People make fun of Pets.com. They were obviously doomed. Nevermind that Amazon initially owned 50% of Pets.com. They pulled in 620k in revenue their first year and spent $12m on advertising so obviously they were doomed. They raised $82m at their IPO and were doomed. They were losing $3 for every $1 they brought in because they were trying to make money shipping pet food which has a single-percentage-point margin.
I mean, that's stupid. Clearly, obviously stupid. But WeWork rents space from one group and leases it to another and loses $1.80 for every dollar it brings in. They're middle-men whose value-add is clearly giving you all the stuff you would normally pay double for. I mean, fuck - who wouldn't want to get $800 worth of office space for $400? Other than the people trying to pay the mortgage?
Softbank was going to shovel $16b into WeWork. Instead they're shoveling $2b. Masayoshi Son, founder of Softbank, also piled $130m into Bitcoin in December 2017 which, okay, but he also sold it three months later.
Who wants to subsidize hipster rent?