WeWork Added 25,000 Members In 2015

WeWork has met its aggressive expansion goals for 2015, according to new numbers the startup published Monday.

Throughout the last year, the company, which leases office coworking space, has added 40 new locations and 25,000 members. It has also hired about 800 new employees.

In a pitch deck that leaked in August, WeWork told potential funders that it planned have a total of 65 locations and 45,352 members by the end of 2015. Its actual expansion was not far off: The startup now operates 52 locations and says it has more than 40,000 members.

WeWork CEO Adam Neumann told Fast Company that most new locations have been filled 60% to 70% capacity by the time they open. “It takes us about six months to achieve the full maturity of the space,” he says. Locations that have been open for longer than 12 months, he says, on average are occupied at 93% of their capacity.

Eight of WeWork’s new locations this year were in cities where the company had not previously operated. “We could have even spread out more,” Neumann says. “We chose the main cities that we believe are the most important ones and double-downed on them.” In London, for instance, WeWork added seven new locations since October 2014 and has seven more locations under construction.

As WeWork’s valuation skyrockets (the startup raised $355 million at a $5 billion valuation in December, and then, six months later, another $400 million at a $10 billion valuation), some have questioned whether its business model can keep up. Answering those questions relies on metrics, like the revenue per member, that WeWork did not release in its year-end numbers.

In 2016, WeWork plans to launch a new co-living offering called “WeLive” and open new co-working spaces in Montreal, Mexico City, Atlanta, and Denver. “There are a lot more,” Neumann says about the cities in which WeWork plans to open locations next year. “But that’s a great start.”

Correction: This article originally misstated that WeWork opened spaces in seven new cities this year. It opened offices in eight new cities.