News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on WeWork Co-Founder Has Cashed Out at Least $700M Via Sales, Loans. Parent comment

Re:WeWork Co-Founder Has Cashed Out at Least $700M Via Sales... by robocat on Thursday July 18, 2019 @05:26PM (#20474072)
"WeWork is a weird company because it is a real estate company that thinks it’s a tech startup; it seems to have the culture and New-Age-y patter and grandiose ambition and valuation of a tech company. But what if, deep down in its heart, it really is a real estate company?"

"Multiple investors of the privately held company said the arrangement concerned them as a potential conflict of interest in which the CEO could benefit on rents or other terms with the company."

Mr. Neumann "is WeWork’s largest individual shareholder and has voting control over the company, so it is not clear that the board can say no."

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/opinion/articles/2019-01-16/we...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:WeWork Co-Founder Has Cashed Out at Least $700M Via Sales... by codetrotter on Thursday July 18, 2019 @07:07PM (#20474848)
> "WeWork is a weird company because it is a real estate company that thinks it’s a tech startup; [...]"

This quote reminds me of something that was said in the movie The Founder (2016).

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4276820/

(Spoiler alert, possibly.)

“You’re not in the hamburger business. You’re in the real estate business.”

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:WeWork Co-Founder Has Cashed Out at Least $700M Via Sales... by jackweirdy on Thursday July 18, 2019 @10:22PM (#20475713)
That movie had some excellent scenes demonstrating systems thinking, particularly the idea of optimising parts a system to improve the productivity of its whole
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:WeWork Co-Founder Has Cashed Out at Least $700M Via Sales... by dmix on Thursday July 18, 2019 @07:04PM (#20474831)
It’s rare to find a founder being the one who is fleecing the investors instead of the other way around.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:WeWork Co-Founder Has Cashed Out at Least $700M Via Sales... by phamilton on Thursday July 18, 2019 @08:20PM (#20475223)
Not that rare. Ignoring cases like fraud (old ones - Enron, WorldCom and new cases like Theranos) there's still plenty of things like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17239361
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:WeWork Co-Founder Has Cashed Out at Least $700M Via Sales... by dmix on Thursday July 18, 2019 @08:36PM (#20475310)
It’s still rare, that’s why Domo and Theranos have so much controversy. ‘Unicorns’ themselves aren’t even that common.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:WeWork Co-Founder Has Cashed Out at Least $700M Via Sales... by Nerada on Thursday July 18, 2019 @06:57PM (#20474767)
Levine does some really great working breaking down a lot of these current events.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:WeWork Co-Founder Has Cashed Out at Least $700M Via Sales... by barce on Thursday July 18, 2019 @06:35PM (#20474604)
I totally respect what they've done to build such a large company. But tbh, they've never built any tech. My guess is they had such a hard time building the systems they needed that they acquired Meetup.com to address those needs. So deep down, tech-wise, it's really just Meetup.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:WeWork Co-Founder Has Cashed Out at Least $700M Via Sales... by toasterlovin on Friday July 19, 2019 @12:00AM (#20476064)
And Meetup is a shit show, technically. Most of their features don’t work or haven’t been updated in years. Their iOS app require a superstitious pigeon dance to make the notification badge on the app icon go away. Etc, etc.
[ Parent | on HN ]