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I don't agree with your analysis about the relative culpability of Masayoshi and Neumann, although I agree that both are culpable, but you are missing the point

I don't agree with your analysis about the relative culpability of Masayoshi and Neumann, although I agree that both are culpable, but you are missing the point. I am not talking about WeWork going from a large valuation to a small one, where you might argue, not that value was destroyed (by WeWork management or whoever), but simply that the large valuation was erroneous, and the later, smaller valuation reflected the true value all along, and so no value was destroyed. Rather, the actual money paid into the company by investors in cash, was much larger than the later valuation of the whole company. If investors, including Son, paid WeWork large amounts of money, for good or bad reasons, it was always 100% within the CEO's control what that money was spent on. Neumann could have hoarded that money as a war chest, or could have spent it buying something valuable or building something which could be sold profitably. Instead it was wasted (much of it before Softbank's involvement). There is literally no way of blaming investors for this.

recuter 4y ago
> it was always 100% within the CEO's control what that money was spent on. Neumann could have hoarded that money as a war chest, or could have spent it buying something valuable or building something which could be sold profitably. Instead it was wasted (much of it before Softbank's involvement). There is literally no way of blaming investors for this. I can see how you might think that if it was some normal functioning tech company. As a matter of fact here it is simply not true. This was a real estate play and everybody involved who invested knew exactly what he is going to do with the money -- which is to expand further and faster -- in fact they demanded this and conditioned their investments on it. No "war chest" was possible here, ha. All of these people though the same as with Uber: grow as quickly as possible even if it means bleeding money, corner the market, IPO as the winner, hope retail investors prop it up long enough for the company to start eeking out profits and pay down the accumulated debts. From the founders perspective it was like taking money from a loan shark essentially. The only surprising thing about it all is that he made a deal with the devil knowing he was getting played and managed to end up with anything.

recuter 4y ago

> it was always 100% within the CEO's control what that money was spent on. Neumann could have hoarded that money as a war chest, or could have spent it buying something valuable or building something which could be sold profitably. Instead it was wasted (much of it before Softbank's involvement). There is literally no way of blaming investors for this. I can see how you might think that if it was some normal functioning tech company. As a matter of fact here it is simply not true. This was a real estate play and everybody involved who invested knew exactly what he is going to do with the money -- which is to expand further and faster -- in fact they demanded this and conditioned their investments on it. No "war chest" was possible here, ha. All of these people though the same as with Uber: grow as quickly as possible even if it means bleeding money, corner the market, IPO as the winner, hope retail investors prop it up long enough for the company to start eeking out profits and pay down the accumulated debts. From the founders perspective it was like taking money from a loan shark essentially. The only surprising thing about it all is that he made a deal with the devil knowing he was getting played and managed to end up with anything.