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Tag: #WeWork

Tech’s Bad Hair Day

Tech’s Bad Hair Day

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Photo by Birger Strahl on Unsplash

No one wants to say it out loud, but is the latest tech bubble bursting? While the Web 1.0 demise was a result of too much money chasing too much youth and inexperience, this time around it’s different: It’s a result of a different kind of huckster class which has woven itself into the fabric of tech.

And many investors were complicit.

WeWorked It

Yes, he did, ‘he’ being Adam Neumann, the company’s charismatic founder/showman who somehow convinced investors that WeWork was a tech company, and not just another real estate play. Tech startups were drawn to the space, but being able to rent office space using an online system doesn’t make you a tech company. There was WeWork Labs, but it was something of an accelerator by any other name and which other accelerator considers itself a tech company?  WeWork’s rapid expansion into new spaces and more cities did grab attention, as they’d almost instantly be 90+% full, it would be announced. Although the play was to rent ten floors, build out three, fill them, and as for the floors that hadn’t been converted? Details! Kick the can down the road and stick to the plan to show hockey stick growth. Read More...

Where in the World Is Travis Kalanick?

Where in the World Is Travis Kalanick?

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If your reaction to the above was ‘who cares?,’ do not pass go, do not collect $200. How can we so quickly forget one of the seminal unicorns of Web 2.0.

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of four of the 11 counts of fraud brought against her (three of the charges were dismissed and the jury was deadlocked on the other four, so it may not be over yet), and while she may serve (a reportedly fairly negligible amount of) jailtime, did this send chills through Silicon Valley, which at this point has become a generic term, like ‘Band-Aid’ and ‘google,’ considering that Report: Californians Leaving for Texas So Rapidly, U-Haul Ran Out of Trucks?

Will this verdict be a wake-up call? The Elizabeth Holmes verdict: Silicon Valley’s reckoning or a single bad apple? Will the guilty verdict change “fake it ’till you make it” culture?, the Mercury News asked. “Experts say the guilty verdict and the potential prison sentence it carries are sure to send a chill down the spines of entrepreneurs and investors — especially in the health care field — and prompt them to tread carefully. But it may not be the major reckoning that some have been clamoring for in Silicon Valley, where criminal charges remain rare and money continues to flow.” Read More...

Dudes, just dudin’ it up: Softbank and the Bro Culture

Dudes, just dudin’ it up: Softbank and the Bro Culture

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Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

The Softbank Vision Fund hasn’t had an easy time of it and we use this as an example of the bro-cul (bro-culture) focus that might have contributed to some of their current woes.

They’re not alone. Simply more heavily tracked by the tech media.

First, there was WeWork, which very publicly and unceremoniously came crashing down (time will tell if new CEO Sandeep Mathrani, who comes from the real estate sector and has a successful turnaround history, according to the Bloomberg News, will save the company), despite CEO Masayoshi Son’s abundant/blind faith in ousted founder/tech-bro Adam Neumann (we are aware that WeWork is not nor was it ever a tech company, but Neumann did manage to spin it that way). Read More...

The Seed Funding Conundrum

The Seed Funding Conundrum

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Image by skeeze from Pixabay

We work with entrepreneurs all the time, and while there may be no lack of interest in the startup, it still may take time to close the round. Why is that?

As Anne Lee Skates @anneleeskates noted: 1/ There are now 1000+ micro VC firms, >4x more than 10 years ago, most of these seed funds. Despite this trend, it can still be hard to raise a seed round. Why? Few firms lead rounds, and many wait for a lead investor to commit before investing.

Said Rob Go from NextView Ventures (The Seed Funding Market Is Less Crowded Than You Think), leading a round involves a lot of heavy lifting: “Part of it is the mechanics of putting together the actual financing. This includes working with founders to determine the right valuation, negotiating the other substantive terms of a round, and typically writing one of the largest checks.  But more important than the check or term sheet is the moral authority and responsibility of building independent conviction for catalyzing the rest of the round. Read More...

Will “creepy” be the new norm for the 2020’s?

Will “creepy” be the new norm for the 2020’s?

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Since it’s the beginning of a new decade, as a starting point, we thought we’d take a look at 2010 and see what the sentiment was then. Eric Schmidt set the tone when he famously said, “There is what I call the creepy line. The Google policy on a lot of things is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.”

Said Business Insider, “If you don’t cross the creepy line, we suppose by definition you aren’t creepy. But making it a policy to go right up to that line “on a lot of things” is, well, something a lot like creepy.” So, where do we stand now and as for the creepy line crossed – how often and in how many ways was it breached, if not completely ignored? Some instances from the past year and the past decade:

The Digital Arms Race Read More...

The 20-Teens Were the Decade of the Unicorn. Let’s Look at the Ugly.

The 20-Teens Were the Decade of the Unicorn. Let’s Look at the Ugly.

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Real unicorns were pretty ugly, too

The final few weeks of any year – what to speak of a decade – tend to give us pause to reflect on, in the words of Alexander Graham Bell, “What hath God wrought?”

We realize that, in terms of historic industries and major industrial transitions, tech is relatively new to the planet. Every major industrial shift prior to tech has done precisely what tech has done: basically, created efficiencies. But given the breadth, scope and speed at which tech has engulfed the global landscape, forgiving founders for their youthful business missteps has tended to create those efficiencies at great expense to some, and in many cases, quite a few members of the planet’s population.

Uber entered the ride-hailing space without consideration to local regulations (Ask forgiveness, not permission) and scaled quickly, following yet another tenet of technology: move fast and break things. Uber did make ride-hailing more convenient and, surge pricing aside, less expensive. However, their drivers were not all properly vetted, which led to, in several cases, criminal allegations. But Uber skated a fine line, insisting that it is an ‘app,’ and that their drivers were not employees – the same argument they made in order to avoid paying drivers employee benefits. Job creation? Uber did contribute to the swelling underclass: the money mostly went in one direction. The Next Web summed it up pretty well back in 2017: Uber: The good, the bad, and the really, really ugly. Given Uber’s (current) legal challenges around the world, it seems to be going to the lawyers. Read More...

Fake It Til You Make It 2.0

Fake It Til You Make It 2.0

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More and more we’re seeing founders without so much as a plan to profitability raise outrageous amounts of venture capital based mostly on, from what we can tell, hubris, being mediagenic and what may arguably be either a Napoleonic complex, a touch of bipolar syndrome, or some combination of the two.

There seems to be a clear pathway to success in technology without having to be bothered with showing profits or even having a viable or clearly defined product, but given the downfall of Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos), Travis Kalanick (Uber), and most lately Adam Neumann (WeWork), that pathway hasn’t been clearly defined, or refined. But we have been paying attention, and we believe we have come up with 12 basic rules for success in technology – even with little or simple tech required: Read More...

Unicorn, Shmoonicorn. Is It a Fantasy?

Unicorn, Shmoonicorn. Is It a Fantasy?

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Image by Julieta Mascarella from Pixabay

If we noticed anything this week, it was that it may be time to rethink unicorns and hockey stick growth. We know what investors look for: TAM (Total Addressable Market) and it had better be big, as it’s all about ROI.

WeWork is planning their IPO, and after years of expansion and so-called hockey stick growth, the cracks are showing. Business Insider laid out The history of WeWork’s meteoric valuation rise — and fall, including “the coworking startup’s governance, real estate holdings, succession plan, employee retention, and questionable patent purchases have spooked potential investors. WeWork has amended its SEC filings twice already to address several of those concerns, but it might not be enough.

“According to a Reuters report, WeWork will target a $10 billion valuation for its IPO, drastically lower than the $47 billion valuation it last fetched in private markets. A $10 billion public valuation would be only slightly above the total amount of funding WeWork has taken in as a private company: about $8.39 billion since 2011, according to Pitchbook data.” Read More...

Social versus Real Life: Where’s the Balance?

Social versus Real Life: Where’s the Balance?

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The reports are in. People are leaving Facebook, and/or spending less time on the platform. It seems that for all of Mark Zuckerberg’s claims that Facebook’s intention is to bring the world closer together, people may well be finding each other online, but it seems that they aren’t necessarily liking what they find.

Or that the online experience simply isn’t enough. Read More...