There will always be charismatic snake-oil salesmen, who may even be a little psychopathic.
The real problem is the people who follow them, validate them, and throw money at them. Big names who sit on their boards, etc.
At least in Neumann's case, the only thing that happened was some rich people lost their money. There were probably no pension funds, etc, investing in him. And their product didn't hurt anyone.
It's easy to quickly think that "if you're a 6'5" good looking man with great hair you can get away with anything", but people also wanted to believe in Elizabeth Holmes.
To me Elizabeth's Holmes case was even scarier: Investors wanted to believe in a "female Steve Jobs" so much that people were getting bogus medical tests. "Real people" -- not just wealthy investors who should be prepared to lose money -- got hurt.
And unlike the NY Times editors, it doesn't bother me that Adam Neumann walked away with $1 Billion. It doesn't hurt me at all, and it certainly doesn't occur to me that this money should somehow be redistributed to more "worthy" people. It's odd for an uninvolved spectator to feel bitter about this.
Notice that the Times was gushing about Theranos until the Wall Street Journal called them out, but they were skeptical about WeWork from the beginning. One played into their preferred narrative, one didn't.
There's grandma falling for a tech support scam, and then there's heads of billion dollar investment funds falling for business scams and a personality cult.
One of these can reasonably be assumed to not be at fault. Masayoshi Son at least had the grace to admit it (indirectly) and try to turn things around.
There are some marks and con-men that deserve each other. People who think they're buying stolen merchandise at pennies on the dollar and get a box of bricks for the "street" example. Does either party have clean hands?
Then there are Grandma's that get duped. These are real victims, not enablers.
How do you arrive at that conclusion in light of his grievances with Holmes/Theranos? Seems pretty obvious that he is distinguishing between the degree of damage between different scams, believing it is worse to harm low or middle class sick people (with their inherent lack of safety nets) than wealthy investors. Whether or not you or I agree with this assessment, we should be able to distinguish between that point and your interpretation.
They were no artists. The investors money made them artists. I presume both neumann and holmes believed in fake it till you make it, build it and they will come, 10000 hours etc. Holmes turned to a con artist when the thing simply failed to work. Wework didnt get to that stage even.
Yeah but at least WeWork has an actual product, aside from the financial boondoggle. Holmes was spinning and lying about vapor ware right up to the end.
Didn't hurt anyone? Misallocation of capital leads to people taking jobs that are unsupportable, and pushes out firms that potentially could have done a better job.
It’s entirely possible that pensions had some dollars wrapped up in WeWork but I don’t have inside knowledge or anything, they just have a decent backplane of institutional investors. But you can’t take this view that every failed investment “hurt” people. Some investments outperform expectations, some you nail, and some are big dumpster fires. A lot of this seems tied up in the myth that everyone knows what they’re doing: they don’t, grand majority of people are winging it to various degrees most of the time.
Can/do pension funds invest in private companies? Seriously asking.
Edit: I don't understand why this would get downvoted, and I am endlessly amazed by how weird or sensitive people are on HN. Just to downvote without even answering a simple fucking question in earnest.
I think "seriously asking" actually ends up making your comment seem ruder rather than nicer. The phrase has taken the same loop as "literally", unfortunately.
To answer the question, they do. Many pension funds manage billions of dollars, so they're at the scale where complex investments like that start to make sense. Even when they don't directly do it, very large private companies like WeWork often start getting included in mutual funds.
Fair enough, might have been better to leave out those words completely.
I also thought about writing an entire sentence on it, such as, "I am asking this in earnest, not trying to make some point in a debate with a rhetorical question." But then I thought it would be too much.
xD I don’t know either but I did my best to make you whole on needless downvoting.
But yes, pension funds do invest in private companies in a few ways. Some of it is relatively recent. They absolutely will invest during the “road show” of pre-ipo companies, but I’ve also seen numbers like up to 20% of vc funds coming from public pension funds [1]. It’s actually kinda a great idea imo, they’re definitely not betting the farm on these companies, and it’s a great way to get further diversification on an asset class that probably moves differently from other asset classes. They’ve also branched into things like real estate trusts, another kind of diversification that moves off-cycle from other asset classes.
And unlike the NY Times editors, it doesn't bother me that Adam Neumann walked away with $1 Billion
Remember that the goal of the scam was to offload it to retail investors at a $47Bn valuation knowing it was not worth even a fraction. They were stopped but that doesn’t excuse them of the conspiracy. And they will surely try again.
>It doesn't hurt me at all, and it certainly doesn't occur to me that this money should somehow be redistributed to more "worthy" people. It's odd for an uninvolved spectator to feel bitter about this.
What about the employees he screwed over and are getting laid off without severance?
I liked the article, but didn’t find anything particularly new to me that hasn’t been said in previous articles by the WSJ, Atlantic, NYT, and others. There wasn’t anything “failing up”. Just a rehash of the same stuff.
> “I actually think he’s probably one of the greatest entrepreneurs I’ve ever met,” Marc Benioff, the co-chief executive of Salesforce, told Business Insider on Oct. 15. “He’s an incredible evangelist. He’s an incredible visionary. He’s hired a lot of amazing people. He’s built an amazing brand, right?” Mr. Benioff did allow: “Unfortunately, there were some things, obviously, in the company that you probably would have preferred to change if he could do it all over again.”
He's smitten the Salesforce CEO. Qualifies as failing up, I guess?
I wonder why we as a society valorize advancement at any cost. Surely it’s much more respectable to reach a level that fits your personal abilities, needs, and aptitudes, and then be a generally sane, trustworthy, competent person.
The evidence and vibes in the article demonstrate a lot of greed, but not a ton of dominance. In comparison, Travis Kalanick greyballed the government, vilified competitors, and literally brewed a culture of stepping on toes. It seems Neumann wanted to start a religion, but not necessarily one centered on dominance. Neumann was evidently pretty mean to his chief of staff, but this article makes him look like an delusional angel (in many metrics) compared to TK.
I personally find Neumann’s excess revolting, but it appears that the collapse of WeWork will mainly impact investor capital (primarily Softbank) versus the livelihoods and civil rights of tens of thousands of people. Or perhaps there’s more to the story?
It turns out there is a case where a private pilot has had his license suspended after his wife carried edibles purchased legally in CO onto their aircraft without his knowledge. While article (b) in the link above seems to suggest this should have been legal, it may have been a result of them having carried the marijuana over state lines into Kansas, where marijuana use remains illegal.
Pilots could get high by the smoke if they didn't close the cabin. Unless you can just fly under the influence with a private aircraft which would be news to me.
There was a thread on one of the pilot forums years ago where folks who flew private jets for celebrities and musicians asked about the legalities when folks start getting high in the back. There is pressure from their companies to not get involved but if you are knowingly operating as pilot in command and transporting individuals impaired not for medical reasons it could potentially put their certificates at risk. For example if anyone filmed it and showed the crew aware of what was going on, etc. Lots of "I didn't see anything" up there.
I mean, Kalanick is up there with Zuckerberg as far as being a self-aware sociopath who doesn't care. Just because Neumann isn't as bad as Kalanick doesn't really say much.
Personally, almost half of the Uber rides I've had (more than 30) were unsafe and I got a refund for reporting them. In one of them, an Uber employee reached forward from the back seat to distract the driver because the employee was concerned about being late to a party. I've seen an Uber mow over a bicyclist and then drive away as if nothing happened.
Never had any of those experiences with taxis. Love the idea of rideshare, but I'm deeply convinced that Uber does not care about public safety.
I happen to believe that whenever a phony gets rewarded, it's a tiny kick in the gut to everyone else who is truthful and authentic. It damages the entire ecosystem. People look to other successful people for examples of how to behave, and when frauds succeed, more people start thinking, "Well maybe that's how we're supposed to do it."
I think the majority of people do aim for "sane, trustworthy, competent". It's just that there are a certain number of sociopaths in any population that are very interested in being the big boss.
Because money equals power, and we incentivize and condone the behavior. Imagine a maximum wage. How incentivized would people be to accumulate ever increasing amounts of money?
I'm a consultant and I rented some space at WeWork Montreal.
When I visit my clients in their office, which are not IT related, I often notice how grey or dark brown'ish are the walls. The vibe is kind of depressing in some old style offices in Montreal.
I must say that I really enjoyed going back to my shared office at WeWork. The light was nice, the vibe and I was connecting with people with similar mindset. I can't vouch for M. neumann, but I can say that my time at WeWork was really awesome.
I would often invite my clients to WeWork so that we don't need to meet in their super depressive dark'ish offices. My clients were always amazed and impress by the WeWork offices in Mtl.
I quit, not because of the latest issue, but for personnal reason.
I miss WeWork and I will definitely renew my subscription later if they still offer thata amazing experience.
You’re missing the point. Those clients you visited had old offices because they acted rationally and paid an appropriate amount for them (and didn’t receive subsidies). You were paying under market for a cool, new place. I bet you and those others with similar mindsets would be priced out if WeWork tried making a profit.
I know this comment too will get downvoted but I find it weird that a genuine question is getting downvotes. To my knowledge the whole thing is made up of design and actual physical things. Designs can be open sourced, right? So how much do these things actually cost to obtain?
When you start breaking things down, you'll realize that things are often the way they are because they are the most efficient way to organize resources.
AirBnbs are cheaper than hotels because they don't have to pay for the licensing or meet the safety requirements of hotels. Ubers are cheaper than taxis because Ubers don't have to deal with taxi driver unions. WeWork looks better than standard gray-brown boring offices because WeWork style offices actually cost a lot.
"Mr. Neumann would talk eloquently about creating the first “physical social network,” a place where members could talk about jobs, family, love. “It was like, wait, you mean life. What you’re talking about is just regular life,” Mr. Weber said. But as Mr. Neumann framed things, it sounded revolutionary. "
"And some came to wonder if Mr. Neumann had been wise to share, during a 2017 speech at Baruch College, a story from his first date with Rebekah. “She looked me straight in the eye and she said, ‘You, my friend, are full of” crap, Mr. Neumann recalled. “‘She then said, ‘Every single word that comes out of your mouth is fake.’”
It feels wholesome and healthy to point to WeWork as a thinly-veiled re-packaging of office space and an illustrative example of what's not a "tech" company. With the collapse of their IPO, people are piling on heaps of schadenfreude.
But I can't help but wonder: how much of this is envy? Who wouldn't want to be perceived as inspirational and forward-thinking when seeking support for a pet business endeavor?
The choice of which words to use to market your idea, the value of being able to recruit people to fulfill the idea, the ability to persuade people to fund your idea. Isn't there some value provided by inspirational leadership?
Neumann may have duped a credulous Son, but he put WeWork in the position where it received Son's consideration.
I'm not excusing the grifting and self-enriching.
At the same time, I've seen situations where the charisma and the resolute determination of a leader makes a huge difference in how the team executes. WeWork may be a glaring example of what not to do, but it's also an example of the value of politicking-- of agilely positioning your endeavor to receive investment, both monetary and emotional.
> Who wouldn't want to be perceived as inspirational and forward-thinking when seeking support for a pet business endeavor?
Most people would want to be perceived as inspirational and forward-thinking because they seek to be inspirational and forward-thinking. Sociopaths are more happy to manipulate perception to suit their purposes regardless of reality.
You betcha I'm envious of being able to sucker a bank out of a billion bucks. I'd love to pull off a con like that and then spend the rest of my life doing OSS software and traveling the world to do amazing things.
But I think it just goes to show how little merit has to do in this kind of economic system.
Sometimes you sucker the bank, sometimes the bank suckers you, depends on which scale beyond your own resources you can talk them into letting you operate, and where you are on a capitalistic continuum ranging from investors to consumers.
Where does it say merit or even sensibility is supposed to be a factor?
>"Who wouldn't want to be perceived as inspirational and forward-thinking when seeking support for a pet business endeavor?"
Sure but how many would want to be be perceived as "inspirational and forward-thinking" in the short term in exchange for being perceived as little more than a greedy charlatan in perpetuity?
> Isn't there some value provided by inspirational leadership?
It’s entirely derivative of where that leader is taking people. David Koresh was an inspirational leader. That didn’t create value, it destroyed value. (Arguably the better he was as a leader, the more value was destroyed.)
> But I can't help but wonder: how much of this is envy? Who wouldn't want to be perceived as inspirational and forward-thinking when seeking support for a pet business endeavor?
I guess I don't have the entrepreneurial spirit or whatever, because if my idea is not actually inspirational and forward-thinking, then no, I genuinely would not want to have the talent to manipulate people into thinking that it was. I don't think I'd like the person I'd become if that was my life.
The more fluff a person in a leadership position is operating with in place of actual productive ability, the more they will need to surround themselves with associates who are willing to accept this type of substitution. Some types of human nature accept this more readily than others so it can easily be allowed to grow out of hand, but almost everyone else notices once the crap level approaches complete fullness.
All leaders have gaps that need to be compensated for or filled in by associates both upstream and downstream, but especially subordinates, and this is usually accomplished by shrewd manipulation of resources, which can be either good or evil.
If a person in a leadership position can not grow the resources when that is the primary objective, either from investors or customers, that can be a sign that the talent of the so-called leader is more talk than action, sometimes even fantasy versus reality.
Sometimes that type of talent works better on investors than customers, sometimes not either one. Both are usually served by action even better than talk, and look how far talk can get you.
If this guy was working for Thos. Edison or for Elizabeth Holmes at an early time, their companies might have had faster growth than they did, with Edison's shareholders reaching institutional status earlier & bigger in the long run, and Theranos reaching it's final conclusion sooner as well.
If Edison or Holmes were working for this guy it wouldn't have made much difference if they had been below-average Joes & Janes instead.
Business schools are going to study WeWork and Adam in the same chapter as Bernie Madoff and MCI Worldcom. This has been one of the most successful scams of all time.
The fact that it was all legal is just mind-boggling.
Was it a scam? Adam didn't violate any laws. Investors should have done diligence and all the self dealing would have came out during an audit. Fact they didn't is what i think is the scam. If i was an lp in the fund, i would think about suing the fund for the breach of duty.
Maybe, but this is very different from the original examples of Madoff and Worldcom. Their scams were flagrantly illegal at the time that they did them.
Its a perfectly legitimate business that brings in billions of dollars and may even be profitable with some optimization. To call it a scam a la a Ponzi scheme is a little too harsh.
The business model of WeWork as "AWS for Real Estate" has finally dawned on me, and it's a shame it's connected to such a toxic person.
There are very few things as bad as real estate negotiations (in the context of procuring a new office for a growing company), depending on the city they can take multiple months, require you to deal with all the furniture/decoration and require very long commitments. While tech is in the XXI century real estate contracts are still in the XX century, if you're lucky. Residential usually sucks less but it's still complicated as well.
> There are very few things as bad as real estate negotiations
I can think of, literally, thousands of things. And I've negotiated commercial and residential real estate several times.
Child sex abuse, human trafficking, the death of a spouse, or child, or parent, genocide, murder, negotiating a contract when you are a startup and your customer is a Forbes 50 company that insists on Net 120 terms, war crimes, wage theft by multinationals, cannibalism, pointless Hollywood reboots, HackerNews posters bragging about how they never enable JavaScript in their browser, etc, etc.
Is it really necessary to exaggerate to the point of being ridiculous to make the simple point that there's room for improvement in commercial real estate negotiation in the US?
It's not just this post: Americans seem to need to turn everything into "worst ever" or "best ever".
I’m like 85% sure “There are very few things as bad as...” is just an expression, and not literally suggesting that real estate negotiations are, on the spectrum of evil, the worst possible thing ever.
An inability to consider and relate multiple states is a trait of immaturity. The long tail of modern economics (which gives way to the long tail of education) ensures that this is a dominant perspective, over time.
From one of my absolute favorite articles about this, and about finance in general. The most entertaining thing I've read this month: Matt Levine's "How do you like We now?"
Masayoshi Son: What does your company do?
Neumann: We lease office buildings, spruce up the space and sublet it in small chunks.
Son: Hmm I invest in visionary tech stuff, this doesn’t really sound like my thing.
Neumann: Did I mention we are a state of consciousness. A generation of interconnected emotionally intelligent entrepreneurs.
Son: Okay yeah that’s more like—
Neumann: The world’s first physical social network. We encompass all aspects of people’s lives, in both physical and digital worlds.
Son: You’re crazy! I love it! But could you be, say, ten times crazier?
Neumann: You’re going to invest $10 billion in my company, which I will use as kindling to light the whole edifice on fire, and then when we are both standing in the ashes you will pay me another billion dollars to walk away while I laugh at you.
Son: All my life I have dreamed of meeting someone as crazy as you, but I never really believed this day would come.
Neumann: I’m gonna use your money to buy a mansion with a room shaped like a guitar, where I will play the world’s tiniest violin after all your money is gone.
Son: YES PUNCH ME IN THE FACE.
Neumann: Also I’ll rename the company “We” and charge it $6 million for the name.
Son: RUN ME OVER WITH A TRUCK.
The other important tidbit from the article that I think is critically important is that a huge part (most?) of Son's fortune, after the .com collapse, was a single investment in Alibaba.
So, basically, Son got lucky. Of course, "luck" of this sort isn't possible unless you are willing to take big risks, which Son did, but so often, especially in the VC world, you see folks whose really sole main skill is a penchant for outsized risk-taking, and they got lucky, and then they are hailed as a "genius", where the only difference between them and thousands of others who failed is one lucky event, and of course, stastically, someone will get lucky.
When I first heard about Neumann's ridiculous platinum parachute, it made me angry about the state of capitalism, but honestly, if you are going to be a grifter, can't think of a better group to take it from than Son and the Arabian oil shieks.
I signed up for Matt Levine's newsletter after that and was surprised to receive well written serious information in addition to this sharp wit.
An example of one such pieces was on the relationship between institutional investors and proxy advisers. Not a single joke or funny sentence unfortunately, but very interesting.
As long as the two types of content he writes are well written information about how the markets work or humorous viewpoints tinted with a mild amount of rage, I am a fan.
> Neumann: We lease office buildings, spruce up the space and sublet it in small chunks.
> Son: Hmm I invest in visionary tech stuff, this doesn’t really sound like my thing.
> Neumann: Did I mention we are a state of consciousness. A generation of interconnected emotionally intelligent entrepreneurs.
> Son: Okay yeah that’s more like—
> Neumann: The world’s first physical social network. We encompass all aspects of people’s lives, in both physical and digital worlds.
> Son: You’re crazy! I love it! But could you be, say, ten times crazier?
> Neumann: You’re going to invest $10 billion in my company, which I will use as kindling to light the whole edifice on fire, and then when we are both standing in the ashes you will pay me another billion dollars to walk away while I laugh at you.
> Son: All my life I have dreamed of meeting someone as crazy as you, but I never really believed this day would come.
> Neumann: I’m gonna use your money to buy a mansion with a room shaped like a guitar, where I will play the world’s tiniest violin after all your money is gone.
> Son: YES PUNCH ME IN THE FACE.
> Neumann: Also I’ll rename the company “We” and charge it $6 million for the name.
If SoftBank hadn’t provided that exit package, they would probably have been crammed down by the JPMorgan proposal and lost every dollar. With this offer, they might be able to get 50% of their investment back.
I imagine things like this have gone on at thousands of companies before and now the rich ex-founders are heralded as geniuses. Neumann will Be in that camp in 20 years, giving Ted talks and writing VC posts
You can understand the madness slightly better I think if you watch a bit of the interview with Mrs Neumann who in some ways seems to have been the brains behind the operation but who is a little woo woo. (about 2 min in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAQR-NVPX6o&feature=youtu.be...)
It definitely makes me sad to see people like this rewarded so much. Not only did he become a billionaire, but he continues to get media attention which only raises his profile further.
I've worked with people like this in the past, who've done bad things and got rewarded for it. It does make me wonder if you can be a good person and also be successful, or if the rewards only go to those who are willing to achieve success at any means necessary.
It's even worse. He'll use his billion dollars to buy himself cachet in SF, NYC, and LA (and the universities, museums, etc., will all be too glad to take his money and give him board seats), so he'll never personally feel any repercussions for the damage he has done.
Sure, us plebes will despise him, but he'll move around in circles with people like him, not us, those who have gotten rich by making the world a worse place, and then bought themselves an esteemed position in "society", where they congratulate each other on how brilliant they all are.
What frustrates me to no end is that the one thing he is praised for is his "charisma" and ability to motivate people. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I have some level of Asperger's-ness (e.g. I never really understood rooting for a particular sports team), but I've never found people like this motivational. I've met these types before, and they just sound like smarmy used car salesmen or televangelists to me, and I have a visceral negative reaction to it. Yet I often look around and see other smart people pumped up and excited to act. It's an aspect of human behavior I just don't understand very well.
Luckily there are secondary markets (https://softbankfiresale.com/) popping up that will hopefully offer some kind of liquidity avg janes/joes who cant dump to softbank!
I feel that this debacle would not have happened if it had been subjected to the scrutiny of public market much earlier.
One can make public financial market more efficient by spotting bubbles and bet on the other side, and thereby making a killing financially and arguably counterbalance prevailing insanity somewhat. How does one do it in private markets? Not only is there much less transparency, but also murky and less liquid markets. Therefore are private markets less efficient?
> His great-grandchildren will be prominent philanthropists with their names on museums and universities, the strange origin of their fortunes long forgotten.
Maybe the archival nature of the Internet will preserve this article and instead they'll be shunned from all the fanciest regattas and dressage competitions. It's maybe the only justice we can hope for.
105 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 182 ms ] threadThe real problem is the people who follow them, validate them, and throw money at them. Big names who sit on their boards, etc.
At least in Neumann's case, the only thing that happened was some rich people lost their money. There were probably no pension funds, etc, investing in him. And their product didn't hurt anyone.
It's easy to quickly think that "if you're a 6'5" good looking man with great hair you can get away with anything", but people also wanted to believe in Elizabeth Holmes.
To me Elizabeth's Holmes case was even scarier: Investors wanted to believe in a "female Steve Jobs" so much that people were getting bogus medical tests. "Real people" -- not just wealthy investors who should be prepared to lose money -- got hurt.
And unlike the NY Times editors, it doesn't bother me that Adam Neumann walked away with $1 Billion. It doesn't hurt me at all, and it certainly doesn't occur to me that this money should somehow be redistributed to more "worthy" people. It's odd for an uninvolved spectator to feel bitter about this.
Notice that the Times was gushing about Theranos until the Wall Street Journal called them out, but they were skeptical about WeWork from the beginning. One played into their preferred narrative, one didn't.
One of these can reasonably be assumed to not be at fault. Masayoshi Son at least had the grace to admit it (indirectly) and try to turn things around.
There are some marks and con-men that deserve each other. People who think they're buying stolen merchandise at pennies on the dollar and get a box of bricks for the "street" example. Does either party have clean hands?
Then there are Grandma's that get duped. These are real victims, not enablers.
You should care that society functions well, even if the parts that don't aren't the parts you are involved in.
And perhaps foolish investors learning a lesson is part of a well-functioning society.
Edit: I don't understand why this would get downvoted, and I am endlessly amazed by how weird or sensitive people are on HN. Just to downvote without even answering a simple fucking question in earnest.
To answer the question, they do. Many pension funds manage billions of dollars, so they're at the scale where complex investments like that start to make sense. Even when they don't directly do it, very large private companies like WeWork often start getting included in mutual funds.
I also thought about writing an entire sentence on it, such as, "I am asking this in earnest, not trying to make some point in a debate with a rhetorical question." But then I thought it would be too much.
But yes, pension funds do invest in private companies in a few ways. Some of it is relatively recent. They absolutely will invest during the “road show” of pre-ipo companies, but I’ve also seen numbers like up to 20% of vc funds coming from public pension funds [1]. It’s actually kinda a great idea imo, they’re definitely not betting the farm on these companies, and it’s a great way to get further diversification on an asset class that probably moves differently from other asset classes. They’ve also branched into things like real estate trusts, another kind of diversification that moves off-cycle from other asset classes.
[1] https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-relationship-between-pension...
Remember that the goal of the scam was to offload it to retail investors at a $47Bn valuation knowing it was not worth even a fraction. They were stopped but that doesn’t excuse them of the conspiracy. And they will surely try again.
What about the employees he screwed over and are getting laid off without severance?
Landlords sell aluminium, we sell iPhones - Dave Fano
[Edit] Quote attribution correction
He's smitten the Salesforce CEO. Qualifies as failing up, I guess?
The evidence and vibes in the article demonstrate a lot of greed, but not a ton of dominance. In comparison, Travis Kalanick greyballed the government, vilified competitors, and literally brewed a culture of stepping on toes. It seems Neumann wanted to start a religion, but not necessarily one centered on dominance. Neumann was evidently pretty mean to his chief of staff, but this article makes him look like an delusional angel (in many metrics) compared to TK.
I personally find Neumann’s excess revolting, but it appears that the collapse of WeWork will mainly impact investor capital (primarily Softbank) versus the livelihoods and civil rights of tens of thousands of people. Or perhaps there’s more to the story?
edit: pertinent regulation: https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?c=ecfr&SID=03efb7c1b34...
It turns out there is a case where a private pilot has had his license suspended after his wife carried edibles purchased legally in CO onto their aircraft without his knowledge. While article (b) in the link above seems to suggest this should have been legal, it may have been a result of them having carried the marijuana over state lines into Kansas, where marijuana use remains illegal.
And I'm glad he did. Do you want to go back to the misery of taxis?
Never had any of those experiences with taxis. Love the idea of rideshare, but I'm deeply convinced that Uber does not care about public safety.
When I visit my clients in their office, which are not IT related, I often notice how grey or dark brown'ish are the walls. The vibe is kind of depressing in some old style offices in Montreal.
I must say that I really enjoyed going back to my shared office at WeWork. The light was nice, the vibe and I was connecting with people with similar mindset. I can't vouch for M. neumann, but I can say that my time at WeWork was really awesome. I would often invite my clients to WeWork so that we don't need to meet in their super depressive dark'ish offices. My clients were always amazed and impress by the WeWork offices in Mtl.
I quit, not because of the latest issue, but for personnal reason.
I miss WeWork and I will definitely renew my subscription later if they still offer thata amazing experience.
AirBnbs are cheaper than hotels because they don't have to pay for the licensing or meet the safety requirements of hotels. Ubers are cheaper than taxis because Ubers don't have to deal with taxi driver unions. WeWork looks better than standard gray-brown boring offices because WeWork style offices actually cost a lot.
This is why many people feel the value of WeWork may be $0.
Please note that "We" is a registered trademark. Fixed it for you: I'm a consultant and I rented some space at We®Work Montreal.
The "Art of Failing Up" only requires getting an exorbitant amount of money from someone who is giving away money like candy.
"And some came to wonder if Mr. Neumann had been wise to share, during a 2017 speech at Baruch College, a story from his first date with Rebekah. “She looked me straight in the eye and she said, ‘You, my friend, are full of” crap, Mr. Neumann recalled. “‘She then said, ‘Every single word that comes out of your mouth is fake.’”
mmhmmmm...
But I can't help but wonder: how much of this is envy? Who wouldn't want to be perceived as inspirational and forward-thinking when seeking support for a pet business endeavor?
The choice of which words to use to market your idea, the value of being able to recruit people to fulfill the idea, the ability to persuade people to fund your idea. Isn't there some value provided by inspirational leadership?
Neumann may have duped a credulous Son, but he put WeWork in the position where it received Son's consideration.
I'm not excusing the grifting and self-enriching.
At the same time, I've seen situations where the charisma and the resolute determination of a leader makes a huge difference in how the team executes. WeWork may be a glaring example of what not to do, but it's also an example of the value of politicking-- of agilely positioning your endeavor to receive investment, both monetary and emotional.
Pile-ons don't imply that other people want to be that person. Shaming feels good.
Most people would want to be perceived as inspirational and forward-thinking because they seek to be inspirational and forward-thinking. Sociopaths are more happy to manipulate perception to suit their purposes regardless of reality.
But I think it just goes to show how little merit has to do in this kind of economic system.
Where does it say merit or even sensibility is supposed to be a factor?
Sure but how many would want to be be perceived as "inspirational and forward-thinking" in the short term in exchange for being perceived as little more than a greedy charlatan in perpetuity?
It’s entirely derivative of where that leader is taking people. David Koresh was an inspirational leader. That didn’t create value, it destroyed value. (Arguably the better he was as a leader, the more value was destroyed.)
I guess I don't have the entrepreneurial spirit or whatever, because if my idea is not actually inspirational and forward-thinking, then no, I genuinely would not want to have the talent to manipulate people into thinking that it was. I don't think I'd like the person I'd become if that was my life.
But someone with cash will fall for them, and then, Ka-ching!
what else can it be?
See https://goop.com/
She may have known every word was fake, but it was a turn on.
All leaders have gaps that need to be compensated for or filled in by associates both upstream and downstream, but especially subordinates, and this is usually accomplished by shrewd manipulation of resources, which can be either good or evil.
If a person in a leadership position can not grow the resources when that is the primary objective, either from investors or customers, that can be a sign that the talent of the so-called leader is more talk than action, sometimes even fantasy versus reality.
Sometimes that type of talent works better on investors than customers, sometimes not either one. Both are usually served by action even better than talk, and look how far talk can get you.
If this guy was working for Thos. Edison or for Elizabeth Holmes at an early time, their companies might have had faster growth than they did, with Edison's shareholders reaching institutional status earlier & bigger in the long run, and Theranos reaching it's final conclusion sooner as well.
If Edison or Holmes were working for this guy it wouldn't have made much difference if they had been below-average Joes & Janes instead.
Kind of puts celebrity in perspective.
The fact that it was all legal is just mind-boggling.
Would absolutely be a different discussion if they had IPOed.
There are very few things as bad as real estate negotiations (in the context of procuring a new office for a growing company), depending on the city they can take multiple months, require you to deal with all the furniture/decoration and require very long commitments. While tech is in the XXI century real estate contracts are still in the XX century, if you're lucky. Residential usually sucks less but it's still complicated as well.
I can think of, literally, thousands of things. And I've negotiated commercial and residential real estate several times.
Child sex abuse, human trafficking, the death of a spouse, or child, or parent, genocide, murder, negotiating a contract when you are a startup and your customer is a Forbes 50 company that insists on Net 120 terms, war crimes, wage theft by multinationals, cannibalism, pointless Hollywood reboots, HackerNews posters bragging about how they never enable JavaScript in their browser, etc, etc.
Is it really necessary to exaggerate to the point of being ridiculous to make the simple point that there's room for improvement in commercial real estate negotiation in the US?
It's not just this post: Americans seem to need to turn everything into "worst ever" or "best ever".
An inability to consider and relate multiple states is a trait of immaturity. The long tail of modern economics (which gives way to the long tail of education) ensures that this is a dominant perspective, over time.
Hollwood reboots are not worse.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-23/how-do...
The other important tidbit from the article that I think is critically important is that a huge part (most?) of Son's fortune, after the .com collapse, was a single investment in Alibaba.
So, basically, Son got lucky. Of course, "luck" of this sort isn't possible unless you are willing to take big risks, which Son did, but so often, especially in the VC world, you see folks whose really sole main skill is a penchant for outsized risk-taking, and they got lucky, and then they are hailed as a "genius", where the only difference between them and thousands of others who failed is one lucky event, and of course, stastically, someone will get lucky.
When I first heard about Neumann's ridiculous platinum parachute, it made me angry about the state of capitalism, but honestly, if you are going to be a grifter, can't think of a better group to take it from than Son and the Arabian oil shieks.
An example of one such pieces was on the relationship between institutional investors and proxy advisers. Not a single joke or funny sentence unfortunately, but very interesting.
As long as the two types of content he writes are well written information about how the markets work or humorous viewpoints tinted with a mild amount of rage, I am a fan.
> Neumann: We lease office buildings, spruce up the space and sublet it in small chunks.
> Son: Hmm I invest in visionary tech stuff, this doesn’t really sound like my thing.
> Neumann: Did I mention we are a state of consciousness. A generation of interconnected emotionally intelligent entrepreneurs.
> Son: Okay yeah that’s more like—
> Neumann: The world’s first physical social network. We encompass all aspects of people’s lives, in both physical and digital worlds.
> Son: You’re crazy! I love it! But could you be, say, ten times crazier?
> Neumann: You’re going to invest $10 billion in my company, which I will use as kindling to light the whole edifice on fire, and then when we are both standing in the ashes you will pay me another billion dollars to walk away while I laugh at you.
> Son: All my life I have dreamed of meeting someone as crazy as you, but I never really believed this day would come.
> Neumann: I’m gonna use your money to buy a mansion with a room shaped like a guitar, where I will play the world’s tiniest violin after all your money is gone.
> Son: YES PUNCH ME IN THE FACE.
> Neumann: Also I’ll rename the company “We” and charge it $6 million for the name.
> Son: RUN ME OVER WITH A TRUCK.
I imagine things like this have gone on at thousands of companies before and now the rich ex-founders are heralded as geniuses. Neumann will Be in that camp in 20 years, giving Ted talks and writing VC posts
I've worked with people like this in the past, who've done bad things and got rewarded for it. It does make me wonder if you can be a good person and also be successful, or if the rewards only go to those who are willing to achieve success at any means necessary.
Sure, us plebes will despise him, but he'll move around in circles with people like him, not us, those who have gotten rich by making the world a worse place, and then bought themselves an esteemed position in "society", where they congratulate each other on how brilliant they all are.
Maybe the archival nature of the Internet will preserve this article and instead they'll be shunned from all the fanciest regattas and dressage competitions. It's maybe the only justice we can hope for.