WeWork IPO Shows It's the Most Magical Unicorn • Hacker News Board

Re: WeWork IPO Shows It's the Most Magical Unicorn

#31

Post by anthony_doan » Wed, Aug 14, 2019, 9:21 PM UTC

gnulinux wrote: post #8

danso wrote: post #7

Tangent: the article includes a chart titled "Unicorns Gored" with the caption, "Many of the highly valued young technology companies have not done well as public companies". It features 9 relatively recent tech IPOs, including Lyft, Dropbox, Spotify, and Snapchat. All of the companies have a negative delta in terms of initial stock price, from -47% to -2%, except for Pinterest, which is +77%. I actually had forgotte…

Huh didn't even know Pinterest is still a thing. Is it like Instagram?

Different-ish.

There's a recommendation system that I think is pretty good and people can collect other people pictures/pins in their own collections.

I don't think there is any emphasis on influencers or at least from my casual usage I don't see any. I think this is in part because people can collect other people's pins/pictures into their own collection.

Re: WeWork IPO Shows It's the Most Magical Unicorn

#32

Post by thrav » Wed, Aug 14, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

microtherion wrote: post #15

danso wrote: post #7

Tangent: the article includes a chart titled "Unicorns Gored" with the caption, "Many of the highly valued young technology companies have not done well as public companies". It features 9 relatively recent tech IPOs, including Lyft, Dropbox, Spotify, and Snapchat. All of the companies have a negative delta in terms of initial stock price, from -47% to -2%, except for Pinterest, which is +77%. I actually had forgotte…

Another way in which Pinterest is an outlier in this list is that its user base skews heavily female (>80% according to one source: https://www.omnicoreagency.com/pinterest-statistics/ ). I wonder whether some "Moneyball Factor" could be at work, in that this led to it being underpriced for its potential. Snapchat users also skew somewhat female, but they are also quite young compared to other sites, and "youth" may…

Don’t want to overgeneralize, but women seem to be more likely consumers (of things) & regular users of social media. [I’m sure niche exceptions abound]

I don’t know if anyone has run the numbers, but I’d expect ladies to more valuable on all kinds of KPIs of a good customer.

My feel is that men gravitate towards large purchases around a hobby or two (bikes, outdoors, cars, computers, video games). While women are more likely to spend in smaller amounts across a wide variety of categories.

I also may just be full of shit.

Re: WeWork IPO Shows It's the Most Magical Unicorn

#33

Post by elliekelly » Wed, Aug 14, 2019, 9:30 PM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #18

dougmwne wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ouch, HN showing off its gender bias I guess. Pinterest is also supposed to be popular with dads, so we must be showing off our age bias as well.

Not this dad. My wife kept trying to get my 14-year old daughter interested, but so far she's not. I think, based on these three data points in my family, that I have pretty conclusive proof it's a not-quite-young-but-of-course-not-old-female demographic.

Pinterest has cornered the market for women who (1) are planning a wedding or (2) have a child under five in their family.

And I don't just mean brides and mothers, but everyone involved with the wedding/baby shower/birthday party planning process: bridesmaids, mothers of the bride, future mother-in-laws, aunts, grandmothers, and godmothers. And of course everyone who's paid to be involved with those events uses pinterest as well: photographers, venues, florists, event planners, designers, etc.

My gripe with pinterest (that none of my friends seem to be bothered by) is how difficult it is to source the information that's posted. Not only does it create an environment for misinformation to spread but it makes it really hard to determine whether you're purchasing from the person responsible for the beautiful photo or if you're being led to some sort of alibaba drop-shipping site.

Re: WeWork IPO Shows It's the Most Magical Unicorn

#34

Post by mywittyname » Wed, Aug 14, 2019, 9:32 PM UTC

anthony_doan wrote: post #28

danso wrote: post #7

Tangent: the article includes a chart titled "Unicorns Gored" with the caption, "Many of the highly valued young technology companies have not done well as public companies". It features 9 relatively recent tech IPOs, including Lyft, Dropbox, Spotify, and Snapchat. All of the companies have a negative delta in terms of initial stock price, from -47% to -2%, except for Pinterest, which is +77%. I actually had forgotte…

> I guess that's a function of how relatively few HNers may be Pinterest users? I actually use Pinterest. It's just how often does the opportunity to mention Pinterest comes up? My pins are fashion (boots, athletic wares, etc..) and haircuts.

Pinterest probably has an amazing tech stack. I am surprised that it doesn't get more love around here.

Re: WeWork IPO Shows It's the Most Magical Unicorn

#35

Post by jfk13 » Wed, Aug 14, 2019, 9:37 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #34

anthony_doan wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess that's a function of how relatively few HNers may be Pinterest users? I actually use Pinterest. It's just how often does the opportunity to mention Pinterest comes up? My pins are fashion (boots, athletic wares, etc..) and haircuts.

Pinterest probably has an amazing tech stack. I am surprised that it doesn't get more love around here.

Personally, I hate Pinterest with a passion, mainly because of how it pollutes image searches with useless, context-less results.

Re: WeWork IPO Shows It's the Most Magical Unicorn

#36

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 14, 2019, 9:40 PM UTC

thrav wrote: post #32

microtherion wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way in which Pinterest is an outlier in this list is that its user base skews heavily female (>80% according to one source: https://www.omnicoreagency.com/pinterest-statistics/ ). I wonder whether some "Moneyball Factor" could be at work, in that this led to it being underpriced for its potential. Snapchat users also skew somewhat female, but they are also quite young compared to other sites, and "youth" may…

Don’t want to overgeneralize, but women seem to be more likely consumers (of things) & regular users of social media. [I’m sure niche exceptions abound] I don’t know if anyone has run the numbers, but I’d expect ladies to more valuable on all kinds of KPIs of a good customer. My feel is that men gravitate towards large purchases around a hobby or two (bikes, outdoors, cars, computers, video games). While women are mo…

[deleted]

Re: WeWork IPO Shows It's the Most Magical Unicorn

#37

Post by kolbe » Wed, Aug 14, 2019, 9:42 PM UTC

What I don't get is how small some of these numbers are. Weren't some of the figures being tossed around valuing it at $40bn? And their revenues are in the low single digit billions. It's one thing to get sucked in by a company like Uber who does $50b+ in rides, and think how valuable they could be if they figured out how to earn a meaningful chunk of that pie, but WeWork earns virtually no money, and exists in one of the oldest and most competitive businesses known to man. What is the upside that investors are envisioning?

Re: WeWork IPO Shows It's the Most Magical Unicorn

#38

Post by qsymmachus » Wed, Aug 14, 2019, 9:43 PM UTC

WeWork's business model makes more sense when you realize it's probably just a scheme for transferring VC money directly into Adam Neumann's pocket. He owns a number of the buildings that WeWork is leasing: https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2019/01/16/wework-c...

Re: WeWork IPO Shows It's the Most Magical Unicorn

#39

Post by lifeisstillgood » Wed, Aug 14, 2019, 9:47 PM UTC

The City of London is having a skyscraper boom at the moment - two major 100+ floor buildings are going up and you can hardly turn a corner without some crane or building work going on.

I personally (and without any empirical evidence) think that there is no way London needs this much more office space, partly because "Brexit China Tariffs", but mostly because remote working and "just not in the office five days a week" is becoming a thing.

Turning that sterile office space onto more live/work/mix-it-up space, perhaps floors 1-20 as office and 20-40 as apartments or something, will almaot certainly be a feature of the next twenty years.

And all that office space and living space and mixed something or other we don't quite get, all that will need to be sold and packaged and marketed.

And so, long story long, whilst WeWork may look like a joke, may be a "lose money on each sale but make it up in volume", something like WeWork may just be the Hoover or the Pullman coach of mixed live work office buildings. Because mixed live work office buildings will be the Pullman coaches of tomorrow's cities - cities have a new brighter car free future, where Barcelona's mega-blocks will meets the density of skyscrapers. But it needs ... looking after.

Putting a millions tons of glass and steel pointing straight up is an awesome technical achievement

Making that tower somewhere that families can live, love, shop and work is a different skill set entirely.

It won't look like building service companies do today. It might just look like WeWork

(Thank you, normal cynical and cutting remarks will resume shortly)

Re: WeWork IPO Shows It's the Most Magical Unicorn

#40

Post by danso » Wed, Aug 14, 2019, 9:47 PM UTC

dougmwne wrote: post #12

danso wrote: post #7

Tangent: the article includes a chart titled "Unicorns Gored" with the caption, "Many of the highly valued young technology companies have not done well as public companies". It features 9 relatively recent tech IPOs, including Lyft, Dropbox, Spotify, and Snapchat. All of the companies have a negative delta in terms of initial stock price, from -47% to -2%, except for Pinterest, which is +77%. I actually had forgotte…

Ouch, HN showing off its gender bias I guess. Pinterest is also supposed to be popular with dads, so we must be showing off our age bias as well.

I'm inclined to agree with you but I realize I get a lot of my tech news on Twitter too. I follow many tech and business reporters, and a lot of tech people in general, and doing a search for "pinterest" from people I follow turns up very little. Though I'm not sure if that's inherent to the network – e.g. it's not a general usecase to share pins across Twitter. Still, I see more on my Twitter timeline about Etsy when it comes to people I follow tweeting about something cool they bought or saw.