Timber.
WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO
501–510 of 551 posts
Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO
#502Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I understand they wanted to instrument their offices (with cameras, microphones, thermometers, etc.) to collect data on the occupants ostensibly because they’re trying to be a tech company. Felt Orwellian, but it sounded interesting enough to at least hear them out.
On the one hand it seems like a new level of creepy. On another level, it's kind of funny to have tech companies be the ones getting spied on.
At my old company (energy company), they've now installed sensors at every desk - to track whether or not someone is sitting at the desk, and their activity level.
Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO
#503Earlier quoted context omitted.
Definitely just another failed tech bro pump 'n dump scheme headed to the dustbin of history. I seriously doubt that. I think they're overvalued too, but I predict WeWork is still going to be around in another decade. There's clearly a ton of demand for what they provide.
> but I predict WeWork is still going to be around in another decade. There's clearly a ton of demand for what they provide There's also a TON of rent-a-desk places. The big questions are: - What's the benefit to a large corporation doing this instead of lots of small companies? (The economies of scale need to outweigh the large corporate overhead.) - What's WeWork's secret sauce or first mover advantage?
> What's the benefit to a large corporation doing this instead of lots of small companies? (The economies of scale need to outweigh the large corporate overhead.)
Same answer in case of gyms. Your advertising overhead does not scale linearly as you grow. Once you build a brand. Customer acquisition costs go down. For moving workforces - entrepreneurs, sales, executives - it becomes more affordable to use one brand rather than plenty of smaller brands.
Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO
#504WeWork's business model is convincing investors they are a tech company with a dozens-of-billions valuation. I am glad HN, amongst others, have torn down this real-estate company wearing a tech-unicorn-mask.
Ironically, the company is in the front page of HN for two days. If Tech really didnt care (they do - they ve invested in it) they wouldn't give a toss about a RE company.
Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hijacking this spot to highlight newrelic as a company I used to evangelize and now will go out of my way to recommend against (I consult startups as a virtual CTO). They used to have a brilliant offering (Application level monitoring with all associated hosts included) then they deprecated the host monitoring and jacked the price up on every one of my clients while simultaneously threatening them to collect based on…
Please contact me at the email in my profile. I may have a work opportunity for you in the New Year.
There doesn't appear to be one on your profile.
Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO
#506Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect the majority of WeWork's revenue comes from people working in the same location day in, day out. Same with gym chains. People sign up for Planet Fitness because the nearest location is the most convenient, not because they plan to visit multiple locations over the course of a year (not to say there aren't people taking advantage of the multi-city aspect, just that they aren't the typical customer).
WeWork may soon be headed the way of Gym's business model which is to oversubscribe like crazy assuming not everyone will show up at the same time and many will not show up at all. When that happens, I wonder what happens to NPS. How many people will be a WeWork member (like their gym membership) but don't really need/want to use it?
The answer to that question is already answered by looking at existing coworking spaces. WeWork isn't doing anything different.
Existing coworking spaces already make lots of money off of people who don't fully utilize their membership (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). WeWork is no different.
Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen a Walgreens that was closed in less than a year because of poor location despite being across the street from a Rite-Aid. They aren't perfect either.
It's not that useful to say they aren't perfect. The better measure would be how they compare to other stores, and/or how their own churn rate has changed over time.
This also misses the point. The point was that optimizing for number of stores closed is the wrong metric to begin with. Who cares how they rank on a metric that doesn't matter?
Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO
#508Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What's the upside of having a giant corporation owning all coworking spaces, versus having many small and independent small businesses running and operating independent coworking spaces? Advantage to customers? Likely minimal. Advantage to the company itself: economies of scale and, likely more importantly, lack of competition allowing them to increase prices. The very clear trend across all sectors is that compani…
> lack of competition allowing them to increase prices. There is so much commercial real estate that it's hard to imagine them in any kind of a monopoly situation.
Rabois has suggested multiple times that one bull case for them is that the company becomes almost too big to fail. They'd be so large that even in an economic downturn they'd have the power to renegotiate lower rents with the commercial property owners.
Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO
#509I'm so glad I read hacker news. I almost took a job at WeWork just 2 months ago with a recruiter working very hard to convince me I'd be rich when they IPO. Now I'm at a much smaller startup called Weave which is a really phenomenal place to work. I didn't discover until recently that it's also a YCombinator company. edit: to clarify, hacker news has been extremely skeptical of WeWork for some time, due to this, I wa…
what doe WeAve do?
Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO
#510Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What's the upside of having a giant corporation owning all coworking spaces, versus having many small and independent small businesses running and operating independent coworking spaces? Advantage to customers? Likely minimal. Advantage to the company itself: economies of scale and, likely more importantly, lack of competition allowing them to increase prices. The very clear trend across all sectors is that compani…
> lack of competition allowing them to increase prices. There is so much commercial real estate that it's hard to imagine them in any kind of a monopoly situation.
To the other response I can’t reply to - WeWork is also benefitting tremendously from all of the new build outs. Like hotels, condos, and apartments even the cheaper ones are nice when they are shiny and new. 10 years out, they aren’t going to look very good. The front loaded growth could be very damaging to their brand in the long term because of this.
I’m not sure exactly how all of those contracts look with landlords, but someone is going to need money to spend to maintain them. If not, the person with brand new build outs is going to look more attractive.
Now, maybe I’m wrong and run down office spaces don’t matter. Uber drivers all used to wear suits and their cars were pristine. Even UberBlack cars have holes in the seats and transmissions in poor condition. Uber is vastly largely today than it used to be. So that could be the trick, WeWork at scale but more as a necessity than anything else. If that is the case, then it is more a question of how much extra space other sorts of businesses, like coffee shops, want to keep free for customers.