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Comment by ginkgotree | Hacker News Reader

We Co isn't a tech company. Its a landlord subleasing commercial realestate as short term month to month leases with snazzy furniture. They happen to have a mobile app. Its functionality is so poor they removed the pay snack bar in my SF WeWork because no one could pay through the app.

CloudFlare... Now there's a proper tech company.

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Ah, but it has/had a tech company valuation.

Why do you think valuations varied so wildly? You get the same thing with Tesla, it's valued more as a tech company than as car company.

Clearly it does not have a tech company valuation, hence they pulled the IPO.

You can't put a horn on a dog and call it a unicorn.

I said 'has/had'. Anyway reread the linked article, the IPO is back on.

You can make a reasonable case that Tesla might grow a lot, whereas other car companies not.

Yeah sure, but if its valued similar to Ford, you'd expect it to grow to the size of Ford, at least. That seems a tall order, so then you're looking for other reasons for the high valuation.

The biggest difference between car companies and tech companies is return on invested capital.

According to that Tesla is somewhere inbetween a tech company and car company. Also it's the only car company that used software to substantially improve the performance of the car using software after selling it.

ROIC?

Have you got figures because I just googled for Telsa, Ford and Facebook at that doesn't seem to be the case, albeit with older figures.

Anyway at this stage Tesla are selling luxury cars to the converted, its unclear to me that they can keep doing that. Eventually they'll have to start selling to Joe Bloggs.

https://www.gurufocus.com/term/ROC/NAS:FB/ROC-/Facebook

https://www.gurufocus.com/term/ROC/F/ROC-/Ford-Motor-Co

https://www.gurufocus.com/term/ROC/TSLA/ROC-Percentage/Tesla...

ROIC is effectively useless for tech companies because they do not capitalize nearly enough R&D.

Hackers do this to traditional cars - you can turn a bog standard Audi A6 into almost a RS with some software mods an di think to be safe you beef up the suspension and brakes

There Is of course the fabled Ford FBI chip that was used on FBI pursuit vehicles, knackered the engine life of course. I was told this buy a guy who worked at a Ford dealership.

Yes! They even use lava lamps in their lobby to generate entropy.

Which is a gimmick, to be clear.

Isn't a normal run of the mill business that happens to have an app the definition of a startup?

Is Greater Anglia a startup? https://www.greateranglia.co.uk/travel-information/journey-p...

By that logic there is a local fish shop in my area that would qualify as a tech company/startup which they are certainly not

The furniture isn’t snazzy it seems like cheap ikea stuff

WeWork has created an incredible sort of social filter though.

At least in NYC, if someone is a member at WeWork its a strong signal you don’t want them at a party.

Maybe it’s some sort of AI they’ve built in house?

Lol how full circle -- WeWork-membership being a negative selector.

I remember when folks were telling me not having a WeWork space was a sign you didn't want to network with other like-minded folks.

Well, those aren't incompatible statements. It just pre-supposes that GP doesn't like the sort of people that WeWork attracts, but that they like each other.

Personally I have no experience with WeWork, but I've never really found the urge to make much of an effort to know people from other companies in shared office environments. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. But don't try to make me socialise with them, thanks ...

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