321–330 of 347 posts
"My friend’s entire company is locked out of their WeWork office because an umbrella fell, jamming the door. No one can figure it out. It’s been like this for 2 days." --https://twitter.com/NeerajKA/status/1173997679363407872
Too good.
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> but I bet 90+ percent goes right in the can and out to the curb Source? Or are you just speculating based on nothing?
Just to elaborate: The comment is basically saying they are lying without any proof of such. Is it OK to blatantly and unfoundedly accuse companies of fraud like that?
The comment absolutely does not accuse them of lying. They claim the material is recyclable, not that it is actually being recycled. I don't contest their claim that it can be recycled, and I simply speculate that most of it isn't.
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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.
Assumption: smart engineers only care about money.
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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…
its more like entertainment 720 or whatever it was called in parks and recreation
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You nailed it, it's absolute parody. The graffiti in the Broad St. NYC location is cringe inducing. On more than one occasion I've witnessed people omit that their office is based out of a we work location. Just too embarrassing to be associated with them.
Never been there but always thought the copy for the Harlem location was special. https://www.wework.com/buildings/8-w-126th-st--new-york-city... >If you’re looking for workspace that revels in uptown funk but gets business done with downtown panache, choose WeWork Harlem. >Our open and airy shared office at WeWork Harlem embodies the future of workspace while embracing Harlem’s rich cultural history. Inspired by the…
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Perhaps dominance is not required, despite their beliefs? There is more than one huge car company and a bunch of medium sized ones too. It's possible some investors are buying in because they think they are getting into a viable-when-dominance-not-required business on the cheap. (Me, I don't understand any of these businesses (We, Blue Apron etc) and let someone else take the risk.)
At the returns the investors want, dominance is required. Lots of consolidation happening in auto manufacturing too, along with most fields. Even of the car makers that exist, I wonder how many would be kept propped up by a country just to ensure they retain manufacturing capability in case of war. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-renault-m-a-fiatchrysler-...
But everyone selling at a loss is getting their money from someone buying. Since the price of some of these companies is nonzero, someone must think they are a good deal at that price. Just speculating as to why.
As for war fighting capability: that is the legit justification for ag support, but modern factories can’t be repurposed that way. Nobody would expect IBM to be able to retool to build machine guns any more.
The right fix is many automated reconfigurable on-demand factories making goods close to point of consumption. But that’s a long way away, and wind use humans.
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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 y…
I gotta say, I do hope Blue Apron survives. After all, if it goes under, who will sponsor the entire podcast ecosystem?
Seems as if the stick was handed over to a suitcase company whose "smart" suitcases cannot be checked in to flights due to batteries, that already-mentioned annoying prefab website company and underwear manufacturers offering to put decorative metals around my testicles.
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My WeWork in Gurgaon, India has a biweekly bhangra dance class at 4pm on a weekday After the third such class, I decided to get the hell out of my lease. It's like their entire corporate culture is built around finding creative ways to not work. It's awful environment to build a startup in.
Snort! I am imagining a bunch of microdosing firangi sitting in their gravity pods, asking each other what Indians do to be, like, all cool and stuff. "Build a successful business" is, like, way too square an answer, daddy-o. Anybody can be a dull old business man. Our customers want to be cooool. So what's cool and Indian? Yoga? Sure, man, but everyone does yoga. They probably do Yoga in Kansas these days, so how's…
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…
Blue Apron and WeWork share a common problem, they’re viewed as tech companies, even when they’re clearly not. Being tech companies means that they’re viewed as part of a group of companies who have pulled of billion dollars IPO, so they’re wrongly focus on “no less than the one billion”. Mentally the jump from 1 billion to 2 billion is also a lot less that the jump from 150 million to 1 billion, so why not go for 2…
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Why would it matter if it's "tech" or not? Being "tech" somehow makes companies magically better than being "not tech"? If so, that's a bubble right there - your valuation depends on whether or not you're considered "tech", rather than what the financial performance data says. Here's a news headline: "Tech company" brand value damaged by WeWork; WeWork not in the club key investors say
People work with prejudice, if they are aware of it or not. A bunch of companies from the tech sector have managed to earn absurdly high valuations in a short timespan by successfully monopolizing a winner-takes-all market for a service with high initial cost but very low additional cost per customer. This situation is pretty uniquely found only for a certain subset of digital services, but people have already genera…
I reckon I should play this like Soros would: first add fuel to the fire, and then short the shit out of the dumpster fire once it becomes clear that it really is a dumpster. And the end is nigh, so keep within reach shortlists of things to short.
Too bad our salaries will suffer too. Nothing one can do about that.