WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality • Hacker News Board

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#231

Post by komali2 » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 9:45 PM UTC

sriram_sun wrote: post #151

reaperducer wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One shake of the economy and everybody will cut WeWork and go back home or somewhere considerably more affordable Or even free. When I was in the Seattle tech scene about ten years ago, the State of Washington had free co-working space at the convention center as a way to stimulate local entrepreneurship. The desks were a little strange, but they were free!

Do not forget your local community college and city libraries!

Libraries are amazing and I'll sing their praises all day, but I have two complaints and they both revolve around pooping, which genuinely distresses me when considering where to work for the day.

1. At a library, when it's poop time, you gotta bag everything and bring it with you. Mildly annoying if you're using a mouse and notebooks etc.

2. If you're in a major metro library, no matter how hard they try to keep it clean, the bathrooms are full of people using the sink as a shower, and the toilets are foul beyond measure.

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#232

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 9:50 PM UTC

mikestew wrote: post #144

Traster wrote: post #4

>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…

Somewhere along the way I think we got it flipped around. No one was calling Sears a tech company in 1969 just because they bought an IBM 370 to computerize their accounting and inventory. By probably 1975, if you were Fortune 500 and still doing your books by hand you were probably just a dinosaur rather than your computerized competitors being so advanced. Uber, Tesla, okay, maybe there is an argument to be made fo…

[deleted]

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#233

Post by hobofan » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 9:57 PM UTC

code4tee wrote: post #36

It will be interesting how this all plays out. WeWork’s model wasn’t new (Regis has been doing real estate subdivision arbitrage for years) they just made that model cooler and added some free beer and a few other perks but it’s still the same business. Someone from WeWork recently told me they are a digital experiences company and not a real estate company. Increasingly the market seems to be calling BS on that. The…

> they are a digital experiences company

The problem also is that the experience also sucks. I've been working out of WeWork and other coworking/office rental spaces in Berlin and WeWork is by far the worst of it while also costing 2-3 times as much.

Excerpt from the things I experienced at one WeWork location over the last year:

- Broken AC in the whole building during a very hot summer

- Water dripping from the ceiling in the hallway for about two weeks (which also left ugly stains, which I think are still there to this day)

- Regular recurring construction noise during working hours, to this day (one year after opening!)

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#234

Post by daniel_iversen » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 9:58 PM UTC

kgwgk wrote: post #93

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-08/wework... "In addition to the corporate finance weirdness: “Going forward, the company will no longer be called WeWork but rather The We Company.” (“The switch is not a legal name change,” okay.) And: “Rather than just renting desks, the company aims to encompass all aspects of people’s lives, in both physical and digital worlds,” which is—and I have spent years w…

Wish I could triple upvote this comment, you’re hillarious and it made my morning! :-)

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#235

Post by sudosteph » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 10:05 PM UTC

sixstringtheory wrote: post #194

sudosteph wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case anyone is wondering: not worth the read unless you're just interested in the history of dystopic fiction. The characters are boring and everything drags on far too long.

I’ll agree it can get boring at times, but it was incredibly creative and a lot of the descriptions of the world in the book are unlike any other I’ve read about and were quite poetic, while at the same time mathematic and scientific. Still, it’s a pretty short read and should be of much interest to those into scifi and dystopias.

Perhaps our interpretations of those descriptions where our disagreement lies then. I found the protaganist's obsession with romanticizing everything in terms of math to be incredibly repetitive and even cringeworthy at times (the imaginary number thing especially). It's not that I think loving math in a poetic way is not possible, but the protagonist's manner of thinking about it just made no sense, and it was sprinkled through everything in a way that added little value and distracted from the meat of the story. I suppose that may be what the author intended, but it was not enjoyable to read or poetic in my view.

I also judge it harshly for the way the author wrote the only female character as an obvious object of wish-fulfillment rather than a coherent individual with reasonable motivations.

I do indeed give it credit for being an early scifi dystopia, but every other dystopia I've read was far better, and I can't help but feel that "Brave New World" surpassed "We" in every possible way. Still not recommending this book to anyone who doesn't just want to learn about dystopic novels.

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#236

Post by badwolf » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 10:06 PM UTC

whalesalad wrote: post #150

auiya wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These coworking spaces are terrible. They're like Monkey Joe's for tech bro's.

It's not really tech bro's ... I don't encounter those people very often. I think that fraternity style vibe has kinda gone by the wayside. It's everyone else who aren't really technologists but want to get in on the gold rush. The social media marketing companies, the wordpress/magento factories, the crypto people, the uber-for-xyz... there is a lot of noise both literally and figuratively with these groups.

I'm currently "officing" in a WeWork dedicated desk. Out of all the desks immediately around me, I'm the only person working for a "tech" company. There's a building contractor, a couple designers, electrical engineers, and a Realtor, and a marketer for some distillery/alcohol co.

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#237

Post by CM30 » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 10:06 PM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #221

bobthepanda wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the Nintendo strategy. Why anyone at Nintendo thought that the Wii U was a good name for a completely new console is beyond me.

There's some systematic issue with naming that has existed at Nintendo since the 90s. Thinking: Nintendo entertainment system and super Nintendo entertainment system. Not necessarily bad, but also kinda "meh." Probably the best 90s explanation for what a "console" is, before everyone already knows what a console is. I bring it up because here begins Nintendo's critical error: failing to understand the customer in Ame…

There's also the 2DS, and the 2DS XL. Oh, and the New Nintendo 3DS XL.

They all play the same games though, so yeah, good luck explaining which is which to a casual buyer. The very 2DS name sounds like it should be a weaker system than the 3DS, despite coming out later and being mostly the same bar the stereostopic 3D visuals.

Names certainly haven't been their strong suit.

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#238

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 10:06 PM UTC

bartread wrote: post #206

kgwgk wrote: post #93

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-08/wework... "In addition to the corporate finance weirdness: “Going forward, the company will no longer be called WeWork but rather The We Company.” (“The switch is not a legal name change,” okay.) And: “Rather than just renting desks, the company aims to encompass all aspects of people’s lives, in both physical and digital worlds,” which is—and I have spent years w…

"The We Company": somebody didn't check what that sounds like when spoken in British English. Wait, what? A company that manufactures and or sells wee?!?? (Pee, to our American friends.) It's not as extreme as powergenitalia or expertsexchange but still something of a facepalm.

Sounds like it's now a Weak Company.

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#239

Post by badwolf » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 10:09 PM UTC

colmvp wrote: post #61

grogenaut wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is attractive to you about it? Serious question, I’ve worked in their spaces before but we leased an entire floor and I wasn’t wowed or pissed at it. What makes you excited?

I co-work in one. The people who also co-work there are friendly, and they do have good amenities. Honestly, they upped the game of co-working spaces in my city. I don't work consistently in the office to warrant renting my own office space but I wanted a place where I could socialize instead of getting cabin fever at home. Starbucks / Cafes aren't really conducive to talking to random people either.

This is basically my story. After we closed our office due to everyone except me moving away, I worked from home for a few months. It's nice being around people.

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#240

Post by meterplech » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 10:12 PM UTC

mikestew wrote: post #144

Traster wrote: post #4

>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…

Somewhere along the way I think we got it flipped around. No one was calling Sears a tech company in 1969 just because they bought an IBM 370 to computerize their accounting and inventory. By probably 1975, if you were Fortune 500 and still doing your books by hand you were probably just a dinosaur rather than your computerized competitors being so advanced. Uber, Tesla, okay, maybe there is an argument to be made fo…

Agreed. Valuation is based on sum of future profits - so essentially how profitable the business can be AND how big it can be. If

1) Ratio of fixed to marginal costs is high you have economies of scale, and will get much more profitable as you grow (software vs consulting)

2) You can capture revenue quickly because it's operationally simple to add customers (e.g don't need to hire with each dollar of revenue) you are more likely to reach that profitable scale faster.

If your company uses tech to achieve (1) and (2) then they should have high valuations. If you happen to use cool tech but don't have economies of scale or easy operational growth than how you brand the company shouldn't really matter.