The hipster company that wants to save the world
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 4 September 2019
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is WeWork an exciting new tech firm with lofty ideals worth $47bn, or is it just an over-priced office rental business?
Manuela Saragosa speaks to two sceptics. Rett Wallace of investment advisory firm Triton says the prospectus for WeWork's forthcoming stock market flotation is long on aspirational zen, but rather short on hard financial details. Meanwhile Vijay Govindarajan, business strategy professor at Dartmouth College, is unimpressed by the company's attempt to brand itself as a tech firm.
But plenty of WeWork's tenants are convinced of the value of the service they provide, among them Matt Hubert of software engineers Bitmatica, although he wishes his landlord would cut some of the philosophical waffle and focus on what they are good at.
(Picture: WeWork member works in her office space at WeWork Union Station; Credit: Andy Cross/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Manuel Zaragoza. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:05.9 | Coming up, the $47 billion company that says it wants to elevate the world's consciousness. |
| 0:11.9 | Do I see them as kind of this lofty company that's going to change the way that we all see work? |
| 0:17.5 | I don't know about that. We need to see through the nonsense. |
| 0:21.6 | We're talking about a property firm called WeWork. It markets itself as a tech company. But when is a tech company, |
| 0:28.0 | really a tech company? And is WeWork just too hip for its own good? We look at this document to see, |
| 0:34.3 | have they given us the facts that we need to see if this is a good investment? |
| 0:38.0 | And did they? |
| 0:39.3 | No. |
| 0:41.0 | That's here on Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:47.0 | Let's say you want to sell shares in your company on a global stock exchange. |
| 0:52.0 | How would you pitch your business to prospective investors? |
| 0:55.2 | Perhaps you'd spell out how your company's set to grow, what makes your business a good proposition. |
| 1:01.0 | But nah, boring. How about this instead? |
| 1:07.0 | How about saying our mission is to elevate the world's consciousness |
| 1:16.3 | or we dedicate this to the energy of we, |
| 1:20.3 | greater than any of us, but inside each of us. |
| 1:26.3 | Seriously, that is literally how a company called WeWork has been selling itself to Wall Street |
| 1:31.5 | in recent months. It's irritated quite a number in the investment community and prompted a few |
| 1:36.9 | sniggers too. But it's also raised questions about what exactly a firm needs to do and be to qualify |
| 1:43.8 | as a tech sector business, to ride the |
| 1:46.4 | Silicon Valley hipster hype, so to speak. Plus, how do you value a company anyway? WeWork |
... |
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