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WeWork IPO Shows It's the Most Magical Unicorn

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

#161

Post by buboard »

samgtx wrote: post #160
buboard wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH setting up a coworking space is not risky for real estate owners. Couple of desks and a coffee machine. Wework may be setting itself up to be airbnb'd by everyone who has available space in the future.

But doesn't that mean that WeWork could become the AirBnB by making itself the app/website where all of these independent landlords list their office spaces and where workers go to rent them?

Many sites , e.g. Coworker.co already exist . Running such a website seems to be easier than running an airbnb - the leases are daily passes and they dont seem to worry about cleaning fees & damages etc. The main takeaway for wework is that they are in the real estate space, this is an uber-competitive and regulated space which has been "disrupted" for millenia

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

#162

Post by loceng »

adrianN wrote: post #126
discodave wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would absolutely not sign on to a company whose space is a garage. First of all, it signals precariousness and non-seriousness So you would have avoided Apple and Amazon then?

They would also have avoided a million companies you never heard of.

Right, so following the leading metric for your decision basing it on off of if they mostly run out of a "garage" is a terrible idea; adding the two Apple founders into the equation, assuming you have the opportunity to get to know them and their ideas and plans well enough, would be an important part to the equation of deciding where to work.

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

#163

Post by RyanAF7 »

I'm sorry, who the frack is this CEO?

How are these anti-savvy CEOs getting this much money in the first place? What investor looked at this kind of model and went...oh hell ya, Imma dump money into that.

Massive real estate speculation you say? Shrinking capital gains you say? No downside risk of massive customer fallout or systemic risk of market downturns you say?

Oh...you're saying all those things are totally possible and very likely! Well in that case just take 75% of all my money for your little scheme.

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

#164

Post by School-Cotton »

discodave wrote: post #119
School-Cotton wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it could work for founders, but as an employee I would absolutely not sign on to a company whose space is a garage. First of all, it signals precariousness and non-seriousness. Second, I can get a job at any number of companies in more comfortable settings, so why shouldn’t I? Maybe part of the difference is related to supply and demand: potential employees have other opportunities, so why should they make sacr…

> I would absolutely not sign on to a company whose space is a garage. First of all, it signals precariousness and non-seriousness So you would have avoided Apple and Amazon then?

If they were in a literal garage and I could have gotten another job paying 300k or more in a real office with free food then yes, I definitely would have avoided them.

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

#165

Post by adrianN »

loceng wrote: post #162
adrianN wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They would also have avoided a million companies you never heard of.

Right, so following the leading metric for your decision basing it on off of if they mostly run out of a "garage" is a terrible idea; adding the two Apple founders into the equation, assuming you have the opportunity to get to know them and their ideas and plans well enough, would be an important part to the equation of deciding where to work.

Only if you believe that you can distinguish lucky founders from normal founders with sufficient precision to beat the odds. Personally I wouldn't trust myself to do that.

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

#166

Post by matthewdgreen »

nradov wrote: post #135
themagician wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that most people don’t know what they are doing. The 401(k) is the only retirement program we have. At the end of the day when companies go public and then go bust the money is often coming from the collective public in some way. You are right, it’s a very small detail. But it’s one of those cogs that turn while making the rich richer by extracting value from the public. The founder of this company is a…

In most 401(k) plans the default funds don't invest in IPOs. Most workers and retail investors have no exposure here.

During the last crash, most 401k investors didn't think they had much exposure to mortgage-backed securities. Turned out they had lots of exposure to companies that held those securities. I don't know how much that's also true with these IPO stocks.

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

#167

Post by Balgair »

jngreenlee wrote: post #77
tomhoward wrote: post #69

I have a bit of knowledge of the co-working industry. I’m good friends with the founder of the first and long-dominant tech/creative co-working space in my Australian city, and I served on its advisory board in the past couple years, through what turned out to be a distressed sale of the business to its landlord, after it became insolvent and unsalvageable. There are several fundamental flaws with the concept that ma…

I really like your analysis here and it made me think. Ultimately, for control of many of these issues, a localist approach is superior..understand the local culture, etc. Maybe a coworkery in La Jolla would have surfboard racks and a tacit understanding that surfing comes first...so allowance for wet gears (and showers) might be needed. Maybe a location in Boulder has community climbing gear and/or a bouldering wall…

> Maybe a location in Boulder has community climbing gear and/or a bouldering wall.

I mean, yeah there is a lot of climbing in Boulder, but a MUCH better resource would be a daycare. You'd have line out the door if you had a daycare in Boulder. Childcare costs in CO are crazy high, like ~$40k/year for 2 kids.

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

#168

Post by alasdair_ »

tomhoward wrote: post #86
jngreenlee wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like your analysis here and it made me think. Ultimately, for control of many of these issues, a localist approach is superior..understand the local culture, etc. Maybe a coworkery in La Jolla would have surfboard racks and a tacit understanding that surfing comes first...so allowance for wet gears (and showers) might be needed. Maybe a location in Boulder has community climbing gear and/or a bouldering wall…

> So, does scale lend _any_ benefit? Certainly the "network" of locations might help...but what % of tenants are really and truely jet-setters off to many major cities, versus those that stay close to home and just need a regular space out of the house. I don't think scale is that vital in this view. Spot on here. They are building for a world in which everyone is location-and-asset-independent. Don't need a car beca…

>They are building for a world in which everyone is location-and-asset-independent. Don't need a car because we have Uber/Lyft. Don't need a home as we have Airbnb. Don't need an office as we have WeWork. Etc.

It’s easy to look at current trends and extrapolate from there but when I think of Wework, I am reminded of the time when selling ones home and moving to a shared boarding house was commonplace. Trends reverse, often quite quickly.

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

#169

Post by OkGoDoIt »

ageitgey wrote: post #154
OkGoDoIt wrote: post #128

One thing I never see mentioned in any analysis of WeWork is Regus, which does more or less the same thing but with less fanfare. They’ve been running coworking spaces and short term office rentals around the world for a long time. Do the two companies have similar business models? Can we look to Regus’s long history to better analyze WeWork’s prospects? It’s not like WeWork invested co-working spaces, so I don’t und…

I've worked at a lot of different WeWork locations in different cities and countries. They are essentially Starbucks for working - you get the exact same product in every location and it is "good enough". The overall product is definitely designed for a younger generation, but it is very easy and fast to use. I've also used Regis occasionally when a WeWork wasn't nearby. It was like stepping back 30 years into the pa…

I feel like what you and the other replies are saying is WeWork is super trendy and hip whereas Regus feels old-fashioned and stuffy. This feels surprisingly superficial to me.

1. The old fashioned office feel at Regus is not necessarily a bad thing. I’m able to focus much better in a Regus office. And I feel like I’m actually getting what I’m paying for (if I want beer, I’ll go to a supermarket). I’ve never had client meetings in either place, but from what I’ve seen Regus is much more the kind of place I’d want to bring clients to if I wanted to give a good impression. This kind of feels like a parallel to the open office versus cubicle debate. Open offices are undoubtedly trendier and more community driven and just feel cool, but if you want to actually be productive and get work done then open offices are kind of a step backwards.

2. Regardless of what’s better in our differing opinions, the business models are more or less the same, so it feels like Regus could be a useful case study when thinking about WeWork. I still find it confusing how most articles about WeWork imply it’s the first company to do what it’s doing at scale and therefore it’s in uncharted tech startup growth mode territory.

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

#170

Post by AlchemistCamp »

anthony_doan wrote: post #104
AlchemistCamp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were very early adopters of Elixir!

They do? They should actually talk about it on their tech blog ( https://medium.com/@Pinterest_Engineering ). I couldn't find it other then third party post talking about them using it ( https://prograils.com/posts/why-discord-pinterest-moz-bleach... ). Even their github https://github.com/pinterest , elixir isn't even in their top programming languages. It could be the secret sauce language kind of deal. Or they've…

Thanks! I'm glad I could get the same handle.

AFAIK, Pinterest rewrote the logic of their notification system into Elixir and also used it to rebuild their rate limiter.

This is the main piece I've seen open sourced: https://github.com/pinterest/elixir-thrift

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