WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO • Hacker News Board

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#171

Post by munk-a » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

Jagat wrote: post #166

munk-a wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Uber in it for the social change? If not then this is just a silly point. Some of the regulations were unreasonable and the result of corruption - but Uber also skirted insurance and background check related laws at various times.

Neither is the taxi lobby out there for the social change. It's better to have two parties competing for user's money than just one party fixing the price and service quality.

Sorry, to clarify... the comment above was:

> Unfortunately, this seems to be the only way that's not outright massive violence such as Hongkong or France to get politicians to do their goddamn job. Taxi services have had a really massive lobby power in the US.

This was strongly implying that Uber was causing political change. I don't disagree that the competition has been healthy or that the taxi companies were bad actors - or even that the regulations were legitimately onerous sometimes... I object to the statement that "disruption = positive social change".

I think that Uber's case is particularly weak because, while skirting regulation may have gotten accolades, the company itself was toxic to work at and brought in a bevy of sexual harassment charges.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#172

Post by confiscate » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #158

mschuster91 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically, just ignore the law, but make sure you get enough workers and customers that love you so that they turn against politics when you break the law. Unfortunately, this seems to be the only way that's not outright massive violence such as Hongkong or France to get politicians to do their goddamn job. Taxi services have had a really massive lobby power in the US.

Is Uber in it for the social change? If not then this is just a silly point. Some of the regulations were unreasonable and the result of corruption - but Uber also skirted insurance and background check related laws at various times.

consumers vote with their wallet, at the of the day.

by and large consumers don't care if the company is for social change or not.

it's difficult for a company to succeed in getting customers to pay based purely on social change intentions. That's how a market works

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#173

Post by jetti » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

myth_buster wrote: post #15

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...

It has been super interesting listening to Scott Galloway blast WeWork and their business model on the podcast Pivot.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#174

Post by 0xDEFC0DE » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:51 PM UTC

chisleu wrote: post #11

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.

Flooded means I'll be able to find more than 3-4 qualified applicants per quarter? Good

I think those folks will still shoot for top companies, so if that’s you, most likely.

(psst, train your own, damnit)

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#175

Post by SAI_Peregrinus » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #112

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

> or cheat This is called "Being disruptive." Basically, just ignore the law, but make sure you get enough workers and customers that love you so that they turn against politics when you break the law.

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.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#176

Post by ohazi » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

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…

People complain about an "IPO shortage" and the problem of VCs capturing all of the pre-IPO growth.

But if there's a silver lining here, it's that VCs can pull this shit until the cows come home without causing the same systemic problems that led to the first dot-com crash. They tend to have a small handful of wealthy LPs, and the financial system doesn't really give a shit if they get wiped out - grandma's pension may not be growing fast enough, but it's not going to evaporate.

In this case, SoftBank and the Saudis run away with their tail tucked, and everyone else just looks at them like they were idiots and moves on.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#177

Post by mertd » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

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(…

Most management companies are local. One can kind of see how WeWork would work by being bigger than all management companies and having a global presence.

Assuming their kind of risk in a robust economy is lucrative. But I fail to see how WeWork could ever weather a recession, US or global.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#178

Post by benj111 » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:58 PM UTC

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).

Ok fair enough, that's more late Buffett.

I don't think he invests so much in capital starved businesses, more he just uses the cash generated by eg insurance to invest in high quality businesses. I suppose the difference here is the high quality part. Wework doesn't seem to have much of a moat, have particularly good governance, or have much of a track record of anything.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#179

Post by gist » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

myth_buster wrote: post #15

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...

I wouldn't give that much worship to Galloway it's not like he is always right or my guess even close to that (and nobody is). For example this post circa 2017 about the bubble. I can't tell you how many people have not called the bubble since the last bubble correctly. Galloway is one of them:

https://www.profgalloway.com/every-seven-years

Market was at 21,600 (very roughly) on the approx. date of that post and now is at close to 27,000. It did not go lower than 22,400 in the interim.

To wit (that post):

> There are several hard metrics for why we may be nearing full-monty bubble, including things my NYU colleagues spend a great deal of time thinking about, and understand much better. But you don't need a Nobel to see the similarities between 1999 and 2017. (Btw, NYU Stern has three active Nobel Prize winners… We. Rule. But that's another post.)

Very generally if you are predicting a collapse ala 1999 you need to be a bit more accurate than that.

I didn't do a great deal of work to find that post either, it was linked in the post you gave.

Edit: Also love his being so proud of the anointed 3 active nobel prize winners. Would like to remind everyone that until recently the game in business was making money or a great product or being loved by your customers not winning academic awards and platitudes.

Re: WeWork says will file to withdraw IPO

#180

Post by wpietri » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #158

mschuster91 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically, just ignore the law, but make sure you get enough workers and customers that love you so that they turn against politics when you break the law. Unfortunately, this seems to be the only way that's not outright massive violence such as Hongkong or France to get politicians to do their goddamn job. Taxi services have had a really massive lobby power in the US.

Is Uber in it for the social change? If not then this is just a silly point. Some of the regulations were unreasonable and the result of corruption - but Uber also skirted insurance and background check related laws at various times.

Exactly. Some of the regulations were due to corruption. But others we reasonable ways to create a situation fair to workers. Regulating the number of cabs allowed drivers to have some confident that they'd earn a reasonable wage. And the medallion system ended up being basically an investment/retirement plan for a lot of cab drivers.

Yes, the rise of the Internet meant it was time to change how we did cab dispatch. And it would have been great to see what else we could improve, including getting the cab companies to be less oligopolistic. But Uber was clearly after a monopoly [1] so Kalanick could jack rates up enough to justify the billions of investment they took. But national monopolies are way more harmful to both workers and customers than local, strongly regulated oligopolies. Uber was ultimately trying to make things worse, but with them skimming the monopoly rents.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Super-Pumped-Battle-Mike-Isaac/dp/039...