I 100% agree with you, and to dismiss web apps in this way is to devalue making thinking easier for people. However, I'm also amused by the Freudian slip of 1 second to 1000 ms, which would of course be "tech" instead of tech.
Yeah, that one would indeed be "tech":). I meant 100ms of course.
WeWork is a "tech" company in the sense that the actual business is a thin tech veneer around an established business model (like Regus Group). A huge number of SaaS services are effectively a thin design layer around a database, a technology that has been established decades ago. I think that's the real thrust of the post.
I tried writing this three times, and I'm probably going to screw it up anyways but here's my take on business models and "tech":
If the entirety of your approach is an existing model but "on the internet" and you don't spend any effort on what "on the internet" really means, then you might be in "tech".
However if you take the time to carefully apply yourself to how the new environment changes your business model and your relationship with customers, and exercise sound technical and product focused expertise in so doing, then you're in tech. Efficiency, expanded markets, better experience, ease of use, etc are real tangible benefits, even if the whole product is just a shell around a 1970s COBOL database.