WeWork Goes Bankrupt, Capping Co-Working Company's Downfall

Re:WeWork Goes Bankrupt, Capping Co-Working Company's Downfall by libraryatnight on Monday November 06, 2023 @11:09PM (#38173147)

I had to look myself, from wikipedia: "As CEO, Neumann, on multiple occasions purchased buildings and then leased the space back to WeWork.[60] Observers noted this as a potential conflict of interest and one that would not be allowed if WeWork were a public company.[61] During his tenure as CEO of WeWork, Neumann also purchased US$90 million worth of residences, including a 60-acre (24 ha) estate in Westchester County, New York, a 6,000-square-foot (560 m2) condominium near Gramercy Park, two homes in The Hamptons, and a US$21 million mansion in Corte Madera, California.[16]

Neumann launched Flow, a residential real estate startup funded by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, in August 2022." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Neumann)"

This guy is just a greed engine at full steam!

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Re:WeWork Goes Bankrupt, Capping Co-Working Company's Downfall by Vipsy on Monday November 06, 2023 @11:20PM (#38173218)

Its astonishing that Adam Newumann was able to raise hundreds of millions for Flow after all he did at WeWork. At this point you wonder, if VCs are also complacent in these scams. Are they together in scamming the LPs?

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Re:WeWork Goes Bankrupt, Capping Co-Working Company's Downfall by EdwardDiego on Monday November 06, 2023 @11:26PM (#38173253)

Given a16z's presence in crypto, I reckon so.

Although to be fair, they seemed to be interested in scamming true crypto believers in that space, more than their partners, they'd get a bunch of shitcoins in the ICO and then offload them asap.

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Re:WeWork Goes Bankrupt, Capping Co-Working Company's Downfall by vernon99 on Monday November 06, 2023 @11:29PM (#38173264)

Not LPs, but later stage VCs and private equity. It’s a game of musical chairs, you just need to be early in. And A16Z are experts in this, with all their investments in crypto. Def not great for their rep and I’d never raise from them because of this btw.

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Re:WeWork Goes Bankrupt, Capping Co-Working Company's Downfall by lolbase on Monday November 06, 2023 @11:54PM (#38173394)

a16z viewed Neumann very positively, to the point that they asked potential CEOs what they thought of Neumann, and the "correct" answer was to be empathetic that he took a huge swing of the bat.

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Re:WeWork Goes Bankrupt, Capping Co-Working Company's Downfall by Cookingboy on Tuesday November 07, 2023 @12:23AM (#38173583)

If that's true, then it's kinda gross tbh.

What's their advice to Neumann this time?

"I hope you are more discreet this time so your scam lasts long enough for us to exit"???

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Re:WeWork Goes Bankrupt, Capping Co-Working Company's Downfall by lolbase on Tuesday November 07, 2023 @12:33AM (#38173633)

This article elaborates on it: https://www.businessinsider.com/interview-venture-capital-jo...

> A candidate who displayed empathy for the entrepreneur would answer the question about Neumann with something like the following, Horowitz said: "He did an unbelievable thing in that he built something that almost nobody has done, which is he built a consumer brand in commercial real estate." The person might add, "He told that story so beautifully that he was able to raise a gigantic amount of money and fund this incredible growing operation."

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Re:WeWork Goes Bankrupt, Capping Co-Working Company's Downfall by shalmanese on Tuesday November 07, 2023 @01:18AM (#38173804)

I mean, Ben Horowitz is correct here. In a VC interview context, crapping on Adam Neumann is boring and zero information value which is a negative signal. Being able to fairly evaluate people you have strong emotions for, positive or negative is a key VC trait.

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Re:WeWork Goes Bankrupt, Capping Co-Working Company's Downfall by pclmulqdq on Tuesday November 07, 2023 @02:11AM (#38174048)

I somehow think that Horowitz wouldn't want to hear my honest evaluation of Adam Neumann: He found a set of idiots with money (chiefly Andreesen Horowitz and Softbank) and saw them making dumb trades, so he found a way to put himself on the other side of those trades. To do this, he constructed an "audacious" but ultimately fundamentally dumb business that he could wrap in VC shibboleths, whose principal goal was to collect VC money and funnel it into his pocket. In a way, he is a brilliant exploiter of people like Horowitz.

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Re:WeWork Goes Bankrupt, Capping Co-Working Company's Downfall by shalmanese on Tuesday November 07, 2023 @03:03AM (#38174331)

I mean, if he fails his own test, that’s his problem but the test is the correct one.

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Re:WeWork Goes Bankrupt, Capping Co-Working Company's Downfall by socketcluster on Tuesday November 07, 2023 @07:57AM (#38176221)

Agreed. Anyone can create a company which raises a ton of money and feeds 90% of it back to itself as revenue.

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Re:WeWork Goes Bankrupt, Capping Co-Working Company's Downfall by pclmulqdq on Tuesday November 07, 2023 @11:03AM (#38178440)

I don't think that anyone can do this, at all. I think there's a totally different skillset than it takes to actually run a business than to get money from VCs, and by stripping away the need for that skillset, Adam Neumann really perfected his VC grift game. That doesn't mean that he wasn't exceptionally skilled at it.

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Re:WeWork Goes Bankrupt, Capping Co-Working Company's Downfall by namdnay on Tuesday November 07, 2023 @02:19AM (#38174095)

I’m not sure the evaluation above is “fair”. “Positive” would be a better term

People never like to be told they’re mugs

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Re:WeWork Goes Bankrupt, Capping Co-Working Company's Downfall by meheleventyone on Tuesday November 07, 2023 @02:55AM (#38174283)

I suspect it’s more self-serving and they just want to weed out people that would have moral qualms about making gobs of money with a white elephant.

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Re:WeWork Goes Bankrupt, Capping Co-Working Company's Downfall by vintermann on Tuesday November 07, 2023 @03:53AM (#38174653)

But IS this a fair valuation? Was his glamour and charisma really all there was to it?

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Re:WeWork Goes Bankrupt, Capping Co-Working Company's Downfall by sangnoir on Tuesday November 07, 2023 @12:27AM (#38173607)

> Its astonishing that Adam Newumann was able to raise hundreds of millions for Flow after all he did at WeWork

I'm not astonished: WeWork made VCs lots of money - not counting SoftBank as they were the unsophisticated marks/bag holders.

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Re:WeWork Goes Bankrupt, Capping Co-Working Company's Downfall by TheOtherHobbes on Tuesday November 07, 2023 @06:33AM (#38175636)

I'm fairly sure Vision Fund is just a money laundering operation. It takes talent to have such an unbroken record of investment failure.

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Re:WeWork Goes Bankrupt, Capping Co-Working Company's Downfall by brohee on Tuesday November 07, 2023 @04:58AM (#38175071)

More than complacent, complicit.

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