WeWork Gets a Visit from Financial Reality
&gt;The Gulf investors backing the Vision Fund seem to have decided that WeWork is not a tech bet but simply an aggressive punt on real estate.<p>This is the bogey man of a huge number of current &#x27;tech startups&#x27; - What if it turns out Tesla really are a car company! Or if We Work are actually an office rental company! OR <i>gasp</i> Uber is a cab company! (1)<p>We now have a glut of companies operating in traditional markets that have valuations that would indicate they&#x27;ll be as big or bigger than their biggest competitors. IWG is a comparable company to WeWork, has £2.35n revenue and £1.95Bn market cap. Wework has slightly lower revenue but is being lined up for a £20Bn valuation. Not only this, but WeWork are going to learn about the cyclical nature of office rental revenue.<p>The key for these companies is to show concrete indicators that their business is actually different from the companies they&#x27;re disrupting and We Work has done an absolutely rubbish job of that so far.<p>(1) I want to be clear I don&#x27;t think all those examples have nothing to differentiate them, but it&#x27;s closer than some people might like to think.