WeWork to begin operating in Central America

Bogota — US firm WeWork, which does business in more than 101 cities, announced on Wednesday that at the end of this year it will begin providing services in San Jose, Costa Rica, to transform the local ecosystem and connect it with companies around the world.

Valued last year at more than $47 billion, WeWork offers the spaces, services and connections needed by firms and their collaborators to grow and become more competitive.

The firm provides shared workspaces for technology startup subculture communities, and services for entrepreneurs, freelancers, startups, and large and small businesses.

With its arrival in San Jose, WeWork, founded in 2010 by Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey, is moving into Central America to expand its field of action around the world, the firm announced in Bogota, where it has operated since 2017.

By making the move into Central America, WeWork is adding to the operations it has undertaken elsewhere in Latin America, where it also provides its services in Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chile and Argentina.

The firm’s community includes more than 450,000 members worldwide, of whom 45 percent say that their business began growing the moment they joined WeWork.

Thus, the firm’s regional manager for Latin America, Patricio Fuks, told EFE that “32 percent of the Fortune 500 have seen in WeWork the ideal ally to empower their teams and they have made themselves part of the community.”

He added that “with the arrival in Costa Rica, we will be able to connect with the whole business ecosystem that exists in the Americas.”

In fact, just in the Costa Rican capital, the six floors of offices where WeWork will do business will provide access to 2,000 members, thus significantly adding to the expansion that Fuks has been steering since 2016.

He said that the first of the three key pillars of WeWork’s operations anywhere in the world is “transforming buildings into intelligent spaces through design and technology, fostering creativity, productivity and the connection among people.”

In addition, “We offer in a single membership all the services a company needs to operate, that is, we take care of everything while the companies focus on growing.”

Finally, he said that WeWork creates an exchange of ideas, knowledge and experiences so that by means of this cooperation new business can be generated.

Fuks said that “74 percent our members around the world tell us they have done at least one business deal (with other members).”

Costa Rican Foreign Trade Minister Dyala Jimenez said that “WeWork’s decision to establish itself in Costa Rica opens up for us the opportunity to position ourselves, as a country, in a changing and globalized world.”