231–240 of 404 posts
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Cultural fit is so important these days and every one of them was a cultural fit at an extremely shady company. Even if they weren’t participating in the rampant excesses, they were still willing to go along with it.
We're talking about an office here, not a SS regiment.
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'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...
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Even simpler: it's fraud and they got caught. Hopefully it doesn't paint other great IPOs in a bad light.
In order for something to be fraud there has to be deception. This was never the case with WeWork.
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$16B is a lot to pay for a turkey, even if you wipe out all the other shareholders in it.
True, but consider: 1. They want some turkey. 2. WeWorks is a turkey that already exists, in a good enough form and, should non-wanker management be installed, fat trimmed and the co being returned to real estate business rather than technology business, it seems to be a pretty tasty and immediately available one. 3. Buying it outright would have been a lot more expensive. Is it any different from Softbank investing…
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…
This was going to be one of the largest IPOs of all time. This means a huge amount of fees for bankers. In addition, WeWork is an opportunity for those bankers to also win business putting together the various kinds of debt WeWork throws off.
When bankers want a deal that will generate a huge amount of fees for them, they're not going to tell a potential client they won't get the valuation they want or that he needs curb his spending habits and reduce his control. That's a great way to lose a deal.
No, they tell Adam he's a genius, We Company is revolutionary, and once the company is public he should buy a second jet just in case the first one is grounded because a mishap like a cereal box of weed being found on it.
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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.
The best part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAeEpbtHDPw
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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).
If that's the definition of a tech company, then Citibank, United Airlines and Fedex are also tech companies.
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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?
Holding it for a period of time is "generating float." For many of these companies the float is a large multiple of the profit.
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> Hopefully it doesn't paint other great IPOs in a bad light. Are you thinking of any in particular? Attention toward IPOs (especially on HN) go almost exclusively to bad IPOs. Fair offerings seem to get ignored. Edit: Peloton is one that comes to mind. Nearly $1 billion in sales, up 40% YoY. Although even they are posting a net loss of a quarter billion.
> Peloton is one that comes to mind Is it not possible that both investors and the public will find the shine off the apple of pairing two independently somewhat unattractive things--a stationary bicycle and a hefty monthly fee--as used models start to hit the secondary market? Have you ever tried to sell a used stationary bicycle? It ain't easy! The evidence of the gulf between good intentions and regular use is rig…