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WeWork Cleans House, Looks to Trim Staff Close to Ex-CEO, Sell Private Jet
- codesushi42 7y agoYou know things have really hit rock bottom when the private jet has to go.
- habitue 7y agoMaybe they can keep the staircar
- rumanator 7y agoBanana stand is a great name for a venture capital firm.
- themacguffinman 7y agoThere's always money in the banana stand.
- holler 7y agotoo bad they did it after he was fired, would have made a great episode of Airplane Repo
- moltar 7y agoIt’s just PR
- masonic 7y agoYou'd think they would have waited and flown it to/from the Global Climate Conference first.
- sadmann1 7y agoIncredibly hard hitting cuts, hopefully they yacht is spared at least
- inimino 7y ago> Mr. Neumann’s staff included at least one driver for the $100,000-plus Maybach luxury car he often traveled in. That poor driver is gonna be forced back on the job market I bet.
- luckydata 7y agono, not the WeBoat...
- goatinaboat 7y agoMaybe Sea Org can have it
- not_a_cop75 7y agoHow will I have my off coastal sort of legal staff employed without taking my people 12+ miles out on the WeWork shared yacht?
- mises 7y agoGives a whole new meaning to "off-shoring", doesn't it.
- taude 7y agoWonder if they'll do tequila shots after the Jet leaves the building?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rdiddly 7y agoMaybe "You Be Illin'" this time.
- helpadvisors 7y agoI'm a member at WeWork in Brooklyn - personally I think they could use more staff. Our community manager told me her inbox is flooded w/ "tickets" from petty things about chair noise to room temperature. Overall, I like it here though.
- bksenior 7y agolol
- sib 7y agoIf I ran the place (I'm just the "primary member" for a 20-space private space in one of their LA locations), I would suggest that they prioritize handling all of these real problem tickets and stop spending time planning and coordinating massages, astrology readings, ice cream with unpronounceable names, etc.
- EpicEng 7y agoBut then they would just be a landlord and not a VC backed lifestyle brand super hip co. My mental image of the old CEO is Ryan from The Office.
- JohnJamesRambo 7y agoAnd the average investor in WeWork is a Michael Scott type that thinks he has the next big thing lined up.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ineedasername 7y ago*> Ryan from The Office Wow, that is incredibly spot-on
- paulsutter 7y agoAmazing how quickly the WeWork brand has been demolished
- sg47 7y agoWeFucked
- PopeDotNinja 7y agoWeWorked.
- maxaf 7y agoWeBork
- smallgovt 7y agoI know you’ll get downvoted but ty for the laugh.
- bsder 7y agoI miss FuckedCompany.com ...
- sg47 7y agoApplies to the country too based on the turn of events
- bdcravens 7y agoI think they are working to preserve the brand, and are demolishing the personality cult.
- rchaud 7y agoThe brand was always shady and they never had a good answer for the criticism that they were a better-funded, worse-performing Regus. It's just that Neumann's PR team is no longer pushing this idea of him as a new generation of corporate leader, messianic, charitable, drowning in charisma etc.
- pxeboot 7y agoI am not even sure who to blame for all these shenanigans. The CEO or the people financing him?
- merlincorey 7y agoCherry picking, of course, but, my gut tells me it might be the CEO: > Also out are some of the 10-plus staffers who worked directly with Mr. Neumann in a group that was referred to internally as the “oval office” and included some friends who worked on personal deals for him. Charitably, some high aspirations from Mr. Neumann and excellent synergy to have his personal deals team on-site at his We office. > The plane was a favorite of Mr. Neumann’s, who would use it frequently to zip between his homes in the Bay Area and New York. The main use of the plane was for personal reasons, not business ones. > Attached to his office was a small spa an ice bath, according to people familiar with the matter. I wonder if this is a normal amenity offered to CEOs and if it is more prevalent in the Bay Area or New York City? > The office is in the process of being cleaned up, ... which I take to mean they are removing the spa? > and as a director, Mr. Neumann’s access to the company’s facilities will be more restricted, the people said. And here's where I hear a loud buzzer signaling that someone is not appreciated within their organization - no one wants to see them on-site after they leave.
- inimino 7y agoYes, but... who do we blame for it going on this long?
- raiyu 7y agoThe board of directors. They have a fiduciary responsibility to the business and shareholders and obviously they were looking at high level financials and not digging in further. It is a bit surprising that Masayoshi Son of Softbank would fund so many rounds when it was quite obvious that it was a house of cards. With Uber, at least there was a real business, with some real differentiation and not the tremendous Capex overhead of real estate to weigh down the business. Imagine if Uber had to employ all of the drivers full-time and also own the cars outright, that would be a dramatically different business. But everyone is happy when things are moving up and to the right, but in this case, the losses outweighted revenue. It's one thing for a startup to be burning x% of revenue to grow market share, but to literally every year burn more capital than revenue at such a massive scale is completely bonkers. The only logical conclusion is that Masayoshi Son was calculated in this. In that he had some belief that WeWork would work, but additionally if he was able to markup his shares through his own investments, he could then raise a second vision fund based on the supposed returns of the first one. Obviously that plan is now shot with Uber trading below the value of his private investments, and with WeWork it is an even larger hole that he has dug for himself, because not only is it's value dramatically less than when he invested, but there is a real possibility that the company may not be able to get on to solid financial footing. Softbank would literally be the only investor willing to put in more capital at this point, and they almost have to in order to save the business, but at that point, don't be surprised if the entire cap table is completely redone.
- stefan_ 7y agoFeels like they need to clean house at whoever invested billions in a company run by a guy embezzling and his in-laws.
- goatinaboat 7y agoReducing his shares from 20 votes each to 3 was a start, but he really ought to only have the same stock class that retail investors will possibly eventually get. That’s the only way to keep founders in check.
- rolltiide 7y agoThe thing I like about finance is how you can make things legal simply by writing the action in a contract and by sometimes disclosing the contract.
- jgalt212 7y agotell that to Dennis Kozlowski > Kozlowski, prior to trial, asserted his innocence by stating, "I am absolutely not guilty of the charges. There was no criminal intent here. Nothing was hidden. There were no shredded documents. All the information the prosecutors got was directly off the books and records of the company." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Kozlowski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Kozlowski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_servant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_servant
- CzarnyZiutek 7y ago...and the wework obsession at HC continues
- uoaei 7y agoFor better or worse, they are a powerhouse and are changing the landscape of corporate retail.
- GrayTextIsTruth 7y agoI keep seeing "wework isn't a tech company", yet there is definitely an obsession here as if they were.
- rchaud 7y agoI think the fascination with WW on HN is because of how deftly they've used the "tech company" image to shield themselves from criticisms that their valuation is far removed from their reality of their gargantuan losses.
- rossdavidh 7y agoYou know, it's true, but I'm included. Yesterday, when I tried to tell my wife something about WeWork, she pointed this out to me. I realized that it is basically the same as when Theranos was cratering, and I was way more interested than I should have been.
- wyldfire 7y agoWhat's the utility of a private jet for an office space broker?
- PopeDotNinja 7y agoIn a normal standard company, the argument for buying a private jet is that the value of the time it saved for the person(s) traveling exceeds the costs of flying & maintaining a jet. Wendover Productions did a pretty good video on the topic. [1] [1] https://youtu.be/jYPrH4xANpU https://youtu.be/jYPrH4xANpU
- inimino 7y agoOr (as in this case): the prestige of flying in on a private jet outweighs the fiscal responsibility concerns of anyone in a position to say "no." Same thing with the Maybach.
- dwoozle 7y agoThis is the justification but is true in only the vanishingly rare case of the company whose activities are constrained by the bandwidth of the CEO, like Tesla. In other cases the CEO should be paying for the jet from his post tax income.
- bogomipz 7y agoPresumably to fly him around the world to do deals like these: https://www.insider.com/wework-adam-neumann-investments-wavegarden-laird-superfood-full-list-2019-9 https://www.insider.com/wework-adam-neumann-investments-wave...
- arkis22 7y agoits so he can work out of any of the wework offices of course!
- uoaei 7y agoYou don't have to deal with air travel wait times when visiting locations which are separated by great distances. Not sure if that was the actual use. Similar reason as to why Wal-Mart has a fleet of private jets.
- nevi-me 7y agoWhy did they need the jet? Was it to swiftly fly startup founders around the world conveniently when they needed to attend something? And to think that this mess nearly got listed :(
- codesushi42 7y agoRumor is Neumann had to step down because he flew the Great Circle route.
- Barrin92 7y ago>Why did they need the jet? Was it to swiftly fly startup founders around the world conveniently when they needed to attend something? for the same reason Neumann's name appeared ~170 times in the IPO filing and the corporate structure looks like Losts Dharma iniative it's the only way to get a company that subleases real estate to look like something that is worth 40 billion dollars
- bogomipz 7y ago>"Also out are some of the 10-plus staffers who worked directly with Mr. Neumann in a group that was referred to internally as the “oval office” and included some friends who worked on personal deals for him." Wow so there were people on the We payroll that were being paid by We Co. to work on private deal's that only benefitted Adam and not We Co? The level of of greed and hubris involved in the We story is really incredible.
- inetknght 7y ago> Wow so there were people on the We payroll that were being paid by We Co. to work on private deal's that only benefitted Adam and not We Co? The level of of greed and hubris involved in the We story is really incredible. Poke a little more at your own employer and you'll likely find just as much shenanigans.
- bogomipz 7y agoThere's no Chief Impact Officer whose married to the CEO, no private jet and no Maybachs chauffeuring the CEO where I work. You don't have to poke at all to to be aware of things like that.
- lucideer 7y ago> He will remain nonexecutive chairman of the New York company Phew. At least they haven't lost him completely. /s
- alaskamiller 7y agoI've worked for CEOs like Adam, tho with way less access to cash. Ambition is good only if you can pull it off, otherwise like like the greatest warrior poet of our generation Dominic Toretto would say: it don't matter if it's by an inch or a mile, losing's losing. This dude had a plan, had big energy, earned trust, spent like a king, and came up short some miles and inches. He was building We to be a holdings company since the late-2010's-era, a la Zuck with late-2010's-era Facebook or a la Mayer with mid-2010-era Yahoo. This is what a WeWork tech stack would have been: For construction: * Case - property development management software * Fieldlens ($12.6MM raised) - construction site management software For space management: * Euclid ($43.6MM raised) - space tracking software * Welkio - lobby digital sign-in software * Waltz - digital lock software * SpaceIQ - office management software * Teem ($100MM buyout) - room booking software * Manage by Q - office vendor solution management software * Spacious ($9MM raised) - restaurant downtime For business management: * Conductor - digital ads spam software * Unomy - sales marketing spam software For training management: * Meetup ($200MM buyout) - event and group management software * Flatiron School - coding school * MissionU - fake college For expansion: * Naked Hub ($400MM buyout) - Chinese wework clone * Spacemob - Singapore wework clone * The Wing ($32MM investment) - Women wework clone For fun: * Wavegarden ($12MM investment) All of this prob has been a $2B spend. But Steve Jobs he ain't with the integration so it's all loosely organized and disjointed. But Adam's at least Steve Job's esque enough to convince Ashton Kutcher to call all this pile of parts a tech behemoth. Divesting all this will be a mistake. Find a better CEO, get it all done.
- 3PS 7y agoA tip: you can use an extra newline to make the bullet points appear on the next line.
- chowes 7y agoI can't seem to find anything about Case - can you link to them?
- alaskamiller 7y agoIt's their first acquire in 2015 https://techcrunch.com/2015/08/05/weworks-first-acquisition-is-building-information-modeling-firm-case/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/08/05/weworks-first-acquisition-...
- not_a_cop75 7y agoBut what if I want to have a group, shared meeting in a private jet? Hardly forward thinking, WeWork!
- solotronics 7y agoAnd they always told me you couldn't party your way to the top. I could have had a private jet if I kept it up!
- ykevinator 7y agoThat guy had it all, he was a year too late, he could have cashed out and bounced.