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Comment by gigatexal | Hacker News Reader

The more we learn about this guy the more I can’t wait for him to ride the wave into obscurity and irrelevance except for in the immortal pages of case studies of what not to do.

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Agreed.

I also use this opportunity to learn how these con artists present themselves.

So watching interviews with them to learn their verbal and physical expressions (and people around them).

This is one particular interview I find useful in the above context.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/01/14/watch-cnbcs-full-inter...

Between this and another con artist (Elizabeth Holms, Therano's founder), there a representative sample developing.

Generally speaking, people know how to spot a con artist intuitively. The difficulty is figuring out who is part of the con, and who is a mark. Sometimes one person is both, or changes from partner to mark overnight.

When you are more charismatic than the actor sitting next to you...

I love Ashton's response to why he isn't invested in WeWork though.

What mannerisms are indicative that he's a con artist? Just seems like a good public speaker to me

I'm not sure how by just solely looking at people's mannerisms/behavior without evaluating what they are saying, I'd be able to detect con artistry

I wonder if a database of past videos of these people (after the truth is known) and machine learning would be able to make a bullshit/con detector? Maybe the same could be done with old PR news from companies that fail to deliver (pump and dump). Would ML be able to detect if the person truly believes what they are pushing?

Immortal page of "how to ride an unicorn to death"

Well, he still made it out as a billionaire.

did he? He's very levered against his stock.

Even worth the buildings owned and the cash payments for the word ‘we’?

He gave back the trademark payment iirc.

He got a few hundred million for stock he sold, and borrowed a few hundred million more against stock he still owned. We don't know the exact numbers though. He also gave away $100m+.

He was paid for 'we' in stock, not cash, and he ended up paying it back after their first IPO filing caused an uproar.

At least it was private money that hopefully learnt their lesson. Think of it as karmic wealth redistribution. Unless the private money turned out to be pension funds in which case oh shit.

Most likely it was pension funds or municipalities. It’s not the VCs own money

Most of it was the Saudi royal family’s money, they were the biggest investors in the Vision Fund.

Not sure I'd rip off Mohammed Bonesaw, but I guess he didn't do so directly.

The vision fund is the truly amazing case of serial capital destruction.

Of course it brings to mind something I heard from a PI years ago: if something doesn't make sense as a business, maybe it makes sense in some other way. Could this be somehow about moving money around? No clue, just wild speculation because it all looks so irrational.

He looks set to walk away with $700m regardless. He deserves a chapter of his own in How To Sucker A VC.

Not unless he gets sued. And I hope he does

He borrowed money against his WW shares. There are rumours a margin call may be due.

At this point, he should really be looking to add a property in Florida before it is too late.

how does that work? I know from OJ that FL law protects the home, but will you have a $50 Million home with all the expenses but that cannot sell? Maybe he can borrow against it...

But I doubt he'll get sued. Unless he fudged the numbers it isn't his fault that supposedly sophisticated suckers gave him money.

I think it would be hard to prove anything outside out of gross incompetence. If he buys a Florida home and uses it as his primary residence, he would be able to keep the house even during bankruptcy. So he could buy the $40M, declare bankruptcy on the margin loan, and then sell the house eventually as far as I understand it.

But the valuation falling so badly and his shady antics perhaps there’s a case for failing as CEO to execute one fiduciary duty?

Any lawyers here on HN?

"If SoftBank puts in a new $5 billion at a sub-$8 billion valuation, that will bring its total investment to about $15.8 billion, or about twice WeWork’s current value. If it doesn’t get a majority of the stock for that, it should just hand WeWork founder Adam Neumann the keys to its next $100 billion Vision Fund with a note saying “you are better at this than we are, here’s a present.” "

(Matt Levine on Friday)

Or the immortal page for the definition of megalomania

What not to do? He made $700m, who doesn't want to do that?

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