I'm glad Ben laid out the bull case simply because nobody else is doing that. However, the analogy to AWS isn't compelling. First, running data centers is a much bigger challenge (technically, organizationally, and financially) than running your own office space. That's why AWS can maintain 30% gross margins and still be cheap at the price. By contrast, it's hard to imagine WeWork getting that kind of margin for repackaging leases (and adding beer and smugness into the mix.)
With the rise of serverless computing and similar technologies, there's also the question of utilization. Setting up your own server for an occasional request is expensive because you end up using some small percentage. of the capacity. AWS can make a lot of margin by pooling and smoothing demand for those occasional services. I don't think there's a good analogy in the office space category: maybe shared kitchens? Your average small business is much better at managing it utilization percentage for office space than for compute.
With the rise of serverless computing and similar technologies, there's also the question of utilization. Setting up your own server for an occasional request is expensive because you end up using some small percentage. of the capacity. AWS can make a lot of margin by pooling and smoothing demand for those occasional services. I don't think there's a good analogy in the office space category: maybe shared kitchens? Your average small business is much better at managing it utilization percentage for office space than for compute.