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Troubles Mount for the We Company as Softbank Reportedly Calls for Shelving IPO

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Re: Troubles Mount for the We Company as Softbank Reportedly Calls for Shelving IPO

#151

Post by graeme »

swsieber wrote: post #150
graeme wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's from the article. The author of that post has had virtually all of his work funded by the oil industry. That doesn't make him wrong, but it does raise questions. There are also few who agree with his stance. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/02/26/uds-david-leg... Fully examining arguments against Legates would be a lot of work, but here's a discussion of his most recent paper. https://www.theguardian.c…

That has virtually nothing about his claims, just his funding. And while the source of funding is important, I'd love to see an analysis of the actual claims/science.

Oops, my mistake. I meant to link two articles, left off the second. This is the one I was referring to with my final para. Will edit my comment above if I can

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...

Re: Troubles Mount for the We Company as Softbank Reportedly Calls for Shelving IPO

#152

Post by Traster »

I've got to say I think this is a really bearish sign for Softbank. Softbank is meant to be so big that it can pick winners and buy shares of entire markets so they can own the future returns of all these tech companies. One of the big advantages of Softbank was meant to be that if you have softbank money you are going to win through capital spend and expansion.

But the fact that Softbank can't walk away from We seems to indicate that they actually are a lot more sensitive to the market than they claim to be. It really changes the dynamic if Softbank can't afford to hold all these companies when the next recession comes. You don't want to be a Softbank owned company during that fire sale.

Re: Troubles Mount for the We Company as Softbank Reportedly Calls for Shelving IPO

#153

Post by swsieber »

graeme wrote: post #151
swsieber wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has virtually nothing about his claims, just his funding. And while the source of funding is important, I'd love to see an analysis of the actual claims/science.

Oops, my mistake. I meant to link two articles, left off the second. This is the one I was referring to with my final para. Will edit my comment above if I can https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...

Many thanks :)

Re: Troubles Mount for the We Company as Softbank Reportedly Calls for Shelving IPO

#154

Post by paulddraper »

save_ferris wrote: post #24

Corporate governance for startups is such a joke sometimes, it’s unbelievable. And investors bring it upon themselves. You want sustained hockey stick growth, regardless of the cost to the team and the business, no matter what? Then you’re gonna find some founders that are much better at making the business look promising by hitting certain metrics than actually building a solid operational foundation for the busines…

> And investors bring it upon themselves.

Of course.

Yes you have the occasional bad apple, but so what? You're a VC...you have 10 bad apples for every 1 good one.

The calculus is in favor of pouring gas on a promising bet, even if it increases the risk of explosion.

Re: Troubles Mount for the We Company as Softbank Reportedly Calls for Shelving IPO

#155

Post by braythwayt »

prepend wrote: post #143
braythwayt wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What loathing? Finance serves an important purpose. But its purpose is NOT to police self-dealing. And the people putting the money in are exactly the people who are directly responsible for governance. Likewise, due to regulatory capture, the people who put money into businesses are closely related to the people who write laws about what is or isn’t legal, and enforce those laws. So if Adam’s choices are ok with his…

> If Adam provides an opportunity for his investors to make their “ten billion,” why would anyone object to his self-dealing? Why do we, for that matter? There’s one aspect of some sort of ethical wrongness because I suspect there’s an eventual chump who will lose out not having full perspective when this thing falls apart. But, for me, I have a tendency to feel uncomfortable when things are “obviously” wrong. I find…

Ah, well, I think it's certainly valid to take a CEO's behaviour as a signal you use to make predictions about their future behaviour.

And I think it's valid to use that to make predictions about the company's viability and/or make predictions about the likely outcome of any private or public stock market investment.

Choosing whether to do business with someone who fully discloses their past choices and is truthful about their future plans is a whole different thing from judging whether their past choices are criminal and/or dishonest.

Unless it is revealed that they are withholding other relevant transactions, I'd say the man is honest. But "honest" is not synonymous with, "someone I want to do business with."

Re: Troubles Mount for the We Company as Softbank Reportedly Calls for Shelving IPO

#156

Post by tptacek »

vonmoltke wrote: post #112
kasey_junk wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WeWork is offering its customers something of value, that while not unique, was rare. That it has to do largely with changing the normal contracts in their industry doesn’t matter much. The issue is not with what they are selling it’s with how they are funding it. I think this story says a lot less about We than it does about SoftBank.

Rare? Regus was widespread in this space before WeWork was a twinkle in Adam Neumann's eye.

Is Regus really pin compatible with WeWork? WeWork offers cheap 1-desk offices with Internet/utilities bundled. Last I checked, Regus offered a "1-desk office" that was much more expensive, could fit several people, and didn't include amenities like Internet bundled.

There were online retailers before Amazon, too.

Re: Troubles Mount for the We Company as Softbank Reportedly Calls for Shelving IPO

#157

Post by mrnobody_67 »

tempsy wrote: post #137

I'm looking through some other SoftBank investments. My guess is that Brandless, Wag (dog walking), Clutter (moving), and DoorDash are all in similar positions of having raised too much money.

Correct.

Brandless even fired their CEO back in March of this year.

Wag founds are off doing a mobility startup, got kicked out as well.

Re: Troubles Mount for the We Company as Softbank Reportedly Calls for Shelving IPO

#158

Post by tomp »

mywittyname wrote: post #141
alistproducer2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been reading zerohedge since 2008. I've not really liked the turn it took around 2015-2016 but it seems to have come back around and become a bit more balanced than it was in those early days of flirting with being a full on MAGA blog. It's, IMO, the best financial blog out there.

The problem I have with ZH is that it's always pessimistic, regardless of whether or not pessimism is warranted or logical.

Indeed, but that's a constant / predictable bias the you can easily correct for.

Re: Troubles Mount for the We Company as Softbank Reportedly Calls for Shelving IPO

#159

Post by vonmoltke »

tptacek wrote: post #156
vonmoltke wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rare? Regus was widespread in this space before WeWork was a twinkle in Adam Neumann's eye.

Is Regus really pin compatible with WeWork? WeWork offers cheap 1-desk offices with Internet/utilities bundled. Last I checked, Regus offered a "1-desk office" that was much more expensive, could fit several people, and didn't include amenities like Internet bundled. There were online retailers before Amazon, too.

> Is Regus really pin compatible with WeWork? WeWork offers cheap 1-desk offices with Internet/utilities bundled. Last I checked, Regus offered a "1-desk office" that was much more expensive, could fit several people, and didn't include amenities like Internet bundled.

Depends on the market. Regus, as far as I know, doesn't put a lot of effort on build-out of the spaces they sublet. They take them pretty much as they are. It certainly wasn't a co-working space, but those weren't rare before WeWork either.

> There were online retailers before Amazon, too.

There certainly were online retailers before Amazon, but people didn't call them "rare" before Amazon.

Re: Troubles Mount for the We Company as Softbank Reportedly Calls for Shelving IPO

#160

Post by tptacek »

vonmoltke wrote: post #159
tptacek wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Regus really pin compatible with WeWork? WeWork offers cheap 1-desk offices with Internet/utilities bundled. Last I checked, Regus offered a "1-desk office" that was much more expensive, could fit several people, and didn't include amenities like Internet bundled. There were online retailers before Amazon, too.

> Is Regus really pin compatible with WeWork? WeWork offers cheap 1-desk offices with Internet/utilities bundled. Last I checked, Regus offered a "1-desk office" that was much more expensive, could fit several people, and didn't include amenities like Internet bundled. Depends on the market. Regus, as far as I know, doesn't put a lot of effort on build-out of the spaces they sublet. They take them pretty much as they…

"Rare" wouldn't be the word I would use, but the offering WeWork had, a few years ago, was unique and very well targeted to people like me: default month-to-month leasing of flexible 1- and 2-desk offices and hot desk spaces, all amenities included, at below-market prices.
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