Hellbound
Merchant of Doom
For some reason, I keep reading the thread title as WetWork instead of WeWork.
The title works either way, really.
The title works either way, really.
We should develop an app that automates the process of recruiting, tasking, and paying assassins.
Darat had it nailed. They had an App. An App.
SoftBank Vision Fund is bailing on Wag, the dog-walking and dog-sitting company in which it invested $300 million in early 2018.
What's happening: SVF will sell its shares back to the company for an undisclosed amount, and give up its board seat.
The big picture: This is just the latest black eye for SVF, but isn't quite as dark when viewed in the context of traditional VC portfolio management. The Wag investment represents 0.3% of SVF's committed capital.
I wonder how much a person can earn as a dog sitter/walker? Even if it's just minimum wage, some people might prefer that to flipping burgers at McDonald's.
Oddly I'm currently in a presentation by someone from Workday.In addition, they have a pretty decent Human Resource system called Workday. That line of business may actually be profitable for the company.
Many of my coworkers do, yeah. The remuneration can be several times minimum wage if you're organized, but there are risks and overhead costs that eat into gross profits that vary regionally.
Just for example, I have a coworker who works weekend shifts, so she's free M-F all day and walks dogs and does some pet sitting in the city (Vancouver). She hikes the trails daily anyway, and now takes along an average of 5 dogs at a time. Her overhead costs are incorporation, insurance (dangers include animal getting hit by a car, stolen, attacked by other dogs, lost off leash, inexplicable sudden death, &c), some equipment like spare leads and muzzles and toys and treats, plus part of the costs associated with owning a van. She estimates it's about $4k/mo at the moment, four hours a day M-F, mostly outdoors, and pretty physical, which she likes. She's a triathlete.
WeWork filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday in New Jersey, according to a statement from the company.
The beleaguered company, once valued at $47bn on the private market, endured a 98% decline in its share price this year, leaving it with a market capitalization of less than $50m. In August, it raised “substantial doubt” that it could continue to operate as it grappled with $2.9bn in net long-term debt and more than $13bn in long-term leases. The company said in a statement it had entered into a restructuring support agreement and would deal with the debt by “addressing our legacy leases and dramatically improving our balance sheet”.
Company leadership also asserted that most WeWorks would remain open for the foreseeable future.
Neumann, 44, has already started a new venture. Flow, which raised $350m from the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz last year, is focused on residential real estate.
UpDate:
WeWork, once a $47bn firm, files for bankruptcy after accruing $2.9bn debt
Fortunately the company's former CEO seems to have landed on his feet:
In addition, they have a pretty decent Human Resource system called Workday. That line of business may actually be profitable for the company.
Oddly I'm currently in a presentation by someone from Workday.
Absolutely unsurprising. The whole WeWork concept was a rather obvious disaster from the start.
Anyone want mug of t-shirt?
Office space bubble?!
And maybe not just office space: John Oliver Rips Landlords for making Rent Unaffordable: "Housing Is a Human Right"
Oliver's a twat. I love that his criterion for affordability is that someone working a minimum wage job should be able to afford a "modest" two-bedroom home. Seriously? So a pimple-faced teenager working at Burger King?
It's not landlords who are making housing unaffordable, it's NIMBY homeowners not wanting multifamily in their neighborhood, it's planning boards that demand X, Y and Z and can't see that those costs must be passed on to the renters.
At 03:53:Sarah Silverman covers RFK Jr.'s three-way race with Biden and Trump, orcas sinking another yacht, and Ronny Chieng chimes in on WeWork's bankruptcy.
RFK Jr.'s Surprising Poll Numbers & WeWork Files for Bankruptcy (The Daily Show on YouTube, Nov, 8, 2023)
Housing is not a human right though.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Article 25: Right to a standard of living adequate for your health and well-being. We all have the right to enough food, clothing, housing and healthcare for ourselves and our families. We should have access to support if we are out of work, ill, elderly, disabled, widowed, or can’t earn a living for reasons outside of our control. An expectant mother and her baby should both receive extra care and support. All children should have the same rights when they are born.
FTFY"Oh noes something somehow went wrong with our cunning business strategy of renting out 1/40th of an office with a beanbag and expresso maker."
And beer....FTFY
I don't know why, but it really pisses me off when companies like WeWork are called "tech companies". Like, they didn't break out any sort of technological innovation or use technology in some new way. They were subletting office space. Just because they had an app doesn't make them a technology company.
Also, I've been saying for several years now that we need to declare a moratorium on words like "disruption". Having a business that lives within the margins of an industry is not a disruption.
I don't believe in positive rights. I do believe the Universe has the right to declare anything it wants, though.
I don't know why, but it really pisses me off when companies like WeWork are called "tech companies". Like, they didn't break out any sort of technological innovation or use technology in some new way. They were subletting office space. Just because they had an app doesn't make them a technology company.
Also, I've been saying for several years now that we need to declare a moratorium on words like "disruption". Having a business that lives within the margins of an industry is not a disruption.
Automating a business process that was not previously automated to that extent, and building a business based on the automated process, qualifies you as a tech company, in my opinion.
Once the automation of that process has become commoditized, and everyone who builds a business on that process uses the automated version of the process, then it goes back to being a [whatever] company business.
And if you're one of the first to achieve that automation, and you're able to do business better/faster/more/different than every other player in that market because you have technology they don't, that's disruptive, in my opinion.
Most of the tech companies started in the last twenty years are better described as tech-bro companies. They offer nothing new in service terms, develop no new products or technologies, develop no new processes to improve productivity and are generally aimed at ideas with no real prospects of profitability.
But they get plenty of funding because their upper echelons are stocked with the right kind of people (for a given value of right).