Live data from Hacker News

WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

wsj.com

61–70 of 551 posts

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#61
post #45

The latest Slate Money podcast had a great segment savaging Neumann. https://slate.com/podcasts/slate-money/2019/09/slate-money-o...

Their criticism of just about anything rings hollow since two of the hosts basically hate just about everything associated with money and capitalism, despite their staggering ignorance of many corners of it. Their guests and Anna Szymanski are the only non-embarrassing parts of the show for me, but I still eventually just gave up and stopped listening.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#62

Well, corporate governance was one of the main factors why the market refused to accept anything close to their last private valuation, so this makes sense. Note that they desperately need the public money before the end of December in order to avoid running out of cash [0]. My bet is that they will now try to remarket We as a shareholder-controlled company, will maybe even eliminate the multi-class stock structure i…

I just don't see them wrestling control away from the deranged, cult leader. He truly believes he is destined to be president of the world and revolutionize.. well every thing. There best bet would be to drop the multi-class structure to get into passive funds. It needs $8.1b market cap to get into S&P500.

>He truly believes he is destined to be president of the world and revolutionize.

I am not sure. He has been pretty methodical in siphoning the money out of the company (privately leasing the real estate to We, charging them for the trademark, etc), so he probably knows very well what he is doing.

Somehow, if you act this way, investors will perceive you as a charismatic and energetic leader and buy in even if your business model doesn't make much sense. IIRC, similar happened to Juicero, albeit on a much smaller scale: countless talks about expanding consciousness, changing the world, raw water bollocks, a completely unsustainable business model and questionable transactions to some external consultants.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#63
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WeWork has been an obvious fuckup to even casual observers for years, if people inside the company couldn't see this I really don't know what to say.

All the more reason for employees to be excited about the opportunity to finally see liquidity for their shares.

Well my point is it should have been obvious the shares were absolutely worthless.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#64

Well, corporate governance was one of the main factors why the market refused to accept anything close to their last private valuation, so this makes sense. Note that they desperately need the public money before the end of December in order to avoid running out of cash [0]. My bet is that they will now try to remarket We as a shareholder-controlled company, will maybe even eliminate the multi-class stock structure i…

Corporate governance was definitely a factor, but getting cut down from $47B to $10-15B is... a lot. Public market investors clearly have a much worse opinion of We's fundamentals than SoftBank did.

Yeah - these institutional investors have a lot riding on "the market was responding to weworks governance structure" and I don't think that is really representative of the facts.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#67
post #20
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were always a real estate company, they just didn't get to IPO under the SV hype because as it got closer people looked closer at the company and realized the valuation was ridiculous and the CEO was lining his own pockets acting as landlord to his own company. Now that that's happened and it's all come out he has to step down.

the way you described it, it's like a cult lost its leader

Cult of personality

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#69

> recruiter working very hard to convince me I'd be rich when they IPO recruiters still do that? so unethical.

I had a unicorn's VP-operations try to convince me that my job-offer isn't below market - I should be valuing their stock at 10-100x the valuation used in their most recent round (a few months ago), because this company is sure to become the next big thing.
Post reply on HN