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Adam Neumann’s WeWork Debacle Wasn’t Possible Without VC Help – Book on WeWork

• Apocryphon 5y ago
  Funny how history works. > Did we learn any lessons from WeWork? EB: No. MF: For a minute, it really seemed like they did. In 2019, for a while, Masayoshi Son was telling everyone, “Oh, you suddenly have to be profitable.” And then the pendulum has swung back faster than we ever could have anticipated. And it almost feels more extreme in some ways than it was then. EB: When we started the book, we thought it was the punctuation of an era of, you know, Silicon Valley unicorn insanity. And then the pandemic happened, and the Fed printed money and cash rolled even more into Silicon Valley. And, yeah, it seems to have gone the other way. So WeWork was more of a blip than the end of an era. These things go in cycles. If you were to be a super charismatic founder out there trying to raise money for a co-working company right now at a $47 billion valuation, it would be extremely difficult. People still do mention WeWork in VC circles. But one of the things that the pendulum has swung so the public markets are kind of where the crazy is right now. So this is a long way of saying we have learned nothing. --- Maybe the worst is yet to come.