When I first heard that WeWork was going public through a SPAC in 2021, after a disastrous IPO attempt back in 2019, my first thought was that they were going to use a SPAC as a way to skirt through the regulations and extensive due diligence that investment banks did.

But when I dived deep into the turnaround story, that's when I realized that this is a turnaround story worth looking into.

After Adam Neumann and other toxic executives left the company, SoftBank and other investors were able to place a better leader. With this better leader, WeWork has the leadership it needs to conduct that turnaround.

The person they placed as the new leader of WeWork is Sandeep Mathrani. For those that don't know him, he was notable in the real estate industry during the Great Recession because he was the one that lead General Growth Properties (GGP) out of the largest real estate bankruptcy in history.

When you think about it, back in the Great Recession, General Growth Properties was the largest real estate bankruptcy case at the time. During the late days of the post-Recession bull market, WeWork was the largest real estate bankruptcy case.

In essence, Mathrani, who has been a master at navigating real estate bankruptcies since the Great Recession, is now given another chance to exercise his skills by helping WeWork out of a bad situation. So far, Mathrani has done a fantastic job at helping WeWork out of bankruptcy. At the same time, there's a lot of work that still needs to be done.

Furthermore, with the rise in WFA (work-from-anywhere), many remote workers are looking to work in a WeWork office since working in an RV can be cramped, and working from home can come with many distractions.

As for the many new businesses that got started during the pandemic, many of them would prefer to lease space in a WeWork than lease their own office space. There are many testimonies where employee morale at startups surged when startups chose to leave their own, uninspiring office floors for a WeWork.

If you're curious to learn more about my thoughts on $WE, here's a link to my write-up.