Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 347 posts

Re: WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

#221

Post by Svip »

batiudrami wrote: post #197
Svip wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same reason, I sometimes still like to watch classic television; rather than choosing specific programmes to watch, I want them curated for me. And while television channels offer a mediocre experience on average, watching something I wouldn't have picked myself is a way to expand my horizons. In the same vein, Blue Apron and Hello Fresh, I'd imagine, are there to expand your horizons in terms of culinary op…

That's interesting because, by the nature of needing to appeal to everyone, I find Hello Fresh recipes to be very safe and often quite bland tasting. If you already know how to cook it's easy to make them tasty according to your preferences but if you don't I suspect people just churn out middling-tasting food.

I have no experience with Hello Fresh, but Aarstiderne in Denmark strives on making their offerings uncommon. They arrange their subscriptions by how difficult they are. Of course, there is no 'chef' level, so to speak, because if you're at that point, you don't really need something like this.

But as someone who is reasonable acceptable at cooking, I do like the idea of something where I can get outside my comfort zone.

Re: WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

#222

Post by kelnos »

Crusoe123 wrote: post #206
smallgovt wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything you said is accurate, but that doesn't mean there isn't a place in the market for Blue Apron. People are paying for convenience. Think of it like a house cleaning service. You don't NEED to hire someone to clean your house, but it makes your life a little easier and for some, that's worth it.

Except this is like buying a small package of cleaning utilities for one cleaning and then cleaning the house with it yourself. In your analogy, the cleaning service would be ordering food from a restaurant. The utility here is very marginal, and there are alternatives that make your life even easier.

You need to understand that people do irrational things all the time but feel like they get a positive benefit from it. Meal kit delivery is easier than picking out recipes yourself and then buying ingredients yourself. It's certainly not easier than ordering takeout from a restaurant. But there's the "feel good factor" of doing the cooking yourself but removing some of the prep and decision-making. It's not all about utility; emotion factors in heavily sometimes.

Re: WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

#223

Post by Bombthecat »

trumbitta2 wrote: post #171
bakuninsbart wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is true, I seem to miss what makes Slack special. We use it at work, and it is decent at what it provides, but we could probably just as well switch to Discord, Microsoft Teams or ICQ. Microsoft Teams especially seems like a deliberate attempt to dethrone Slack, and while it is slightly more annoying to use, it just makes sense for companies to bundle their services and subsciptions. I do not really see a…

I don't think you can post syntax highlighted code snippets, or do automations with ICQ.

Well, probably rpa could help here.. If it makes sense is another story :)

Re: WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

#224

Post by aglionby »

victor106 wrote: post #77

> The WeWork brand is strongly tied to Neumann, a freewheeling 40-year-old Israeli-born entrepreneur who has said that We Company’s mission is “to elevate the world’s consciousness”. "Elevate the world's consciousness" --> Dont mean to be negative but what the hell does that even mean? Imagine your landlord told you that. Been following this story closely and Adam Neumann is such a crook, from the outset he just want…

Selling the 'We' trademark to your own company is damning. It's difficult to feel like you need a deeper understanding of Neumann after that. Maybe even more so is WeWork entering into lease agreements with properties he had a stake in on the same day that he obtained that stake. Unbelievable.

Re: WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

#225

Post by CPLX »

Traster wrote: post #134
miguelmota wrote: post #48

WeWork is a real estate company and not a software company. They don't have any worthy propriety tech and their business model is collecting rent. How they were once valued at 47 billion just straight up doesn't make any sense.

I don't think big investors are that stupid. They don't think an office rental business is a tech business, that's just a really convenient story to tell. Because if it's NOT a tech company, you have to look at why it's worth so much and come to the conclusion that all the fundamentals point to. It's worth a huge premium because it's getting a monopoly. My suspicion is that WeWork thinks that they can use their scale…

> It's worth a huge premium because it's getting a monopoly.

A monopoly on real estate?

Yeah no.

Re: WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

#226

Post by twic »

nkoren wrote: post #182
tempsy wrote: post #23

As someone living in SF, I don’t think anyone in SF or SV would ever consider WeWork to be a “Silicon Valley” company in the same way that Uber or Twitter or Slack is. The company has 0 tech brand among employees (how many ex-FB or ex-Google engineers work there?) and outside of Benchmark’s early round none of the VCs are SV-based. Point is the media is making this out to be an indictment on some SV tech bubble but p…

It's not "Silicon Valley", it's Silicon Valley . As in the show. My wife just started a contract at a new WeWork office in London. The lobby features a giant but non-functional as skateboard ramp, and two DJ booths, both manned (at 9am on a Monday). The bathrooms feature the very latest in digital toilets, but they aren't flushing, and nobody can figure out how to reboot them. At an aesthetic level, this couldn't be…

This sounds a lot more Nathan Barley than Silicon Valley.

Re: WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

#227

Post by twic »

OJFord wrote: post #198
XJ6 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong about OP's confusion, but a quick note that uber recently reported quarterly revenue of ~3.1bn which means "tens of billions" annually is exaggerating a little. Does uber count it's fees as revenue or does it count fees and the fares (which get passed back to the drivers) as revenue? My opinionated take is that if uber wants to pretend that drivers are not employees and it's just a marketplace then t…

> My opinionated take is that if uber wants to pretend that drivers are not employees and it's just a marketplace then they shouldn't be booking the fare as revenue, just their cut but I'm not an accountant and I don't make the rules. Good point, but Uber literally takes the money through its app, so I don't suppose that would be possible.

Does PayPal count money paid through its app as revenue?

Re: WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

#228

Post by twic »

kelnos wrote: post #214
autokad wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Point is the media is making this out to be an indictment on some SV tech bubble" Its not the media, I think its just true. Had WeWork IPO'ed under the same conditions a year ago, I think it would have been 'fine'. but the glut of SV unicorns losing money, hating investors, and slowing growth has got people highly concerned. This list of companies (slack, lyft, Uber, Pinterest, beyond meat, crowdstrike, tesla, spo…

Twilio has been non-GAAP profitable for a year now with a positive EPS for the last four quarters (possibly five, but my brain is failing me and Yahoo Finance only lists the last four), but you list it as negative. So that leads me to wonder if many of the other figures you cite have similar issues. (Disclosure: I work at Twilio.)

> non-GAAP profitable

Like how on my Tinder profile i'm a non-GAAP 10.

Re: WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

#229

Post by twic »

IMTDb wrote: post #190
bakuninsbart wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While this is true, I seem to miss what makes Slack special. We use it at work, and it is decent at what it provides, but we could probably just as well switch to Discord, Microsoft Teams or ICQ. Microsoft Teams especially seems like a deliberate attempt to dethrone Slack, and while it is slightly more annoying to use, it just makes sense for companies to bundle their services and subsciptions. I do not really see a…

You could switch, sure. But would you ? You would be losing : - Message history - Files that have been shared - Integrations / bots / ... - Plus you would need to setup everyone again, create channels, ... Slack goal is to be cheap enough that it does not represent a major cost for the company and integrated enough that moving would be a pain.

My company switched from Slack to Mattermost, and then back to Slack. We either did all these things, twice, or lived without them. Switching is not something you'd do on a whim, but it's not really difficult either.

Re: WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

#230

Post by twic »

jsf01 wrote: post #126
autokad wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Point is the media is making this out to be an indictment on some SV tech bubble" Its not the media, I think its just true. Had WeWork IPO'ed under the same conditions a year ago, I think it would have been 'fine'. but the glut of SV unicorns losing money, hating investors, and slowing growth has got people highly concerned. This list of companies (slack, lyft, Uber, Pinterest, beyond meat, crowdstrike, tesla, spo…

>negative revenue How is that even possible?

WeWork is such a mess that i wouldn't be surprised if their revenue was negative and their profit was a quaternion.
Post reply on HN