After WeWork detailed the most complete picture to date of its corporate finances last week, the leaders of some of its main competitors wanted to make a strong point: We are different.

“It’s important to make sure that we’re not painted with the same brush, that others aren’t painted with the same brush,” said John Arenas, the CEO of coworking provider Serendipity Labs. “If you’re not funded by magic money, you have to make money to stay in it. That’s what the rest of us do.”

WeWork is enormously influential in the office market, with close to half of coworking’s market share in 2018, according to a Colliers International report. Since 2016, as WeWork kicked its growth into high gear, the nation's flexible office space grew from 18.4M SF to more than 27M SF.

Corporate offices nationwide look more like WeWorks, and many office developers seek out providers to manage a flexible office space in their buildings, rather than lease one. It has also helped spawn a boom in smaller coworking providers.

While WeWork hopes the power of its brand and its emphasis on community can help justify its valuation, its message has spread to the masses.

“WeWork has been great for the sector overall, there is a broad awareness of flexible workspace now here in the U.S. and globally,” said Charles Robinson, the senior vice president of the U.S. for Servcorp, an Australian coworking provider.

In that way, Wednesday’s initial public offering was hailed as a landmark for WeWork's smaller rivals, which are also looking to establish long-term legitimacy.

“It’s obviously a very big moment for the industry,” Industrious CEO Jamie Hodari said.

“It’s going to help people think about this industry, digest numbers and trends in the industry, which is obviously something I’m personally really excited about … And they are going to come to their own conclusions about what the strengths are, where the pain points or weakness or risk are — they are going to come to a conclusion on the underlying business model.”