At first, WeWork really did sound like little more than a large, consolidated chain of coworking spaces. The way the article is laid out, you first read that description and then read the founder's breathless claims of how they're not just another real estate firm. But with a crazy valuation!
So you take all that with a grain of salt. Founders are always talking about how they're doing something completely novel and groundbreaking, even if they're not.
And then you hit some little details: "…valuable benefits like access to a group health insurance plan…". In the US that is a big thing. If they're offering group health insurance, they really aren't just another real estate company!
In fact, I'm pretty enthusiastic about the idea now. I've always thought that many of the benefits offered by large corporations did not have to be tied to a single monolithic entity. Nothing about well-managed office space, group health insurance and shared infrastructure is inexorably tied to having a top down autocratic organization, but historically it has been.
Wouldn't it be cool if somebody supplied the same infrastructure not to business teams in a rigid hierarchy but to a loosely federated network of startups and freelancers?
Looks like exactly what WeWork is offering.