I think this is partially due to the fact that people are looking for the next Amazon; everyone wants to be a billionaire, and if that bald dude can become the

I think this is partially due to the fact that people are looking for the next Amazon; everyone wants to be a billionaire, and if that bald dude can become the richest man in the world by selling books, why can't I do it leasing office space? That drive causes people to try a lot of ... "plans" might be a more charitable word than "schemes" ... that might otherwise have never seen the light of day. And the media bears a lot of responsibility for this, too. WeWork is an office space rental company. It should have been trivial to figure out how much money they were taking in, and how profitable they could become - if they could become profitable at all. Valuing them at thirty bajillion dollars was just stupid, but stupid gets eyeballs, and that's what the media thrives on. "Office space leasing company rents desk space" isn't going to make the front page of Hacker News.