The Spectacular Rise and Fall of WeWork
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- Опубликовано: 6 ноя 2019
- 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.
The Breakdown showcases rise-and-fall stories from the modern business world, told through the lens of Bloomberg reporting. Episodes look at what contributed to not only the success of a business or organization, but also the turning point at which the fall began. Prior stories covered include the NRA, Hertz, WeWork, Boeing, Kodack and many more. See the full series: • The Breakdown
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When a business talks about its special energy and bringing people together, run like hell.
so true! a very ethos argument.
Special energy 🤦
Too much blah, blah, blah is a major red flag.
Make sure they tell you what you WILL make and not what you COULD make.
And somewhere in their marketing line, is the word "Synergy"
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.
See, most of the internet companies make money from advertising. Apple (hardware), Amazon (advertising + shopping + hosting etc...). I think Amazon's business model is superb.
Nova El Amazons business model is dominate, destroy, control, then inflate prices. The diaper stranglehold revealed this business ethic devoid of morals. It'll end up as a company that promised much but delivered little of actual value to its customers. Prime delivery is supported by MarketPlace sellers taking shipping hits. That's unsustainable in the long term as Amazon win but sellers lose. The beauty of Amazon was low prices with the sacrifice of instantaneous gratification bringing efficiency through no store chain costs. It's lost sight of its founding principles. Very soon the gloss will wear off of the disrupters and we'll see nothing but profiteering at the expense of their customer base deluded into thinking these vast companies genuinely cared about and protected their customers. It was a wonderful idea but greed took over. What next?
Brynley Talbot Amazon’s main business model is not amazon online shopping business. It’s AWS. Lmao
Brynley Talbot Amazon makes most of their profit from AWS
Soft Bank will turn things around.
"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.
I dont really get the meaning of the above sentence. Could u plz explain it to me?
@@96hoangkieutrinh84 It means you must have an adult who is willing to say no to your enthusiasm and is not eager to run to quick victories but rather slow and sure winnings.
“On the internet, it is easy to find studies that support both sides of an argument. In general, you should never accept the validity of people’s ideas because they have supplied “evidence.” Instead, examine the evidence yourself in the cold light of day, with as much skepticism as you can muster. Your first impulse should always be to find the evidence that disconfirms your most cherished beliefs and those of others. That is true science.”
― Robert Greene, The Laws of Human Nature
that depends on the adult.... Many adults have brought companies down too....
😂👏👏👏
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
after studying the trajectory of great assets like real estate dividend paying stocks and gold, my conclusion is to buy and invest in what you can afford today! working with a financial advisor can certainly help
Just because there are opportunities in the stock market does not mean you should dive in headfirst, if you're unsure if to remain in the housing market i suggest you consult a professional just like i did before making any move, That's how i've been able to stay afloat for almost 5 years with proper portfolio allocation earning about $1m in investment returns
sounds great! could you please suggest this expert you engaged their service? I have lots of difficulty sorting out the right investments on my portfolio
@@Curbalnk How much is WeWork worth?
In the beginning of 2019 it was valued at $47 billion. Two years later after WeWork SPAC IPO (it was the merger with BowX SPAC) the company was valued at $9 billion. As of November 25, the WeWork market cap is $7.3 billion.
Lol.
She goes by ‘’Heather Ann Christensen’ I suggest you look her up. To be honest, I almost didn't buy the idea of letting someone handle growing my finance, but so glad I did.
when someone describes their company as a "family," that's your cue to leave
Why
My Magnises famly begs to differ.
Michael Scott does not approve...and if he doesn't, then I don't.
"do you offer health benefits?"
"No but we have a therapy dog that comes in for an hour on Thursdays and yoga balls for chairs"
@@Eliketi You have to prove you are a family not just say it, when it's thrown out like that then yes people beware
Is this a "tech company" because people are sitting around using laptops? By that measure, perhaps Starbucks is a tech company....
well wework is just a overgrown coffeeshop soooo
@Rajmund Csombordi lol
🤣🤣👍👍
I think it also provided presentation spaces, conference rooms and other infrastructure that companies generally need. But yea, I think it lost sight of core ambition.
Wait.. you're telling me i'm a tech company??
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.
wow
I got that. Many startups today are about being a middleman with an app, to make life easy for millennials. Find a hotel, find a ride, send news mailers, rent a house, get a date, find a place to work. "We have an app with a catchy name, a charismatic CEO and cult-like culture. It's a revolution!
Dennis: it's even worse. Newman bought a building then leased it to WeWork.
oh, interesting
Ya something like Uber or A B n B , they r called the gig economy .
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.
And then there are some of us who are in the middle. We're optimistic about our expectations but also concerned about what the numbers tell us so that we can be flexible and plan accordingly.
Hahaha. You just described SOCIALISM and why it always fails! Keep in mind that Socialism is not welfare. Socialims-Communism is about government control of the business.
More content like this Bloomberg. Thoroughly enjoyed this style and topic. Kinda like Vox's "explained" but with business.
OMG yes please!
Personally thought it took a long time to not mention pump and dump. I agree its "kinda like vox"
Agreed!
Same thought here
I'm Curious; What's wrong with Vox ???
.
I'm asking this because Jousua Topolsky was the one who started the "The Verge" and eventually "Vox Media"...was the same guy on whom Mr. Bloomberg entrusted with revamping the Company's Digital side and making it even more accessible to the wider spectrum of audience.
Otherwise; 10yrs ago who would have thought that the company like Bloomberg can also mobilise the not so elite-business croud.
P.S. I'm in no way taking the credit of those who are currently at the helm of this division; it's just that the I believe Topolsky was the one who spearheaded the new outlook of the company.
This is what happens when a bunch of rich people have convinced each other they are the smartest people on this planet.
Kevin Schmidt 😂😂😂
Actually it's just the dying old employees at Bloomberg hating on WeWork. WeWork will be just fine
@@musama8771 hahaha you're funny
Getting rich fast is like a drug, a make-believe drug, that the top-dogs know all, and those skeptics know nothing!
Liberals. None of these people voted for trump
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
"Let's make everything happen faster with more money"
Ah... the classic corporate absurdity. If one woman can carry a child in 9 months, lets get 9 women in here and do it in a month!
Exactly what im saying, slow growth is better than a steriod injection from a large bank. If wework would have slowed down and stayed humble, it might have lasted longer or maybe even grown organically into a success
That happened to a company here in LA called Juice Serviced Here... huge early success, followed by lots of capital raised, followed by opening numerous multi-million dollar locations all over that were also cafes, followed by bottling in plastic and trying to sell in grocery stores, followed by bankruptcy. Everyone loved the product. Organic growth would have built a more stable company.
In my experience this is a common Japanese company philosophy.
In the end everything is done sloppily and ineffectivly because the focus is on spending money
martixy lol
I don't That's how the process of pregnancy works!
It was bound to fail. A real estate company being valued as if it was a silicon valley tech start up.
I too saw some youtube videos where this was explained
Didn't fail; Succeeded spectacularly. Neumann's $685 million buyout should be legend among hype-men and hustlers.
The space is overpriced. $600 a month for a work station at a table. You can just go to Starbucks for the price of a latte.
WeFail
@@migkillerphantom links?
Sounds like it is just a office space rental company to me, with lots of bs and exaggeration
Tyson Liu, that is how they dress it... 😅😅😅
@Tyson Liu, that is what it sounds like to me also.
The spectacular rise and fall of WeWork. Anyone could see that when it was starting up it was going to be destroyed by the next recession. It didn't even take that long, such an overvalued startup.
"lots of bs and exaggeration" you mean "genius marketing"?
@@roadtomanitoba9753 not like it takes much to trick boomers into think your idea is new and revolutionary "We have an app" "Oh you mean like that snapchat"
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.
no, they were in the red even up until recently... getting cash doesn't mean you're profitable. it just means your revenue flow is of a large magnitude. you have to consider costs as well. just having large CF may get you new funding but eventually everyone's LF profitability
pretty much and they SPLURGED it founder's fault
The idea is great actually. And it would be no surprise to see other companies doing the same in the future. The problem with WeWork is bad management and bad execution. Being greedy is usually looked down upon in society. “Lack of oversight” should be looked down upon as well.
@@sakshum4455 It is very unstable as a venture.
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.
Can’t think of anything worse than trying to concentrate with 100 strangers surrounding me 😭
Exactly. Could not agree with you more.
My guess was that was a work place? though I think some buildings was "open" to public to sit and work lmao... I could not do that!! Fuck me, sounds aweful you are right lol. Fuck that.
Sounds like college...
Agreed, my current employer is located within a wework and during the week I find ways to avoid people so that I can concentrate on work.
Don't you love these new all-glass buildings? Who needs privacy? Who needs cubicles? So much better to have everybody watching you and you watching them all day.
Running a real estate company like a tech one is stupid. Having an app doesn't make it a tech company.
It's insanity!
I remember someone argued that Uber is a tech company but their service is cars instead of rooms and use an app, therefore WeWork is a tech company. How absurd can people be xD
wework rents desks! with wifi and coffee machines! How tech is that?
🙈🙈🙈
Having an app doesn't make you a new Taxi company
Key lesson: there is a difference between raising money and making money.
so true
yeah people seem to miss that
So... they're charging people money for what they could easily do at any library.
Thanks for explaining,I wasn't getting it
Pretty much hahaha
@@darkale658 Spot on 😂
entrepreneurship isn't for everybody, so its no wonder you don't get it. Name one public library where people are allowed to congregate in large numbers, laugh, talk out loud, drink coffee? Where employees are offered storage space, play area for their kids, gyms, all things that are definitely existing in typical offices today, and out of all these things, We work was catering for all and more. The video clearly says the idea behind WeWork was nothing short of genius and it was actually solving a major problem, the let down was the poor management !!!
Does a library have Starbucks tho? Huh?? Think about THAT!
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.
According to Adam, wework is a Space As A Service (SAAS) Company 😂😂
They didn't own any real estate. All they were was the service, brand and tech
@pcbs5211 that's where I'm confused, I thought they did own real estate and then they would turn that real estate into office spaces and rent those offices out to other people?
Where reality collides with virtualitie , real estate is not a software tech company .
Even in software, it's unreasonable to expect exponential growth without a concrete and realistic plan to profit. Most software companies don't see exponential growth either. Thinking every shiny new thing can do that when only a handful of outliers had achieved it in a different market is exactly what led to the hype and wistful thinking that create things like wework.
I don’t exactly understand why they keep calling it a technology startup? It wasn’t.
EXACTLY!!!! The king had no cloths, I can't imagine how sb can throw 4B at a company that it literally just renting office space. There are hundreds of companies like this. There is no innovation here, except for big talk.
Rightly said,
Because Silicon Valley is a bunch of liberal cultists.
I think in total SB invested $7B USD into it, and just loaned it/ themselves $2-3 billion USD more in October 2019.
In comparison to IWG, the 30 year old mature company they are competing against, We shouldn't be valued at even $1B USD.
In fact, SB could have bought IWG twice over with their investment in We.
That's why you know it was all a scam from the get-go.
If they had really wanted to change the world, they would have just purchased IWG and turned it into this magic vision for half the investment.
Instead, the plan was to inflate a new company's valuation and the pawn it off on the retail investors of the world while we are at the peak of the current economic cycle. It wouldn't have been possible with an existing public company with an established, realistic valuation.
Only companies like deepmind are real tech companies. When Amazon and Facebook started they shouldn't really be called tech companies.
I'm surprised that WeWork didn't just make a bid for IWG with all the cash they were getting at such a lofty valuation. They would have more than doubled their footprint overnight and acquired a profitable business. With so many bankers on the cap table I'm surprised they never thought of it.
Yes, an amazing thought.
This story is very timely especially given the high speculation in many tech industries. Really goes to show how "slow and steady" really does win the race
Adam Neumann talking about working but really never worked in his life should have been a sign
JanitorIsBack 😆
@Cosmonauteable Yeah he's loaded... He trademarked 'We...' and sold it back to the company at $5.9 million. Totally not sketchy or anything /s
@@donny83 "Neumann will walk away with as much as $US1.2 billion as well as a $US500 million credit line from SoftBank, after it pushed him out"
JanitorIsBack Thats a pretty ignorant thing to say.
Sick burn. Too bad that prick is not in prison for fraud.
The real problem was believing an office rental business is some high-flying software tech startup with low overhead and huge growth potential.
True
They probably could have made it work, but they just seemed to take on too many verticals, too early on
@@Funkotronimus How?? Is there really that high a demand for working space that EITHER current landlords/property giants can't meet OR is missing something that WeWork alone had figured out that can also guarantee WeWork not only the money to cover it's 15 year or so leases on its buildings but also profits??
@@crimsonstrykr what I was referring to was how WeWork had dabbling in random areas that had nothing to do with their primary focus of leasing work spaces.
@@Funkotronimus You didn't answer my question. How does the WeWork business model make any sense?
Who's here after We work's bankruptcy..😅
When you CEO has a private 65 million dollar jet, and then Vote himself not to be CEO you know theres a problem
JoeKickass324 Honesty it's a cool level headed trait to vote yourself out. But it's also like calling an Uber from the titanic...
@@RsDefcon What if he wanted to do that so he could cash out early and have less headaches to deal with? If we assume the charlatan route for him, then this makes sense. Avoid any further issues and run off with your gains than waste any more time on it.
CEO wanted out because he got 1.7 billion dollars. Sucker in this plot is Soft Bank and it's share holders. A company like Lockheed Martin, which in place for decades and has made stealth Fighter jets, drone, cyber security, weapons.... With big Governments as its customers is worth 100 billion dollars. how can 'We Work' with few real estate ventures be worth 47 Billion dollars? What was soft bank's CEO smoking?
@Facts Matter - The future for startups and their work spaces. When they start making huge profits (the startups) WeWork will lease out higher priced spaces on properties built to accommodate these companies. And yes it sounds far-fetched but they think they have something that no one has figured out
@@edgecase1047 he thought it was a tech company had he known it was only a real estate company he never would of invested.
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?
Wework board at that time was all of his friends and family lol
This is how our criminal US "leader" works.
@@Lorelcom but Clinton is no more the prez & his crook wife lost.
@@AlphaCentauri24 he was talking about trump of course
They were ALL going to get rich; they willfully hitched their wagon to the tall, dynamic speaking pretty boy’s wagon. Greed corrupts.
How rich does your Dad have to be so that you can move to New York in your twenties and just start 3 companies?
Yeah, this guys family had to be super rich. Did you see those baby knee pads? How else on earth could you startup something for THAT? Lmfao
You need to have exactly $2.53 per second.
I can’t remember if the Hulu documentary mentioned that. He was a tall pretty boy and could have schmoozed people to invest.
VERY
when a company focuses on coffee mug production, it deserves to go under..
I've got one at home to remind me to never be a mug.
Having an app does not make you a tech company. Steak & Shake has an app.
What makes a company a tech company?
Baby Boomers think it does. If you make an app they wonder why you're not making hundreds of thousands of dollars, and don't realize any 12 year old could do it.
@@Wedneswere I'm a software developer by trade. It is completely false to think that any 12 year old can make a functional app for a company. Making an app vs making a fully-featured app with actual functional requirements are two different things. Why do you think we get compensated by LEGIT companies the way we do if "any 12 year old" do it? Meanwhile, the company's that I come across who attempt to hire senior level developer Talent at entry-level rates, are always crappy failing companies. You have no idea what you're talking about.
milenials and x y and z generation belives companies like wework are tech and they will supress classic ones. No plan for tomorrow. Is it what, a typical yung sight or an old man style? sure a kids faery tale. Old people are not that dreamy. And WE dont base our existence on the smartphone, its just a small tool. Kids belive its the new center of galaxy, or the next big bang point of explosion hahahaha
@@demetriusmiddleton1246 Well, it helps if your main product is computer hardware or software. But really, the whole category of "tech company" has become a meaningless buzzword used to attract investors. Since the 90's everyone has been trying to find the next Apple or Microsoft, and startups know this and exploit this.
It's rental space for people that miss their time at university, where you can hang out with people with similar interests.
And it's a great idea honestly except those college kids without clue also tried to run the company and it failed. University is run by hardened management regents that eeked out the living for hundreds of years, connecting government funding to private doners. Wework couldn't hold up a candle to that
At a university, there's always a critical mass of people to hang out with. No matter what your interests are, there's always a whole bunch of other people who share not just one, but many of your interests. Plus they've got all the time in the world to hang out with you.
At a co-working space, you go there and there's like five people there and nobody has anything in common with you. And they're not there to hang out with you anyway, they're there to get work done.
Worse still, if one of them does share your interests and is working on the exact same thing, they're not your friend, they are your competitor. You're eating into their profits and they're eating into yours.
Best case scenario, you and them combine efforts and start a company together. But that's not the best case scenario _for the co-working space._ It's their worst nightmare. You just use them for a couple months until you've found enough like-minded people to start a business with. And then all of you are out of there all at once.
@@alex_evstyugov Wise points
@@dewinmoonl I mean, how does WeWork differ from all other office spaces? Office area can be rented in every possible variety, there are start-up incubators that resemble WeWork's offices in every inch.
The mystery of WeWork is that this isn't a revolutionary idea and that anyone can rearrange their office space to sth similar in a couple of weeks. When you turn down the marketing you'll see that it's just another real estate company, not a multi-billion tech start-up.
@G P yeah cuz their job is to create jobs for the rat race people
This is really great content. I was baffled as and couldn't find a comprehensive explanation about this topic and glad to have stumbled this video. More of this, please!
lol watching this in 2020. COVID was probably the final nail in the coffin for wework
It's actually potentially going to help them... companies want 'flex' office space
You look creepy, especially with your short off bruv
Adam Neumann's WeWork failed long before Covid. Rebekah Neumann was the true downfall. Got a little bit of money to build the company, little bit of hype, and suddenly felt like they were going to take over the whole world and turn it into a new age spiritual utopia. Complete delusions of grandeur. Highly recommend the doc that just came out on Hulu, shows just how batshit they both were.
Adam was the nail in it...
lol.
So, basically they created something that’s been going on at Starbucks for years...
A bunch of people drinking coffee and “ working “ on laptops surrounded by a bunch of strangers🤔
This is unironically the way all new offices are built. No walls, just glass windows everywhere. You're lucky if you have some privacy in the toilet.
It's been proven that people do worse in open floor plans
I don't like working at Starbucks and these kind of places offer more amenities than a Starbucks does. Many of these also offer 24/7 access can't say the same for Starbucks.
@@jessicacole8404 I found myself being productive in an open floor plan I was doing it yesterday at a uni. library and I'm planning to give one of these places a shot, there's more companies out there than just wework.
@@jessicacole8404 Also if you wanted an individual office those plans are offered at some of these places to. It's not like your only option is the open floor plan.
"The first mouse to chase the cheese is the one that gets caught in the trap" This is gold.
Or the one that eats the whole cheese (?)
@@lucasbleme1337 One outcome is true 100% of the times, while the other is only a possibility.
@@SadamYT It seems you don't understand. Let's start with the word "outcome". What are the outcomes here? Either the mouse gets caught in the trap or eats all the cheese. The first outcome is always true. A mouse that gets caught is always caught regardless of whether it ate or not the whole cheese.
However, to have eaten all or just part of the cheese is not dependent on getting caught.
See how your argumentation is just flawed?
SadamYT: You’ve made the assumption that those options are mutually exclusive outcomes...
@@tattabox cut your losses kid
wework: aesthetics before business
I'd love a video where Ellen or someone from Bloomberg explained in-depth the appropriate controls a business should have before an IPO, with more examples.
"when you don't earn your money you don't respect it" is what I hear people say.
ain't that obvious to see from those elites
spending all limitless from money taken off from the people who really worked their ass off of EARN meager amount of money
Yeah I see it all the time when people don't actually earn the money they don't appreciate the value of a dollar from ex wife to children to people who have inherited money they just waste and blow the hard earned money of other people till it's all gone
Fast money goes fast.
Easy come easy go
@@CrydonPT is what it's called.
Charles Ponzi would be proud of these characters.
Charles Ponzi reincarnated
I still can't believe all the 'smart' people who gave their money to a man named "Made Off."
Ponzi?... Amateur!
Not a Ponzi; but, rather a Pyramid. The initial stakeholders will be slightly less screwed when the scheme collapses....
Obama would be proud. None of these people voted for trump. All liberals
Great video, thank you for this Bloomberg. Please keep content like this coming!
In my area , I saw a wework venue open . 3 months later it closed down, now it's open as some sort of charity shop.
I always get the feeling of throwing up,
when I here a company wants to become my family.
*Sunk cost fallacy:* We're done.
*Softbank:* Hold my 9 Billion.
I got to talk with one of the talent team of WeWork in Japan at their office but everything was so off and I couldn’t even get a slight idea of what they are doing, how they are different and what business model they are based on.
I guess WeWork might be appealing for extroverts, but introverts? Hell no
It's always disgusting when a company tries to frame itself as a "family".
Absolutely. What other words are they going to bend the meanings of?
@@bforty79
ALL THE WORDS!!!
Expropriate the expropriators!!!
It's a friendly way of telling employees to work hard for the company while receiving less in return.
exactly! this company tries to sell their gimmick by forming themself as a "family", all it does is making me cringe. When i work i still call my company a corporate, a business, not a family. A family is something that always has a bond with you since you were little, those that actually cares about you, not like company where they tries to backstab you everytime you make a mistake, those two-faced motherfuckers.
Big Bob FB: “friend”
Adam was a very smart hustler, he played with investor money and got millions to exit.
*billions
Adam has a hustler background
1.3billion man ,not millions
Exactly, i think that was his plan all along, he just took vantagr of all the media app, boom
$7 billion
This is a brilliantly made documentary about WeWork’s rise and fall - and what it tells about the tech & startup world.
whenever i hear "The fundamentals" remain strong, you know things are f'd up to the nth degree. remember when they said that in 2008, right before the great recession started.
"As long as the foundations remain strong .... " Korg
*Asgard blows up in the background*
I remember going to their annual 3 day Summer party in the UK back in 2017. It was extravagant as expected. The first WeWork employee I met was a bit tipsy, said hello and then proceeded with "Our CEO smokes weed...how awesome is that." It was at that point I knew...
I saw his face and heard the first three words out of his mouth. It was at that point I knew ....
"Exponential growth" in everything except the one thing that mattered...profit.
Yeah, this pretty much. When building an Internet startup there's a sense that it has to grow to global scale right away or else a bigger competitor will come along and swallow them so they blow billions of dollars growing without finding out if there's an actual market for the thing they're growing. In WeWork's case it should have been obvious to all that there wasn't - it's co-working. There's no special sauce there, no special technology, no patents, no IP, no meaningful network effect, nothing stopping anyone from just setting up shop down the street. Just Neumann blowing neo-new-age smoke up everyone's ass.
I disagree - Neumann profited quite a lot, actually, "and that, kids, is what really matters".
amazon ecommerce has still not made profit. lets get realistic. Profit doesnt matter growth does.
@@ankitdixit6389, you're stupid. It's a matter of public record that from 2016-2018, Amazon MADE net profits of $2.3B, $3.0B, and $10.3B. Amazon may be more than just an eCommerce company with AWS now, but they're profitable.
@Tradin War Stories, Liberal Snowflake. Go invest in another WeWork.
Interesting.. In my relatively short experience with startups I encountered 2 that failed, and both couldn't afford the severance and/or payroll. It seems to be a very common situation, which is both intellectually comprehensible and common in the real world.
I am a digital nomad working in Bangkok and I have not repeatedly sat in the co-working space since 2020, because of COVID-19. Today's workplace is a cafe, hotel, restaurant, or anywhere else that has WiFi. Where am I working today? Mangrove, the riverfront cafe and restaurant in Amphawa, Samutsongkram.
TBH the way wework advertises their space looks more like it’s a university study area not a place of work.
Their target costumers are aspiring entrepreneurs coming out of college/uni so it kinda makes sence..
@depressed cockroach Thats the thing! Their business model is nonsense!
I like how a woman in this video called it a “cult.” No wonder pyramid schemes love these places.
@Darius Kang The Japanese manufacturers I worked for that act EXACTLY like this. Sometimes the branch manager or national officer would drop in (with his yes men), inspect the workforce (beyond lunch breaks), and "encourage" applause and attention to his inspirationals during required briefings. I looked around the room, seeing almost everyone NOT BUYING IT (there's always one stooge clapping like an idiot). It was glorious.
Liberalism is a cult, yes.
The Hulu documentary goes into that in detail. Some amazing stories.
Really interesting content. Thanks for the video. I can say that I've heard of companies not being able to lay off their employees...severance pay would be too high. Happens in my country and then the Government has to step in to help.
This was the video that got me interested in the wework story and is probably the summary of the hulu wework doc.
The video goes over 13 minutes without once saying the word 'fraud'.
Finn Krogstad because it’s not
@@Pongsk128 banksters reporting on banksters yolked by laws written by and passed by/for banksters. Indeed only by the letter of this law is it not.
@@soupforare it's just overvalued the business itself is not fraudulent
Finn Krogstad I agree. There is another example of this which is Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes.
@@mishael7863 "Renting" your logo to the company at 5.9mil is a gray areas especially if the investors didnt sign off - but who knows we had to see what the SPA/SHA looked like. Soft Bank probably didnt even want anymore scandal either at risk of losing even more - just let him walk with that money, move forward.
"Oh man, I lost 3bn... better cash out and vote myself out as CEO so someone else can handle this pile of turds"
This is such a great analogy for our generation
"No adults in the room". Exactly! I'm only 25 but even I can see that just from watching the movie. But investors are partly to blame too. Too often they just throw cash at a startup with a catchy name and takes their chances. That's risky to say the least.
Everyone talks about the ceo but no one talks about SoftBank’s wrong vision of the company.
The bigger picture is even scarier... how soft bank has this huge ammount of money to bet in this bs idea?
All the cocaine changes perspective
SoftBank is run by people with money to burn. Their philosophy is to throw money at anybody who asks. They want to lower the barrier to entry for small companies.
@@lostinthelookingglas central banks trying to estimulate the economy and failing miserably...
@@PedroSilva-re6ck When you have that amount of money, you bet on 9 bs ideas to find one that will give you a 1000% return and keep your shareholders pockets stuffed. You then create a monopoly with that company to keep the cash streaming in while you screw your customers. If you're the Wework guy, you're skimming off enough of that pile in salary to set you up for life before the company goes tits up.
So basically it was a Starbucks that people paid rental space for 🤔
OpenLinz You haven’t worked from a coworking space before have you?
We have unlimited beer on the tap too. At least where I go at least. I would say more of a Starbucks the you need to pay to enter, but you always have a spot to sit at. Coffee is okay. People are generally alright. I work in healthcare, not there to make a start up, but like the atmosphere. and I get my work done, study in peace, don't have deal with homeless people being loud, and it helps me stay on track with what I need to do.
@@michaelambrose No, I'm a grown up and can happily work from a library or starbucks and not pay 1/3rd of what it costs to rent an apartment
MrEeeaddict Grown ups don’t work from “Starbucks and library’s” 😂😂😂
@@michaelambrose
Before WeWorks came along that's exactly what Grown ups were doing; working from Starbucks and libraries.
You might want to look up history and see all the scientists who spent hours upon hours working in libraries for research.
Or we could look at entrepreneurs who spent hours in Starbucks going over their plans for a larger enterprise.
Stop acting like this is some new invention that is beyond understanding.
I've had meetings in coworking spaces before because my agent had one.
It was nothing special
Whatever the clicking is in the soundtrack, when it happens, I can feel it in the back of my head.
Who’s here after watching “wecrashed” series?
Emphasis on the word ,
“Cult like” ;
The kool-Aid wore off,
This company is a sham
take a shower in own office, smoke a joint while walking around the office. dunning kruger his way to the moon.
pavelzaitsev I would work there for sure.
Pyramid scheme
Maybe, but they should have not abused that VC money. When Masayoshi Son was talking about them expanding, they should have thought about making a profit.
That’s not a word, it’s a phrase.
"They felt drained afterwards..." that's what narcissism does once it's done with it's victims then happily moves on with the goods.
.....moves on to the next victim
I don’t think it’s a particularly bad idea. It was just executed by a swindler who made it look more exciting than it was
youre half right, that swindler did make it exciting and it really was exciting but that excitement spent all of that money haha, theyre coming back now bit by bit, suddenly everyone is coming to WeWork when its not smart to take an office lease for 10+ years in fear of another pandemic or war
Watching this as I sit working at a WeWork location lol. Things are starting to pick up around here and fast. I see new people coming in every day. Mental sanity of work/life balance is going to start weighing on people as the walls of their homes start closing in on their mental state.
My startup rented office space at WeWork in the early days and I already wondered how the business model could be profitable. WeWork more than often provided lunches, holiday presents, and not to mention all the free beer from the bars available on every floor. Every Friday a big party was thrown with tons of snacks, all the beer kegs being emptied and a lot of happy tenants as a result. People were even dancing on the tables. The vibe was awesome, I've met amazing people and I have really nice memories to an exciting time. Next to that, my company had really affordable office space.
hahahaha he is a philanthropist it turns out
Yeah i think people focus on the fraud and forget how this could have been a solution to the loneliness epidemic
WeWork should be renamed to WeSpendALot, looks like Neumann thinks about spending rather than earning.
Thanks Bloomberg I learned a lot today.
We Scam?
I remember watching that interview where he says they inspire people to work harder and just have fun doing it I remember thinking that sounds like complete BS. But didn’t think much else of it. No one really wants to be “more connected” or a part of a “community.”
That’s what got my attention too. ‘More connected’...? No Thx! Lol
My husband worked at one of these buildings in London, it was awesome! I was really intrigued by the bottomless beer offering....surely it couldn't be bottomless....???. Eventually WeWork cut it down to 4 beers per person per day...If you are only paying $48 a month for a desk that's an excellent return on investment!! Granted it was probably more than $48, I am pretty sure people filled their boots on the snacks!
The airbnb of offices... when you could just go to your local library to work.
Or Starbucks
José Luis WeWork user here! I work in a 30 person branch of a much larger company and we rent an entire room at the WeWork. It may be pricy for just one person to use a WeWork (Versus working somewhere else like a library or coffee shop as you pointed out) but it’s way cheaper for my company to put our small remote office in a WeWork versus renting an entire office. One of the benefits of WeWork this video didn’t highlight at all.
Marisa Weiner Why not just all work remotely and meet virtually via Skye?
@@JCizzleSoCal Some clients want to meet you in person. If you are a sole proprietor or small company, having something like WeWork makes it possible to meet your clients in larger cities like NYC. You would never be able to rent office space to meet the occasional client where they want to meet otherwise. I had like one meeting per year, in NYC or Philly.
No VPN at the library, who are you allowing access to your clients and confidential information to.
Tip, there's not this huge demand for co-working spaces.
I'm available to consult.
Excellent reporting and production.Kudos all. (Holy crap! What a story).
I interviewed for this company and wanted to work there so badly. They rejected me and now I am happy they did.
Watched the whole thing and still no clue what WeWork is or does.
They lease large commercial real estate then sublet it at various tiers to others on a casual or subscription basis while providing amenities.
People that can't afford to have an office pay a subscription and they get time shared office space.
@@David-sq2en It's not always simply a question of whether they can afford it. Not everyone needs a full-time office.
@@TonyRule If you put it that way then... Nobody needs a full-time office.
@@David-sq2en Thanx for the reply.
Looks to me like Adam Neumann got exactly what he wanted from all this lol.
no, I think he still got out with 1 billion $.
@@mhjunky4278 thats plenty more than he started with mate
@@OfficialYeat How much did he started 5 years-ish ago?
There could a chance that his net worth plummeted slightly cause of WeWork.
That’s what I’ve been saying all along.
He’s still laughing every time he goes to the Bank you fools...That’s American Business for you....fire them all and take them money and run!!
Excellent documentary- thank you Bloomberg
My dad's startup had office space in wework for a while looks like he got out perfectly.
My local WeWork was just filled with very young adults that had recieved money from their parents to try and run a start-up. For most of them it seemed to be about being an entrepreneur, not actually growing all their niche webshops.
They sold it... to investors. The investors just couldn’t hand the hot potato to some other over-enthusiastic investors!
Nice analogy
Best comment.
Pump and Dump. This is the type of thing that you'd see in the OTC stock market.
@@Evocatorum except this is not a publicly traded company, so there are rules limiting who can invest to "sophisticated" investors and funds. To Softbank's credit/insanity, it didn't dump, instead it pumped $9.5 bn *more* into WeWork to keep it afloat only to see the valuation drop to $8 bn within months... ouch!! "We believe in this company... wait where is everyone else?"
I own a co-working space putting all my savings into it and it's one of the worst decisions I've taken. The pandemic hit us badly.
did you open it before the pandemic?
I wish Bloomberg could adopt wsj's style videos and how they transition smoothly with music background keeps viewers locked. I could be wrong.
Been in business since 2010 still call themselves a start up company.
Protip: if you go interview for a job and the company calls itself a startup even though it's 5 years old and has 2000 employees just walk out the door and don't look back
@@GlutesEnjoyercan you explain why?
Technically it is not incorrect, many companies that have been in business for less than 10yrs call themselves startups. There is no definitive definition for it
Yes, like Uber
@@EricZhouWu Startups have low salaries, long work-hours, shitty managers (early in, not promoted due to skills) and can collapse any day due to trying to hit a super-growth phase while begging for lot of investor-money.
Who are those people being interviewed in this feature? There are no captions.
The mother and girlfriend of the producer.
@@Anonimolino lol 😆😆
Gerardo Uribe thanks for making my day!
It says Ellen Huet.
Bloomberg reporters
It is a very nice analysis for the case study of the rise and fall of WeWork .
I find how we work managed to raise so much money given the lack of lack of originality in the concept of the business business centres and incubator units have existed for years
I had a friend who worked for We Work for several years, until this past spring. She hated it and talked about the nonsense that would occur during their company outings and the rampant sexual harrassment that took place. She was so burned out and is so relieved she got out when she did.
SEVERAL years?? "Got out when she did"?? Uhhh.....
This is another reason why toxic companies like this get as far as they do, people not willing to stand up & say something right away...or just simply leave. People that work at some amazing game-changing/disruptor unicorn that put up with this kind of behavior & rampant greed & fraud because they think it's their only option boggle my mind. Apparently Kool-Aid is a helluva perk...
Do u mean worked as they rented an office at one of those Wework buildings or actually worked for the WeWork company itself?
@billblaski9523 the company itself. She was one of their early hires and leveraged it to work for one of the FAANG
We tried 5 x times to open an office with Regus and they had such poor customer to the point that we spent six months waiting for a contract and the keys. In the end we found other offices. So one of the things Mark Dixon could do as CEO is actually try to speak and listen to his potential customers.
13:09 "...the era of EASY MONEY and NO RULES, in startup land"
yikes!
It’s a cheap/hip place to rent an office or work station. For me it worked out pretty well.
So it's like a Starbucks location but bigger.
and they have to pay $45 a month because late stage capitalism
And with more amenities and more convenience than a Starbucks cafe.
@@quintonashley5745 yea but you get coffee and other amenities included as well as 24/7 access at most of the co-working spaces. So yea $45 a month seems like a ripoff for being in an open space, but you'd probably spend just as much heck I'd argue even more than $45 if you were constantly going to an overpriced place like Starbucks.
Actually, it's more like an office-subleasing company. Anyone can come and go into a Starbucks, and you can't safely leave your stuff on the tables while you use the washroom. But WeWork's business model isn't novel, and it's very easily replicated. Another company called Regus has been doing it long before WeWork, and there are many many co-working spaces in cities that provide the same service as WeWork, at a competitive price.
@@jonathantan2469 Jesus just rent a room yourself why don't you, I have no idea how it can be cheaper to pay WeWork who, remember, also have to pay a 15 year lease on that building too cuz it doesn't own it, than to just rent a room for yourself and your co-workers??
A startup I refused the offer from last year, cos they wanted to work in “coworking” space. No. Sorry. I need a desk and preferably a cabin. I need to think. Work isn’t daytime party. Work is a creative process, that which fires the engines of the company. If i needed to socialise, I’d go to a bar.
avoid the agile culture.
puneetarorax I KNOW THATS RIGHT
You said it. I'm the same way.
lol
Then you should sit at home.....and work , probably WFH is a better option for people like you !
They should elaborated more on the 1K or so former employees that were recently outsourced to JLL, a Facility management company.
I love my time there! It’s an amazing space!
Me _thinking one morning for no reason to start a business_
*SoftBank : Hey take our money...*
Now your company is worth $2 billion dolars.
Now the company is worth 8 billion dolars
And now the company is worth 34 billion dollars and is one among the top 5 startups in the world
@@shivramakrishnanv6854 *Plot Twist : I'm Elizabeth Holmes*