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WeWork chases new financing as cash crunch looms

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Re: WeWork chases new financing as cash crunch looms

#121

Post by WeaselNo7 »

remarkEon wrote: post #8
sasper wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been fantastic for our fast-growing SaaS startup. We've been able to spin up offices in 4 international cities in the last 18 months with very few issues, and our teams are productive and happy with the spaces. I manage one of the new offices and have LOVED the responsiveness of the local WeWork team, the facilities, the infrastructure, and it's lightyears better than the previous office we were occupying. I don…

It seems like the value that they are offering is just outsourced-office-management then. Am I wrong in thinking that? It's hard for me to parse what WeWork was "trying" to become. A real estate company that manages offices? An office management company that also does real estate?

That's a big part of it. But their scale and presence also means they get to do things that have been invaluable for us, like being able to book meeting rooms in and have access to other WeWork premises with low effort.

Re: WeWork chases new financing as cash crunch looms

#122

Post by Konnstann »

EpicEng wrote: post #64
cgh wrote: post #24

I don’t understand how this company employed 1500+ programmers, PMs and data science people. What did they do? I guess not much, as 500 of them got laid off recently.

>What did they do? My guess would be 'very little', though I have no facts to back that up. It's just a staggering number given what the company does. I've worked at a place like this. The job was as easy as it was cushy. Two week sprint plans could be completed in literally 3-4 days... but they just kept on hiring. I often heard the word "growth", but I have no idea as to why their interpretation of the word was des…

Hey, I work on automated microscopy systems too! I'm the only dev though, rest of the team is optics/biologists. It's surprising how few solutions there are for incubated microscopes.

Re: WeWork chases new financing as cash crunch looms

#123

Post by EpicEng »

Konnstann wrote: post #122
EpicEng wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What did they do? My guess would be 'very little', though I have no facts to back that up. It's just a staggering number given what the company does. I've worked at a place like this. The job was as easy as it was cushy. Two week sprint plans could be completed in literally 3-4 days... but they just kept on hiring. I often heard the word "growth", but I have no idea as to why their interpretation of the word was des…

Hey, I work on automated microscopy systems too! I'm the only dev though, rest of the team is optics/biologists. It's surprising how few solutions there are for incubated microscopes.

Nice. It's a niche industry still for sure, and I didn't work on live cell imaging that would require incubation (we had a process that would keep the cells in good shape via a live cell medium.)

It's interesting work. Sounds like you're an in house dev in a research company or maybe academics? I went from device development in my first job to applications in my second.

Re: WeWork chases new financing as cash crunch looms

#124

Post by codesushi42 »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #120
codesushi42 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? What do your acquaintances do then for 8 hours, sleep?

Get to work at 9-10am. Work slowly doing trivial things. Eat long lunches. Go to the gym. Leave by 5pm. Get home by 6pm, and have the energy to get back on the computer. Where as I have absolutely no desire to look at a computer when I GET to work, let alone after work.

Sounds like a FAANG.

Re: WeWork chases new financing as cash crunch looms

#125

Post by _bxg1 »

raiyu wrote: post #97
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this assumes there’s some inner core of WeWork that is worth saving. I mean, maybe Softbank will fall for a sunk cost fallacy and pursue it irrationally, but I don’t see why that would be useful instead of just founding a different company to do that small kernel of an idea at much lower scale. It’s actually a big if to me whether there even is a kernel of a business idea. Even if there is, can it (assuming m…

There is a real business there if they can control the costs and get the revenue right and make sure there was no financial fraud. Also, they can't shelve it easily because it's one of their largest investments so it would really destroy any chance of raising a second fund if they can't get this large investment to work. From a customer perspective, while a lot of people on Hackernews do rag on WeWork as a product, p…

> if they can control the costs and get the revenue right and make sure there was no financial fraud

And, you know, cut out the random tequila parties with live hip-hop performances

Re: WeWork chases new financing as cash crunch looms

#126

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

the_watcher wrote: post #115
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a nearly completely unrelated point.

> I think this assumes there’s some inner core of WeWork that is worth saving. It seems directly related to your first sentence, doesn't it?

No. The general viability of subleasing as a business is not meaningfully related to the points about whether a subset of WeWork’s current corporate entity can produce a viable business.

Re: WeWork chases new financing as cash crunch looms

#127

Post by the_watcher »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #126
the_watcher wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this assumes there’s some inner core of WeWork that is worth saving. It seems directly related to your first sentence, doesn't it?

No. The general viability of subleasing as a business is not meaningfully related to the points about whether a subset of WeWork’s current corporate entity can produce a viable business.

Yes, it is. It is, quite literally, the actual business part of WeWork.

Re: WeWork chases new financing as cash crunch looms

#128

Post by pat87 »

sieabahlpark wrote: post #93
unaxk38 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that isn't how options work. Everyone needs to pay...it's just usually when you found a company you're buying options for fractions of a penny. See https://www.axios.com/behind-wework-founders-700m-cash-out-3... for more info on the $400M loan - it's not clear if it's to purchase his stock options or to pay for AMT...it's likely additional options he was granted through the years at a higher strike price.

When you found the company you own the shares. You divy out options when you, the founder, hire or make deals. You could alternatively also give actual shares (usually VCs get a share %)

Founders need to purchase shares in the company they found.

The shares are extremely cheap as the company has no assets, but you still need to physically wire money to the company bank account.

Source: https://stripe.com/docs/atlas/issuing-stock

Re: WeWork chases new financing as cash crunch looms

#129

Post by Konnstann »

EpicEng wrote: post #123
Konnstann wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I work on automated microscopy systems too! I'm the only dev though, rest of the team is optics/biologists. It's surprising how few solutions there are for incubated microscopes.

Nice. It's a niche industry still for sure, and I didn't work on live cell imaging that would require incubation (we had a process that would keep the cells in good shape via a live cell medium.) It's interesting work. Sounds like you're an in house dev in a research company or maybe academics? I went from device development in my first job to applications in my second.

Something like that. The institute bills itself as the link between the two, so we do a wide range of things. I got hired to do image processing work, but as things tend to go am now being leveraged anywhere they need software. Can't complain though, interesting work with a world class team.

Re: WeWork chases new financing as cash crunch looms

#130

Post by tetron »

cgh wrote: post #24

I don’t understand how this company employed 1500+ programmers, PMs and data science people. What did they do? I guess not much, as 500 of them got laid off recently.

It's been like 3 years since I worked in a WeWork location but it seemed like they were doing a lot of wheel reinventing, they had their own social network site, their own room reservation system (actually something that makes sense, but it sucked), probably their own printer manager, chat app, mobile app, billing system and who knows what else. I could believe they employed a hundred programmers to just clone popular apps, and thinking they were "providing value" but the actual software was classic shovelware.
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