The Spectacular Rise and Fall of WeWork

In less than one year, WeWork went from having a $47 billion valuation and being the darling of the venture capital world to needing an $8 billion infusion to avoid running out of money. This is the story of Adam Neumann, Softbank's risky investment, a failed IPO and how we got here.

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[minyaksayur]

It's not a tech company, wework is just a building rental, but people want it to have returns like internet companies that is just not possible.

[tommc]

Is this a "tech company" because people are sitting around using laptops? By that measure, perhaps Starbucks is a tech company....

[greekbarrios]

This is the last thing the reeling real estate market needs right now, as an Air BnB investor i think due to the similar mode of operation like WeWork, we might soon be run off the market. Essentially why i'm at large for exit measures or where to allocate $1m

[CongaLineMonkey]

When a business talks about its special energy and bringing people together, run like hell.

[jayhm]

More content like this Bloomberg. Thoroughly enjoyed this style and topic. Kinda like Vox's "explained" but with business.

[denniss]

I can't believe that the Bloomberg piece didn't mention it and I've seen a lot of the comments here don't get it either. The reason WeWork failed is because *they were renters themselves* . They basically didn't own any of the spaces that they were at. It had such a spectacular failure because there's no assets, no buildings, no real estate, nothing. The chart in the video comparing to IWG is completely misleading because if you were to compare the *owned* real estate square footage, WeWork would be zero while IWG does own some of it's buildings.

[SpyinGirly]

when someone describes their company as a "family, " that's your cue to leave

[tysonliu]

Sounds like it is just a office space rental company to me, with lots of bs and exaggeration

[minasamir]

"You can't run a business without an adult saying no"
I LOVED that sentence.
In Egypt, we have a proverb : He, who lacks an adult supervisor, must go and buy himself one.

[Beanhill_]

Running a real estate company like a tech one is stupid. Having an app doesn't make it a tech company.

[pathtobillions]

It was bound to fail. A real estate company being valued as if it was a silicon valley tech start up.

[ziksy]

It's great to have optimists. They get people moving. But in a company, you also need the realists to stop those people from moving too far and fall off a cliff.

[quinnp]

I've really liked this simple line to sum things up "WeWork was a real estate company being valued as if it were a tech company". Expecting exponential growth with software isn't too crazy; expecting exponential growth from real estate is.

[christiankalonda]

This wasn’t a tech company, it was a renting space to put it simply.

They got way too much cash than they knew what to do with basically.

[owenb]

The guy who says "I thought I'd give you a tour of where wework" and repeating the joke twice kinda sums up the whole company to me. Like people who thought something that was mediocre was really profound

[wayne]

Wait, he registered the trademark personally and then sold it back to his company and then board is like, 👌. and no one asked any questions?

[michellet]

I don’t exactly understand why they keep calling it a technology startup? It wasn’t.

[standardpecan]

My company still uses WeWork, which is incredible through the whole crumble and covid era. Office space is nice, pantry is always interesting. Their biggest problem is that people overvalued them as the next frontier or something.

[billvolk]

Having an app does not make you a tech company. Steak & Shake has an app.

[ricosrealm]

The real problem was believing an office rental business is some high-flying software tech startup with low overhead and huge growth potential.