Even the 2B might be just to preserve the value of their earlier invested money ?
WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality
21–30 of 380 posts
Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality
#22>The Gulf investors backing the Vision Fund seem to have decided that WeWork is not a tech bet but simply an aggressive punt on real estate. This is the bogey man of a huge number of current 'tech startups' - What if it turns out Tesla really are a car company! Or if We Work are actually an office rental company! OR gasp Uber is a cab company! (1) We now have a glut of companies operating in traditional markets that…
I don't agree with the "rubbish part". WeWork single handedly changed the way we work. It is way easier to build a tech startup with the help of a co-working space company than before. I suspect that WeWork's business model ain't the problem but it's competitors, for example in London, UK. Competition drives prices for new real estate, crashed margins.
This makes very little sense to me. They haven't "changed the way we work", they've just stuck an attractive brand on shared office space. Every city in the UK has at least one Regus building where you can rent managed office space on short term leases, they just don't also throw in copious amounts of free drink and an atmosphere more like a college party than a workspace.
Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality
#23"The Gulf investors backing the Vision Fund seem to have decided that WeWork is not a tech bet but simply an aggressive punt on real estate." If you have earlier invested in WeWork as a tech startup then one should be questioning your investment strategies and research methods.
Probably not a bad idea for SoftBank... even this headline is funny, Sotbank has decided against a _ludicrously large_ investment in favor of a _still very large_ one
Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality
#24>The Gulf investors backing the Vision Fund seem to have decided that WeWork is not a tech bet but simply an aggressive punt on real estate. This is the bogey man of a huge number of current 'tech startups' - What if it turns out Tesla really are a car company! Or if We Work are actually an office rental company! OR gasp Uber is a cab company! (1) We now have a glut of companies operating in traditional markets that…
You're right on Tesla and WeWork, but not on Uber. Uber doesn't buy and own the car, which means it requires much less capital. This small change has many implications, and the tech helps solves many of the problems that come up. I am not saying it is properly valued (over or under or whatever). Just that given the choice between an Uber (or Lyft or yourlocalapp.com) or a cab company with the same fleet, customers, a…
>Uber doesn't buy and own the car, which means it requires much less capital.
I don't think this is true with one of the major things they have been selling investors for years: self-driving cars. That certainly requires a lot of capital to pull off, and I think they plan is they would own those cars.
Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
In 1999 there was an email going round about how ridiculous dotcom valuations were. Taking Amazon, I think, as an example it said it would have to earn more than Kodak, Boeing, Caterpillar etc to ever be worth it's valuation. There was a general sense of "it's just a bookstore". Now I know everything is more mature and the situation is different, but I also remember feeling very confident that Amazon was waaay overva…
On the flip side, if it wasn't Amazon mentioned but pets.com, they were entirely right.
I guess the right question is, was a basket containing Amazon.com, pets.com and all the rest overvalued? Amazon is up about 15X since its peak before the crash, the dow is at 3X over the same period.
So as long as AMZN was >= 20% of your basket, then it was fairly valued. Sounds about right.
Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality
#26> " Given WeWork’s opaque financials and its self-made metrics such as “community-adjusted Ebitda,” you can see why investors might be rethinking a company that has relied a lot on confidence, optimism and faith."
I understand why companies occasionally report results as GAAP and non-GAAP, but "community adjusted EBITDA" is absurd, even for a private company.
Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality
#27>The Gulf investors backing the Vision Fund seem to have decided that WeWork is not a tech bet but simply an aggressive punt on real estate. This is the bogey man of a huge number of current 'tech startups' - What if it turns out Tesla really are a car company! Or if We Work are actually an office rental company! OR gasp Uber is a cab company! (1) We now have a glut of companies operating in traditional markets that…
You're right on Tesla and WeWork, but not on Uber. Uber doesn't buy and own the car, which means it requires much less capital. This small change has many implications, and the tech helps solves many of the problems that come up. I am not saying it is properly valued (over or under or whatever). Just that given the choice between an Uber (or Lyft or yourlocalapp.com) or a cab company with the same fleet, customers, a…
Uber does plan to own the cars though, since they're doing their own self-driving car work and have a deal in place with Volvo for up to 24,000 self-driving SUVs. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/uber-signs-d...
Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality
#28I hope they make it through. I have a WeWork right in walking distance and would love to work there regularly if I ever get a remote job.
Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also; it might be different in the US ( I do not know ) but in the countries (UK (the wooden floors in Aldwych) , NL, DE, HK ( the one in Wan Chai I cannot even hear myself talk often)) I work where partners or clients have invited me to WeWork offices, the employees complained openly about the noise (it is more like a college kantine than an office space) to me and the next time they were not there anymore. Somehow…
WeWork is exactly the same everywhere, just as you described in the US. It is far too noisy to get any meaningful work done.
This is because they are the trendiest of trendy open office work spaces. Many many other tech companies are following this trend to be sure their new offices are featured in business mags and they can take pretty pictures of the office for promos.
Oh, and for greater 'collaboration'.
Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality
#30>The Gulf investors backing the Vision Fund seem to have decided that WeWork is not a tech bet but simply an aggressive punt on real estate. This is the bogey man of a huge number of current 'tech startups' - What if it turns out Tesla really are a car company! Or if We Work are actually an office rental company! OR gasp Uber is a cab company! (1) We now have a glut of companies operating in traditional markets that…
In 1999 there was an email going round about how ridiculous dotcom valuations were. Taking Amazon, I think, as an example it said it would have to earn more than Kodak, Boeing, Caterpillar etc to ever be worth it's valuation. There was a general sense of "it's just a bookstore". Now I know everything is more mature and the situation is different, but I also remember feeling very confident that Amazon was waaay overva…
It still is!
It's a heavily leveraged company with high capital requirements. AWS makes all of the money.