It’s worth challenging the cool norm/mantra that “it’s OK for startups to lose money…” If a business’s financial model is broken scaling it does not fix the P&L “WeWork will never ever, in its short history, generate a profit, let alone the tens of billions in revenues necessary to generate anywhere near the $3 billion in earnings required to (even then generously) value the company at £47 billion.” It’s not unusual for sensible investors and management teams such as Softbank to get duped by these mantras, but it does require a different skill set to resolve this. This is our comfort zone www.winningthinking.uk highlights these flaws and gives the team the tools to avoid these scenarios ever taking root essential at due diligence, post-investment and during portfolio management to exit. I dont think Softbank can afford to lose their $20bn? 

 

https://medium.com/@henry.hawksberry/is-we-work-a-fraud-5b78987d3e61