The Inevitable Decline of WeWork
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- čas přidán 27. 08. 2024
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WeWork announced this week that it would not make two sets of interest payments totaling about $95 million, a move meant to jump-start negotiations with its lenders at the same time it tries to cut costs with its landlords.
The missed interest payments will spur speculation of a bankruptcy filing. But WeWork says it has the cash on hand, and the company has a 30-day grace period to make the payments, which were due Monday. At the end of June, it had $205 million in cash and access to a credit line worth $475 million.
Skipping an interest payment is not necessary to negotiate with lenders. But indebted companies sometimes use the move to put pressure on lenders to restrike deals under more favorable terms.
From its inception in 2010 to its collapse in 2023, WeWork's journey has been a roller-coaster. Once valued at $47 billion dollars, the company today, is on the verge of bankruptcy. How did the Venture Capital backed co-working company, end up as the biggest financial bonfire in Venture Capital history?
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Masayoshi Son is absolutely fuuuurked losing a huge chunk of his investments in poleaxed We Work led by that crooked plonker ex CEO Adam Neumann. We Work Inc is now gasping for breath on life support machine.
You know how I can tell you it's a scam.. Normal idiots like me have never heard of it.. But they advertise its towards idiots like me 😂❤
You advertise digital books.. Not good 😐 think about it ❤
I am glad I got to hear about Blinkist today.
Can you talk about the fraud in Singapore
Adam Neumann is honestly one of my favorite CEOs of all time. Just a golden example of someone who has absolutely no place running a business continuously failing upwards. It’s inspiring in all of the wrong ways.
I got depressed when I saw his net worth ...
The wages of sin is death and the wages of zero interest rates is the capitalization of absolutely moronic startups.
Agree, this is a product of cheap money. Start up, sell out, and dump on the idiots. Standard practice. Look at all the idiots still investing in SPACs.
Agreed
These people usually have something in common. They wear the same hat
To put this in perspective, there have been NFTs that have kept their value better than WeWork stock.
All my homies hate offices.. homeoffice 4 life
I'm on the toilet and just laughed so hard at your comment that my girlfriend banged on the toilet door asking if I was ok. It.took a moment to compose myself and she thought I was either having a heart attack or a huge wank. LoL. Might have a wank now that she's put it in my mind
Yet, wework and nfts are still here, I hate both but they're still in existence
I'd still rather have stock in WeWork than own an NFT.
@@bipolarminddroppings isn't it better to buy a bit of both?
"The clothes were hard to sell, because they were horrible."
I love finance stand up comedy.
his sarcastic asides are great throughout this whole video!
Given what I saw, I am amazed that the clothes existed at all. I was half expecting them to be made of "single layer graphene".
Joey cables lol
Ahahahaha!!!!
I also like fashion stand up comedy.
"Coffee lines get long in the morning. People like desks near windows."
That deadpan delivery just got you a sub. Well researched, well presented.
There's probably a nice little office ergonomics and health app business in there. It's probably worth a few million dollars, too.
The actual "tech" part of WeWork - if ever implemented correctly - was worth maybe 1/1000th of their peak market value.
Insane.
@@mrkeogh I recently watched "The rise and fall of Under Armour" on youtube and it sounds like their tech play didn't go well, but boy, it sure seems like there was some way they could have monetized all that data... I'm not a big data guy but I feel like I could think of some way, given a few weeks to think about it. Not to recoup all the money they spent but as you said, maybe on the order of several million.
Microphones record every word and analyse your tone. Cameras and facial recognition record every move, every person and their mood. And this manages to work out...people like coffee in the morning and natural light. Incredible.
For some reason when I first read "coffee lines get long in the morning," I pictured a bunch of yuppies at their desks with ground up coffee spread out like lines of coke and on Mondays before they start their work week the lines are extra long.
@@zombietrash416i did too lol
The moral of the story. Today's society isn't based on education, plans or hard work. It's about knowing the right people people with too much money.
sadly yes. also people making emotional decisions and hiring people they like not people they need
@@roc7880 And people they know who will do the same for them ! Over the years I noticed how ' higher management ' always gets hired from outside instead of promoting someone from the existing middle management .
They come into a business they know nothing about and receive huge salaries. When the company goes bankrupt, they already have another job waiting for them. It's a group of people with mediocre skills that went to the same schools, married eachother,, etc , etc . They keep giving eachother , their friends , their friends kids, jobs as a 'favor '
This implies that the problem is a novel moral issue.
Knowing the right people with money has been part of the problem for ages.
What you are describing is capitalism, nothing more or less.
And flashiness. Lots of it.
@callusklaus2413 I'm pretty sure that's all of human history not just capitalism, most old empires was in charge by those who had wealth, land and military power
"And his head of IT of his $100 million startup was a 16 year old high school kid nicknamed Joey Cables - who installed routers in the buildings for minimum wage."
"Couldnt be contacted .. during school hours."
Holy shit what????
No way his real name is Joey Cables 😂😂
@@Chadnerhis *Nickname*, as in Moniker. Probably cooked up by the "Jenius" Neumann.
He's the Peter Parker of IT.
😂😂😂
Adam Neumann is the kind of impossibly charismatic entrepreneur that every first year business student high on cocaine thinks they are
Talmudic charisma.
@@Willy_Tepesalmost choked on my vape😂😂😂
Wish he were an entrepreneur....but the truth is he is just one of those criminal genius scam artists like Ponzi.
Admittedly, that was likely because Neumann was that business student high on cocaine.
He's super creepy, which is the dark side of "charisma"
"They suited New Yorkers who were concerned their apartments were already too spacious" 😂There are so many gems in this
I’ve yucked my way through a few compilations of the WeWork collapse but the fact that well over 90% of the decision makers here continue to enjoy a life far more leisurely and luxurious than anything I can imagine…it stings a bit. Definitely stings. Accountability is just not a thing for the ruling class.
If you are rich enough you live consequence free. Other people have to bear your consequences instead.
@@michimatsch5862 find me a rich person that complains and I will show you a liar. They don’t work, they just waste other people’s time.
@@michimatsch5862 but the other people bearing the consequences for this are venture capitalist who dont care because they investing knowing this had a 1% chance of succeeding they invest in a hundredth company and if the hope that one will make more than 100X their investment so when it fails they dont care that much. the other people affected are the rich land owners that got not paid rent.
Externalising one's costs definitely seems to be the highway to wealth, for a business OR an individual! (Or a whole high-tech consumerist society.) Whether it's ethical or constructive, on the other hand...?🤦🏻♀️
Rug Pulls R US
Whenever you doubt yourself just remember Adam & Rebecca Neumann were able to convince a lot of supposedly intelligent people to allow them to run this company and give them hundreds of millions of dollars. If they can do that, you can do whatever challenge is in front of you.
Reckon his investors will fund the early days of my international infrastructure brokerage? We're happy to offer investors special prices on bridges.
All you need to meet any challenge is a complete lack of ethics and the ability to lie shamelessly!
More like get depressed that competence is this undervalued, and that you're always going to be screwed over by someone who can BS better.
@@lindaholtzman5374 Is it "lying" when it's done to gullible venture capitalists? 🤣
@@233kosta I know this is going to be a much too nuanced answer, but: Yes.
WeWork is a classic example of a company that thrives in late-stage booms: when there's frenzied speculation and people throwing money at anyone who can tell a good tale.
@@zogwort1522 And the founder had long hair, an exotic accent and didn't wear a suit - he *must* have been a genius!
@@zogwort1522 Trailblazer my a**. Dirty little hippiesque fraudster.
bro said late-stage
@@incurableromantic4006 And don't underestimate the power of that CEO having a wife that is related to a celebrity as well. A celebrity that just so happens to be so cool that she sells a candle that smells like her vagina. These are big brain people we are talking about here.
While people who does actual work (manufacturing, agriculture, etc.) are being further wage depressed, coupled with the fact that these days a lot of people and their mother wants to be Uber famous on the internet. This civilization has become a sick joke.
At one of my previous employers, I had the "privilege" of working in a Wework office. The really astonishing thing is how extremely overpriced the rent was (50x the rent per square foot of our most central business areas). It blows my mind thinking people still pay to work in what's essentially an overpriced nice-looking office.
Having also worked in a WeWork office, I also realized they were overpriced by the square foot, but the advantage was that you could rent far fewer square feet and save money overall. I also referred to them as the Apple of the office market. Where I worked, they were about 90% occupancy. The two downsides: 1: The toilets almost always had a lineup. 2: The free beer was a bad idea from some people. I had a co worker actually fill up a water bottle with beer and manage to be mildly drunk all morning.
The trouble was always that the company was designed to bleed it's income and was structured to fail. If WeWork had not rented through intermediaries, held off their Charitable activities, and waited to be profitable before wasting money on perks like corporate jets, the whole thing could have been very profitable.
@GerhardMack would you mind to say what you paid and what Sq footage you had? This is really interesting. I never looked into a WeWork place specifically, but I did need office space when they were in their prime. I looked into a traditional office in a financial district that was $1100 a month. It had a coffee area but definitely no alcohol and no attempt at creating a happy hour culture. Then I looked at a coworking hipster place that wanted $1700 for less space. I also got the sense that few space renters there were bringing clients to the office, although there were meeting spaces. I sensed that the meeting spaces were meant for the workers and not so targeted toward client meetings. Is that right? I am sure most of these places followed a blueprint.
Well where I am, you could get WeWork spaces for a few hundred if you only needed 2 or 3 desks. This seems to be the sweet spot since no one will rent out an office that small here. Certainly if you have enough people to fit the smallest rental spaces something like WeWork isn't competitive.
The meeting rooms had to be reserved so they could be for either meetings or clients.
“There’s a sucker born every minute.”
-PT Barnum.
Dude
It couldnt be profitable. Have you not watched the video?
Its not innovative. Its high risk, Very low margin. You lose big the moment someone cancels with you
Theres no If they made mess extravaganza they could exist.
It was a matter of when the vc funds would dry. Sooner than later
Still blows my mind how people actually believed We Work was a "tech" company.
technically, buildings and offices are technologies, so ofc they were a tech company.
@@kris1123259Nooooo...buildings are art, as any architect will remind you. Physics and mathematics of the building's construction are usually an afterthought. I hang out in an architecture Discord and some of the things the pros say scare me.
I think it worked because tech people don't have any idea outside of tech and of course Joey Cables.
People still insist Tesla isn't a car company.
@@dvoiceotruth Tech has a stupid amount of money sloshing around, from people who were with MS in the 90s and became millionaires from selling their stock. Or otherwise invested during the Dotcom and later tech bubbles. These might be software development geniuses, but business novices, and believe what everyone tells them. And when they get ripped off most are too embarrassed and disappear.
".. as a worst case scenario, it can only fall an additional 100%." I simply couldn't stop laughing. I love his dry humor.
I have made this "fill in the missing word" task for my math class: ""WeWork went public just under two years ago through a SPAC merger and since then the stock has fallen by 99 percent, which means that at this point (as a worst-case scenario) it can only fall an additional one percent.""
@@mysteryman480haha.... good one!
that was gold and let's you know you listening to a shrewd documentary.
@@mysteryman480some parameters not defined.
If I "can still lose 100%" then we must be talking about "relative to today's value"
.....
If I "lost 99% of my investment" and "can still lose 1%" ... then we must be talking about its value relative to some unspecified moment before the present.
The sarcasm was so dry on "for NYers who worried their apt was too roomy" I had to drink some water 😆
Masayoshi Son is my favorite example of how people with money often don't get it through hard work or talent.
You just need dumb luck once and you can be rich as hell.
aka: being born to rich &/or influential family
That's not his money. Vision fund is apple, Saudi money
Well the richest man in the world is Elon Musk. If you need proof we don't live in a meritocracy there it is.
Preparation makes taking advantage of “ good luck” or an opportunity ,easier for hard workers , than s9me body who waits for it to be handed on a plate ,
well said, my old man invested about 20,000 into apple stock in 97, and another 10k in 99. Made tens of millions off a lucky gamble.
I was looking for office space in Hong Kong and was being shown around wework building by the wework team. I said to the sales professional “how are you a tech company when it’s office space?” She replied “we have an app where you can book meeting rooms” 😂😂😂
That's hilarious but surprisingly honest haha
Regus has it too.
😂priceless
_"His wife Rebekah Paltrow insisted on choosing the paper for the IPO filing."_
I can't help but reminded of the business card scene in American Psycho. 🤣
But did she get a table in Dorsia?
@@oz_jonesno, she was returning video tapes.
"Pat neuman" tasteful eggshell with Romalian type.
Very nice
Very nice. Let's see Paul Allen's IPO filing
The first "Physical Social Network" was/is gossiping grandmothers.
Or a bar
Pub vs Knitting Circle - which came first?
Pretty sure it's my grandma's weekly game of mahjong
The entire arc of human history, the whole thing, had been a "physical social network" right up until the Internet came out. The absolute hubris of this statement is astounding, in a bad way. That not a single person with a gazillion dollars had this thought before tossing all that money in the trash is also astounding in the most HORRIFIC way.
@@ChristopherSadlowski Easy Karen... don't get your panties in a wad
I interned at a startup that worked out of a WeWork in NYC on Wall Street from 2015 to 2016. I always thought something was pretty fishy because that whole time the offices were basically empty. If at 21 I saw how sus this was, then investors have 0 excuse beyond pure stupidity.
They weren't looking.
same thing happened with the wework building in seattle!! wework never finished it and another company ended up buying it. most of it is STILL unfinished. it was just way too big and the location is awful
Disgusting that a CEO that appeared to be defrauding the company by leasing from his own properties still got a layoff package...
i believe Neumann should be hit with both fraud and insider trading investigations
and no court
the biggest con is rich people convincing everyone (including themselves) that they're smarter than everyone else
You only notice the rich people that think that. Statistically, two thirds of people think they are smarter than average.
Gov needs to change it's laws to stop abuse people need to pay taxes
Tons of research shows that IQ predicts income and job performance.
@@BUSeixas11 bullshit. The researchers think they're smarter and have brighter futures than they really do
@@ClxTablet-pv5hi namely you
"Adam smoked so much weed on a private flight to Israel the crew had to wear oxygen masks and refused to fly him back" I died.
@@JamesDeWalt909 That's all it takes? Wow, takes more to hotbox a small car. Is this because the cabin air system recirculates the terpene-enhanced air?
@@JamesDeWalt909gotta roll the windows up.
Rastafari mon.
@@JamesDeWalt909 You're going to tell me that a car is hotboxed after just 1? You'd still be able to walk...
Capt: how high do you want to fly?
Adam: yes!
@@StephenGillie Higher altitude and maybe decreased cabin pressure compared to sea level would allow gases, vapors, and smoke to expand rapidly.
"The clothes were difficult to sell because they were horrible," had me burst out laughing.
1. Neumann is very talented at coming up with businesses that are obviously ridiculous and idiotic to 99/100 people but appear absolutely brilliant to one fool who happens to have lots of money to burn.
2. This video could have been titled, "idiots with too much money and all the ways in which they wasted it on terrible ideas."
3. You have the driest humor I've ever come across and it works so well here. You don't even skip a beat and I love it so.
The bit about New Yorkers complaining that their apartments were too spacious was pure comedic gold and financial satire -> Thank you Patrick!
How the VCs and portfolio managers who invested in wework still have their jobs and self respect is astounding.
I am guessing that an inflated ego and losing other people's money helps one rest easier at night.
Um, it's their money.
@@alexanderSydneyOz Um, most of them it wasn't. VCs and asset managers typically are investing other people's money with just a little skin in the game.
Otherwise JPMorgan wouldn't exist at all
Perhaps the other companies they invested in were so successful that it more than compensated for their WeWork losses.
This concept has been around for decades, going by the name of "executive suites." Numerous office buildings around the country rented out large blocks of office space in the traditional way, but then they would also have a few thousand SF carved up into numerous offices to rent to small companies who needed just one or two rooms. The executive suite tenants would typically share a bathroom, break room, conference room, copy machine, and sometimes a receptionist. So this genius decides to call this WeWork space, and he makes billions. Wish I had thought of that!
It is classic Silicon Valley reinventing the broom. The irony is that they could have made it Uber/AirBnB For Offices centralising all those existing small suite offerings on one platform, taking a commission from that. If done properly could have been a nice little income for fairly low investment.
I was using Regus “pay by the hour” offices and conference rooms in the 2000s. And they were just the best known; there were local one-offs and other national chains. I cannot fathom the sheer stupidity of people who believe WeWork “fundamentally changed how people use commercial real estate.”
@@gravityissues5210 but WeWork is a community that raises the global conscience! I bet Regus can't do that! 😄
@@duncanhamilton5841 If done properly, yes. This is a line of business that could organically grow into something.
To achieve the desired level of hype, WeWork spent big to achieve rapid growth. So they locked in a lot of long term leases when office space prices were at their highs. Now there is empty office space everywhere. A very small company with cash flow issues might be willing to pay a premium for office space with WeWork, to be able to not lock in more than they need. But real businesses can now get a long term lease at an attractive price.
@@joostdriesens3984 Yeah, true, and Regus didn't have free beer either, so, I guess they have a point, lol.
Seems like the crazy runs wild in the whole Paltrow family.
"According to Vanity Fair at WeWork "[Rebekah Neumann] has been known to have people fired, such as a mechanic for WeWork’s Gulfstream jet, within minutes of meeting them because she didn’t like their energy.""
Does she also sell jade eggs?
One could be forgiven for watching this video and coming to the conclusion that working for a living and trying to do something useful and valuable with one's efforts is for suckers.
You gotta work honestly, focusing on hard work and dedication, and lie, cheat, and steal on the side to rise to the top. Heh
it is
Absolutely..
@@MikeRyzhikovyes Mr Newman worked very hard to sell the idea that his idea was so bullet proof he could be a complete the worst vision of a California frat boy without fear of consequences.
And it was a sound idea. For himself.
Just throwing it out there: if working 9-5 would make you rich, the ruling class would all be working.
Adam Neumann is likely one of the great heroes of capitalism and modern society. He is possibility the greatest salesmen to have ever lived. He sold rubbish using a known bad business model for tens of billions to people who could easily have known better. He demonstrates why many modern companies lavish wealth on the sales department and have bare bones for the technical department. You can sell a bad product with a good sales team but you can't sell a good product with a bad sales team.
Bill Hicks said it better: "people working in marketing are satan's little helpers" 😂 and you are right, no matter the quality of a product, if you have bad sales people you will be toasted
Apple's probably the best example of this. Mostly just marketing fluff and branding.
And the best part is that he did it while being basically a hippie selling spirit charged shungite.
@@kicapanmanis1060You saying that shows how little you know, buying into brand hatred. You’re the perfect consumer Lmao.
Apple has some strengths (their supply chain, chipset, and software-as well as their diversification and ecosystem) but also have plenty of limitations. I’m in a computational science field, and most people actually prefer development on macs for a lot of the mentioned reasons. These aren’t stupid people-most of us are either doing our PhD at a “top tier” (HYPSM) school, or have one. Of course we have to do high performance jobs on the school or US government’s HPC clusters - but your shitty $3,000 razer gaming laptop or my custom setup isn’t doing that anyways.
Of course, there are plenty of restrictions too-that’s why I have my own PC that I built.
However, “apple is only marketing” is a braindead take. That’s as idiotic as saying “Elon musk is a great engineer and not at all a salesperson.”
@@kicapanmanis1060yes Apple have made zero innovations in their history 😂😂😂
19:00 I absolutely love the whole "I trust my feelings", "The spakle on his eyes" and so on... is like these people never bothered to watch a documentary of a serial killer!
I'm just a guy who works in healthcare and knows nothing about finance. But I subscribe to this channel because Patrick is so damn good at making finance both interesting and entertaining. Thank you Mr. Boyle!
Losing millions means that you're an incompetent buffoon; losing billions means that you're a visionary!
The collapse of 1 is a tragedy-
The collapse of billions is a statistic.
Sir Bankman Stalin.
When you owe the bank million you're in trouble. When you owe the bank 1billion theyre in trouble.
Love the above two comments.
So long as you yourself lose nothing and walk away with over a billion like Adam Neumann did.
The worst thing about this is that all this money could have been used to fund business that actually produced value not another ponzi scheme which seems to be the core of our economy and our version of capitalism.
Neumann learned the art of miliking VCs for their money. You have to somehow respect that.
It's a legal con
I do to be honest. I have ideas better than Wework and why not pitch them to a VC?
Yeah but in the other hand it's Softbank
You just need to be charismatic, wear a Turtleneck and say you want to be the next Steve Jobs and they will give you one Billion dollars
@@roc7880 one has to have money first and good looking, also helps if one comes from a well known family
@@roc7880you need to come from extreme wealth in the first place for them to listen to you
I seriously love seeing captions that aren't auto-generated and I can actually understand what's going on.❤
Maybe one thing to remember when (rightfully so) being perplexed about Adam's behaviour and success: that entire system of VC funding that created him (and SBF, Elizabeth, etc). That system encourages exactly this kind of behaviour and punishes founders who care. Your investors will tell you to fake it for your customers and they will try to teach you how to fool the follow up investors into putting in even more. No one seems to care what really you build and whether it can work.
It never fails to make me laugh to see how effective: "This time, it will be different!" works as a marketing slogan. From bad real estate leases to totalitarian governments, people are always willing to believe that it really will work out that way.
Counterpoint: all of human progress.
@@JulietSierraUK People still make the same mistakes over and over - they think they've got the world figured, they've got the problems solved, and this time it will be different, because we've got this new technology, or now we've got the right people in charge, or we're going to eliminate the right people this time...
Reminds me a lot of Democrats in the US
Yeah, but this time it will be different.
One more lane will fix it.
Once Cramer backed it, that should have been the red flag against investing.
😂
Inverse cramer to the moon
My question, why does he have an investor club for $400 a year?
@@tfive24so that people can inverse cramer
I saw a video once where a guy invested exactly as Cramer said and lost most of the capital he set aside.
Cramer's endorsement should have been enough to send any sensible investor running. The Inverse Cramer strategy reigns supreme!
‘The clothes didn’t sell because they were horrible’
Pmsl 🙌🤣🤣🤣
Go Patrick! 🤣🤣🤣
I’m so Fecken glad that I’ve found this informative and hilarious channel!!
BRILLIANT 😂
As a person who has worked in Tech for well over a decade plus, permit me to state a rather obvious fact: the mere existence of computers on your premises or adjacency to tech companies doesn't make you a tech company and shouldn't be valued as such.
Thanks, I was in a high school recently and was wondering if it should promote itself as a tech company to venture capital firms.
I would argue that even tech companies shouldn't be valued as such. The kind of valuations they get for essentially more of the same is crazy.
@@SupramanRambled Bro those valuations are insane even for a "Bean Counter" finance professional like myself 🤣.
Tech stands for technology. Why do anyone think its specifically about computers? Anyway.... no matter the discourse, "Tech" as a business concept is so broad as to be basically meaningless.
Managed a modest cloud environment for a company, as they moved off of their mainframe and into a data lake, then built out a web store front end with credit card processing. Even a package tracking feature. They're not a tech company at all, but one of the country's largest chemical sales and logistics companies. They make money selling hundreds of tons of caustic soda (lye, sodium hydroxide) to makeup and soap companies.
I cannot express how great it is to find a CZcamsr who doesn’t shout at the audience, the fact that the content is actually fresh and informative is just gravy. I hope your channel grows from strength to strength!
Yeah, a youtuber that is actually dignified and doesn't whore himself out to any rumored algorithm clickbait trick of the day
@@KunjaBihariKrishna...No? Maybe our definitions of "clickbait trick" differ? I consider any provocative vague titles clickbait, not just the ones that are full of caps and emojis, and every large channel does it, afaik, without exception.
I mean I enjoy his content and think he does a good job, but he's made videos with titles like "Is The Luxury Goods Bubble About to Burst?" and "Turkey In 2023 - An Economy on The Brink?". What is that if not clickbait?
There are actually many of these on CZcams.
Whenever I read a comment like this I have to wonder what are you doing?
Why is CZcams mostly recommending you those horrible channels? Most channels CZcams recommends to me aren't screaming channels. Most are educational and toned down.
So I have to assume that it is your fault. Are you mainly subscribed to screaming channels? Are you watching a lot of bad videos? Do you click on every clickbait video title?
@@Jehty_ fascinating how even the most innocuous comments breed insults on this platform. Glad I partook.
I'm honestly amazed they've lasted this long. A shared office space that hit big just before Covid? Remote working should've made them completely irrelevant.
"If you boldly declare your company with worth a certain price, then you just need one person with money to agree and it takes on that value"
Just like with selling high art, another shady industry.
Adam Neumann is one of the best CEOs of the 2010s.
He successfully was able to short a private market.
I assume that at the time there was still a belief of "if SoftBank invests in it, it must be good." I would like to think nobody would be fooled that easily now.
Talk fast, drink fast, fire extinguisher full blast
@@nitehawk86 Stares at 'flow'
😂
He also made his early investors tons of money.
Patrick is easily one of my favorite youtube comedians, the stellar financial reporting is a nice plus
The story of WeWork’s craziness is just so extreme that I can’t distinguish between a factual recounting of what went on there on a daily basis, and Patrick’s deadpan one liners.
I walked near a Wework building yesterday. And this is in my feed. Thanks, Google maps!
I was working at a WeWork the day the news came out that it was essentially done. The annoyingly upbeat WeWork staff looked like they were about ready to jump out the window (and we were on the 20th floor). I may not sound sympathetic but it's only because I had my turn in the tech company barrel having worked 8 years building a company only to get shafted and pushed out the door. It's the cycle of from Start Up to Fucked Up. I honestly still like the idea of shared workspaces although I'd rather work remotely.
Yeah, the real kicker is there IS a way to have communal working conditions if you yeet capital interests and pressure out the window. It's kinda sad how small the American imagination has become. End stage capitalism is going to drag us all down with it and drown us beneath the waves; no one seems to have the gumption to speak out in a way that matters. My poor disabled ass can't start the revolution, that's for damn sure.
The most amazing thing about this story is that there was no fraud. Just plain stupidity
No stupidity, I bet the guy knew what he was doing. Which is: he siphoned off a buttload of money by overcharging WeWork for the real estate, which was owned by his own company. The guy is loaded no matter what WeWork's fate is. But yeah, no fraud as far as I can tell; this is not illegal.
The guy who got rich wasn't stupid that's for sure. I'm kinda jealous actually
Stupidity of vcs yes.
I think the OP was referring to investor stupidity, and there was plainly no fraud. Hype, yes, but no deception.
There was a lot of illegal stuff going on, some of it fraud. A CEO selling to his own company is in conflict of interest and has liability.
They didn't press charges because they tried to salvage the business and save face.
VC business model hangs on the fact that people think they are "smart money", they don't want to go and say that "The golden boy CEO we hyped is not only a bad CEO, he was stealing to our faces and pissing on our heads".
Remember that VCs have investors of their own, its not their money they lose.
As someone who worked in startups in that period I do remember knowing a) it was bullshit, b) loving the amount of money I was making off of it, c) wondering when it would end, and d) wondering if I should get in on the grift. I never did because I just don't have the charm of these people nor the propensity to grift. Still, good times, lots of champagne, trips to exotic places, insane ideas, impossible projects and zero fucks given by me. Shame I'm no longer in my 20s because I doubt I'd be able to keep up if it all started up again.
Oh and I loved WeWork offices.
Good for you. Sadly, I was the working slave in two of these startups with none of the benefits.
They weren't even glorified landlords, because at least a landlord owns the real estate. Zero hard assets, and a ton of short and long term liability in the form of payments on ten-year leases. Add the that the potential quagmire of employees of competing businesses working in close quarters with sensitive and proprietary info...There is a reason companies have their OWN offices.
20:54 "The core business while growing rapidly was unprofitable, but Neumann diversify into other unprofitable business lines" That line lmao 🤣🤣
I assume after that, the plan was to make up the difference in volume.
Don't forget to mention the million dollar check and free advertising from his father in law to launch WeWork. Without that man and his network, WeWork would never exist.
It shows how stupid investors can be, how fare a bad idea can get, how gullible the media is that can't stop promoting it, and how little oversight there is to prevent this from happening.
What a truly insane system we've created.
We deserve this.
WeDeserve
This video is so well-made. I have learned the basis of everything I needed to know in order to write a paper on this cult leader and his financial adventures. I still can't believe WeWork , despite having all the opportunities in the world, never reached profitability. Thank you very much, Mr.Boyle 🌺
Jim Cramer was bullish on the IPO, and that was all you needed to know.
Like clockwork.
Short any Cramer pick.
I may not know much about finance compared to Patrick, but his videos always make me feel like a financial genius compared to the people and companies he showcases. I would be curious to know what the SEC rejection rate is for IPO filings.
I would expect the SEC would *always* push back on the first filing and make them fix something, but I haven't been through the process personally. I've been through some similar government-run processes where that's the way it's done, though.
Now, the CEO getting fired because the SEC asked some basic questions, *that's* unusual.
It is always easier to observe things afterwards. The actual financial genius part is to skip something that both looks like huge opportunity and fishy af (as long as you are like Patrick who has done a lot of homework). The latter is so easy to miss if the first one can convince you well enough.
I was thinking the same thing. I'm an honest person whose always followed the rules and tried to do things "by the book". Hearing about how someone can rizz their way to the top providing zero value other than moral net worth is astonishing. I'm currently living paycheck to paycheck and have become more interested in how to replicate this behavior than admonish it. Dude tricked everyone and still came out a billionaire. It's people like Adam, SBF, and Elizabeth Holmes that make me question morality.
Well, presumably you have managed to avoid jail time and the disadvantages of being a convicted felon. That's more than you can say for Elizabeth Holmes and, soon, Sam Bankman-Freid.
@@douglassun8456 You said exactly what I was thinking. Holmes is now broke and locked up and SBF will follow suit. They were fraudsters, however WeWork wasn't a fraud, it was nothing.
@@PaulSpades Bernie Madoff died in jail. Elizabeth Holmes is in jail right now. Bankman-Fried may or may not get the full 115 years that he's facing, but people following the trial have almost all said that it's not going well for him and the judge is irritated by his defense team. None of them bought their way out of trouble. But you rather stupidly missed my point: I was responding to someone who wondered whether it was better to be a white-collar criminal or live an honest life and stay out of trouble. I pointed out something that seems obvious to me, that even a little trouble with the law is best avoided. Have you ever applied for a job, or a lease? It's nice having a clean background check.
@@douglassun8456 Of course you're right. Justice is always served.
People who produce the really valuable things and provide the valuable services are usually middle class at best, with some exceptions.
That SEC filing is killing me. Like do you people understand that you're filing an official statement to the united states government, not pitching investors..?
Who thought that giving free beer to Gen-X and Millennials depressed about their office careers was a good business venture?
I didn't know they had free beer. The JS meetups I went to at a WeWork were all dry.
Yeah. They should've provided cocaine.
Everytime I heard Adam Neumann, I remember Elizabeth Holmes and SBF. They did the same things: made a company, got money from investors, spend some of the money for their luxury lives and had their company in dubious performance. The latter are in trouble with law while Adam isn't.
My biggest concern are the investors, why they were so easy to give money to these people.
AOC is better at LOL than SBF. She was ranked and didn't play during work, while he was not ranked despite (or maybe because of) playing during investor calls. (Don't get sniped by a jungler when you're alt-tabbed looking for last year's ebitda.)
Hmm... I wonder what share of the investment was spent by the ceo. I imagine a lot of the investment was in real estate itself and the losses arise from interest rates and wfh.
Noticing is forbidden
I was thinking about this. And while I'm sure there's a ton of technicalities I don't understand as far as I can see on the surface is that Holmes was selling a physical product she knew didn't work while Newman was selling an idea he knew didn't work.
It's alot easier to prove the former than the latter.
@@SoulDevoured The fact that he got booted out with money in his pocket (while the investors still had hope for the company) basically absolved him and his misses for all of the shady accounting and lies. I understand the process of it, but I also don't understand why and how this is fair.
I remember a chat with friend who was a running a startup and he said that Regus was a lot better than WeWork and had a more professional vibe to their co working spaces compared to WeWork. Also cost, mentioned how much more expensive renting WeWork space was compared to one with Regus
Oh, Good Lord have mercy, Mr. Boyle! Please please please disclose how in the name of all that’s holy do you keep such a deadpan delivery?! I don’t think a financial breakdown has ever been more informative and hilarious at the same time.
WeWork is the equivalent of a timeshare for 2 weeks in Haiti during Hurricane season…😝
Never underestimate a man who speaks in bumper stickers.
"they invested anyway" - well, in that case they deserved to lose everything they had.
Man, if someone sprayed me with a fire extinguisher during an investor meeting, they'd be running from the same extinguisher as I chase them down the hallway with it.
@@iless664I did say deserved, not that they did. I have no idea if they did.
the phrase “struggling landlords” is so funny especially when you remember the landlords in question own large high rise office buildings in new york 😭😭
He must be an incredible salesperson to convince people after WeWork that he has any ideas
Masayoshi Son + Jim Cramer + Andreesen. The only way this could be a bigger scam is if San Bankman-Fried was part of the deal.
If Jim Cramer's bullish, you know it's time to short the SPAC.
SBF is a fraud but not stupid. He would have not invested in Neumann
But there was no scam.
@alexanderSydneyOz neither are MLM's. They publish their shit earnings reports, and they have disclaimers to the fact that their products probably don't work.
We still call them "scams" because they are exploitative, manipulative organizations that create a cult-like reality distortion
Dont forget being named on the Forbes 30 under 30 list.
The dry wry humor always keeps me coming back for more.
"That wouldn't be nice, and I pretend to be nice on this channel" is the most relatable thing I've heard this decade.
I can’t express how much I love your mini docs, Patrick! In a world of cookie cutter documentaries & news, you and a few other CZcams greats are invaluable ❤
Same! I love his dry delivery of hilarious character assassinations. And his accent - it's unique.
what other youtubers?
yes you can
@@count7ero. Cold Fusion, Company Man, and Bright Sun Films all do great mini business documentaries.
Cringe man. Get a room.
I'm shocked We Work didn't die during the COVID19 crisis.
Maybe still too much VC $$$.
It pretty much did die during Covid, but companies are bureaucracies and the "death certificate" took a few years to finalize.
It did but you can't really kill a zombie, its already dead.
That's because they ate $3 million worth of horse de-wormer and switched on the flashlights they shoved up their butts. A world-famous real estate magnate clued them in on that - I've seen the video.
I think what finally killed it was the fed raising interest rates and continuing to do so.
Whenever I am talking to VC and start to get just a tickle of nervousness and intimidation, I just think about WeWork and instantly feel much better.
“And I pretend to be nice on this channel…”
me: immediately clicks subscribe
i usually dont subscribe to a channel before i have watch at least 3 videos of the same creator and ihave watch a couple of videos from this channel already and when he said that i inmediately subscribe
"The clothes were difficult to sell because they were horrible." HAHAHA had me laughing out loud in the communal office space (like WeWork) I am sitting in watching this video.
Or maybe potential customers noticed that babies already come with built-in fat pads!
The real estate market in areas like Seattle, NY and Portland for example are areas I believe represent a ticking time bomb for investors. The valuation of land in NY nearly tanked during Covid despite landlords hiking rents to crazy levels and drastically lower numbers of prospective renters, the cost of living in areas like i've mentioned are higher than the income levels of the people looking to rent or buy.
as someone who is super into finance and investing and all that good stuff. the WeWork story is an all time classic and Adam Neuman is a legend. I will stop and watch anything about WeWork because I just love hearing the story lol
he just cooks up some half baked idea and talks his way into a a billion dollar valuation… its insane and awesome
I think that's exactly what the housing crisis needs, I'm sure Adam will be a great landlord who doesn't make everything worse.
Pretty impressive that Joey Cables and Willy Wireless were single handedly running the tech infrastructure of a 44 billion dollar tech company.
The combination of your serious delivery and the montage including funny animations always cracks me up. Who knew I would burst out laughing multiple times watching a financial video
Don’t know how you keep your face straight at times Patrick, when you tell these stories. The bit about the 16 year old IT guy was gold.
Very well made analytic video. Learned something from this. Liked and subscribed! I remember visiting a friend at a we work office years ago before the pandemic. The atmosphere was attractive. Giving the sense of community over boring office life. If the ceo and investors weren’t so greedy. We work might still have a place in this world
Yet another example of way too much capital distributed up top, into the hands of a few wealthy companies/institutions/people, to be squandered away, partially lost, partially redistributed into another single individual's pocket. Imagine what you could achieve on a societal level with 700 million dollars, and this is just one, prominent case.
Yep. I agree with Lefties on this one.
Our nations greatest scientific achievments were back when we had the military funnelling BILLIONS into scientific endeavours. Shit like Bell Labs.
Google has billions lying around, and doesnt know what the fuck to do with it.
Look at what Elon Musk managed to achieve with a fraction of the capital. Made infinitely more tech than google couldv dreamed of.
Google/Facebook are glorified marketing firms.
Apple is a fashion company.
Your average company these days makes just as much software they do.
Amazon(AWS) and OpenAI are the few actual Tech Companies out there.
The worlds most lucrative launch service that actually pushed mandkind forward, was funded with significantly less private capital.
You are describing exactly how high GINI index leads to stagnant growth.
We need to force venture capital to function like normal investments
Fools and their money are soon parted.
"Squandered away" and "lost" does mean the money went into the economy. On a "societal level." If that's really your goal you should be cheering failures like this.
As a South African, I am really insulted by Newman's condesending attitude towards the African continent. I live in a city of 5 milion plus. We have plenty of office space to let. In addition, shared office spaces have been available for small businesses in my city since at least the late 1990s. WeWork did not offer anything new, it was just an attempt to brand an existing real estate business model.
Wonder why no one wants to invest in Africa
@@TheThreatenedSwanall the white supremacists right
You live in south africa a country in risk of civil war / insurrection.
What are you talking geezer
@@capitan_gorgonzolazolayou've been fed far right propaganda.
@@carlost856Delusional. The crime rates don't lie, neither do people who openly call for killing white people and stealing their property.
I always come back for the humorous sarcasm as he tells these business tales. I enjoy it!
How you kept a straight face with reading all that.. I have no idea. Bravo!
I hear WeWork had plans start a lavatory space rental company called WeWee.
😂
you have got to be shitting me 😂
@@travisadams4470 Chill, he's just taking the piss
Its subsidiaries are WePee and WePoo.
Patrick, you never fail to deliver an honest take on what should have been obvious to us all. Well done.
I did work in multiple we work buildings doing construction. The amount of money wasted was ridiculous and the scheduling for construction was awful. Several gc's that were in house from we works were awful and incompetent. They had a big custom made desk with receptacles that fold out that cost over $20k , they had these things they called "eggs" that were at least 40k where kids could sit inside and relax, they had a wall they called a living wall where they taught kids how to be farmers. The money that was spent on light bulbs were like $300 a bulb, they had a light fixture that stretched the entire length of the school space that was imported from Italy and was just ridiculous
@DarkZombieMan007 Man, those are ridiculous investments, there's a way to do those cheaper too, the guy really just wastes money.
I think we have fallen upon his next big move; "we didn't work" - a consultancy firm to advise VC firms because they seem to need it !!
When Jim Cramer said he was bullish, it was game over.
"it wouldn't be nice, and I pretend to be nice on this channel"
Ok subbed 😂
I have a brilliant idea for another physical social network. It's a place that has beer as well, and best of all, you don't have to deal with your co-workers. I call it a "bar".
The robinhood of our time... ladies and gentlemen. Takes money from the dumb rich people and... and that's it
$45 a month for a desk sounds like a great deal for a space rental, but that desk was probably the one closest to Adam Neumann😂🎉
Adam must be a hell of a Salesman 😂
“The clothes were difficult to sell because they were horrible.”
I love you Patrick.
Might be a minor nitpick overall, but Son's choice to get the rights to the iPhone and gain market share was a HUGE success for SoftBank and Apple. It put SoftBank on competitive terms with the other big telcos and made Japan one of Apple's top markets even today.
Major Major fallacy that one random great call means anything in terms of their investment prowess. Just random chance guarantees someone somewhere will make a ton of money. Never put money with these folks.
@@mcguigan97 oh for sure. Son has made a lot of investments that didn’t work out, like WeWork of course. Just saying that importing the iPhone to Japan specifically was one that paid off and part of the reason he has such money to spend.
Imo Apple's dominance was mostly inevitable given Japanese disdain for Chinese and Korean tech combined with Sony's fumbling of the mobile market.
@@BoxdHound Certainly it’s not the only reason, but you see, back in the late 2000s the Japanese phone industry was quite different. All the major tech brands had mobile phones that were comparatively more advanced than what we got elsewhere. Docomo and KDDI likely thought this was enough, but Son took a chance with the iPhone, bringing it with minor tweaks to suit the Japanese market, such as emoji. It ended up being a huge success (as advanced as the Japanese phones were, they were also kind of cumbersome to use). The Japanese makers tried to come back with Android devices, but never could make a significant impact because (among other reasons) given the phone plan structures at the time, you were often paying as much as an iPhone for it. Now, it’s pretty much Sony and Sharp that remain from the Japanese brands. Otherwise you’re looking at an Apple or a Korean/Chinese brand, not unlike what you’d get in any other country.
aka survivorship bias