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WeWork has frittered away $46.7B in value as the stock sinks below ¢50

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Re: WeWork has frittered away $46.7B in value as the stock sinks below ¢50

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter and YouTube don’t make profits, yet are still wildly successful. With a high enough amounts of hype, stock price, and money, a company can stave off reality in seeming perpetuity.

I’m fully convinced that YouTube not making money is some sort of accounting trick utilizing the fact that it rents bandwidth and compute from Google.

The only thing saving YouTube from going down under is that Google supplies it with bandwidth. Egress-dominated bandwidth is hella expensive, and video (especially if you're going 4K) demands tons of it.

Netflix eases that problem by providing ISPs and other interested parties with racks full of what are essentially ultra-performant NAS systems [1] for free, but that's only realistic because the utter majority of Netflix's load comes from their top movies/series and it saves them all the egress fees and the ISPs a hefty chunk of their connectivity needs - ~15% of all Internet traffic is Netflix [2] and even serving a quarter of that by ISP-local caches takes off a lot of load.

Youtube, Vimeo and their smaller competitors, in contrast, have way too much different content to make such an expense worth it.

[1] https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/

[2] https://www.statista.com/chart/15692/distribution-of-global-...

Re: WeWork has frittered away $46.7B in value as the stock sinks below ¢50

#152
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Construction companies?

What if there is no reconstruction? Not every catastrophe is a catalyst for reconstruction. If a house is destroyed in a fire, it loses its value as a house. Now you have the value of the land, which will be offset by the cost of clearing it. So the value of the land is below market. The asset has depreciated. Large scale construction tends to be very good for the economy because it both increases economic activity (…

Surely some of these costs / economic activities are just like the parable of the broken window? For example, the meal makers. Construction works buy their lunches from shops nearby - that's great for those shops. But how is this improving the economy? Those workers would have needed lunches anyway. If they weren't working, they could have made their lunches at home, and not had to eat out. It would have (probably) been cheaper for them than buying lunches from the local shops.

So maybe the workers spent more money buying their lunches, but that's just extra inefficiency, and not extra economic acitivity. Just like the broken window, the workers spend more in one area and so have less money to spend elsewhere.

Re: WeWork has frittered away $46.7B in value as the stock sinks below ¢50

#153

I’ve ridden this stock down almost all the way (came in at $5 then 2.50 then again at $0.50). I am a pretty bad investor in that my top criteria is to buy stocks that produce a good or service I love and then stick with them a long time. As an operator WeWork adds so much value to us as we staff up all over the world. I love being able to go into any city and have a fun energetic and aesthetically beautiful environme…

Interesting, didn't short it? I see that you're an operator of a fintech info/news company? What sort of analysis did you do on WeWork?

P.S. Is the about link in your profile correct? https://finsight.com/about/our-products seems to 404.

Re: WeWork has frittered away $46.7B in value as the stock sinks below ¢50

#155

It never had that much value, it just made it look like it did for long enough to get people to invest in it at vastly inflated prices. "Renting offices to work in" was never going to be a silicon valley style success, because it just can't scale that way.

Explain why. It’s literally Uber for offices. It could’ve worked if managed right.

Timing is everything and they had bad timing.

The time for this company might still not have arrived yet. I just don't see what they could have done at the time and either way Covid would have bankrupted them.

Re: WeWork has frittered away $46.7B in value as the stock sinks below ¢50

#156
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on your definition of 'success' he may be one of the most successful. After all, he apparently managed to profit off a business that was worth little to nothing.

Is success making lot of money for yourself. Or building a business that in general makes money and world a better place. That is generates societal wealth.

Success is personal. If your goal is to increase the amount of wealth for everyone then go for it.

With that said, remember the following. While the economy is not zero sum and we can increase the amount of wealth in the world, power is zero sum. Power is finite and very scarce. You can create tremendous wealth and later find out it ended in the hand of a single person. And that person is not willing to share.

Re: WeWork has frittered away $46.7B in value as the stock sinks below ¢50

#157
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on your definition of 'success' he may be one of the most successful. After all, he apparently managed to profit off a business that was worth little to nothing.

Is success making lot of money for yourself. Or building a business that in general makes money and world a better place. That is generates societal wealth.

Personal success. He's certainly done a lot better personally than 99.99999% of people who have created something of value.

Re: WeWork has frittered away $46.7B in value as the stock sinks below ¢50

#158
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, exactly like Uber. "Mini-cab firm" is not a SV success story either.

I bet you could come up with bullshit like: “WeWork is a platform! We can also do food delivery and sell other add-ons…”. Saudi investors would be delighted five years ago.

I am pretty sure "WeWork is a platform" was actually something they pitched. Or maybe it was WeWork as a service.

WeWork labs was the most genius thing though. Build a tech lab straight up for no other reason than to have a tech lab for the optics of having a tech lab.

Re: WeWork has frittered away $46.7B in value as the stock sinks below ¢50

#159
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on your definition of 'success' he may be one of the most successful. After all, he apparently managed to profit off a business that was worth little to nothing.

Is success making lot of money for yourself. Or building a business that in general makes money and world a better place. That is generates societal wealth.

> Is success making lot of money for yourself.

It's all about getting the larger personal high score. Building a viable business is secondary.

Re: WeWork has frittered away $46.7B in value as the stock sinks below ¢50

#160
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on your definition of 'success' he may be one of the most successful. After all, he apparently managed to profit off a business that was worth little to nothing.

Is success making lot of money for yourself. Or building a business that in general makes money and world a better place. That is generates societal wealth.

The most fucked up thing I heard is about people investing in artificial wombs.

You want to know the actual reason they’re doing this? It’s not because some restrictive laws were passed or to keep the physical toll low on the mom, etc. maybe it is, but that would be found in the marketing slide.

“We are too generous with how much leave we offer”

Everything is to extract as much value out of everyday things as possible. In this case, their thinking is along the lines of how can they can get women to stay in the office longer while the kid bakes at homes. Maybe offer a short leave after it’s ready. But the economy grinds harder since the woman employee didn’t have to take time off for doctors visits or to recuperate post birth.

90% of the ideas and products that come out of here have a solid dystopian underpinning to them.

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