What Happened to WeWork and Selina, and What We're Doing Differently

WeWork filed for bankruptcy in November 2023, four years after SoftBank valued it at $47 billion, and emerged in June 2024 as a smaller, debt-free private company. Selina listed at a $1.2 billion valuation in 2022 and was insolvent by July 2024, its value down more than 99%. Both companies made the same three mistakes: they leased instead of owned, they grew before the unit economics worked, and they sold community as a marketing line rather than building it.

We're building NOMADA, so this is not a neutral history. We're building a residence and club in a historic building in Mexico City, and these are the two failures we study hardest. Register your interest →

WeWork, by the numbers

• 2019: about 850 locations worldwide, valued by SoftBank at $47 billion.
• November 2023: files for Chapter 11 with more than 500 locations, $19 billion in liabilities and $15 billion in assets.
• June 2024: emerges from bankruptcy after nine months, debt-free and private, majority owned by the property software company Yardi.
• Now: roughly 170 locations in the US and Canada, positive EBITDA for six consecutive months as of mid-2025, and adding locations again. Bankruptcy erased an estimated $12 billion in future rent.

The business works at a fifth of its old size. What failed wasn't coworking. It was the balance sheet underneath it.

Selina, by the numbers

• 2022: goes public through a SPAC at a $1.2 billion valuation, raising over $350 million.
• 2023: operates across 163 destinations, with about 29,600 beds.
• The problem: occupancy of around 47%, persistent negative EBITDA, and chronic cash shortages.
• July 2024: files for insolvency in London.
• Late 2024: assets bought by Collective Hospitality, with the valuation down more than 99%.

Selina got the product right and the finances wrong. Its coworking-plus-hostel format is now standard across Latin America, ours included.

The three shared mistakes

1. Long leases, short revenue. Both signed 10- to 15-year leases and sold nights and monthly memberships. When demand fell, the rent didn't. Selina leased or partnered rather than owned, which multiplied operating costs and debt.

2. Growth before economics. Selina promised 40,000 new beds and $1.2 billion of revenue by 2025 while losing money on the beds it already had. WeWork opened locations to defend a valuation. Both treated hospitality like software, where scale fixes margin. It doesn't.

3. Community as marketing. Both sold belonging. Selina's high staff turnover meant nobody stayed long enough to build it, and the experience varied wildly between locations. Community is a staffing line, not a brand line.

What we take from it

• Own the building. NOMADA is funded to buy, not lease. That's the single biggest difference, and it's why the model survives a bad year.
• One building first. No second city until the first one works. Both of these companies died of expansion.
• Multiple revenue streams under one roof. The restaurant, rooftop, coworking floor, spa and gym trade with the public, so the building doesn't depend on rooms alone.
• Fund the community role from day one. A full-time programming lead, not an intern with an events calendar.
• No debt. At the yields this kind of project produces against Mexican interest rates, leverage destroys value rather than amplifying it.

None of this guarantees anything. It removes the specific failure modes that killed these two.

What it means if you're booking

Coworking and coliving are fine businesses when they're run as property businesses. WeWork is profitable again at a fraction of its size, and Selina's format lives on under new owners. As a customer, the practical lesson is to prefer month-to-month terms, avoid large upfront payments to any operator, and check who owns the building.

More: what coliving is and who it suits · coliving in Mexico City compared · coworking prices by neighborhood

Register your interest at nomadahouse.com →

Sources

• A year post-bankruptcy, WeWork is profitable, mature and growing again, Bisnow (June 2025)
• Selina Hotels: when the digital nomad dream met financial reality, Hospitality Net
• Selina Hospitality collapsing in insolvency, Hotel Investment Today (July 2024)
• Coliving funding: learnings from Selina's, Everything Coliving

Checked September 2026.