WeWork co-founder Miguel McKelvey describes creating Green Desk, the precursor to WeWork, in an overnight sprint to pitch a Brooklyn landlord.
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“I go home and I start thinking of a concept of a name, come up with green desk, which is office space oriented towards people who are environmentally responsible. I buy the domain, you know, I build a website. I designed some floor plans, really simple do like a quick, like business model basically, I remember I went to Kinko's and had business cards made, had some little, like, promotional flyers. Basically put, I stayed up all night.”
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AssertionNot checkable as stated
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