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WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

wsj.com

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Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#431

Post by eloff »

tgtweak wrote: post #369
alainchabat wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what are the other companies you'll never work for?

Hijacking this spot to highlight newrelic as a company I used to evangelize and now will go out of my way to recommend against (I consult startups as a virtual CTO). They used to have a brilliant offering (Application level monitoring with all associated hosts included) then they deprecated the host monitoring and jacked the price up on every one of my clients while simultaneously threatening them to collect based on…

Please contact me at the email in my profile. I may have a work opportunity for you in the New Year.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#432

Post by randycupertino »

pjc50 wrote: post #335
chid wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some examples where HN is too skeptical? I find that it's a good filter to view "news"

The famous Dropbox comment? HN is overly skeptical of startups that take something possible and simplify the UX. Although I can't think of a recent example.

What was the famous Dropbox comment? I'm out of the loop. Thx.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#433

Post by Wowfunhappy »

ageitgey wrote: post #304
jen20 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advantage to me with Spaces (which I believe is owned by Regus) is that I can do guest co-working in any city they happen to be present - and since I travel extensively, the bigger the network the better, as far as I'm concerned. Sadly WeWork do not appear to offer this option (or didn't last time I looked).

WeWork offers this if you sign up for an American Express Platinum Business card and take advantage of the free year of WeWork benefit. I can (and do!) book any WeWork in the world any day - all for $0. Yes, that's right, the free AMEX WeWork plan is significantly better than any WeWork plan you can buy. That's start-up logic for you. I stopped paying WeWork after 1-2 years as a paying customer because their free pla…

What will you do after your free year is up?

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#434

Post by Larrikin »

ngngngng wrote: post #17

I'm so glad I read hacker news. I almost took a job at WeWork just 2 months ago with a recruiter working very hard to convince me I'd be rich when they IPO. Now I'm at a much smaller startup called Weave which is a really phenomenal place to work. I didn't discover until recently that it's also a YCombinator company. edit: to clarify, hacker news has been extremely skeptical of WeWork for some time, due to this, I wa…

Hacker News helped me decide to never work for WeWork by prominently featuring this[1] article on the front page

[1] https://time.com/5338287/wework-meat-vegetarian-company-envi...

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#435

Post by acchow »

braythwayt wrote: post #142
joshcain wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporate governance was definitely a factor, but getting cut down from $47B to $10-15B is... a lot. Public market investors clearly have a much worse opinion of We's fundamentals than SoftBank did.

You are presuming that SOftBank believed in the fundamentals, and not in the proposition that if you carefully stage a series of cash injections at increasing valuations, the charismatic founder's PR halo will impart a shine onto the company's shares.

> if you carefully stage a series of cash injections at increasing valuations, the charismatic founder's PR halo will impart a shine onto the company's shares.

Can you give some examples where this has worked in the past?

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#436

Post by intuitionist »

human20190310 wrote: post #71
rwmurrayVT wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was another good segment on it today. From "WeKeepGoingWithThisHuh"[0] >...Or I guess maybe the IPO bankers leaked it because they want Neumann gone, to make the IPO easier, and want to commit Son to it by leaking. Or because they love messy drama maybe? It’s not their company. The even funnier part of the segment is when he gets into what some of the banks actually put out as a reasonable IPO valuation. >...JP…

At what point do these deranged estimates start damaging the credibility of the estimators?

There’s no real downside to saying a big number when pitching a company’s executives on an IPO. It’s not like it locks the bankers into trying to price the IPO at that number, it doesn’t cost anything, the worst that happens is that journalists and pseudonymous message board commenters snark about it.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#437

Post by braythwayt »

acchow wrote: post #435
braythwayt wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are presuming that SOftBank believed in the fundamentals, and not in the proposition that if you carefully stage a series of cash injections at increasing valuations, the charismatic founder's PR halo will impart a shine onto the company's shares.

> if you carefully stage a series of cash injections at increasing valuations, the charismatic founder's PR halo will impart a shine onto the company's shares. Can you give some examples where this has worked in the past?

I'm not claiming it ever worked, what I actually wrote was that perhaps Softbank believed in the proposition that it could work.

The alternatives are either that Softbank believed in WeWork's fundamentals, which honestly feels unlikely, or to believe that they went in early, then discovered that nobody else would invest, so they kept putting more of their own money in to avoid closing the business and taking a write-down.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#438

Post by braythwayt »

ineedasername wrote: post #323
braythwayt wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are presuming that SOftBank believed in the fundamentals, and not in the proposition that if you carefully stage a series of cash injections at increasing valuations, the charismatic founder's PR halo will impart a shine onto the company's shares.

In which case, the major failing of We was that it did not go public fast enough. I wonder if we'll see this translate into time pressure for future startups to go public a little earlier before the bloom is off the rose.

I don't think speed would help. If Softbank were the only people putting in the last few rounds, that suggests that nobody else wanted to invest in this business with this governance.

People already knew what kind of business WeWork was. Sure, they were getting press, but when actual institutional investors looked at it, they must not have liked what they saw.

That has been going on for the last few rounds, so I suspect that they couldn't have gone public then, either. Nobody was buying what they were selling, except Softbank. And once the S-1 dropped, the press and social media saw all the red flags together in one document.

Those red flags would have been just the same if they'd gone public earlier.

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#439

Post by notfromhere »

syedkarim wrote: post #263
88840-8855 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must say, I am jealous. It seems a bit unfair to me how computer engineers are getting hired and paid so well, while my economics degree is useless and I have to fight like crazy to get a job that pays WAY less than engineers get. Honestly, I studied economics because I wanted a job that pays well - that was one of the key criteria - and now I am standing with little money and a job I hate. It sucks.

What originally led you to believe that an economics degree would result in well-paying jobs?

I have a degree in Econ and its worked out wonderfully. It's really YMMV

Re: WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

#440

Post by ahi »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #345
chid wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some examples where HN is too skeptical? I find that it's a good filter to view "news"

Articles warning against buying bitcoins were highly upvoted for years, and bitcoin costs several thousand dollars now.

I was mining bitcoin in 2011. It was stupid then and stupid now. Sometimes a lotto ticket hits.
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