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Some WeWork Board Members Seek to Remove Adam Neumann as CEO

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Re: Some WeWork Board Members Seek to Remove Adam Neumann as CEO

#241

Post by davinic »

gamblor956 wrote: post #219
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that's not a new thing; companies have been in the same business for years. WeWork's valuation is wildly out of proportion to its competitors. I take issue with the "people have been doing the same thing for years" take, when most hugely successful start-ups tend to be small tweaks on established ideas. Take AirBnB. Peer-to-peer short term rentals existed on the Internet in the form of sites like VRBO since the…

There's also the important bit where VRBO attempted to comply with local hoteling regulations and AirBnB just ignored them or even actively encourage hosts to ignore the law.

I used VRBO often before AirBnb existed and I never experienced anyone collecting hotel taxes or attempting to be in compliance. Do you have a source for this claim?

Re: Some WeWork Board Members Seek to Remove Adam Neumann as CEO

#242

Post by wpietri »

CognitiveLens wrote: post #170
wpietri wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, that's the theory, which is how they got this far. But that's not a new thing; companies have been in the same business for years. WeWork's valuation is wildly out of proportion to its competitors. WeWork probably does have an advantage specifically for tech startups. But startups are definitionally not a large market, nor are they generally a good one. When we're small, we're cheapskates. And then we pretty q…

This take makes a very clear argument, but I think it's important to question that, as a company grows, it is generally "willing and able to deal with building owners directly" - a similar argument could have been made for the early days of AWS, when it seemed like a great way for startups to avoid managing low-traffic, scalable infrastructure, but redundant for companies that had the resources to manage their own se…

For me the big difference between AWS and WeWork is that a company will always have people dedicated to figuring out their offices. WeWork isn't solving problems like "who do we have, how do we arrange them, and what kind of spaces are best for how they work". On top of that, finding and negotiating leases every 5-10 years isn't a lot of extra work. AWS in contrast eliminates entire classes of work.

Although now I think about it, perhaps demand volatility is even more important. Office space needs are way more stable and predictable than server load. Salesforce, for example, signed a 15-year lease for Salesforce tower. And there's every reason to think they'll use it. Whereas AWS and its customers benefit hugely from being able to change load both month to month and hour to hour.

Re: Some WeWork Board Members Seek to Remove Adam Neumann as CEO

#243

Post by gamblor956 »

davinic wrote: post #241
gamblor956 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the important bit where VRBO attempted to comply with local hoteling regulations and AirBnB just ignored them or even actively encourage hosts to ignore the law.

I used VRBO often before AirBnb existed and I never experienced anyone collecting hotel taxes or attempting to be in compliance. Do you have a source for this claim?

I used VBRO before Airbnb and hosts in vacation towns were definitely collecting local taxes. Unlike Airbnb, VBRO responded to requests for host info because they were trying to do things the right way.

Re: Some WeWork Board Members Seek to Remove Adam Neumann as CEO

#244

Post by mvkel »

thedogeye wrote: post #53

WeWork is a useful product. Office real estate is broken for startups. Landlords make us take 5-10 year leases when startup planning horizons are almost never longer than 18 months. WeWork earning 30-40% margins by allowing us to take shorter terms that better fit our needs. Should be a good business.

That's the optimistic approach.

Shopify went through something similar -- offering their product for free, taking a cut of any transacted products. But they realized that it incentivized companies who, deep down, knew they would never make a dollar. So it was okay to sign up for the 'free' ecommerce software, because they were never going to make a dime.

It also _dis_incentivized companies that were actually selling things, because taking a cut of every transaction is too expensive if you're really driving volume.

In short, WeWork is attractive to companies that, deep down, know they aren't going to grow. These companies minimize long-term exposure by paying more short-term. The companies that are _confident_ they will grow have no problem signing 5-year leases. It's the long-term prudent thing to do, and drastically cheaper.

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