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Comment by tantalor | Hacker News Reader

Yes, and 5 years and 1 Chapter 11 bankruptcy later, WeWork is now (EBITDA) profitable.

And they've gone private now.

Nobody was saying subleasing offices wasn’t a business. It was just WeWork’s setup that was untenable and ultimately insolvent.

Similarly nobody is saying AI can’t be a successful business, but here too the big labs have dug themselves into a giant hole such that a bankruptcy reset may ultimately be the only way out of it. Time will tell.

was it though? sounds like wework had the last laugh. is bankruptcy part of the strategy? people like you call insolvency the end of the journey. the journey is whatever you want it to be.

The corporate entity called WeWork still exists, sure. If you were a pre-bankruptcy investor or equity holder in WeWork you got wiped out. The management and capital that went into the first iteration is gone.

did they though? you're kind of assuming that they were. i'm confident so-and-so employee common holder got wiped out, but everyone? no.

Anyone involved in WeWork 1.0 got wiped out. So there was nobody laughing there. WeWork as a concept lived on, but suggest you read how bankruptcy works.

Well, not wiped out. In bankruptcy, lenders become the new equity holders. But yes, a major haircut on the loaned funds.

The investors and employee equity holders got wiped out. Creditors are generally not seen as investors, at least until they walk away owning the thing after bankruptcy.

EBITDA profitable is not a substantial vote of confidence.

and are much much smaller than they were at IPO

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