This article was published on July 26, 2016

Startup throws shade at WeWork, gets evicted three days later


Startup throws shade at WeWork, gets evicted three days later

When co-founder of Thinknum Justin Zhen decided to blog about his observations on the dwindling number of WeWork tenants, he didn’t expect that his post would soon get him and his company thrown out of their office in midtown Manhattan.

Titled “Deep Dive into WeWork’s User Base as Hundreds of Members Cancel,” the post claimed that, as of recently, customers of the popular shared workspace have been increasingly cancelling their memberships.

Evidently upset by his blog entry, WeWork slapped Zhen with a cease-and-desist letter demanding the removal of the post from Medium. The company also requested that all WeWork-related data displayed in the post be deleted, citing a violation of its terms of service.

Following the threatening letter, the next day WeWork informed Thinknum via email that its membership had been terminated “effective immediately,” giving Zhen and his team a window of 30 minutes to vacate the premises.

Fellow Thinknum co-founder Greg Ugwi told Quartz that the startup stands by the findings and numbers reflected in the blog post. He also voiced his belief that the post “did not violate” any of WeWork’s terms.

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A spokesman for WeWork has since responded, claiming the results and data presented in Zhen’s blog entry were inaccurate and methodologically flawed.

The blog post was consequently removed, but you can still access a cached page from Wayback Machine here.

In any case, 30 minutes to vacate your office is an awfully short period of time, WeWork.

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