WeWork and remembering lessons of the past

Yesterday I wrote: “Your business must make a profit”, finishing that article with a warning about WeWork.

Today, more on that, starting with remembering the lessons of the past and then some alarm bells I am now hearing ring loudly in my ears about WeWork.

I remember the 1999–2000 tech bubble. A few things I remember from then

• I remember people pitching again and again for us to invest in them, feeling first bemused and then frustrated that they only talked about giving us the opportunity to “get in early” before the next round of funding, no mention of the business ever making money
• I remember when people stopped talking about traditional metrics such as (gasp) the P:E ratio, as after all the markets had inflated to the point where traditional PE ratios made no sense
• I remember when people talked about and literally published bestsellers saying that the economic cycle was dead and that we’d never again have a recession.
• I remember when Nasdaq hit 5000 in March 2000 (it took over 15 years to get back there from that point). That was when the bubble went “pop”

So, some lessons from the past:

• We will always have recessions
• When people start making up new metrics and…