WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources • Hacker News Board

Re: WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

#31

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 2:55 AM UTC

quaquaqua1 wrote: post #21

Semi related but Blue Apron will forever be my favorite IPO. 5 stock splits and 3 CEOs later, day one investors will receive roughly 2 pennies back for every dollar invested just 2 years ago. Only people who won were those who dumped free shares on the market (insiders), and maybe consumers for getting subsidized food of questionable quality. Once valued at 2 billion USD, a paltry 150 million will get the job done no…

Honest question if anyone knows more details. VCs these days are very focused on the "SaaS Quick Ratio": https://www.cobloom.com/blog/saas-quick-ratio-how-to-measure... (Blue Apron isn't quite a SaaS business but close enough for this metric).

The idea is that it not only measures growth, but measures new customers in relation to churn, with the idea that it's a lot easier to have a long term successful business if you have, say, 1000 new customers and 50 that leave in a month (net 950 new customers) vs. 5000 new customers and 4050 that leave in a month (though also 950 net new customers).

Blue Apron was legendary for its huge churn rate and commensurate high customer acquisition costs. Curious what its quick ratio was, and whether it was just basically ignored.

Re: WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

#32

Post by Forge36 » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 2:56 AM UTC

quaquaqua1 wrote: post #21

Semi related but Blue Apron will forever be my favorite IPO. 5 stock splits and 3 CEOs later, day one investors will receive roughly 2 pennies back for every dollar invested just 2 years ago. Only people who won were those who dumped free shares on the market (insiders), and maybe consumers for getting subsidized food of questionable quality. Once valued at 2 billion USD, a paltry 150 million will get the job done no…

They had an excellent service, which upon having recipes we promptly dropped. It simply wasn't worth it and even cooking 3 means a night was too much.

Re: WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

#33

Post by JMTQp8lwXL » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 2:56 AM UTC

mikehollinger wrote: post #29

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a phone call from them recently. Not automated. Asking "how the experience has been". I wonder if they're increasingly panicking. I ordered less than a handful of boxes in the past few years with them.

Ahem. https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/please-forgive-us-at-blu... That’s a parody from 2017. It’s probably more true now than ever. We actually cancelled our BlueApron last year in favor of another meal kit service - and might end up canceling them overall for grocery pickup from our local grocery chain.

Wonderful link. To be objective, one of my most recent handful of boxes arrived recently because I forgot to cancel it. Every few weeks, I login to turn off the next months' worth of auto-scheduled deliveries. The ingredient quality is still there. A third of the box is broccoli and it's still $60, so those features haven't changed.

I go to the grocery store and re-make a good number of the recipes. I'm appreciative of the expanded palate BA has given me as well.

Re: WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

#34

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 2:57 AM UTC

autokad wrote: post #30

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…

> "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…

Maybe you need to flip that envelope around because I don't know how you get that much negative revenue.

Re: WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

#35

Post by hendzen » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 3:01 AM UTC

elpakal wrote: post #18

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #10

We should now question the valuation of the other companies that have recently gone public. I understand WeWork was unusually tumultuous, but many of these talking points equally apply to recent IPOs. A couple quarterly filings have already begun to bring some of these companies closer to reality.

like which ones?

uber, lyft, to a lesser extent slack

Re: WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

#36

Post by autokad » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 3:04 AM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #34

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…

Maybe you need to flip that envelope around because I don't know how you get that much negative revenue.

added link above

Re: WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

#37

Post by tempsy » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 3:05 AM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #26

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…

> how many ex-FB or ex-Google engineers work there? This sounds like an awful metric.

It really isn’t. FB/Goog compensation is still the benchmark as far as industry comp goes, so a private co really needs to be convincingly successful to attract smart, high paid engineers at top tech companies. If they can’t then it’s a completely valid signal that something is up - either comp is well below market, growth story is fishy, management is weak, or something else.

Re: WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

#38

Post by troquerre » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 3:07 AM UTC

autokad wrote: post #30

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…

> "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…

You're missing Zoom, Pagerduty, and Cloudflare which are all doing phenomenally well.

Re: WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

#39

Post by codyb » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 3:09 AM UTC

nugget wrote: post #14

Is it true that WeWork is now the largest single lessee of commercial real estate in the US? Seems like a bad bankruptcy could have some broad ripple effects.

Hmm. Despite that there still a very small percent of all office space. I see 26 locations in NYC, I’m sure I’m missing a few so say 30.

Even if all those offices were the whole building (I think many (most) are just a subset of the floors that’s not much for the entire city.

Although it’d be interesting for all the people working in them, I wonder how that’d work out.

Re: WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

#40

Post by ummonk » Tue, Sep 17, 2019, 3:09 AM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #26

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…

> how many ex-FB or ex-Google engineers work there? This sounds like an awful metric.

It's a useful proxy metric, but not a metric to optimize for. I wouldn't want to work for a startup that focused on hiring ex-FB or ex-Google engineers, but given that a large fraction of talented engineers have worked at FB or Google, you'd expect to find plenty of them at any reputable large startup.