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WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

reuters.com

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Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#41

Post by kache_ »

S_A_P wrote: post #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 o…

There are in fact a few unicorns with recurring revenue that is close to their operational costs. You just don't read about them on the news unlike the trainwrecks. Good news leads to no news.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#42

Post by [deleted] »

waterfowl wrote: post #2

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…

[deleted]

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#43

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

S_A_P wrote: post #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 o…

“There are three ways to make a living in this business: be first, be smarter, or cheat.“

-Margin Call

SV ran out of the first two because they are much harder. We are left with the dying gasps of companies trying the third way.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#44

Post by acjohnson55 »

dcchambers wrote: post #6
mharroun wrote: 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.

They're a tech company in the sense that their internal and client-facing operations are enabled by custom tech, and they have the scale that that stuff needs to be pretty mature. But I wouldn't necessarily assume a WeWork engineer is doing cutting-edge stuff (not that they're not; I just wouldn't assume it).

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#45

Post by olliej »

S_A_P wrote: post #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 o…

They thought they would be able to IPO at $50 billion. Their problem was that the IPO process took long enough for people to realize how bonkers it was - it didn’t help that they were going to IPO after all the other loss making hype businesses are down from their IPO prices (so presumably people are viewing similar IPOs with suspicion).

What’s annoying to me is that these companies that are making huge losses were able to hoover up so much of the VC funding, while actual profitable businesses were not :-(

I recall reading an article a few years ago from a profitable startup talking about trying to get VC funding, and all their interactions were basically “you should stop charging so you can get market share”. Essentially demanding that they make their profitable company unprofitable.

I wish I could remember where it was.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#47

Post by harryh »

Hongwei wrote: post #38
harryh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order for something to be fraud there has to be deception. This was never the case with WeWork.

I think the shenanigans they were pulling (crazy governance, conflicts of interest enriching the founder and wife, bad acquisitions) were obvious to the HN and analyst community, but possibly they hoped it would be over the heads of retail investors. Now obviously, in this case, it was too blatant and stunk bad enough that even retail investors shied away.

The vast majority of shares purchased at IPOs are by institutional investors writing very large checks, not retail investors.

Retail investors shying away had nothing to do with the IPO getting pulled. And even if this wasn't the case it's still not fraud: if retail investors have all the data (which they did) but still want to buy something, it's not deception.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#48

Post by [deleted] »

S_A_P wrote: post #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 o…

[deleted]

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#50

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

bjtonline wrote: post #13
dcchambers wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Should have made them get their realtor licenses.
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