, capitalizing on the massive spike in prices for crude.
The markets
S&P 500 futures are down 0.60% this morning. The last session closed down 0.11%. The STOXX Europe 600 was down 0.61% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was down 0.33% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 0.74%. China’s CSI 300 was up 0.21%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down o.90%. South Korea’s KOSPI was down 0.86%. India’s NIFTY 50 is down 0.66% today. Bitcoin was at $71K.
Around the watercooler
Around the watercooler
Turns out the American middle class didn’t die. It got richer—and felt poorer by Nick Lichtenberg
‘People are trying to be creative’: Tariff-battered American companies are so cash-starved they are using refund claims as collateral for loans by Sasha Rogelberg
‘Almost unmanageable’: Raising a child in the U.S. now costs more than $300,000 by Jacqueline Munis
Iran’s crumbling economy is the regime’s greatest weakness with prices up 40% since the war began while authorities worry about making payroll by Jason Ma
Former ‘Citgo 6’ political prisoner sees ‘karma’ in Maduro ouster, but Venezuelan oil won’t rebound until there’s true regime change by Jordan Blum
CEO Daily is curated and edited by Andrew Wyrich, Jason Ma, Claire Zillman, and Lee Clifford.
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