The cooling of the sharing economy may be the general trend, but not all segments of the industry will follow the cold.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “阑夕” (ID: techread ), the author of the editorial department.
On September 24th, the joint office giant WeWork announced that the founder Adam Neumann resigned as CEO, and the current vice chairman Sebastian and CFO Adi took over, and the latter two will serve as co-CEOs.
This has become another heavy snow in WeWork’s recent winter season.
Adam Neumann’s “downfall” is related to its cash-out operation to a considerable extent. For example, he first borrowed money from the company at a rate of less than 1%, then rented it as a landlord, and then used huge rents. Loans, through the operation of this empty glove white wolf, profit more than millions of dollars.
For example, Adam bought the domain name we.co in a private identity during the startup process, and registered the entire set of trademarks of We, then led the WeWork parent company to change its name to We.Company, and then paid 5.9 million to the company through the company. The US dollar has purchased the aforementioned domain name and trademark. This practice was rated by the industry as “a kidnapping of his own son to ransom”…
Aside from the various operations of the helm, WeWork itself is also a constant loss.
In the outside world’s questioning whether it is a real estate company or a technology company, in January this year, Softbank originally planned to reduce WeWork’s $16 billion to $2 billion, and WeWork’s valuation after entering the second half of the year. Peak’s $47 billion fell to $15 billion and announced an IPO plan at the end of September.
Behind this is WeWork’s poor earnings situation. According to its prospectus, WeWork’s 2018 revenue was $1.8 billion, a year-on-year increase of 103%. The revenue surge did not help it achieve profitability.