Exactly!
Just a variation on an old-fashioned real estate play.
That’s what the tech generation, divorced from history, and non-conversant with basic business ideas, gets wrong. They think that everything they come up with is revolutionary and high tech....and it isn’t. WeWork is simply shared office space. Shared office space that is nice, with some amenities.
But WeWork ain’t Google.... lol
It sort of reminds me of FitBit. A very good basic product that fitness people like. A lot.
But it ain’t gonna compete with Apple. Or improve the health of the entire world (one of the taglines they used over the years).
Not everyone can be a visionary.
And WeWork ain’t visionary.
Well the crazy thing was the cash being pumped into it.... Shared Office Space is NOTHING new, and it sure isn’t “DISRUPTIVE”... been around for decades... in fact, every office complex that has space it has difficulty getting rented, tends to fill it with this sort of things...
Its an insanely low barrier, relatively low cost, simple way to get cashflow from vacant space.
Its unfathomable that investors pumped the kind of cash they did at this idea, and let alone throw more good money after bad, once the wheels finally came off when it was revealed as the snake oil it always was... Softbank, or whoever it was, should see their CEO immediately removed after making that play.
Most of the new “tech” stuff is not “visionary” at all.. its low hanging fruit.... Uber/WeWork/etc they are all low hanging fruit... not revolutionary... and most are not even remotely financially sustainable. Uber can only hope to see positive cash if the automated car arrives, which is decades away, and once it exists, their entire business is commoditized... as anyone can fire up a fleet of them, and a request app together quickly.. so the first mover advantage really holds no benefit long term,..... other than if they happen to get some very profitable patents for self driving... The model itself is not ever cashflow positive with humans in the equation and once you remove them, your entire model is a commodity.
But they burn BILLIONS per quarter, and fools keep throwing money at it.....