The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 13 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Rajaram: Benchmark made money on WeWork by investing early
“Even in V work benchmark made money. Genchmark made money at WeWork because they invested early enough.”
Vlad Magdalin: Contractual board control is an illusion as startups scale
“The more a company scales, all that stuff gets away from you anyway, even if on paper you own more of the company. I mean, you see the stuff that we work, you see like Travis having to leave Uber. Even though they technically legally had control, like what rea…”
Lemkin: Current tech era will see 20+ nine-figure founder cash-outs
“But it makes sense there should be double digits in this era, right? There should be 10, 20 founders who walk away with nine figures whether they're WeWorks or Hoppins, there's gotta be 20 or more of them.”
Pishevar: Passed on WeWork over flawed business model
“I passed on that company, that was ironically another benchmark company. I passed on that company because it didn't, I remember the dot com crash and all the office buildings being cleared up. And I was like, I don't get this business model. You don't own, own…”
Kevin Ryan acquired Meetup from WeWork for $10M during early COVID
“Three years ago, I bought the company Meetup for ten million, because WeWork was getting rid of it, and had panicked, and COVID had just started.”
Meetup Pivoted From $20M Loss to $6M Profit After WeWork Buyout
“We also went from a 130 people the day I bought it to 90 people a week later, which is the right amount. Today it has probably 80, or when we sold it had 82 people, and it went from a twenty million dollar loss on thirty-two million in revenue, the, when we wo…”
Stebbings: Benchmark returned roughly 640x on Uber versus 25x on WeWork
“Uber made benchmark roughly 640 X versus around 25 X with WeWork.”
Dishotsky: WeWork set the stage for modern PropTech
“And I think WeWork was the first one that really sort of set the stage. Before that, there was really only like LoopNet and Zillow and Renfin. And, you know, those were really taking a very, you know, web two point O approach to prop tech of, Just being sort o…”
Real estate tech represents $250B+ in public and private market value
“So if you just look at, you know, two of the three largest unicorns today are real estate and hospitality tech. We work in Airbnb after Uber. And then beyond them, there's another two hundred and fifty billion of real estate and hospitality tech companies out …”
WeWork was conceived as a global entrepreneur network from its inception
“Adam Miguel's vision was always to build a company that was going to be this global professional network of entrepreneurs and small business owners”
Claure offered Sandeep Mathrani the WeWork CEO job 30 minutes into a board interview
“And in one of my board interviews, I met Sandeep. I was interviewing for a board member. And I tell you, 30 minutes into the interview, I said, let me stop. I said, you should not be a board member. You should be the CEO of WeWork.”
WeWork tests and iterates on physical spaces directly with live members
“And we learned that people were more resilient than we thought, which actually led us down the path of now we're able to test and iterate on physical spaces inside of WeWork with real members sometimes because we know they're willing to sort of participate in …”
WeWork's second location opened with unfinished construction for 220 members
“In that moment, a story that I can't think about is, is the way that our members handled when we moved to our second We work labs location, which was on Varick street. And we walked into the building on opening day and construction wasn't done. We had 220 peop…”