WeWork parent pulls IPO following pushback: sources

It's been incredible watching each part of this unfold exactly as Matt Levine called it each week prior.

Additionally, I think this is great to think about as far as the entire story of IPOing a big tech company in 2019.

You start with the story the bankers sell you. They all want to tell you you're going to be bigger than you ever thought possible, because, well... those fees are awfully nice.

"We're going to IPO you at 20% of $PREVIOUS_VALUATION"

The counter-argument was, well, "We don't think you're worth that much, you're probably worth only $20B."

The problem is here... well there's not really a financial position you can take here especially as the short price skyrockets. Maybe you get some smug satisfaction, but overall, everyone in the early stage of trying to win the IPO for their bank is going to tell you what you want to hear.

Now... things suddenly change, you need to shop it around. Well, maybe you don't get the number you want. Maybe you do? You edge it a little down. Yet, all the benefits you have as a private company (insert your It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Pepe Silvia meme of Mack trying to connect the dots) you can't really keep entirely as you try to collect that public check.

Matt was spot on here, of course, they're going to try and take apart some of those political rights that usually people grumble about (see Snapchat IPO) and then somewhat get over as time goes on.

Yet even that didn't do the trick! So you slash the economic upside, and once again that's not enough.

Maybe you even set the price low enough that you can hype it and it will go up, but at some point, the market will give its verdict and in this case: WeWork didn't cut it.

In many ways, it's an interesting litmus test of the health of the tech industry. Yes, there's been a bull market for this last decade, but bubble... maybe not. Maybe, this is great example of Wall Street being serious about how much large private companies are worth? Either way, what a crazy saga nonetheless. I wonder if they'll be able to (somewhat paraphrasing Matt) turn the dial from growth to revenue and approach the market later? Time will tell I guess.

Maybe we'll get an Alex Gibney documentary out of it!

Calling dibs on the bankruptcy/restructuring.

We is not a tech company.

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.