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The We Company S-1

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Re: The We Company S-1

#301

Post by nabnob »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #166
nabnob wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll see if I can dig up the article, but I think they're planning on tracking everything that workers do in their buildings and giving that data to employers. Edit - found this - https://www.inc.com/betsy-mikel/wework-is-trying-a-creepy-ne... >WeWork's latest acquisition is a small software company with 24 employees. Euclid is a spatial analytics platform...Euclid's website says the company is "focused on redefining…

There are a couple of issues with this. It's a well-known effect in management theory that workers behave differently when they know they're being observed. Also, presumably most of their tenants employ knowledge workers not factory floor workers, and so data about how often they go to the bathroom or how many steps they take in an hour is probably a lot less relevant than tracking what they're doing on their compute…

Yeah, I don't think this is an effective way to improve worker productivity, and I think it would also be pretty demoralizing.

With that said, there's already companies that track workers like this, so I definitely think there's a market for it.

Re: The We Company S-1

#302

Post by nabnob »

wpietri wrote: post #152
nabnob wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a property company that's planning tracking everything people do in their buildings. >WeWork's latest acquisition is a small software company with 24 employees. Euclid is a spatial analytics platform...Euclid's website says the company is "focused on redefining the workplace experience of the future." Translation: optimizing every aspect of the physical workplace so workers are their most productive. Euclid does…

Yeah, I don't see that providing the outsized gains they're hoping for. I've talked to a number of entrepreneurs who business plan is basically 1. Collect data 2. ??? 3. Profit And every time I quiz them on point 2, they get squirrely. They can never explain exactly how it works; at best I get hazy references to Google making lots from data, which is at best a partial truth. In this case, I doubt having that data wil…

Yeah, I don't think tracking this type of data would improve worker productivity, and I think it could actually have the opposite effect of demoralizing employees.

However, I can definitely see some unethical companies being interested in this type of tracking, so I'm guessing there's a market for it.

Re: The We Company S-1

#303

Post by nawgszy »

maroonshifter wrote: post #211
JackFr wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Peruse can mean 'to read something in a relaxed way, or skim' and can also mean 'to read something carefully or in detail.' Peruse is thus a contronym because it has multiple definitions that seem contradict each other." https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/peruse-usage

Yes I realized this, but this makes the word unnecessarily ambiguous and this new definition is the purely the result of enough people using the word incorrectly long enough. We don't mean "destroy 10%" when we use the word decimate anymore, I get it. Natural language, migration of meaning, subjective denotation etc.

In a vacuum, perhaps, but to call it "unnecessarily ambiguous" when literally placed beside the word "skimmers" seems... intentionally dense

Re: The We Company S-1

#304

Post by seattle_spring »

burtonator wrote: post #219
human20190310 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Adam is a unique leader who has proven he can simultaneously wear the hats of visionary, operator and innovator... Is this a normal sort of thing to see in such a filing? He's being referred to by his first name and heaped with praise.

Adam is extraordinarily humble. Everyone, including Adam, would never exaggerate. Adam is a part of everything. He is in the sky and sea. He is in the dreams of children at night. He is all that there is, forever.

Adam can do anything... the only limit... is himself.

Re: The We Company S-1

#305

Post by navigatesol »

AgloeDreams wrote: post #257
navigatesol wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the same with Tesla. Can you show you get this from? I see it repeated on these boards, ad nauseum, that Tesla is spending their "profits" on R&D and building infrastructure. But in reality, you can see from their financial statements that Tesla's CAPEX spending is embarrassingly small for an auto company, and shrinking. They spent $2BB in 2018 and are on pace to spend half that in 2019. As a sibling comments…

Exactly. This was true of Tesla back when they made only the S & X and blew their R&D dollars on Model 3/AP/Batteries but the Model 3's margins are incredibly bad with sky-high ops costs while they are digging a hole like a car stuck in mud. They are promising FSD (to paid customers), Semi & Roadster (To reserved customers), and a Model Y that will surely eat into Model X sales, meanwhile they are clearly reducing sp…

I agree, but want to emphasize that it's not necessarily sinister: they simply have no money to do the things they've promised. That's best case. Worst case is sinister.

Re: The We Company S-1

#306

Post by navigatesol »

coolspot wrote: post #288
navigatesol wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's the same with Tesla. Can you show you get this from? I see it repeated on these boards, ad nauseum, that Tesla is spending their "profits" on R&D and building infrastructure. But in reality, you can see from their financial statements that Tesla's CAPEX spending is embarrassingly small for an auto company, and shrinking. They spent $2BB in 2018 and are on pace to spend half that in 2019. As a sibling comments…

It’s B not BB.

Thanks. Bad habit to hammer that key twice.

Re: The We Company S-1

#307

Post by hobofan »

kart23 wrote: post #242
mdszy wrote: post #18

That wegrow bit seems really strange and cultish with all the mentioning of "connecting with the universe" and "cosmic education".

What the actual heck. Why are startups trying to do schools now? There is no way I'm sending my kid to a company with shareholders. Oh, and it costs $30,000 for your 4 year old to attend preschool. Why must we 'disrupt' anything and everything? https://wegrow.com/ https://wegrowparents.squarespace.com/

Edtech startups have been a thing for quite some time, but yeah, WeXYZ is something different. If it's a building and it has staff, the We compancy will probably try to turn it into a vertical.

Re: The We Company S-1

#308

Post by staticautomatic »

dctoedt wrote: post #139
beager wrote: post #50

I’m really disgusted by how much recent tech IPOs inject pitch deck-style garbage into the S-1 filing, especially this one. I’ve always had a great amount of respect for the mediating nature of the S-1’s dry, candid, and ruthlessly honest assessment of business risks, and even though those things are still there, they’re blown out by marketing photos, full-page charts, and branding. This is basically like putting per…

WeWork's litigation counsel might have wanted the pitch-deck stuff to go into the S-1 to make the information more understandable to non-business people. That way, the pitch deck would be an official part of the record; in turn, this would mean a couple of things: 1. If disgruntled investors were to sue WeWork, the pitch-deck material could be referred to by WeWork's counsel in tactical maneuvering such as a motion f…

As a jury consultant who's worked on a lot of securities and M&A-gone-wrong litigation, I don't understand why you think it would be beneficial for pitch deck stuff to go into a disclosure. If I were a defendant accused of making misrepresentations, I'd most likely want the pitch deck kept out. "Pitch deck stuff" is aspirational, to put it charitably. A defendant would ideally want to take the opposite position-- that it made only bullshit-free, clear-eyed representations about upside prospects and downside risk.

Also, I totally disagree about the evidentiary issue and would venture to say you're wrong. First of all, the idea that you'd need to cram a pitch deck into a filing in order to get it into evidence is downright silly. A defendant could easily get it into evidence through a fact witness or PMQ. Second, and more importantly, you wouldn't want to do it in anticipation of litigation because you'd lose any control you might otherwise have had over its admissibility (a filing like that would be pretty much guaranteed to come into evidence). Third, and relatedly, you wouldn't want to do it because, pursuant to my second point, it's then going to come into evidence in all of your cases. As they say, the record is forever.

Re: The We Company S-1

#309

Post by tomatocracy »

Traster wrote: post #164
lordnacho wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If WeWork goes broke it's mildly annoying to have to find other tenants, it's true. But it's not like they can't plan for that. For instance if WeWork goes down, there are still tenants that might want to stay in the building. That's a sensible place to start.

The tenants who want to stay in the building aren't going to be paying the same private equity subsidized prices that WeWork were. I'd imagine in some markets wework is such a big customer now that their collapse would cause massive repercussions.

In a default scenario, the temptation for the building owners and ultimate tenants to cut bilateral deals and screw over the middle man (WeWork) would be huge. For the owner it's win-win - they keep cashflow coming in and if the deal remains short term then they can replace the tenant with someone who will sign a longer-term lease once markets recover fairly easily.

Re: The We Company S-1

#310

Post by uxp »

CrazyStat wrote: post #91
lotsofpulp wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? I was under the impression it does not own land for the most part.

It's a mix. Some locations they own, some they lease--including some that the CEO owns and they lease from him, which is an interesting arrangement.

> including some that the CEO owns and they lease from him

Did you see the part of the filing where, in case of death or incapacitation in the next ten years where the CEO is unable to fulfill his duties, a group of two board members _and_ his wife will select the next CEO, and if those named board members are also not available anymore then his wife will solely pick the two board members who will pick the next CEO with her, and if _she_ is unavailable then the estate of the CEO and his wife will pick the next CEO?

Page 198

I've never seen a company like this transfer to successive control via the private estate of the CEO in case of a vacancy. There's a lot of WTFs in here.

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