Experience was the pitch

Experience was never the problem

For fifteen years I have argued one thing: the human experience of a place is not a soft layer on top of real estate. It is causal. It drives who stays, who refers, who leaves, and what the building earns over a decade. The industry prices it last, if at all.

The counter-argument writes itself. If experience is causal, why did the companies that sold experience die in such numbers? Sonder, WeLive, The Collective, Common, Selina: the best-funded experience brands of the decade, gone. Either the thesis is wrong, or something else killed them.

So I built the register. Every operator I could find that sold living or a stay as a brand between 2010 and 2026, classed by one variable the pitch decks never led with: who held the building. Owned, leased, or managed. Then the outcome. The answer is on this page. Occupancy was fine almost everywhere until the end. The lease was due in a quarter the rooms were empty, and the landlord did not sell experience.

That is the point of the register, and of the family office register before it. Experience is causal. Capital structure decides whether anyone is still around when it pays. I publish these as open data because the argument is stronger when you can check the rows, and because the next operator, lender or family office that signs a lease should know what the last 65 learned.

Why the lease lost

The register shows who died and when. The report shows the mechanism: why a brand that sells experience cannot survive on a fixed lease against a variable room rate, why 2020 killed eleven in two years, and why the survivors own, manage or have an owner with patience.

Part two is for anyone building the next one: what Flow, Sentral, Numa and Cohabs do differently, which capital structure matches a ten-year promise, and the four questions a lender or a family office will ask before signing.

Both parts by email, nothing else. No newsletter, no follow-up sequence. I read every signup myself.