41–50 of 171 posts
Evidence we are not in a bubble and that markets are mostly sane currently.
We must be pretty important for Softbank as a signal - even if they didn't believe in the company, allowing such a major investment take such a big hit would be rather bad. Worth them pouring a few $bn more in instead of an IPO, if only to shore up faith in the rest of their portfolio? All that being said, someone needs to be mentoring the CEO, like right now. That S1 was... not... great.
I'd love to know how throwing good money after bad would shore up the faith in the rest of the portfolio?
"No one else wants this, but we can't afford to mark-to-market, so we're going to throw more money in with the hopes of maintaining an illusory valuation."
At the end of the day, it's a bad business. Can't fake your way out of it.
It only took 19 years, but we finally have the next pets.com. What will we call this era? Dotcom Bubble II?
I think at this point it would be surprising if there was GOOD news about We! It just seems to be one thing after another.
We must be pretty important for Softbank as a signal - even if they didn't believe in the company, allowing such a major investment take such a big hit would be rather bad. Worth them pouring a few $bn more in instead of an IPO, if only to shore up faith in the rest of their portfolio? All that being said, someone needs to be mentoring the CEO, like right now. That S1 was... not... great.
> Worth them pouring a few $bn more in instead of an IPO, if only to shore up faith in the rest of their portfolio? I'd love to know how throwing good money after bad would shore up the faith in the rest of the portfolio? "No one else wants this, but we can't afford to mark-to-market, so we're going to throw more money in with the hopes of maintaining an illusory valuation." At the end of the day, it's a bad business…
I mean, I'm just throwing something out there - I can't see how they were funded in the first place...
But, there's definitely a scenario where We taking a 50% haircut after several large-scale late rounds led by one prominent fund could lead to other companies valued at a level by the same late stage fund being valued less. The optics of that to other investors, whilst common for a lot of funds, at this late stage could raise some eyebrows.
$3bn to maintain We's valuation on the private market might mitigate against several multi-$bn write downs across the portfolio, especially if they're planning IPOs as well.
No idea if it's a decent strategy, but this is VC we're talking about...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We're going to look back on this company and say to ourselves "why did we fund a company to sign rental agreements". Because there is just too much dumb money floating around and waiting to be invested after a decade of QE monetary policy. But instead of governments (worldwide) using said dumb money to invest in their future e.g. by building (or even maintaining!) infrastructure, teaching young students, fixing up…
All of the options you listed would result in wealth redistribution. Asset value inflation and collecting rent are how you maintain or increase the wealth/income gap, not giving away your money to make other people’s lives better/productive.