Weekend Interview: WeWork’s Luke Robinson On Its Growth Plans In 2025

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WeWork spent the last year going through a painful restructuring that saw it shutter more than 100 locations and get a new majority owner. The firm emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June with a leaner footprint and a cash infusion from Yardi, a commercial real estate software company and the new majority shareholder. 

Now, the company that made coworking common parlance is once again in expansion mode. In October, the company launched a partnership with franchiser Vast Coworking Group and, two months later, signed a 300K SF Manhattan deal in partnership with Amazon, one of 2024's largest New York office leases.

Luke Robinson, who has spent more than a decade riding the ups and downs at WeWork, took over as the company’s regional president for North America at the start of the year.

Robinson was running leasing operations in WeWork’s largest region in 2020 when the pandemic upended work patterns and grew his role to lead sales across 38 markets by 2024. Now responsible for both sales and operations across North America, Robinson is leveraging that past experience for WeWork’s latest chapter. 

Robinson sat down with Bisnow to discuss WeWork’s growth strategy, its road to profitability — he declined to say whether or not the company was projecting a profit in 2025 — and why the coworking industry continues to rapidly expand.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Bisnow: You've had a long tenure at WeWork. The idea of company culture has always been kind of central to WeWork’s identity, how has that culture shifted in your decade at the firm?

Luke Robinson: When I first joined, we were still in that startup phase. One of the biggest changes is just that the company continues to mature into a much more sophisticated global real estate company. I do think, however, that we've kept a little bit of the startup mentality with regards to the people here, how hard they work, how committed they are and how much we work together across departments. 

It's changed significantly in 11 years but, from then to now, we continue to have incredible employees. That's one of the main reasons that I've continued to stay on. The caliber of people we have here is incredible.

Bisnow: WeWork’s Chapter 11 restructuring included shedding a lot of locations. Since it’s come out the other side, the firm looks to be back in expansion mode. You just signed a 300K SF in New York, for example. How is WeWork thinking about growth decisions today? Is your approach different today from the early days? 

Robinson: I would say now we're focused on growth in a very strategic way. There are a number of different ways, some of it is client-led. We have our enterprise business, which is pretty substantial.

The one you're alluding to in New York was with Amazon, and we've partnered with them on their return to office, so that was a demand-sourced space. One of the ways that we will be growing is going to be through demand-sourced space. That may be by us going to source a new location with them, that may be us reoutfitting some of our space to work for them. 

Bisnow: Do you expect the majority of your growth in 2025 to be driven by enterprise partnerships?

Robinson: No, that's one piece of it. The other piece will be growing through some management-type deals. Just like you've seen across some other providers, those are definitely interesting to us. 

We've got great relationships with many of the largest landlords across the country and world. We’re interested in entering into agreements with them about how we can manage a portion of their portfolio or a portion of their building — plug in our operation and grow that way. 

We will sign leases where it makes sense, or maybe structure them in a revenue share-type of model. There's different ways we're going to do it, but it's not like we're never going to sign a lease again.

Bisnow: WeWork also recently announced a partnership with Vast, a coworking franchiser in a lot of secondary markets. Why did it make sense for you to partner with another coworking provider? 

Robinson: The idea there was that we are always looking to expand our offerings to our members. Part of that is expanding our footprint, and that's not always going to be through signing leases, management deals or revenue shares. Some of that's going to be partnering with companies like Vast and utilizing their portfolio, and allowing our members to utilize some of those locations in a city where there’s no WeWork.

Bisnow: WeWork consistently said the purpose of going through Chapter 11 was to get on the path to profitability, and the company said it would achieve that in 2025. Has WeWork reached that goal? What does that progress look like?

Robinson: We're on a very strong path as a restructured and debt-free company. We're definitely on strong financial footing. That, coupled with just increasing demand for flex space that we're seeing, positions us for a strong 2025 and beyond. That's what I would say on that point.

Bisnow: The global footprint of coworking providers continues. The space is more competitive than when WeWork launched, CBRE just acquired Industrious. How are you maintaining a competitive advantage in this more crowded space?

Robinson: The coworking industry is clearly growing, and it's because there's so much demand for flexibility in general coming out of the pandemic. Whether that's term flexibility, cost flexibility, utilization and so on. 

That's always been a value proposition of WeWork before the pandemic, but it's obviously been brought to the forefront even more over the past few years. We've always been confident that the future of workspaces is flexible, and it's great to see others believe and kind of bet on that too. 

We really believe that what we offer is different, and the breadth of clients who we work with is different than any other company out there.

Bisnow: What's your bold prediction for 2025?

Robinson: I think the tech companies that may have been faster to move to work from home are going to be some of the ones leading the way with regards to getting back in the office. That doesn't mean it's five days a week, but that does mean that there will be some form of office space utilization. 

A lot of smaller companies follow the midsize and larger ones, and I think that will have a trickle-down effect. When you're a small company, it's even more critical to be working together.

Bisnow: And finally, what’s your favorite weekend routine or activity?  

Robinson: I have two kids. One of them is two-and-a-half, and we go to the diner every Saturday morning, just me and him. He knows everyone there, and says “Hi” a hundred times.