Podcast
Pivot
It explored why many experienced investors heavily invested in WeWork, a company described as a real estate business disguised as a tech startup, and how the financial sector came to believe in its immense value before its spectacular collapse. It highlighted how smart individuals can make poor decisions and the role of charismatic leadership in influencing investment choices.
I think that the sort of like short version of the book and what we found was like trying to follow the money because we knew a lot about WeWork beforehand. And so this was sort of like, why did so ma...
— Episode: Tokyo Games Can't Catch a Break, Klobuch...
Episode: Tokyo Games Can't Catch a Break, Klobuchar Targets...
It explored why many experienced investors heavily invested in WeWork, a company described as a real estate business disguised as a tech startup, and how the financial sector came to believe in its immense value before its spectacular collapse. It highlighted how smart individuals can make poor decisions and the role of charismatic leadership in influencing investment choices.
I think that the sort of like short version of the book and what we found was like trying to follow the money because we knew a lot about WeWork beforehand. And so this was sort of like, why did so many smart investors and a lot of them actually were smart investors and CEOs of the largest banks get very personally involved and bullish on WeWork and how did like, the whole financial sector convince itself that the country's most valuable startup was really actually just a mirage, right?
And then another facet on the investment side was just like, there was a lot of stuff that seemed really dumb on the surface. It's like, oh, SoftBank commits to spending $4 billion after a 12 minute tour and in the second largest startup investment ever.
And so you could get the, that plus the charisma of this really magnetic salesman, Adam Newman would mix with a fear of missing out. And so then suddenly you had Fidelity and Tiro price and SoftBank convincing themselves that, oh yeah, well Adam's really charismatic. He convinced me in the room that this thing is a tech company and is gonna just like take over the world in a few years.
It's modeled after Bezos and Jobs neither of them had founder control. Bezos just don't 40% of the stock and Jobs got fired.
And so that like stuff like this is gonna happen. There's gonna be other we works where if it's not Tequila and Jets it's gonna be like rum and yachts and there's gonna be really big implosions if you just have this concept where founders are immortal beings and you give them full control.