What Happens When Founders Have Too Much Power?

WeWork is nine years old and losing $3B per year. Let that sink in for a moment, first, the term startup is rarely applied to a company which is nine years old, those are small businesses, growth companies, or big businesses depending on how fast they grow. Why because VC projected exits are five years or less in typical tech sectors. Second, the only industry where a company losing $3B per year can survive is technology and WeWork is not a tech company.

WeWork could argue they are a new type of real estate venture. Adam Neumann was able to sell investors a story that WeWork is a tech company and apparently, they took him at his word with little or no due diligence. I really would love to hear that pitch. Neumann saying “WeWork happens to need buildings just like Uber happens to need cars, just like Airbnb happens to need apartments” is silly. Sorry dude that makes zero sense. Why? Because Uber doesn’t own cars and Airbnb doesn’t own homes. WeWork customers aren’t bringing their own building or office furniture to work. WeWork is IWG with beer!

Digging deeper WeWork changed from the traditional coworking model to look much more like IWG, formerly Regus a few years ago. Why? continue reading https://medium.com/@joy_randels/what-happens-when-founders-have-too-much-power-6c8be072fe60