Venture Crapital

So yeah, I decided with WeWork and $TSLAQ and assorted unicorn b.s (like TIL that Softbank put $300M into a dog walking app can you believe that?) even though I’m busy with normal things, I am rekindling VCrap. On a whim I decided to look up a company I heard about a few years ago, a hot start-up that secured $6.75M series A …to rent Legos by the month. That was in March 2014. In Feb,…

As per Bloomberg: WeWork desperately scrambles to salvage an IPO being spurned by the investing public by floating a “governance shakeup” although any reforms would still leave Neumann with total control over what happens because of the share structure. Also, the article opines that nobody is sure what governance changes remain to be made, given that “The company already has taken some steps, such as adding a woman to its board and having Neumann return…

I had all but mothballed this project because, frankly, I was neglecting it. But lately I’ve been feeling like some kind of inflection point has been reached. When multiple unicorns are underwater or in danger of going underwater on their IPOs ($TLRY, $SNAP, $UBER, that other one…. ) or at least looking like they should be under water ($BYND) and then WeWork looking like it may not even make it to the gate…. combined with yield curve…

For some reason the investing public seems to be giving the WeWork IPO a suboptimal reception. After multiple reductions in the IPO sticker price, from 40B down to 20B and now perhaps even less, the lead investor Softbank is recommending that the IPO be shelved. For some reason when the CEO cashes out 700 million ahead of the IPO in a company whose losses exceed total revenues people aren’t overly eager to put in more money….

The WSJ today reported on how WeWork co-founder and CEO Andrew Neumann has extracted $700,000,000 in share sales and loans from his money-losing, pre-IPO unicorn. So far Neumann has purchased 4 homes around New York, funded an elementary school his kid goes to, and paid $14,000,000 for a 13,000 squarre foot crib in the Bay area that has a guitar-shaped romper room. He also buys properties and leases them back to WeWork. All very confidence instilling for…