They needed to go all in, and commit fraud like Enron, if they really wanted to leave the public holding the bag.
Hardly.
It wasn't the fact that WeWork had horrific fundamentals that killed the IPO--look at Uber and Lyft. What killed the IPO was all the reporting on how Neumann was looting the company in just incredibly douchey ways.
If Neumann had been a touch more sophisticated or slightly less brazen in looting the company, the IPO probably would have succeeded.
A sixteen-year-old newsgroup poster explains it as follows:
> Sorry to disagree, but I thought the quote worked extremely well the first time and on further reflection, still do. I think it's very apt and I would hesitate to say that perhaps you didn't see the intended purpose on first reading.
> Terry talks about the crowd as a creature, therefore implying one single IQ. So, to use your own methods, let's say a crowd of 100 people would have an IQ of 10 - not each, but altogether. Each person would have an IQ of 0.1 if you wanted to break it down, although to do so would be completely counter-productive, because we are talking about a crowd and not a single person. Once you start talking about single people, they are no longer part of the crowd and their IQ would revert to normal status. The crowd is a whole, and the description provides a picture of it being a single organism with one purpose (to imply the fervour that people get swept up in, in crowds, e.g. race riots, Paedophile lynchings, vigilantes that one person would not do)
> I think the purpose behind the description was to provide the metaphor of a crowd being a big, dumb, violent animal composed of intelligent, reasoning people - a sort of paraphrase on "the sum is greater than the parts".
https://alt.books.pratchett.narkive.com/nVL49SnZ/quote-from-...
As an aside, I find it amazing that I was able to go from a paraphrased description of a quote to an in depth discussion of the accuracy of the quote with suggestions for alternative functions. Despite all its flaws, the hacks upon hacks upon hacks we call the internet is incredible when you step back and consider it all.
But I suspect he really means the opposite, that the larger the crowd, the less rational it is.
By the time public wakes up, the thinking goes, we've already cashed our chips. How many investment firms buy solid businesses, only to chop them up, milk them dry, load with debt and then IPO?
Edit: It's not fraud, they disclose it all but a lot of people are fooled by the low IPO price, even though the business is loaded with debt and has a gazillion shares issued.