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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

#221

Post by pram »

user5994461 wrote: post #198
pram wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The chat program they’re referring to in the beginning was HipChat, which really was a steaming pile of crap. Uber was our largest user and they constantly brought the entire service down. IDK if making their own was the right solution, but it was driven by necessity and not boredom I assure you.

The largest user of HipChat, really? Uber must have been something like 5k-15k employees at that time. I thought HipChat was used in F500, much larger than that. Anyway, HipChat was bought and killed by Slack. They avoided a dying product by accident.

Yes. It seemed like every single one of their drivers was getting messages from one of their chat rooms in HipChat. It was like 25k people in a single room iirc. They seemed to be using it for notifications or something?

At any rate HipChat was already dead prior to the sale. Atlassian made a new program from scratch called Stride which was its own little awful can of worms.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#222

Post by reaperducer »

wpietri wrote: post #188
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…

I think there's a class of narcissist that doesn't really have knowledge and beliefs as much as they have desires and things to say that get them closer to their desires. So in some sense I think asking what Adam Neumann and Elizabeth Holmes really believe is a category error. Knowing the truth makes lying really hard. If you spend a lot of time figuring out what's true, that builds mental habits that make lying feel…

I think there's a class of narcissist that doesn't really have knowledge and beliefs as much as they have desires and things to say that get them closer to their desires.

This problem is fed by the fact that they surround themselves with yes men, who only benefit by feeding the beast, until the beast eats itself.

It's called Michael Jackson Syndrome.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#223

Post by greenyoda »

prostoalex wrote: post #148
skinnymuch wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What major downside or any protections does SoftBank have with WeWork right now? Is there anything they are getting now or likely to get that doesn’t still have them $7B or so down the hole for WeWork? The major thing is usually first dibs if the company sells for a lot less than the later valuations. In this case that doesn’t seem likely to happen with Softbank getting back most of their investment

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/24/softbank-has-a-multi-million...

That article says:

>The [ratchet] provision could grant existing shareholders $200 million to $500 million worth of additional shares, most of which would go to SoftBank, Kennedy said. For example, if WeWork’s market cap came in at less than $14.5 billion post-IPO, the total value of additional shares issued to SoftBank under the provision would be more than $400 million.

$400 million doesn't seem to be much of a compensation for losing billions of dollars in investments.

And that assumes that the company will IPO before it goes bankrupt (e.g., from investors pulling the plug on any future investments to cut their losses).

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#224

Post by chkuendig »

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…

> What I don't understand is how do things get this far down the road before a good old fashioned sanity check happens?

Softbank was hoping Vision Fund II will be closed once this collapses so pumping it up to 47B made sense to juice the returns on Fund I.

Adam N. already took 700M of his chips off the table before the IPO as well, so he clearly expected the music to stop playing as well.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#225

Post by jannotti »

martinald wrote: post #14
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.

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

I wonder how many of them are independent founders being facetious. They might be, literally, a software enegineer who is "at" wework.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#226

Post by caconym_ »

nonconvergent wrote: post #199
SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gets called "being disruptive" but it's possible to be disruptive without ignoring the law. For example see SpaceX: successful disruption of the launch industry, without breaking any laws. The issue is that not every industry is so inefficient as to be possible to legally disrupt profitably, so people try to do an end-run around the law.

The CEO of SpaceX did commit a couple crimes in the same podcast. Uber's autonomous car fatally collided with a woman, raising questions of negligence and liability in automation. Uber acquired some of Alphabet/Waymo's trade secrets when they aqui-hired one of their former engineers who apparently kept a bunch of Waymo's IP he worked on. That engineer himself is now facing a federal indictment, and Uber and Waymo hav…

I guess I'm not sure what Musk smoking pot on Joe Rogan has to do with SpaceX's unquestionable success in a market dominated practically since its inception by pork-armored incumbents.

If anything, I'd expect it to work against them.

What was/were the other crime(s)?

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#227

Post by jacquesm »

danesparza wrote: post #200
wpietri wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a class of narcissist that doesn't really have knowledge and beliefs as much as they have desires and things to say that get them closer to their desires. So in some sense I think asking what Adam Neumann and Elizabeth Holmes really believe is a category error. Knowing the truth makes lying really hard. If you spend a lot of time figuring out what's true, that builds mental habits that make lying feel…

I think the OP's question really involves the CFO or any accountants involved in this case. I would expect the CEO to be driven more by vision than by cold, hard facts.

> I would expect the CEO to be driven more by vision than by cold, hard facts.

Vision is fine but cold, hard facts are essential too. If you let your vision get the better of you and you ignore the facts then you're on the path to self destruction.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#228

Post by epiphanitus »

metalliqaz wrote: post #170
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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). What I don't understand, and this is an honest question for this crowd: aren't these viable businesses, in and of themselves? Maybe this is a stupid question. This is probably what allowed them to run so far on what they actually were, but here's the question…

> For instance, WeWork seems to be an AWS-for-office-space. Is that not a useful business? If I own a contract for space that can be slotted into anywhere in the world I might want to sit, is that not a useful thing to pay for? One might argue that, if I had the resources to truly care about a world-wide smorgasbord of office spaces to choose from at any given time, I'd have enough resources to lease my own building(…

> WeWork leases office space and parcels it out to temporary tenants. But, what's to stop the management companies that already own the office space to do the same thing? Why pay a middle man?

WeWork's business model kind of reminds me of MoviePass in that they are very dependent on vendors who could also be their competitors. And there's the risk that the economy slows down and people cancel their memberships but they still have long term leases to pay...

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#229

Post by prolepunk »

ethbro wrote: post #138
benj111 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"SoftBank's playbook is ripped from Buffett" How so?

Buffett's hypothesis (as I understand it) boiled down to (1) find successful businesses that are capital-starved, (2) pair them with businesses which naturally generate float (e.g. insurance), under a corporate umbrella, (3) invest the float in those businesses and thereby beat market returns (by only selecting quality businesses, and having the ability to provide mentorship / experienced leadership).

What does 'generate float' mean as a financial term?

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#230

Post by asveikau »

danesparza wrote: post #200
wpietri wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a class of narcissist that doesn't really have knowledge and beliefs as much as they have desires and things to say that get them closer to their desires. So in some sense I think asking what Adam Neumann and Elizabeth Holmes really believe is a category error. Knowing the truth makes lying really hard. If you spend a lot of time figuring out what's true, that builds mental habits that make lying feel…

I think the OP's question really involves the CFO or any accountants involved in this case. I would expect the CEO to be driven more by vision than by cold, hard facts.

> I would expect the CEO to be driven more by vision than by cold, hard facts.

If the facts don't align with your vision, figure out a different vision.

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