Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by stratelogical 2501 days ago
In an ideal world, we wouldn't care about which company is called a tech company and which isn't. This reminds me of that famous Bezos quote to the question of whether Amazon is an internet company or not.

He said "It doesn't matter whether we are a pure internet play or not. Internet, Schminternet, it doesn't matter. What matters is obsessing over providing customer value."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyrmPMJoG0Q

That said, it is altogether a different question whether WeWork provides value for customers in a fiscally responsible and sustainable manner, and whether Nuemann has the foresight and business acumen of Bezos.

1 comments

It does matter because a company's valuation is driven by EBIDA and multiple, both of which depend on the type of business (e.g. SaaS, Cloud Services, Real Estate etc). In fact, Amazon's valuation jumped significantly starting 2015 primarily because of AWS, which is a pure tech play, not so much by its retail business. (In 2015 Amazon started reporting AWS revenue and margins)
Multiples and the like are more quick rule of thumb estimating techniques and I hope the valuation is driven more by deeper analysis.