Hacker News Reader

I work in a Wework office and wouldn't touch Wework as an investment with a ten mile pole. It's just an office. A bit more expensive than other coworking spaces. There literally nothing special about it, except that it never turned a profit.

I like that they at least pretend to care about the environment. I'd like it better if they actually did things to lower the energy use of their buildings.

The problem they have is that you can’t save this business by clapping louder. Either it starts generating profits or it’ll go out of business. I am just personally surprised that Adam Neumann isn’t getting the kind of negativity Elizabeth Holmes got. Perhaps after it goes down, who knows, but his activity has been sufficiently shady that it should be drawing more fire.

Holmes was deceptive in her fraud and flat out lied to investors. Neumann's fraud is disclosed and well documented. No skin off my back if he pockets hundreds of millions of Saudi money.

I’ve got no idea what he’s said to investors but it sounds like they’ve been repeatedly surprised by things like his real estate holdings and ownership of the trademark.

Curious for evidence of this.

> Holmes was deceptive in her fraud

That's kind of true-by-definition; you can't have fraud without being deceptive.

And, from that, it follows that ”Neumann's fraud is disclosed and well documented” cannot be correct.

If they (clearly) disclose all they do, it can’t be fraud.

It appears that We has a functional product they're delivering to buying customers; but at severely-questionable future profitability. Theranos claimed they had a product that achieved results it couldn't, customers they didn't have. It seems the difference is between profit viability (We) and fraud (Theranos).

That’s reasonable.

WeWork customers actually get the office space and amenities they pay for. Theranos customers were not getting finger-prick tests, and many of the tests ended up inaccurate anyway.

That’s true too. The good news, I suppose, is that their customers haven’t put a lot on the line. Leaseholders and investors on the other hand, have. Thinking back to the scandals of the early 2000s, many of them were simply overestimating profits while extracting cash. Eventually the profits needed to appear so they went to accounting fraud.

Neumann's bullshit doesn't run the risk of killing anyone.

It’s likely that the company itself is weirdly cult-like and actively manages out any employees who don’t drink the kool-aid. The vegan thing is a small hint to this.

I dont know about that, it doesn’t seem any different than any startup and private company in this space like ones I’ve worked for where I talk privately with employees about what we will do with our stock options.

The metrics employees consider are just very far removed from anything that matters for making shareholders money. Its like listening to the most retail of retail investors, where sentiment is “hey I know that brand and dont hate them” invest

And yes, sure, sprinkle a little vested interest on top of that, and possible career derailment if your colleagues hear you till you get a perfect storm of no objective reasoning. The issuer side of an offering like this is always a good hand, the employee side is decent too unless you have to buy your own stock options.

Throwaway (but at least the name is apropos).

I worked as a software engineer at WeWork for a bit and no other startup or tech company has come close to the cultishness that Neumann is trying to cultivate there.

Some highlights from my brief time there:

- mandatory spiritual guidance at a company summit where the “guru” enforced the importance of one’s place in the organization

- mandatory attendance at “Summer Camp”, a weekend long music festival with excessive drinking

- mandatory attendance of a talk led by Neumann and transferred to Deepak _fucking_ Chopra at Summer Camp

- the Meetup founder displaying a picture of the twin towers, post plane crash, on a giant screen at Madison a Square Garden during a company summit

And these were just the noteworthy events that rose above the background noise of “What insane thing will Adam Neumann say this time?” each time an all-hands was held.

Are the employees drinking the koolaid? What do you think will happen to We?

>a weekend long music festival with excessive drinking

Where can I send my resume?

>and transferred to Deepak _fucking_ Chopra

Nevermind.

Think they’ll retract the S-1 and stay private?

It's not clear what that would mean for SoftBank but it can't be good. All VC funds are looking for an exit, Vision Fund is no different.

I work out of a WeWork location sometimes. I don't like the product and only work out of WeWorks because I need to for my job. I would never choose to be a "member" on my own.

Here's why I'm not a fan: The interiors are cheesey, badly designed, and generally seem poorly built (things are janky and break way too easily). It's often hard to find a good place to work in the common areas - pop music is blasting in the main common areas and the few phone booths and quiet corners are often full (people sometimes just work in phone booths, which is annoying). The fact that you have to pay to use conference rooms (at least with my company's contract) and you have to pay for granola bars and other snacks feels kinda nickel-and-dimey. (There is free coffee, and free beer but during the workday I'm not usually looking to drink a pint.) Also there's a theme of forced happiness everywhere (the mugs all say "do what you love" or "always half full"), which feels at best like vapid corporate fluff and at worst kinda cult-like, but either way it's mildly off-putting. Finally, they often invite salespeople from different companies to set up tables in the common area to sell/advertise random stuff, which isn't that big a deal but monetizing their tenants' attention during their work day kinda seems at odds with "building a community" and "elevating consciousness" and all.

I like the concept of a global coworking space network. I'm just not a fan of WeWork's implementation.

My bet is that in ten years WeWork will end up a bit like Groupon is today - still going, but far from the world-changing force they were once hyped to be. Of course, a lot of weird stuff can happen and maybe they'll end up dominating the worlwide office market, or maybe they'll flame out spectacularly in a couple of years.

Check out the Odd Lots podcast episode: The Bullish Case for WeWork. Personally, I don't see it -- but capital is so cheap and WW brand so strong that they may be able to pull a rabbit out in a downturn.

It’s the only strong brand in a massive market, real estate.

It may be the only strong brand in co-working spaces, but I find it harder to believe it's the only strong brand in real estate.

It's obviously a more visible brand for people working in a particular area of the tech industry than most real estate brands, but that's a different issue than brand strength in real estate.

> Think they’ll retract the S-1 and stay private?

And get their next cash infusion from where, exactly? If they manage to find even more private investors, that might be an option, but would probably hurt their image more than the negative press around the S-1.

Or try to become profitable really quickly?

if all the news are bearish, it would probably pop up.