Adam Neumann planned for his children and grandchildren to control WeWork

https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/18/adam-neumann-planned-for-his-children-and-grandchildren-to-control-wework/

171 189 7 years ago

ridruejo• 7 years ago

I kept wondering what would be the pets.com of this second bubble. I wonder no more

You should have posted as a throwaway account....his great-great-great grandchildren might go after yours for this comment ;)

golergka• 7 years ago

They would need to go after most of HN then.

high_derivative• 7 years ago

Neumann's basilisk?

firasd2• 7 years ago

I think all the 'Uber-for-X'/food delivery apps that popped up circa 2015 and went under a couple years later were actually the pets.com equivalents. That bubble popped and people didn't think much about it, because Facebook, Google et al were doing well.

WeWork is an outlier case since Softbank caused the problem by giving them all this money but will probably keep them afloat as well.

simias• 7 years ago

I don't think those food delivery apps are a good comparison because a few of them actually survived and the market consolidated around them. The service they offer is clearly valuable for many people. I don't think it qualifies as a proper bubble.

codewithcheese• 7 years ago

Interesting how pets.com is so ridiculed but something like a books.com (amazon) became the one of most valuable companies in the world.

skinnymuch3• 7 years ago

All the Groupon copycats largely failed too. Including Living Social. The other related companies that survived were around before and weren’t focused or only doing Groupon’s schtick (Retail Me Not, Coupons.com parent company, Slickdeals, and the cash back sites like Ebates/Rakuten). Otherwise they all died.

The gig economy startup scene was much much bigger. But it also didn’t completely die out. Airbnb is wildly successful. Apps like Taskrabbit have survived. Handy was surviving. Probably a number more that survived outside the big names.

solresol• 7 years ago

In some countries, the food delivery apps and companies aren't actually dead yet. Grab, Lineman, Lalafood, Get and FoodPanda to name a few.

kristianc• 7 years ago

I think all the 'Uber-for-X'/food delivery apps that popped up circa 2015 and went under a couple years later were actually the pets.com equivalents.

Surely ‘Oh shit, point to point delivery for small items in a large built up urban area is actually really difficult and expensive’ is the Webvan equivalent?

throwaway7446782• 7 years ago

We shall still wait a bit for all the chatbots-for-X and the AI-for-already-solved-problems to fade out, too.

perl4ever5• 7 years ago

"Uber wants to be the Uber for 'Uber for x' startups"

https://mashable.com/2016/06/09/uber-rush-api/

christopoulos2• 7 years ago

Don’t know the pets.com story, care to tell more or link resource?

brokensegue• 7 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pets.com

zelly2• 7 years ago

Don't insult Pets.com by comparing them to WeWork. At least they actually produced technology even if it was just an ecommerce website.

heymijo3• 7 years ago

I was alive for the .com bust but kind of forgot the scale. I looked up Pets.com. When they IPO'd they were valued at $290 million (about $294 million in inflation adjusted numbers).

They raised $110.5 million in private capital and $82.5 million at IPO [0].

WeWork has raised $14.2 billion in capital to date[1].

In other words, pets.com only raised a mere 1% of the current total that WeWork has raised.

If pets.com was the poster child for the dot com debacles then this new era of irrational startup exuberance exemplified by WeWork is another beast entirely.

[0] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/sock-puppet-kills-petscom [1] https://craft.co/wework/funding-rounds

perl4ever5• 7 years ago

"When they IPO'd they were valued at $290 million (about $294 million in inflation adjusted numbers"

That doesn't sound like the right amount of inflation. Maybe you mean $190M then or ~$435M now?

stjohnswarts5• 7 years ago

There is no second bubble, just a waxing stage approach. Some of those internet companies were leveraged 1000 to 1 . Not even WeWork or Uber is close to that. There are revenues in even the worst cases unlike back then. So please don't exaggerate.

luckylion6• 7 years ago

This quote sums it up very well:

Warned Jackson, “Those companies are asking shareholders to trust management’s business judgment — not just for five years, or 10 years, or even 50 years. Forever.” Such perpetual dual-class ownership “asks them to trust that founder’s kids. And their kids’ kids. And their grandkid’s kids . . . It raises the prospect that control over our public companies, and ultimately of Main Street’s retirement savings, will be forever held by a small, elite group of corporate insiders — who will pass that power down to their heirs.”

macspoofing3• 7 years ago

I don't see it as a problem because of this line: "Those companies are ASKING shareholders..."

Don't invest in companies that are making dumb decisions, or divest from companies that are making changes you feel are dumb.

dccoolgai• 7 years ago

As someone who is at least somewhat well-informed, I literally never heard this. How would you expect investors to know that? Wouldn't it be better to just live under a system of laws that prevents insanity like this? And then you could spend your time learning and being productive instead of poring over the details of how you're being duped in any given situation?

memetichazard• 7 years ago

As a shareholder, what's the difference between 50 years and forever, anyway? Are you locked into the shares to the point where you're not even allowed to sell them? If not, what's the likelihood anyway that you would have kept them for the full 50 year duration?

stjohnswarts5• 7 years ago

Well is anyone forcing them to buy the stocks? This is a private matter for company owners and stockholders, we don't need regulations for this. If there is fraud or fake financials reporting then yeah the government comes in.

macspoofing3• 7 years ago

This is actually a point in favour of Neumann since it shows he actually believed the bullcrap he was selling around what WeWork was. Like many have noted, it was a landlord with a particular focus on the startup and tech markets. That's it.

whyenot• 7 years ago

It could also be that this was just something he was using to look more sincere.

kgantchev• 7 years ago

This just shows that people with a bad mission and values eventually get exposed only to crash and burn.

nottorp2• 7 years ago

Kinda off topic: is there a way to opt out of tracking on sites like techcrunch that seem to use a seriously obfuscated opt out screen?

I've never dared to click past the second dialog for fear that I'll opt in to something by mistake.

Angostura• 7 years ago

Good question. I haven't found a way around, so I've stopped visiting. Presumably one day they'll get a kicking from a GDPR regulator - but they have bigger fish to fry at the moment.

personlurking• 7 years ago

If you copy the URL fast enough after clicking, you can check Archive (.is) to see if it's been archived. In this case, it was.

http://archive.is/NLqpE

There's also Outline. Not sure if one service is better than the other.

nottorp2• 7 years ago

Yeah, that's what I normally do, but sometimes i click a HN link without checking where it goes... like today.

SahAssar• 7 years ago

Disable all js, and you don't get the popup. I use umatrix to disable js on these sites (medium is another one that is a lot better without js).

nebulous1• 7 years ago

I'm giving this a go but it might be a situation where it just breaks too many things. I realize it gives you the power to fix things up relatively easily, but over half the sites I've visited so far have required changes.

tedmiston• 7 years ago

Try outline.com/<url>.

C14L• 7 years ago

Yes, add these to your `/etc/hosts` file:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/h...

Hendrikto• 7 years ago

“It’s important that one day, maybe in 100 years, maybe in 300 years, a great-great-granddaughter of mine will walk into that room and say, ‘Hey, you don’t know me; I actually control the place. The way you’re acting is not how we built it,'” he said.
These may sound like more outlandish proclamations from Neumann, who has a flair for the dramatic.

solidsnack90002• 7 years ago

It's interesting that he takes solace in the possibility of arbitrary exercise of authority by absentee owners.

shmooty• 7 years ago

I don't think beings will even be "walking" into "rooms" to "say" stuff in 300 years.

deogeo2• 7 years ago

To be fair, competition and investors tend to pressure corporations to place profit above any other values - the only way to maintain those values is to be forced by an external, 'arbitrary' force, like the law, or eccentric owner unconcerned with pure profit.

katzgrau• 7 years ago

Hundreds of years later, company loses site of its mission, descendant of the great one (second coming) appears and steers company back to greatness.

Kind of a strange fantastical vision out of the fiction category. Not something I'd expect the would-be CEO of a public company to seriously suggest.

heyflyguy• 7 years ago

Damn, I mean what a family. The moral compass. Gosh, I hope I can achieve someday the level of moral righteousness that he has. Wow.

nashashmi• 7 years ago

It often works and may even be required for corporations that exist for centuries.

The United States was founded by a group of men based on ideals strongly influenced by a fraternity. That fraternity has steered America for much of its history. Otherwise common ideals fracture quite easily under duress.

Probably that's what Adam had in mind. A family based institution culling certain ideals that serve as the guiding light for the company.

_Nat_• 7 years ago

Does anyone know what sort of "moral compass" Neumann may've been imagining his great-great-granddaughter imposing in 300 years?

I mean, that's just a really weird scenario. Even ignoring the implausibility of modern offices being a thing in 300 years from now, much less being controlled by the same company, what exactly would've motivated Neumann's great-great-granddaughter to walk into an office space in which she'd apparently be an unknown stranger to critique the behavior of someone in it?

To be clear, I'm not asking for someone to make this sound reasonable -- just, what sort of scenario, reasonable or otherwise, might Neumann have been imagining here?

__i___ii____• 7 years ago

I think the simple explanation here is that he's just an idiot.

md_• 7 years ago

In fairness, this is kind of how people expected great media dynasties (like the Bancrofts or Sulzbergers) to work. And this is also a bit weird, because while now the idea of publishers as having a critical democratic function—and being more than just profit-seekers—is well-established, fifty years ago they were also brash big businesses, a bit like tech companies now.

I guess my point is that “changing the world” vs “making a buck” seem to be weirdly in the eye of the beholder.

Neumann seems to have either believed or tried to convince others that WeWork had some sort of greater mission beyond merely short-term office space. I think it’s nuts, frankly, but this is the logical extreme of the more well-established phenomenon of trying to convince investors your food/cookie/pot-delivery website is a “tech company” to justify insane PE ratios.

I don’t know my point. Maybe there are just a lot of idiots out there. But is it the founder, the VC, or the customer who’s the idiot? Seems to generally depend upon timing.

randallsquared• 7 years ago

Sounds like it was just a fantasy, rather than a scenario with internal detail.

yalogin• 7 years ago

Says the guy who used company money to buy real estate and then lease hem back to the company.

Only a crook can say these kinds of preachy things.

signa11• 7 years ago

'Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash.'

- lazarus long (time-enough-for-love, r.a.h)

gigatexal4• 7 years ago

Like what Christian Bale did in Batman begins?

kuon• 7 years ago

After seeing a lot of headlines on HN I finally understood that WeWork is a company and not some sort of US institution or some communist worker union (no pun intended, we have those in Europe).

Hamuko2• 7 years ago

If Neumann is to be believed, WeWork is no mere company.

TheOtherHobbes2• 7 years ago

If the trend in current valuations is to be believed, it's not even a company.

Jerry2• 7 years ago

This is also an interesting one:

WSJ: WeWork Founder Mixed Spiritual Group With Business

https://www.wsj.com/articles/wework-founder-mixed-spiritual-...

baybal2• 7 years ago

Very much like a Jobs, Musk, or Holmes styled persona. They have a very peciliar way to cultivate their image among very trusting people.

Just have a conversation with a kid working for a client about all those guys. In conversation about Mr. Musk: "If somebody gives you $1.8B credit in cash, and you still manage to screw up, you must have been doing something wrong"

How do you call them in America? "New ageians?"

microtherion2• 7 years ago

Except that Jobs, to my knowledge, never tried to have his kids run Apple.

They’re still rather young, of course. For all we know, in 5 years Reed Jobs will ride up to Apple Park on a white stallion, wielding a sword he pulled from the SF Bay…

shubhamjain3• 7 years ago

I know founders can sometimes be eccentric, but for Adam it's just delusion and that's well evident from his first venture [1].

Working out of his Tribeca apartment, he started Krawlers, which sought to make baby clothes with knee pads to make crawling more comfortable. The slogan, he has said: “Just because they don’t tell you, doesn’t mean they don’t hurt.”

Are founders like Adam really incapable of seeing obvious holes in their ideas? Or they just conveniently ignore them?

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-is-not-the-way-everybody-b...

rabbitonrails• 7 years ago

Steve Jobs is turning in his grave at this and other comments on this post.

TrackerFF• 7 years ago

The answer is narcissism.

If you've ever worked or lived with someone that suffers from NPD, you'll know that their self-image is infallible. No mater how half-baked their ideas are, they truly, truly believe that it's the greatest thing ever.

This only gets amplified when they succeed at something. Even more so when being surrounded by yes men and sycophants.

dmitryminkovsky• 7 years ago

I don’t get what you’re saying. This seems like a good idea and a good tagline for our times.

zb• 7 years ago

Babies don't have (ossified) kneecaps - their knees are already padded. And, as 100% of parents will agree, babies will definitely, definitely tell you when they hurt.

goatinaboat3• 7 years ago

Have you ever met a baby? They are extremely vocal about even the slightest discomfort.

IAmGraydon2• 7 years ago

What’s the hole in this idea? I think it’s a decent idea (not a world changer) but he ran into supply chain issues. Also, WeWork is obviously having issues, but Adam did build an enterprise worth tens of billions of dollars. How are you qualified to call him delusional?

shubhamjain3• 7 years ago

Unless your house has a cemented floor, I don't really see why would babies need kneepads. Considering their weight, how much pressure would actually be on their knees? Also, considering they tend to cry at the slightest discomfort, won't they be able to tell it themselves? Undoubtedly, Adam is extremely competent to build an enterprise of that scale but he can still be delusional about the potential of his ideas.

nexus2045• 7 years ago

Seems like being able to not see the holes in your own ideas, believing your own ideas are infallible i.e. narcissism as mentioned below, are very valuable traits in a founder, at least in certain phases. To this day, I still don't get why WeWork is a thing, but it just shows me that the whole system can be hacked given enough levels of self-delusion. And often times not for the better. I mean, people mentioned in religious writings are just like us, all the same, except their headspace is somewhere far different than the average man, and their responses to external stimuli end up being completely different or uninfluenced. A bit of reality distortion field, if you will. There is certainly a phase in the beginning of founding a company where few people will believe in your idea except yourself. And sometimes maybe those beliefs need to be a bit irrational as a defense until they gain traction in reality.

Projecting a little bit here, but, I personally am the opposite, always seeing holes in everything about what I think, what I know, shooting myself down all too quickly, such that a lot of my interactions with other people seem to end up with them sympathizing for my lack of confidence but glad to see me being honest. Sometimes, I'd wish to just be a bit more of the opposite.

lordnacho• 7 years ago

The dual share class thing needs to be phased out, at least as it pertains to separating voting rights from economic rights. (Seems fine for other purposes like cross border listings.)

It's a bubble symptom that investors are happy to go with reduced influence, both wrt equity share classes as well as looser covenants on debt.

As for planning for your kids to own the company, that's pretty common.

robbiep• 7 years ago

There’s nothing wrong with setting up company structures that have radically different rights wrt. Shares; what is important is that the market prices them correctly. And the market clearly has no idea how to price the control. Look at Facebook or many of the other major tech exits that have allowed ords to be priced from a ‘control’ perspective.

The market believes in a BDFL model at the moment and is being taught a bit of a lesson

tim3333• 7 years ago

I guess if you are going to have a benevolent dictator, check they really are benevolent.

tim3333• 7 years ago

The organisation of shares is really a matter for the shareholders and many of the well known dual share class companies seem to have done well for investors. BRK, Ford, Google, Facebook. Even Uber is still valued at $54bn which is not bad for a taxi app.

awinder2• 7 years ago

Correlation is not causation, and the period of time that dual class has been used this way is not long enough to establish causation. Wait until there’s a real crisis that runs up against the dual class share issue. That’s when the wheels will come off.

cannabis_sam• 7 years ago

Noob! He needs to institute primogeniture to make sure the power stays consolidated

Agathos• 7 years ago

Ah, my favorite Crusader Kings II minigame: stitching my kingdom back together after a gavelkind succession.

seapunk• 7 years ago

I thought that it was a headline of the Onion.

danso• 7 years ago

The outlet reports that in a speech Neumann gave to employees in January of this year, footage of which it says it has viewed, Neumann is seen saying that WeWork isn’t “just controlled — we’re generationally controlled.”

Maybe Business Insider (who first reported this, but for their premium paywall offering) has some info, but I’m really curious to hear how WeWork employees, including mid level managers and executives, took this proclamation? I’m assuming some of WeWork’s workforce has some regard for the concept of meritocracy. Hearing your CEO declare that he foresees WeWork to be controlled by his bloodline for the next 300 years would seem to be off putting.

luckylion6• 7 years ago

Hearing your CEO declare that he foresees WeWork to be controlled by his bloodline for the next 300 years would seem to be off putting.

Unless you're that deep into the cult that you actually believe in him being the prophet and you're calmed by the thought that his eternal consciousness will stand watch and defend the company from outside influence.

xwdv• 7 years ago

So imagine Niander Wallace from Bladerunner 2049, CEO of Wallace Corp, whose headquarters is a massive pyramid building about 2 miles tall and has plans of expanding business to other worlds.

Now imagine instead of doing something important such as solving the world’s food shortage or building replicants, Wallace Corp simply rented out office space to fledgling startups, and now you will have some idea of the future Adam Neumann envisioned for himself.

JohnJamesRambo3• 7 years ago

More human than human indeed.

gigatexal4• 7 years ago

The more we learn about this guy the more I can’t wait for him to ride the wave into obscurity and irrelevance except for in the immortal pages of case studies of what not to do.

mister_hn• 7 years ago

Immortal page of "how to ride an unicorn to death"

et2o• 7 years ago

Well, he still made it out as a billionaire.

goatinaboat3• 7 years ago

He looks set to walk away with $700m regardless. He deserves a chapter of his own in How To Sucker A VC.

gigatexal4• 7 years ago

Or the immortal page for the definition of megalomania

75dvtwin• 7 years ago

Agreed.

I also use this opportunity to learn how these con artists present themselves.

So watching interviews with them to learn their verbal and physical expressions (and people around them).

This is one particular interview I find useful in the above context.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/01/14/watch-cnbcs-full-inter...

Between this and another con artist (Elizabeth Holms, Therano's founder), there a representative sample developing.

jeffdavis• 7 years ago

Generally speaking, people know how to spot a con artist intuitively. The difficulty is figuring out who is part of the con, and who is a mark. Sometimes one person is both, or changes from partner to mark overnight.

pmart1233• 7 years ago

When you are more charismatic than the actor sitting next to you...

I love Ashton's response to why he isn't invested in WeWork though.

johnsimer• 7 years ago

What mannerisms are indicative that he's a con artist? Just seems like a good public speaker to me

I'm not sure how by just solely looking at people's mannerisms/behavior without evaluating what they are saying, I'd be able to detect con artistry

neopallium• 7 years ago

I wonder if a database of past videos of these people (after the truth is known) and machine learning would be able to make a bullshit/con detector? Maybe the same could be done with old PR news from companies that fail to deliver (pump and dump). Would ML be able to detect if the person truly believes what they are pushing?

curyous• 7 years ago

What not to do? He made $700m, who doesn't want to do that?

timwaagh• 7 years ago

There is not really anything wrong with having a family business. Many of the German automobile makers are run that way. In this day and age where pump-and-dump short term trading often prevails, the security benefits of limiting the power of public shares often seem worth considering. Indeed the market has spoken on Wework, as it always does, but it had little to do with this. It had to do with him flying around in things the company could not afford.

deelly• 7 years ago

Same goes for politic, yes? Because "in this day and age where pump-and-dump short term trading often prevails, the security benefits of limiting the power of public shares often seem worth considering."

zelly2• 7 years ago

Monarchy is really underrated.

anoncake• 7 years ago

I certainly would prefer to live under a heritable monarch than a bunch of anonymous external shareholders. Of course any kind of autocracy is a gross violation of the rights of everyone living under it. But this is capitalism so democracy isn't even an option.

throwaway7446782• 7 years ago

Well it's a bit like trying to "have your cake and eat it": if you want to run a family company, fine, but you can't ask the markets for capital and yet keep the control! Those dual class of shares have always seem odd to me; I mean, I kind of understand the point for your average young startup - where the voting power somehow represents the risk everyone took, and you don't want to destabilize the company. For a mature company, the justification is less clear.

prebrov• 7 years ago

Why not? Markets are interested in capital gains and profit sharing, not necessarily steering the wheel directly.

How is it wrong for a founder to take a smaller cut of the profit in exchange for more power?

Founders (individuals) want a voice in their companies, and how much money does one need anyway? Investors (usually institutions) want to make money, and they need lots of it.

Seems like a fair trade.

ryanmarsh• 7 years ago

If I’m not mistaken there are several large public US companies with a significant (or majority) control held by family members of the founders. Isn’t Walmart one? I think Ford was mostly controlled by family for a long time too.

I’m not saying I agree with nepotism in public companies, just saying there’s precedent.

ISL2• 7 years ago

Dual class structures are easier for investors to swallow in good times. When things go bad, those investors will discover the downsides.

I own shares in two dual-class companies:

Berkshire is one, and there, the dual class nature has the effect of giving more-serious/rich investors more votes. The coming century will test whether that is a good idea.

Starrett is the other; there the dual class structure is designed to protect a once-family business that is still run by the family. To me, at present, it is a feature, not a bug. Without the dual-class, Starrett probably would have been bought out in a hostile takeover/leveraged buyout. Instead, the company endures, with a long-term vision. The coming decades will test my optimistic thesis.

the_resistence• 7 years ago

They "work" because the real owners "Dallas Police Retirement Fund" et. al. are too far away from the situation to understand the screwjob.

bronz2• 7 years ago

well there is something wrong if you want the company to be run well. if leaders of a company are selected by any other trait than merit, then the company will under-perform. if the company has a monopoly, that means a long and drawn out period of that particular market not achieving what it could or maybe even damaging peoples lives if the market is important.

luckylion6• 7 years ago

That's not the point of control. Think of it as the company selecting their CEOs as any other company would, but the family that owns the company setting guidelines, like, even if we could use our tech in military projects as well, we're not going to get involved in military projects. They don't run the day to day business, but give them guidelines.

navigatesol2• 7 years ago

There is not really anything wrong with having a family business.

Shouldn't building a business be step one, though? Neuman didn't do that; he gambled a bunch of VC money on real estate.

velox_io• 7 years ago

I don't believe this for a second. This is a hybrid fine-art / Ponzi scheme. Investors pay over the odds to inflate the valuation, hoping that more will follow after them, raising the value further, repeating the cycle.

cryptica• 7 years ago

If someone as dumb as Neumann can go so far, how smart are all the people leading all other tech unicorns and corporations?

thosakwe• 7 years ago

Is there a specific reason that WeWork comes up so much on HN? I've never heard of it otherwise, but I see at least one story on it hit the front page a week.

unreal375• 7 years ago

People see it as a "schadenfreude" story. How the hottest of the hot unicorn startups got it's due. A great story to repeat over and over and over.

bronz2• 7 years ago

for the same reason theranos used to come up all the time. because investment and hype didnt appear to align with the true value of what the company in question was offering.

stjohnswarts5• 7 years ago

There really isn't much to compare to theranos, as it was based completely on a lie. The only thing in common here is just a crappy CEO. WeWork has a solid premise, it's just highly over-leveraged and over-valued.

alex_young• 7 years ago

Why is this news? This guy has been pretty solidly shamed, removed from power, and his former company practically destroyed.

At this point it seems pretty shallow celebrating more stories of missteps here.

dredmorbius• 7 years ago

It's another detail in the picture.

It's bearing witness, if nothing else. Showing a pattern (or showing a behaviour which may prove not to be a pattern) of fraud / control / incompetence.

grepthisab• 7 years ago

This one's a bit beyond the pale. No one is upvoting mundane tabloid gossip, this is bigger because it's not something ordinary.

amiga_500• 7 years ago

I could dance on the grave of WeWork, softbank and the general "startup" culture for a little longer.

Strike up the band!

dang• 7 years ago

Please don't. Critique is welcome, but curiosity withers under repetition and internet rage is uninteresting.

brosinante• 7 years ago

Because this kind of behaviour is rife in the industry and hiding it under the carpet only because he was (eventually) removed from his position does not mean the true story does not deserve to be heard.

ycombonator• 7 years ago

WeOwn

unreal375• 7 years ago

Isn't Walmart controlled by the children of Sam Walton? [1]

"Sam Walton's heirs own over 50 percent of Walmart through their holding company Walton Enterprises and through their individual holdings. "

Where does this writer think shares go when someone dies?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart

luckylion6• 7 years ago

The difference is that they actually own those shares. This is about different kinds of shares being issued, i.e. the founder gets some that have 10 times the voting power of normal shares. He now only needs more than 5% of the company to provide the majority in votes.

bagacrap• 7 years ago

510 < 951

unreal375• 7 years ago

But the story is talking about "generational ownership" of companies, that pass control to heirs when the founder dies.

Whether through dual class shares, or retaining a large % stake, it's the same. The Ford heirs control Ford. The Walton heirs control Walmart. There are many, many companies in this world controlled by the children and grandchildren of the founder. That's never been a huge problem.

I just think this Techcrunch story is poorly written. It's acting "shocked" that a child or grandchild of a founder could still control a company. Nothing to be shocked about there.

navigatesol2• 7 years ago

Where does this writer think shares go when someone dies?

I'll bet Sam Walton wasn't fantasizing about his children pushing people around the boardroom a couple years into Walmart...

stjohnswarts5• 7 years ago

I don't know about other countries but the USA is very very lenient on how companies split up stocks and how they condition them. Especially with LLCs. What the Walton's did is perfectly legal and no one is forcing anyone to purchase the public shares. Walmart is actually doing pretty well.

codegladiator• 7 years ago

I don't think public shamig works anymore, .... Wait, did it ever work ? Would love know know cases where it did.

BLanen• 7 years ago

The moral compass of the company

Neumann seems like a black hole of arrogance.

awaisraad• 7 years ago

"Research Reveals That Publicly Announcing Your Goals Makes You Less Likely to Achieve Them"

https://www.inc.com/melissa-chu/announcing-your-goals-makes-...

minxomat• 7 years ago

One instance where the (otherwise insultingly bad) Mitchen translation of Tao Te Ching makes sense:

The slow overcomes the fast. Let your workings remain a mystery. Just show people the results.

36 (https://terebess.hu/english/tao/mitchell.html#Kap36)

neonate• 7 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20191019022454/https://www.busin...

dblohm7• 7 years ago

Not uncommon in Canadian companies. coughBombardiercough

rpmcmurdo• 7 years ago

I am curious what their hiring strategy was. I met someone who worked there a few weeks ago at a networking event. This was after most of the bad news had broken. Wow, was he drinking the Kool Aid. I felt like I was getting an Amway or Scientology pitch (the main thought going through my mind was "you should really be using this opportunity to look for a job"). It made me wonder if they systematically hired people who were easy marks, like the type of people cults would look for, and did they have a hiring protocol for screening them.

stjohnswarts5• 7 years ago

I like the idea of WeWork but my god it's not worth anywhere near what they were trying to IPO for, also their CEO is an idiot. Good riddance.

Adam Neumann planned for his children and grandchildren to control WeWork

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