[wwthrowaway]

Converting a capital intensive and inflexible office lease commitment to monthly payments and the ability to scale is very useful to many companies that manage their real estate prudently.

WW could be successful without all the rah-rah about changing the world. Like Uber, I’m sure they could afford to shed a few thousand employees (who were hired for growth) and continue to run a more sustainable business.

[skinnymuch]

Sustainable as in much more low key and not trying to grow a lot? How would that sit with investors? No less Softbank’s $9B investment into it and 30% ownership.

[wwthrowaway]

Sustainable in the sense of better managing the 500+ locations they’ve already got and easing off the ridiculous growth for a while.

I don’t see Softbank have the option to continue feeding capital into the company so they might need to reassess their end-game with this investment. The alternative is possibly a spectacular crash into bankruptcy.