Summer Entrepreneurial Experiences

WeWork Week 1

Monday, June 5, 2017 4:22 pm

This past week I moved up to New York to begin my summer internship at WeWork. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the company, WeWork is a startup based out of New York that is changing the way businesses rent and utilize office space. WeWork builds communities among their diverse range of clients who all work collaboratively and become members of a private entrepreneurial network. Over the last 7 years since the companies inception, WeWork has grown exponentially — and are now valued at nearly $17 billion dollars and poised to go public within the year. Its an incredibly interesting time to join the team here in Manhattan and learn about the post-startup stages of a startup company. Attached below is a picture of my office — it’s truly like nothing I’ve ever seen before and an awesome place to work.

On the first day during intern orientation WeWork founder Miguel McKelvy talked to us about all the exciting things taking place throughout the company right now, as the business continues to expand into new areas and position itself as a market leader. One area in which the company is seeing a lot of success is in the enterprise sales division. While WeWork initially started out focused on providing a place for small entrepreneurial startups to rent a desk or two and work collaboratively in an entrepreneurially focused community atmosphere; the space (and cost) efficient model has become appealing to large enterprises as well. Now entire floors and even buildings owned by WeWork are being rented out by all types of Fortune 500 businesses.

This is the exciting area where I will be doing the majority of my work this summer. I have joined the enterprise growth team and have been tasked with handling responsibilities ranging from building proposals for potential customers, to interacting directly with customers on deals, to building business cases as well as models to determine the value of of potential deals. Over the rest of the summer I hope to develop a diverse set of new skills such as managing databases in SQL, learning how to utilize salesforce, and work on my financial modeling skills. Also, the incoming intern class is required to sit in on a weekly programming series of Q&A sessions with entrepreneurs and ultimately tasked with pitching our own new business ideas to WeWork at the summation of our internship.

I couldn’t be more excited for all that this summer is going to bring. New York City has been absolutely incredible and exciting to explore (albeit expensive). I’m looking forward to sharing all of my experiences through this platform over the course of the summer and could not be more grateful for this opportunity.

2 Responses to “WeWork Week 1”

  1. That is such a cool office space and what an awesome opportunity for you this summer, Donovan! WeWork really embraces the entrepreneurial mindset, and as you mentioned you are getting to step in at a very interesting and successful stage for WeWork.

  2. I had the opportunity to tour the WeWork City Hall location three years ago and it was certainly one of the coolest office spaces I have seen. It’s amazing to see just how much the company has expanded in three short years. Good luck up there in the big city!

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