Comments

1

Hope it was a good donut.

WeWork's entrepreneur-in-chief clearly thought the way to do a start-up was to start at the top, as if the company was already Amazon or Google when it wasn't even off the ground. Apparently, he never read the bios of so many of today’s insanely successful entrepreneurs who started on a shoe string, had several business failures before achieving success, and sometimes operated with only family or friends out of a garage in the early days (a garage was Amazon's first HQ).

This should be a lesson to today's young, aspiring entrepreneurs. Don't run your start-up like you're the Jeff Bezos of today, run it like you're the Jeff Bezos of 30 years ago and GROW IT over time. If you don't have the patience or stamina to stay the course through the lean early years until success comes, then find the highest paying job you can. You probably don’t have what it takes to create a successful business.

3

This is so pre-bubble 90's dot-com. I guess everything comes back around.

5

@1 Name for me three of "today's insanely successful entrepreneurs" who didn't start with a large cash injection from their parents (Bill Gates, Donald Trump, David Packard, Paul Allen, Elon Musk etc) and/or deep, pre-existing ties to old money and/or wall street (Bezos, Ellison, Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Bill Hewlitt etc etc)

6

Is WeWork the place that insists on scanning guest IDs and faces into a reception system, and other draconian Minority Report bullshit? All I know is I was going to a series of conferences a few years back and I declined all the ones at WeWorks because the visitor requirements were more invasive than when I’d go visit friends in prison.

7

I was largely unaware of WeWork before they bought Meetup but that acquisition has been somewhat surreal. Every time you create a Meetup now they offer to rent you a WeWork space to have it in. Which would make sense if the lion's share of Meetups weren't casual social events held outdoors or in restaurants.

I've worked at startups that rented office on short term leases in shared floors in downtown Bellevue and Seattle in the nineties. I never got the impression it was a new arrangement then. I guess WeWork is commoditizing that but it seems like the last thing short term commercial real estate needs is another middleman.

9

How the company got to these layoffs is one of the most spectacular and dramatic stories in the history of American business.

No, that would be Juicero. At least WeWork was offering a useful service.

10

Still over valued. Its biggest (as in larger and actually turns a profit) competitor IWG is only valued at $3.5 Billion on the open stock market.

11

Amazing that WeWork still has or ever had "employees". Make sure the card reader is working, restock the cold brew every few days, drop the daily rate in half and watch the tall dollars roll in. If you've ever worked for a company that leased from WeWork, you're familiar with the creepy feeling of being watched by 2 sets of overlords.


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