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WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

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Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#13
post #4

Incoming layoffs... between wework and uber the market will be "flooded" with talent. I wonder if having wework on your resume is a good or bad thing.

How many engineers does WeWork actually employ though? From everything I've read on here they're not really a tech company. I can't imagine that, even if it all goes up in flames, there will be many SWEs looking for new jobs from this. Uber is another story. They've got a sizeable engineering force.

WeWork has done a significant amount of hiring in New York City for SWEs with very generous compensation, and honestly hasn't really had much for them to do.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#14
post #4

Incoming layoffs... between wework and uber the market will be "flooded" with talent. I wonder if having wework on your resume is a good or bad thing.

How many engineers does WeWork actually employ though? From everything I've read on here they're not really a tech company. I can't imagine that, even if it all goes up in flames, there will be many SWEs looking for new jobs from this. Uber is another story. They've got a sizeable engineering force.

At least 500 doing a quick search for 'software engineer' at 'wework'. Probably over 1000 for different job titles, etc.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#15
I'm just impressed by how well the fallout has been predicted by Scott Galloway[0] and Matt Levine.

Has been an incredible learning experience for me on the unicorn class in general. Looking forward to unicorn report for 2019 [1].

[0] https://www.profgalloway.com/wewtf-part-deux

[1] https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2019/03/20/the-unicorn-ipo-r...

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#17
post #12

I feel bad for the stary-eyed kids one year out of college that are going to get mass fired. They're all really young and naive :/

Hopefully they'll learn something from it. Losing a job really isn't the end of the world if you don't have a mortgage and a family (which will be the case for most entry level hires).

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#18
post #5

This whole thing has been nuts. It's clear no one who invested late ever actually believed in the valuations -- matt levine says it better "We came to market and public investors informally expressed some skepticism and its private backers were immediately like “wait this company isn’t profitable, why did no one tell us, burn it all down.” I am not saying that the public markets are wrong, but I kind of wanted there…

Even simpler: it's fraud and they got caught. Hopefully it doesn't paint other great IPOs in a bad light.

It is less fraud and more like gambling. They want the next Google or Facebook desperately to make big money.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#19
What I don't understand is how do things get this far down the road before a good old fashioned sanity check happens? I have got to think that Soft Bank knew/knows the valuation was off. The fact that they pushed on means they either intended to try and get away with it/take the money and run as I cant believe incompetence is the reason here. How did this get so far along???

As for Adam N, I have to think some part of him knew that it was a bullshit valuation and all the hand-wavy "we are a tech company that also happens to do real estate" doesn't pass the smell test to me. He has personally enriched himself quite a bit so even if the whole thing falls apart he will be ok. I don't know if there is a bubble in SV or not, but it seems that the last couple of really huge unicorn companies have all been based on BS(We Work), Fraud(Theranos), and untenable business models (Uber). I'm far removed from that whole scene so maybe I'm showing my ignorance by stating this. I am, however, very curious to hear about any startup unicorns that are profitable or at least have a clear roadmap to profitability and not based on a business model that will be outlawed in a few years.

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