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WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

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Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#191

Post by TylerE »

mcguire wrote: post #63
simias wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hindsight is 20/20. Maybe people in 1999 were wrong about Amazon but they were right about Pets.com and many others, your comment is just an example of survivorship bias. I mean, I'm sure you're not trying to argue that dotcom valuations weren't generally ridiculous. Besides, Amazon, Kodak and Boeing were never exactly in the same market. The parent is comparing companies that ostensibly offer similar services. If I…

On the other, other hand, Amazon sends currently very overvalued as a retail company. (I haven't looked at the comparative sizes of its various components.) How long before Amazon sounds of its retail business?

I mean, haven't they pretty much already done so?

Would not surprise me if a majority of both inventory and sales are actually marketplace sellers by now, that pay Amazon for fulfillment.

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#192

Post by subpixel »

linkmotif wrote: post #148

I really wanted WeWork to work for me. But it did not. During my time there, it became apparent that their entire focus was on growth. WeWork was never interested in catering to their core market: people who want to work. They failed to create a productive work environment. They alienated people like me, who were willing to pay top dollar for a decent place to work. Instead they created distraction-filled, tacky plac…

Brooklyn Creative League

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#193

Post by Konnstann »

mcmoose75 wrote: post #126
rglover wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're disrupting funeral homes. Man, that sounds...horrible.

Does it really? I can imagine there's room for innovation in helping people to honor and grieve the passing of their loved ones.

The phrase "Disrupting Funeral Homes" would probably be taken to mean busting into funerals uninvited, at least by people ignorant of the business meaning.

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#194

Post by sixstringtheory »

sudosteph wrote: post #171
mi100hael wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When life imitates art: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel)

In case anyone is wondering: not worth the read unless you're just interested in the history of dystopic fiction. The characters are boring and everything drags on far too long.

I’ll agree it can get boring at times, but it was incredibly creative and a lot of the descriptions of the world in the book are unlike any other I’ve read about and were quite poetic, while at the same time mathematic and scientific. Still, it’s a pretty short read and should be of much interest to those into scifi and dystopias.

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#195

Post by nimz »

Spivak wrote: post #138
dragandj wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which means it requires much less capital They burned through billions of dollars of capital. That's quite a lot for a business that requires very little capital. What would they burn if they needed lots of capital? Trillions of dollars?

I mean half a million drivers each with a car that say costs $20k over its lifetime is about 10 billion. So like maybe?

$20K is a very low estimate for cost of owning a car. Edmunds estimates the 5-year "True Cost to Own" of a Toyota Camry for home-use is $35K. This is based on a 15K miles a year, Uber drivers can easily put on 50,000+ miles a year.

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#196

Post by ALittleLight »

rglover wrote: post #120
rajacombinator wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WeDie with free beer/kombucha/whatever sounds pretty amazing tbh. Funeral home industry could benefit from some disruption.

> We're disrupting funeral homes. Man, that sounds...horrible.

Wait. I'm getting a growth idea. Poison half the free beer. Customers will recall the lively and generous atmosphere of the WeDie funeral home and use it for their recently deceased loved ones. The flywheel would then continue to spin...

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#197

Post by jtwaleson »

SneakerXZ wrote: post #135
ghaff wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree that Uber and Lyft are qualitatively different from traditional cab companies although, as many others have said, I'm not sure they have much of a moat or economies of scale. For the overwhelming majority of Uber users, it's irrelevant that they're in 72 countries or even multiple countries. In fact, I'm sure many users would switch to a better service that just operated in their own city.

Outside of US the Uber brand is not so strong. In EU they are very regulated and they compete with local players that understand the market. Asia is also dominated by local players. So Uber exists in these markets, but almost nobody uses it there.

Almost nobody is a wild exaggeration. Most EU business travellers I know use it very often.

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#198

Post by Brockenstein »

sudosteph wrote: post #171
mi100hael wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When life imitates art: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel)

In case anyone is wondering: not worth the read unless you're just interested in the history of dystopic fiction. The characters are boring and everything drags on far too long.

Well the wikipedia synopsis is pretty kind in that regard.

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#199

Post by benatkin »

gojomo wrote: post #174
mi100hael wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When life imitates art: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel)

And, another novel about living under oppressive conditions from a Russian-born author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_the_Living

Just FYI this is an Ayn Rand book, so if you've already explored that I'll save you the click.

Re: WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality

#200

Post by shoo »

onetimemanytime wrote: post #42

People have been valuing them using the wrong metrics so far: "WeWork isn’t really a real estate company. It’s a state of consciousness, he argues, a generation of interconnected emotionally intelligent entrepreneurs." https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-04-27/wework... Can't wait till SEC adds "state of consciousness" and "emotionally interconnect-ness" to quarterly reports.

Quoting Matt Levine from that link:

> That first innovation seems a little questionable. Like, there is an established competitive business of office rental in which real-estate companies own office buildings and rent them to companies; I am not sure why there would be a ton of room to compete with that business by interposing yourself as an expensive middleman. Why would a tenant want to pay a profit margin both to WeWork and to its underlying landlord, when it could just rent from the underlying landlord and pay only one profit margin? There is some room for a value-added middleman — and WeWork can add value not only by providing beer but also by splitting office rental into smaller space and time chunks than a big commercial landlord — but, still, it does not seem easy.

> But the second innovation is great. For one thing, it is great for the obvious reason: If you can get into a traditional mature highly competitive business, call yourself a tech startup, and get a multibillion-dollar valuation based on potential rather than cash flow, then you have achieved a profound arbitrage and really ought to be rewarded for it. But it also helps solve the first problem: WeWork’s tenants don’t have to pay two profit margins, because WeWork’s investors give it tons of money which it can then spend on giving tenants free rent. In a loose sense, WeWork’s business model is getting SoftBank to buy beer for software workers. Which is fine!

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