[HN Gopher] WeWork Book: The $10T Mirage
___________________________________________________________________
WeWork Book: The $10T Mirage
Author : elsewhen
Score : 97 points
Date : 2021-08-07 17:21 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| paulpauper wrote:
| Doesn't we work still exist? I wouldn't say it is worthless or a
| total loss just yet.
| bdcravens wrote:
| My understanding is that it's not the company they're trying to
| keep alive as much as preventing the devastating effects its
| closing would have on commercial real estate.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| Are their investors heavily invested in commercial real
| estate? I'd have thought for most VCs crashing commercial
| real estate would be a plus for most of their portfolio, but
| WeWork had some weird investors.
| qeternity wrote:
| Because capital is fungible, all markets are linked in some
| form.
|
| A collapse in commercial property would roil all markets,
| including VC.
| vmception wrote:
| Yeah they are in the middle of a SPAC deal!
|
| People just need to catch up to modern methods of making money.
|
| If: interest rate environment = low
|
| Then: act this way
|
| If: interest rate environment = high
|
| Then: act this other way
|
| There is zero utility in worrying about Neumann's actual
| financial success, the cult-like employees who got burned after
| segregated themselves from how the entire finance sector was
| making fun of wework pitches. Softbank want to pump and risk
| limited partners infinite money, so be it.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Wasn't more money invested into it at this point than it's
| current valuation?
| femto113 wrote:
| A lot more. Current valuation is fuzzy, but the SPAC deal
| announced earlier this year was publicly putting the
| valuation at around $9B, and the total cash invested is
| around $15B, plus there's around $7B in debt (mostly lease
| obligations). There's also the issue that WeWork is bleeding
| cash and their revenue has fallen off a cliff. IMO $0 is as
| plausible a value as any other.
| castwide wrote:
| Not worthless, but last I heard it was at a $9 billion
| valuation after receiving around $20 billion in venture
| capital, so not exactly a success story either.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| I got a WeWork mask in a FedEx package about a year ago. Such a
| weird promotion. I have no idea how they got my info as I've
| never used WeWork or any other coworking space. But I did take
| a class in one. Maybe that was it.
| paulpauper wrote:
| lol the shipping cost more than the mask
| suzzer99 wrote:
| But it got me to open the package! And then free
| advertising when I wore the mask (which I never did).
|
| Clearly a company with more money to burn than they know
| what to do with.
|
| Like when Boston Market expanded everywhere - including
| neighborhoods in SF that had zero other chain
| restaurants/fast food places. The hubris.
| rvz wrote:
| Yes. WeWork is still alive.
|
| Even better, they are going public via a SPAC. So the CEO won
| anyway, got their billions and the exit scam still succeeded.
| Theranos tried to do the same thing but the scam was detected
| and stopped before they could try to get away with it.
|
| Like many blog posts, this one is just parroting and hyping the
| _' Cult of We'_ book and telling the story of its failed IPO
| and overvaluation in 2019.
|
| It would be more interesting if this failed IPO was the start
| of a gigantic crash, destroyed WeWork and took the tech
| industry with it.
|
| But given that they are still IPOing and exiting for billions
| and more overvalued companies are still going through SPACs and
| IPOs like business as usual; that 'failure' has become ancient
| history.
| polynomial wrote:
| Are you saying Neumann got his exit payment? I hadn't seen
| that story, and speculation was although it was agreed to, he
| would never see the money.
| briefcomment wrote:
| I don't know much about Axios, but I thought they tended towards
| impartial fact-based reporting, and I'm surprised at the
| emotionally charged language in this article
|
| > "chronicling the wiles and humiliation of Adam Neumann,
| WeWork's day-drinking co-founder, former CEO, and chief snake-oil
| salesman"
| fouric wrote:
| I was also a bit surprised at the language. I _agree_ that
| Newman is indeed a "snake-oil salesman", but I don't think
| that that specific language is appropriate for a news
| organization.
|
| I recall reading their mission statement a few years ago and
| getting the impression that they were trying to be impartial
| and fact-based. However, all of the articles that I've read
| from them recently (~6 over the past year) have been similarly
| emotionally charged. Perhaps their vision has changed?
| wussboy wrote:
| Emotionally charged gets more likes. It is the fundamental
| problem of social media. You cannot avoid it because you will
| lose in the competition for attention against an organization
| that embraces it.
| brewdad wrote:
| While the snake-oil salesman label is a bit too charged, the
| rest of the sentence is fact-based with just a bit of flourish.
| brink wrote:
| Emotionally charged doesn't mean false.
| starfallg wrote:
| I don't understand where this recent obsession about using
| neutral language in reporting is coming from. Using neutral
| language doesn't mean unbiased. Very convincing yet very
| biased pieces can be written in the most neutral language.
| fouric wrote:
| Emotionally-charged language is another way to create
| bias. An un-biased article must at _least_ be written in
| an emotionally neutral tone - necessary, but not
| sufficient.
| benlivengood wrote:
| Do we actually want emotionally neutral articles? There's
| always a value judgement being made about what is
| important to report. That value judgement will correspond
| with emotions in most cases, so it's worthwhile to
| acknowledge that fact as well.
|
| It's fine to describe situations where people lose their
| lives as "tragedies", for example. It's possible to go
| overboard by projecting emotions onto the audience that
| they don't actually have.
| shock-value wrote:
| > Do we actually want emotionally neutral articles?
|
| If they purport to be objective journalism (and not all
| articles need be that) then yes, definitely.
|
| Seems that Axios plays a little loose with these
| guidelines outside of politics (their main wheelhouse). I
| think it's probably a mistake, to the extent that they
| are interested in keeping their reputation for good
| journalism.
| mypalmike wrote:
| I used to watch a TV news show from DW called European
| Journal, which I believe no longer exists. The
| presentation was incredibly neutral. They told the facts,
| they asked people involved to tell their stories, etc. It
| was beyond refreshing to hear reporters who were not
| trying to manipulate me emotionally. But apparently it
| was not entertaining to a wide enough audience keep the
| lights on.
| fouric wrote:
| > Do we actually want emotionally neutral articles?
|
| Yes. Articles written in an emotionally charged way in
| order to influence their readers are a flavor of
| brainwashing - telling the reader what to think, or even
| worse, trying to influence them without their knowledge
| or consent.
|
| Furthermore, the fact that an individual or organization
| is trying to emotionally manipulate you _at all_ is a
| huge red flag. The best possible scenario is that they
| 're doing it because they think that they know what's
| good for you better than you do, and after that it's a
| toss-up between "they want to make money" (ads) and "they
| want to control you" (authoritarians).
|
| Emotional manipulation is also a classic tool of tyrants,
| and is necessary in cases where suppression of the
| population through pure brute force isn't feasible.
|
| Yes, "There's always a value judgement being made about
| what is important to report." - but that's unavoidable,
| because reporters have limited resources. Adding in
| emotionally-charged (or straight-up manipulative)
| language makes the bias strictly worse. The fact that
| totally unbiased reporting is impossible is _not_ an
| excuse to embrace more bias than is necessary.
|
| > It's fine to describe situations where people lose
| their lives as "tragedies", for example.
|
| I respectfully disagree, for the reason that news
| organizations actively pick-and-choose words like this
| that are emotionally charged and don't have precise
| meanings in order to slant their articles. While most
| events that a news organization would describe as a
| "tragedy" are indeed so, some of them are not. Moreover,
| even if that word isn't used, readers will understand
| when events are tragedies _anyway_ - the number of people
| who weren 't aware that a plane crash was a "tragedy"
| unless it was explicitly pointed out to them (and who
| were then convinced by the use of that word) is an
| incredibly tiny sliver of the population.
| sprafa wrote:
| Then you can read Reuters.
| thefounder wrote:
| I would rather like the media companies to report the
| facts than spend too much time on the emotional part.
| Same goes for the history books. I've become alergic to
| different parties trying to hijack my emotional state by
| telling me who to hate and who to feel sorry for when all
| I want to read are facts not "opinions", "breaking views"
| etc
| tyre wrote:
| I'm not sure what is biased about this. The book is about the
| wiles and humiliation of Adam Newman, who would day-drink and
| was a snake oil salesman.
|
| That's why we talk about Adam Newman. It's not conjecture that
| he's projections were delusional.
|
| It doesn't make the reporting any less objective because they
| are describing how a book portrays someone.
| hintymad wrote:
| Even if there was humiliation, it was humiliation with a $400M+
| payout to Adam Neumann. Softbank set up a really bad example in
| the industry: you can get away with a hefty payout even if you
| screw your investors and employees with deceit and corruption.
| For that, Masayoshi Son is a co-conspirator and I think he
| should not be trusted by anyone and deserve bankruptcy, if not
| criminal charges.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| The whole saga is fascinating, but I do wonder about the
| level of consternation over this. To oversimplify, it seems
| Adam Neumann was probably either deluded, dishonest, or a bit
| of both, and conned some rich people into giving him a bunch
| of money. Isn't this a bit of a morality play, though? These
| other rich people (i.e. investors in Softbank, Saudi Arabia,
| other venture firms, etc.) would have never had a problem in
| the first place if they weren't chasing outsized gains. If
| these people were happy to track the market, they would not
| have been conned in the first place.
|
| As far as I can tell, your average Joe or Josephine not only
| does not invest in these vehicles, they cannot! Because they
| are not accredited investors and/or Softbank's Vision Fund is
| not accepting new capital. So if you're a normal person
| worrying about getting conned after reading about WeWork,
| don't! If you're a rich person, consider settling for the
| market average rather than trusting an individual like
| Masayoshi Son with your money.
|
| As far Masayoshi Son going to jail, the payoff for Neumann
| was likely contractually obligated or negotiated to get
| better leadership into place. Unless some law was broken --
| which I doubt, and almost certainly not provably -- criminal
| charges do not seem to be appropriate. Bankruptcy does not
| seem to be in the cards either considering he did not have
| that much exposure to WeWork.
| qeternity wrote:
| > As far as I can tell, your average Joe or Josephine not
| only does not invest in these vehicles, they cannot!
|
| The absolutely do, even if they might now realize it. The
| stickiest and most sought after capital for funds is
| typical from pensions or large asset managers.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I feel really bad for anyone whose pension is controlled
| by an active manager. They'd be much better off with that
| value in the S&P 500. Fortunately pension funds are
| insured to some degree in the US, so if a pension fund
| failed, the cost of making the pensioners whole would
| really be paid by the taxpayer, not the average person.
| But in the specific case of Softbank, Saudi Arabia and a
| few other named billionaires provided more than half of
| the seed capital.
| kortilla wrote:
| "Insured to some degree" is not "insured". The pensioners
| could take a huge cut.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| From what I can read the amount of the guarantee is about
| 60k/year at standard retirement age.
| https://www.pbgc.gov/wr/benefits/guaranteed-
| benefits/maximum... Is my reading of this incorrect? Do a
| large fraction of pensioners draw more than this? I had
| assumed not but maybe I'm wrong?
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't think so. Public sector pensions are a bigger
| deal than (mostly legacy) private sector pensions but the
| guarantees are still relatively high compared to typical
| payouts.
| echopom wrote:
| > Even if there was humiliation, it was humiliation with a
| $400M+ payout to Adam Neumann. Softbank set up a really bad
| example in the industry:
|
| AFAIK has always been this way for at least a decade.
|
| An example would be Docker , has raised more than 200M yet it
| had no decent stream of revenue , it's litterrally a dead man
| walking yet the CEO left the boat years ago with tens of
| millions...
|
| Startups that failed and have their founders go "bankrupt"
| are startups that you never ever hear about... The rest of
| startups you'll find on HN or have raised 100M+ millions
| often have their founders pocket millions when they raise
| very large amount ( 50M+ )...
|
| There no surprise here , once you manage to get a business to
| a certain valuation / run-rate it's worth a lot thus you can
| trade that for cash , regardless of the "humiliation"
| jdavis703 wrote:
| SoftBank employs over 80,000 people. SoftBank's investments
| don't seem to rise to the level of corporate corruption where
| it seems reasonable to put the employees on the street.
| hintymad wrote:
| Fair point. My grudge is toward Masayoshi Son. Edited
| accordingly.
| wussboy wrote:
| How many employees does a corporation need before it can
| act unethically?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| But at some point (likely when interest rates shift up
| and/or the market crashes and/or lending tightens), those
| 80,000 people are going to be out of a job when the whole
| thing implodes.
|
| And at that point, it's a solid argument that they all
| would have been better off if SoftBank's capital had
| instead been previously allocated to non-zombie /
| financial-engineering businesses.
| malcolmgreaves wrote:
| The employees don't need to suffer. I can imagine a better
| world where the executives can be jailed and have their
| controlling shares stripped and given to new leaders. Maybe
| even the employees themselves.
| danso wrote:
| Mike Allen is Axios's co-founder and chief newsletter writer.
| I'm guessing his posts are more akin to editorials than
| reported articles.
| paulcole wrote:
| All this talk about WeWork being a total disaster actually got me
| to sign up for a membership. I figure if they were losing so much
| money they must be offering a high-end product for too low of a
| price.
|
| So far, I've loved it compared to working out of my apartment.
| There's almost nobody there. Work areas are comfortable,
| furniture is great, building is really fancy, it's secure,
| there's really good free food and coffee, shower, bike room.
|
| I'm telling everybody I know to take advantage of it now while
| SoftBank is still footing most of the bill.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I wonder how much it would cost if SoftBank wasn't footing the
| bill haha.
|
| I find it hilarious that you state no one is there even at
| these prices. I imagine an investor reading that.
|
| His scribbling on the slide reminds me of the gnomes' plan for
| making major $$$ from collecting underpants on South Park. How
| was he going to get to those numbers?
| ghaff wrote:
| I assume with the pandemic that many companies aren't
| renewing any contracts they have. And relatively few
| individuals are going to pay for even a discounted co-working
| space out of their own pocket just so they don't need to work
| out of their apartments.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Yeah - a dedicated desk is usually >$400/m.
|
| After taxes, this is >10% of income for >70% of the
| population.
|
| If Americans in cities didn't already spend >60% of their
| after tax income on rent - I could see this being more
| popular.
|
| There's just not enough people that make enough money and
| don't work at a good company that already has nice offices
| for this to make sense.
|
| I agree, in theory, WeWork is a lot better to work at than
| most people's apartments. I'm not convinced enough people
| have enough money.
| ghaff wrote:
| And, under normal circumstances, there are libraries,
| coffeeshops, parks with WiFi, etc. I live in an exurban
| house with an office and other space but even if I lived
| in the ~1 hr drive city away in a studio, I'd time-slice
| among free/cheap working options before I'd pay
| $400+/month for a dedicated co-working space for myself.
| I could afford to do so but I wouldn't.
| bdcravens wrote:
| > There's almost nobody there
|
| perhaps due to the pandemic?
| briefcomment wrote:
| I really like the idea of having more comfortable common
| spaces, and I would have no problem paying a fee for that. I
| miss being able sit in my college library's beautiful reading
| room any time I want. I guess WeWork's initial execution was
| bad, but I hope the general industry succeeds.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| I don't think their execution was ever bad to be honest, it's
| just literally impossible to execute their business model in
| a way that justifies the insane valuation they were getting.
| mhh__ wrote:
| It strikes me as a perfectly reasonable business model for
| anything other than an enormous startup. Not every thing can
| grow to a million billion, not everything should.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| WeWork's initial execution wasn't bad, as far as I can tell.
| It was their business model that failed, not the product
| delivery.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| the criticism about WeWork wasn't the product itself, it was
| the fact that somehow it was being valued like a software
| startup despite being just a standard low margin real estate
| and co-working business
| joshuaheard wrote:
| My wife was all excited about this company, and I'm like,
| it's an executive suite. There's already one in every
| business park.
| learn_more wrote:
| But there's a selection bias for trendy folks, whereas many
| executive suites can be quite the opposite.
| iab wrote:
| Absolutely, the Moviepass strategy
| indigodaddy wrote:
| How long will it last before SB starts shutting everything
| down? Also how much are you paying? Really good deal I guess?
| paulcole wrote:
| $150/month for 3 months for access to the common areas/shared
| workspaces (not a private room/office). After that it goes up
| to $300.
|
| It's about 3 miles from my apartment so I just jog there with
| my stuff (or bike). When I jog, I take a shower and change.
| So it's a good way to make myself be more active than I was
| mid-pandemic.
|
| I figure even at the full price, that's like $15 per work
| day, and I usually have an espresso, a Stumptown cold brew,
| and a snack during the day (or meal if there's something
| free/good). Plus on the days I don't get free lunch, I'm more
| motivated to meal prep and take a healthy good lunch instead
| of just snacking while I work in my apartment.
| notsospecialk wrote:
| Seems like WeWork will continue to be in trouble for a while. The
| pandemic has allowed them to renegotiate a lot of their lease
| agreements, which how's allowed them to eek out profitability in
| many locations, and they're trying to extricate themselves from
| their worst deals, but demand for their product is going to
| continue to look different when the pandemic ends (assuming it
| ends!). Less desire for shared/common working space. Less worker
| density. More WFH. They're going to need to invest even more to
| alter their workspaces to what their customers actually want.
| dehrmann wrote:
| They might actually positioned really well for companies that
| don't want to commit to their own space when the company is
| remote half the time.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| That's a fickle slice though.
|
| They're only attractive to (a) individuals or (b) companies
| too small to just deal directly with standard office space
| brokers.
|
| They need larger accounts to drive their COGS down, but
| larger accounts can bypass their service. So they're like a
| cloud provider, except without all the synergy and lock-in.
|
| The only future where they're moderately successful is one
| where workforces are _substantially_ more spread out (one
| employee in each different city) and they 're a broker.
|
| But even then... they'd face the challenge of scaling their
| business geographically (office in every city) vs having
| larger offices in hubs.
| fairity wrote:
| Isn't WeWork uniquely positioned to accommodate employers who
| are looking for flexible post-COVID office setups?
|
| As more workers go remote, some will still want a physical
| office to work out of. That's something WeWork should excel at.
| ghaff wrote:
| But if employers don't pay for it (and I expect nonpaying
| will be the norm), they're now negotiating with _very_ price-
| sensitive individual employees.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Less desire for shared/common working space.
|
| At the individual company level, there's some level of common
| understanding of rules/protocols for coming into offices.
| That's not generally going to be the case with co-working
| spaces.
| Animats wrote:
| _"... how grifters came to be called visionaries. "_
|
| Yes.
|
| Near-zero interest rates enabled the creation of "successful"
| companies that didn't actually make money. That era is coming to
| a close.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > Near-zero interest rates enabled the creation of "successful"
| companies that didn't actually make money. That era is coming
| to a close.
|
| Rates seem to be going down again. What makes you think near-
| zero interest rates are going away?
| Lionga wrote:
| Inflation
| magila wrote:
| That's putting a lot of faith in central banks. The current
| heads of those banks, at least in the US and EU, have
| telegraphed pretty clearly that they are willing to let
| inflation run hot for better or worse.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The wealthy deserve their low interest loans. Then the
| manna they generate will trickle down... Somehow.
| kortilla wrote:
| Loans are for people without money. High interest is good
| for people with money who loan it out.
|
| The wealthy only use the loans when it makes more sense
| to keep money earning returns somewhere else.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The wealthy are using loans backed by stocks to avoid
| capital gains taxes.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > Loans are for people without money
|
| This is false. Filthy rich people are taking billions in
| loans right now because there is a chance the dollar
| crashes and they might have to repay their loans for way
| less than they have taken them.
| bob33212 wrote:
| Until something terrible happens they will keep rates
| low. The only people who care about high inflation are
| people who have salary jobs with low raise potential and
| people on fixed incomes like annuities. Those people have
| far less political influence than the rich. Obviously,
| there may be second order effects that cause another
| reason to raise rates, but that is TBD
| gunshai wrote:
| is it me or has the word "grift" seen a large uptick in the
| last few years.
|
| I used to really like this word now I see it all over the
| place, I wouldn't call anything what Gavin did a grift ... or a
| small time swindle.
| Tenoke wrote:
| According to Google Trends there's been a rise in the usage
| in 2020 (similar to 2005) that's leveled off now. Similar for
| grifter but a lesser rise especially compared to a bigger one
| in 2010.
|
| https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=grifter
| gruez wrote:
| Isn't google trends the wrong tool to use for this, since
| it only represents search traffic? If you want to compare
| usages in written works you'd need to use ngram viewer or
| something.
| tomlong wrote:
| Looks to have been a recent uptick if you put any store in
| Google Trends:
|
| https://trends.google.co.uk/trends/explore?date=all&q=grift,.
| ..
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| The rise of YouTube and Patreon has made grifting a more
| profitable and common phenomenon.
| ghaff wrote:
| How are YouTube and Patreon grifting? People watching
| someone's videos and someone making optional donations
| because they like some creative seems more or less the
| opposite of "grifting."
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| They aren't necessarily grifting, but they give a
| platform for grifters. That's not necessarily a bad
| thing. A more open media environment is worth the cost of
| a few bad actors.
| ghaff wrote:
| I mean, telephones are a platform for grifters.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| They are, just not as profitable as YouTube and Patreon.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| There has definitely been an uptick. You see it quite a bit
| in lefty and progressive media -- and I say this as a
| frequent consumer of such media. It seems like the term has
| lost a lot of its meaning and has become a synonym for
| "person I don't like." You especially often see it applied to
| someone from the other political side of the aisle who joined
| the media after leaving politics.
| mrh0057 wrote:
| I guess whoever wrote this didn't know about the 80s and the
| 90s.
| boulos wrote:
| I find this comment particularly amusing given what Animats
| aka John Nagle is most known for...
| harryh wrote:
| Appropriate management of the money supply by the Fed also
| created the best economic circumstances for the middle and
| working classes in 20 years.
| [deleted]
| lumost wrote:
| The current setup isn't the Fed acting in isolation. The
| federal government is now using the zero percent interest
| rate to distribute cash via direct payments to workers on an
| unprecedented scale.
|
| You could argue for cutting out the middlemen and simply
| having the fed issue credit cards.
| harryh wrote:
| Yes, fiscal policy is important as well. It's also probably
| true that the federal government has overdone it a bit as
| we're now seeing supply side driven inflation. These sorts
| of things are rarely handled perfectly.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| >that era is coming to a close
|
| negative interest rates seem more likely than higher interest
| rates
| uses wrote:
| Bloomberg Podcasts did a 7-part deep dive into WeWork last year
| and its extremely entertaining and eye-opening:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-25/wework-po...
|
| I believe Ellen Huet was the narrator and main journalist. One of
| the more fascinating podcast series I've listened to.
|
| Hearing about Adam and all the wackiness surrounding him, I can
| totally recall some of the hyper charismatic people I've known.
| They can have this weird almost energy field around them that
| just turns people's brains off.
| hinkley wrote:
| There was a guy I worked for, I had to quit three times,
| because he could always paint a picture of the cool things we
| were going to work on, and on the first two occasions I got a
| field promotion out of it.
|
| The last time I literally did not make eye contact with him and
| I kept interrupting his train of thought before he could spin
| up into a speech.
| fabianhjr wrote:
| > In 1866 there was a bank called Overend, Gurney and Company
| [..] they went bust. They invested a whole bunch of money in the
| railway industry and then the railway bubble burst. Thing is, if
| you invest a bundle in railways and lose it, there are still
| railways, people can still use them. But that's increasingly not
| how investment works. A lot of companies, especially tech
| companies, borrow money not to make anything, just on the promise
| that they will eventually make it back.
|
| > Let's take a case study: WeWork. WeWork are an American company
| that provide office space. They dress it up as revolutionizing
| your workplace and bringing people closer together(, but we're
| doing materialism, remember?) They own a bunch of offices, and if
| you need one you can rent it from them. They're landlords! [..]
| In summer of 2019, WeWork was valued at $47 billion. Now, just a
| few months later they're worth.. Well actually, it's not clear
| how much they're worth but nowhere near that.
|
| > So what happened? Was there some kind of disaster? Did the
| offices burn down? No. The truth is, they were never worth 47
| billion.
|
| > [..]
|
| > Their business model was just owning stuff and charging rent,
| and if nobody wants your stuff or nobody can afford the rent,
| then all the money that was invested in you can just vanish.
|
| From: The Trouble with the Video Game Industry | Philosophy Tube
| ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYkLVU5UGM8&t=1000s at 16m and
| 40s)
|
| This was published in November 2019, before the pandemic. I am
| amazed that WeWork is still around.
|
| Citation on that segment: Grace Blakely, Stolen: How to Save the
| World from Financialisation
| sokoloff wrote:
| > They [WeWork] own a bunch of offices, and if you need one you
| can rent it from them.
|
| I always assumed that WeWork was mostly leasing their space (to
| acquire the space, I mean), rather than buying it.
| fabianhjr wrote:
| The video does side on over-simplification and that is worse
| for WeWork since they would have the lease obligations and no
| assets they could liquidate on a downturn. (Like, for
| example, a pandemic)
| fakedang wrote:
| They would lease the space from Adam Neumann-owned
| properties.
| duped wrote:
| The way this article is structured is bizarre, I don't know how
| I'm supposed to read it or what it's supposed to be telling me.
| Is this a book review or advertisement?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-08-07 23:03 UTC)