How WeWork is nearing failure after a valuation of $47 billion in 2019
How WeWork is nearing failure after a valuation of $47 billion in 2019
Following WeWork's warning that it could be headed for bankruptcy, FOX Business gives a timeline of the long-suffering co-working company's years of troubles.
Telework killed it since they were left with empty buildings.
38Man, just terrible timing overall. If not for COVID, they could have pivoted into something a little more long lasting. But COVID just blindsided them, as it did many others.
18If they had some more time they could have pivoted to supporting hybrid work for companies that have a geographically distributed work force. As much as I love working from home, there are some times when it's better to be in person, and WeWork could let people work hybrid without having to move across the country.
9
Weren't they fumbling a sure thing, even before that? I thought they were slightly on fire by mid-2019.
8Lol, no. It was alllllllllll fake the entire time. It's just that once the IPO had happened and the founder ran off with his billions, they really had to try to make this completely unworkable business model work
"In retrospect, Neumann’s knack for amassing billions of dollars in venture capital with no viable business model was one of the greatest scams of the twenty-first century."
9
I had access to a WeWork office for a while. It was fine for solo work or getting a couple of colleagues together for quiet conversations, but their meetings rooms sucked. There was no way to discuss or whiteboard anything confidential in one since the walls were all clear glass and the soundproofing was nonexistent. The whole setup felt like it was created by someone who was going for a ”cool startup office” aesthetic but hadn’t ever actually worked in one.
34Heh.
We were looking at a wework and I asked, why don't the space between different companies get tinted glass or dividers and the sales guy straight out told me this is the environment we are building here.
What. Where is my organisation's privacy?
At least my other office could have a personal room for your company even if the meeting rooms were shit.
17
Why is Softbank involved in so many business investments that go sour? I've lost track of the number of articles I've read that go something like, "Softbank invests in X. X's value is tumbling."
27I think a lot of the issue is that softbank had the idea of if they can invest a bit and get a good amount of growth, how about they invest a ton more from the outset and "guarentee" insane growth. They did that with a few startups and it worked, then they did it with WeWork and it spectacularly backfired. The basic premise of WeWork was pretty sound until the real estate market started going up in price, which kind of blew up the margins that WeWork lived in. That and a frankly financially crazy CEO kind of ruined it.
15Y'know, there was this documentary with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder...
3Thanks to Elon I misread your comment for a bit
2flawed investment philosophy?
2
This is the company that the press unanimously decided everyone needed to hear about in 2019, and you couldn't avoid mentions of it. Good riddance.
19Haven't read the article yet, but I highly recommend watching WeCrashed, a mini series about wework and it's fall
16It’s a good one!
2
sourcing an article from foxbusiness is insane, so many other places for the same story. fuck fox. really.
9A combination of people moving to remote work, office property values taking, and general mismanagement.
3Never heard of them but I'm a little skeptical a company like that could even have had a valuation that high.
2In the era of low interest rates, a lot of stupidly-high valuations happened in tech. Many of those idiotic valuations were predicated on the idea that companies could afford to lose money for a long time in pursuit of “market share”, and then pivot to profitability when they wanted that. Never mind that if your business model is fundamentally about being the cheaper alternative while losing money — waving at Uber — the only path to being profitable goes through gaining monopoly powers and hiking prices to much higher levels that consumers will hate — waving at Uber again.
The truly dumb thing about WeWork’s valuation was that it was being valued as if it were a tech stock. It was a renter of office space, period. All of its “secret tech sauce” was a combination of lies and aspirational bullshit from its bullshit-artist CEO.
4If you were a tech worker 20 miles from a wework building, you got a LOT of swag and invites to events. It was weekly for me.
4
The evaluation was nothing short of a fraudulent scheme.
1