Fair, but did they lie to investors, or did they just sell a (really) optimistic story? Particularly that consumer/business preferences would change for tiny crappy loud pay-by-the-month offices?

If folks like Vision can't be considered sophisticated, and capable of making up their own minds about the likelihood of a financial model working, and whether they like a somewhat-self-serving ownership structure, I don't know who can.

I think a lot of scammers don't start out as calculated liars. They're people who are good at talking big and promising the moon, but they get in over their heads. They weren't sure what they were saying is false, but neither did they do the work to be sure what they were saying is true.

Ultimately, I don't think it matters. Whether they meant to or not, they're running a scam.

I think our disagreement is if there is a set of circumstances under which WeWork could have worked as a company. I think there probably is, albeit low probability. See also Blue Apron. Probably a dead company without covid; maybe rescued by our current circumstances.

edit: I also think my attitude is partly influenced by the fact that successful companies are often quite lucky. Why did facebook succeed when a thousand other social platforms died? Why did Youtube beat all the other video startups? Instagram ... etc. Some of those probably looked like scams that, in some path dependent way, happened to work out.

Successful companies are quite lucky, and YouTube is a fine example. But there was never any question that some company would achieve dominance in the market.

In contrast, there is no world in which WeWork would ever work as it was sold, and their failure does not open the way for somebody else to win. In theory, they weren't just going to rent desks to people; they were going to transform the very nature of work through technology and culture. In some hazy way that would allow them to gain the kind of pricing power that lets the FAANGs mint money. That didn't and couldn't happen; there's no natural monopoly to be had in offices, and their technology was nothing more than spray-on glitter.

WeWork was always, in the Frankfurt sense [1], bullshit. I don't know Masa actually fell for it or just spotted something that he could bullshit other people about. But again, I don't think it matters, especially at that scale.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit

I would say the way the founder structured the company and self-delt so highly in his own favor - selling the "We" trademark to the company from himself for several milion dollars, buying buildings himself and then leasing them by the company from himself, etc - was certainly fraudulent.

>did they just sell a (really) optimistic story?

Lies by omission are just as bad as those by commission.