[joedevon]

Pretty good summary but I think you were a little off on the Softbank side of things.

SB pioneered the practice, based on the concept of Blitzscaling, of pushing entrepreneurs to take an insane amount of money. WW's CEO likely convinced SB that it was a great idea, and then SB likely just ran it through their playbook of throwing money in. If you read up on SB, you'll hear several examples where they did this.

Their thesis is that if you pick a winner in a huge market and give it an insane amount of money, no one else can compete.

There might even be validity to the concept for some startups. But most definitely NOT in the case of WW.

[Lazare]

I'm aware of blitzscaling, but for it to work, you've got to be looking at a market with strong network effects - that is, a "natural monopoly". Selling office space is (to my eyes) clearly not a natural monopoly.

So my theory is that "we sign long-term leases on office buildings, then rent desks on short-term contracts" didn't sound like "we're fighting to become the single dominant player in our space", and so would not have qualified them for blitzscale funds. But WeWork never played up that aspect; instead they talked a lot about wanting to elevate the world's consciousness, being the world's first physical social network, and having maximum global impact.

Now to me, that sounds even less like "we're going to crush our opponents in a brutal winner-takes-all game to dominate the market for flexible office space, and we just new a few billion dollars to do it", and more like "we're trying to run a hippy commune but accidentally started a real estate company". But apparently to SoftBank it...did? And so they invested hugely, and we got a prospectus that said:

> We are a community company committed to maximum global impact. Our mission is to elevate the world's consciousness.

And everyone who was not SoftBank laughed very hard, and refused to invest. And I have to point the blame at SoftBank here. The logic if blitzscaling is that you pick a firm that, with enough resources, can dominate their market, and then you give them the resources. I don't think WeWork was even in that sort of market. This is like trying to blitzscale the market for dog walking or something.

Oh....right. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/10/business/softbank-wag.htm... :)

[joedevon]

Agreed. I'm just saying that SB pulled the wool over their own eyes rather than being victimized by these "visionary" CEOs.

Once you read this story, you'll see what I mean: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-12-18/softbank-...

[daemin]

So in that case Neumann was a damn smart individual, he saw the money flood coming and tried to siphon off as much as he could in creative ways.

On one point, well done getting as much of the flood as he could, even though a lot of it was done in incredibly dodgy ways. Though these ways don't actually sound at all that ridiculous given some other accounting and financial practices that exist. He just got caught.

On another point, this shows how much of a divide there is between normal or even high earning people and the ultra wealthy. Even if you make six or seven figures working at a big company, you're not part of that ultra wealthy crowd, not even close. There is all this money and opportunity if you are already rich that doesn't seem to exist for working class people in general.

On my last point, it just goes to show how much of a divide there is between capital and society. Yes new taxes could be introduced but it will most likely hit those people earning six figures (and lower) than the ultra wealthy that got almost a billion dollar payout for failing. There are a lot things that society needs to reflect upon and consider, perhaps now is a good time because of the isolation.

[joedevon]

Pretty much. I like to say there is a thin line between Steve Jobs and Elizabeth Holmes