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WeWork just announced that it’s acquiring Conductor, a content marketing platform. Financial terms weren’t disclosed, but Conductor had raised approximately $60.6 million in venture funding from investors such as Catalyst Investors, Matrix Partners, FirstMark, and Blue Cloud Ventures. Conductor will continue to operate independently, with its CEO Seth Besmertnik reporting to WeWork president and CFO Artie Minson.
Here’s one of the biggest takeaways: This acquisition gives WeWork access to some large clients as Conductor has relationships with Citibank, Jet.com, CVS, and Salesforce. “When WeWork started in 2010, our focus was the startups and small businesses that filled our first few locations. In the subsequent eight years, we’ve welcomed hundreds of the world’s largest corporations — like GE, Mastercard, and Samsung — into our more than 200 locations. These large companies are now the fastest growing part of our business, making up 25 percent of our membership,” reads a WeWork blog post.
The deal comes days after rival Industrious, a co-working office space startup, raised $80 million in venture funding to grow its roster of corporate clients. As I noted previously, Industrious’ growth in the corporate world is impressive but WeWork is the 800-pound gorilla backed by SoftBank. In turn, WeWork is also going after corporate clients including GE, HSBC, Salesforce and Microsoft. By acquiring Conductor, the co-working giant is using its — what seems like unlimited — cash to show that it’s serious about growing and solidifying its position in the corporate world.
