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It's true Adam Neumann is a con - being a con, though, is not industry specific. Elizabeth Holmes is a con and investors still wasted their money on Theranos, w

It's true Adam Neumann is a con - being a con, though, is not industry specific. Elizabeth Holmes is a con and investors still wasted their money on Theranos, which was more moonshot-esque emerging technology than some office buildings. Every industry has snake oil salespeople, and the Vision Fund should have put in more due diligence with their choices.

lotsofpulp 7y ago
I think the VCs that invested the money into Neumann and Holmes are also snake oil salespeople, hoping to to dump it off on the public markets during frothy times. Is anyone supposed to believe that the smartest people educated at the finest institutions in the world don't know how to do basic due diligence before throwing their money at businesses that don't scale, yet valuing them as if they do?
- searchableguy 7y ago
  Or that wealth is not an indicator of anything and some stupid people are rich because of a fragile broken system which doesn't reward based on meritocratic standards always.
- sjtindell 7y ago
  In my opinion very few of the smartest, most successful businesspeople attribute their success to anything they learned at an institution. There are essentially no traditional institutions that can teach you how to be a great entrepreneur, identify those people, or help them be successful.
  - wolco 7y ago
    A good entrepreneur knows how to navigate a downturn. A successful entrepreneur gets lucky (or puts themselves in better positions) and isn't afraid to gamble.
    - OnuRC 7y ago
      There is almost no way to make it big from bottom with just playing safe. Bigger the uncertainty bigger the upside potential.
- BubRoss 7y ago
  There must be some element of that. Wasn't there a company that promised to charge phones over the air with ultrasound? The basic math showed it would never work, but they had lots of VC backing.
  - chx 7y ago
    You can read more on the slow demise of uBeam at https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/ https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/
matthewdgreen 7y ago
Yes, but the con of Elizabeth Holmes was a case of blatant fraud. Obviously investors should work harder to do due-diligence that can uncover actively fraudulent behavior, but you can understand some people being caught out by it. There was very little in WeWork's model that wasn't visibly problematic on the surface.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  According to experienced scientists with decades of experience and knowledge about testing blood, there were very clear problems with Theranos' claims.
  - duxup 7y ago
    Yeah there was no technical info on how they overcame the issues with actually maintaining the machines... and how they operated with so little blood. Competitors and scientists were pretty skeptical. Word has it when they tried to pick up some traditional investors and started asking questions they just got BS and a lot of those investors walked.
  - lancesells 7y ago
    From everything I've read and watched on Theranos they were committing major fraud. It's hard to blame investors where the company itself is creating false test results during meetings. As far as I can tell it's way worse than WeWork.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Somebody explain uBeam to me then. They're just a regular startup that everyone with high school-level knowledge of physics knows is bullshit, and yet they're still around.
      - Trevor908 7y ago
        They fired just about everyone and are gliding along until their money runs out, hoping for a miracle. (And so that the executives can keep paying themselves healthy salaries, undoubtedly.)
Digory 7y ago
The "visionaries" are often cons like the Vision founder. It might as well be the Peter Principle fund.
SeanAppleby 7y ago
I think the point was, if you're going to invest in someone reckless, you might as well invest in a reckless company where at least if they deliver what they claim, the returns will be substantial. At least if Theranos had delivered what they claimed, they would have had a wildly valuable product. WeWork was always transparently just a middle man for real estate. WeWork's fall wasn't because they failed to deliver what they promised; it's that what they promised wasn't even that valuable in the first place. That is an even more embarrassing miss for an investor to have bought into than to be wrong about tractability, as valuing a business model should be a VC's bread and butter, whereas tractability is a fundamentally hard and niche problem that's different for every business, and an easier place to be misled.

lotsofpulp 7y ago

I think the VCs that invested the money into Neumann and Holmes are also snake oil salespeople, hoping to to dump it off on the public markets during frothy times. Is anyone supposed to believe that the smartest people educated at the finest institutions in the world don't know how to do basic due diligence before throwing their money at businesses that don't scale, yet valuing them as if they do?

searchableguy 7y ago
Or that wealth is not an indicator of anything and some stupid people are rich because of a fragile broken system which doesn't reward based on meritocratic standards always.
sjtindell 7y ago
In my opinion very few of the smartest, most successful businesspeople attribute their success to anything they learned at an institution. There are essentially no traditional institutions that can teach you how to be a great entrepreneur, identify those people, or help them be successful.
- wolco 7y ago
  A good entrepreneur knows how to navigate a downturn. A successful entrepreneur gets lucky (or puts themselves in better positions) and isn't afraid to gamble.
  - OnuRC 7y ago
    There is almost no way to make it big from bottom with just playing safe. Bigger the uncertainty bigger the upside potential.
BubRoss 7y ago
There must be some element of that. Wasn't there a company that promised to charge phones over the air with ultrasound? The basic math showed it would never work, but they had lots of VC backing.
- chx 7y ago
  You can read more on the slow demise of uBeam at https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/ https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/

matthewdgreen 7y ago

Yes, but the con of Elizabeth Holmes was a case of blatant fraud. Obviously investors should work harder to do due-diligence that can uncover actively fraudulent behavior, but you can understand some people being caught out by it. There was very little in WeWork's model that wasn't visibly problematic on the surface.

lotsofpulp 7y ago
According to experienced scientists with decades of experience and knowledge about testing blood, there were very clear problems with Theranos' claims.
- duxup 7y ago
  Yeah there was no technical info on how they overcame the issues with actually maintaining the machines... and how they operated with so little blood. Competitors and scientists were pretty skeptical. Word has it when they tried to pick up some traditional investors and started asking questions they just got BS and a lot of those investors walked.
- lancesells 7y ago
  From everything I've read and watched on Theranos they were committing major fraud. It's hard to blame investors where the company itself is creating false test results during meetings. As far as I can tell it's way worse than WeWork.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Somebody explain uBeam to me then. They're just a regular startup that everyone with high school-level knowledge of physics knows is bullshit, and yet they're still around.
    - Trevor908 7y ago
      They fired just about everyone and are gliding along until their money runs out, hoping for a miracle. (And so that the executives can keep paying themselves healthy salaries, undoubtedly.)

Digory 7y ago

The "visionaries" are often cons like the Vision founder. It might as well be the Peter Principle fund.

SeanAppleby 7y ago

I think the point was, if you're going to invest in someone reckless, you might as well invest in a reckless company where at least if they deliver what they claim, the returns will be substantial. At least if Theranos had delivered what they claimed, they would have had a wildly valuable product. WeWork was always transparently just a middle man for real estate. WeWork's fall wasn't because they failed to deliver what they promised; it's that what they promised wasn't even that valuable in the first place. That is an even more embarrassing miss for an investor to have bought into than to be wrong about tractability, as valuing a business model should be a VC's bread and butter, whereas tractability is a fundamentally hard and niche problem that's different for every business, and an easier place to be misled.