>The Gulf investors backing the Vision Fund seem to have decided that WeWork is not a tech bet but simply an aggressive punt on real estate.
This is the bogey man of a huge number of current 'tech startups' - What if it turns out Tesla really are a car company! Or if We Work are actually an office rental company! OR gasp Uber is a cab company! (1)
We now have a glut of companies operating in traditional markets that have valuations that would indicate they'll be as big or bigger than their biggest competitors. IWG is a comparable company to WeWork, has £2.35n revenue and £1.95Bn market cap. Wework has slightly lower revenue but is being lined up for a £20Bn valuation. Not only this, but WeWork are going to learn about the cyclical nature of office rental revenue.
The key for these companies is to show concrete indicators that their business is actually different from the companies they're disrupting and We Work has done an absolutely rubbish job of that so far.
(1) I want to be clear I don't think all those examples have nothing to differentiate them, but it's closer than some people might like to think.
This is the bogey man of a huge number of current 'tech startups' - What if it turns out Tesla really are a car company! Or if We Work are actually an office rental company! OR gasp Uber is a cab company! (1)
We now have a glut of companies operating in traditional markets that have valuations that would indicate they'll be as big or bigger than their biggest competitors. IWG is a comparable company to WeWork, has £2.35n revenue and £1.95Bn market cap. Wework has slightly lower revenue but is being lined up for a £20Bn valuation. Not only this, but WeWork are going to learn about the cyclical nature of office rental revenue.
The key for these companies is to show concrete indicators that their business is actually different from the companies they're disrupting and We Work has done an absolutely rubbish job of that so far.
(1) I want to be clear I don't think all those examples have nothing to differentiate them, but it's closer than some people might like to think.