"Underestimate the We Company at your own peril, they throw so much shit at the wall to get you to buy more"

Try for a moment to forget what happened in the last three days because here is Stanley Conway asking

Is the We Company the world’s biggest hyped unicorn or the most undervalued company ever?

You bet it is because

"WeWork is really a physical network company with multiple software businesses with a real estate component... Who cares about the immediate cash flow, the impending recession/real estate collapse. If you can harness the power of 600,000+ members and offer more services and suck more dollars out their pocket you don’t need to be better, just here.

WeWork is a place where uber-cool, Millennials, and now full-fledged corporations can park their employees in fashionable and well-designed offices that stimulate interaction and foster community."

Let that sink in. Park employees in fashionable and well-designed offices ... foster community. Now rev up your imagination and get the wine ready. Soak that cognitive dissonance in, will you!

"We Company could be the next Amazon, yes hear me out, don’t hate yet.

“Carpe vinum.” – Grab the Wine, we are going to need it..."

Let that cognitive dissonance soak in and expect

"WeWork to start offering bundled services such as job search, human resources, payroll, skills training, cloud computing, venture capital as a service, healthcare, travel & accommodation, and corporate messaging.

Everyone underestimates the We Company, do so at your own peril - wait until they start expanding into software. Does any successful company just sell one product or service? No, they throw so much shit at the wall to get you to buy more."

After you have seen so much shit thrown at the walls of those well-designed offices, use

"first-principal thinking, just apply some reasoning from the bottom up. We Company now has a giant customer base around the world. They have a unique insight into how small and medium sized business run and what pain points they face.

Now what other pain points can We Company solve and sell?

Now imagine this suite of software solutions deployed across the 600,000 WeWork members, great this will probably bring in a bunch of top line revenue."

WeWork, or rather the We Company, is actually astronomical.

"New businesses are like the same cosmic crap starting to lump together and forming rocks and planets. Right now, We Company is a lump of iron spinning around slowly taking shape.

I digress, but now that the room is spinning let’s do a little thought experiment.

Let’s try some second order thinking for once in your life, stay with me here - pretend you have a time machine and go to the future - 1 year, 5 years or 20 years out- what’s We Company going to look like then?"

Back on the road you discover an alligator devouring all things real estate and then some.

"Come on, hop into my DeLorean Marty...

Real Estate Alligator"

Those landlords are basically toast and do not have realized it yet.

"Landlords who lease to WeWork don’t realize it yet in a down-market they don’t own the buildings, WeWork does.

It is a stealthy real estate alligator, lurking in the shallow water just waiting to snap at the right time."

Business building is jumping off a cliff, assembling your wings midflight, got that! Forget about terrain approaching.

"Reid Hoffman says a startup is like jumping off a cliff and building a plane on the way down. WeWork doesn’t change that experience, nothing will, it’s always a challenge, but WeWork will give you access to better tools and more wingspan, but flap god damn it, FLAP!!!

There are all these cool features of WeWork no one talks about but are insanely helpful. They have a giant internal directory – a network- you post a need for marketing services, SEO or legal and 􏰎immediately you can get qualified people answering you and offering their services at great prices – worldwide – all member of WeWork. There is a sense of trust or implied “don’t fuck this person over” in the network because you are in a type of club. How do you do that currently? You mine your network and hope to get a qualified person. You post on LinkedIn and hope someone answers. All in-efficient ways. Imagine WeWork opening this network to the public - It’s UpWork + LinkedIn in one place. It’s a job board to find new opportunities, it’s a contract work venue and a way to make new contacts."

DNA and CRSPR, that's what WeWork is all about.

"DNA, the incredible software that runs us, is lacking in most businesses. Most companies are just shitty aggregations of people with competing vectors moving in different directions trying to service some legacy clients.

WeWork is like CRISPR for business - you hang around and your company can get DNA inserted into it, you can rally around a motto – hustle harder– assemble, test, flap!, FLAP HARDER!"

And where there is DNA, bagels can't be far away...and neither Einstein, or was it Pixie dust? Who cares when you are on a roll.

"Every Monday at 57thStreet and Lexington Ave WeWork serves bagels for the entire floor and my friend who is standing in line meets a woman is raising money for what will be a billion-dollar company. You aren’t going to do that at Regus or anywhere else. WeWork creates a physical venue where you can interact. ...

Einstein said it best: Everything is energy and that's all there is to it. Or Maybe it’s Pixie dust that gives WeWork that vibe, either way WeWork has it by the boatloads."

VCs will be like dinosaurs. Gone!

"WeWork will be Y Combinator on steroids and will up-end the venture capital space on how startups get funded. WeWork will be a elephant of in the Venture Capital sector and eventually all the current VCs will be flies buzzing around piles of elephant shit as WeWork dominates this eco-system."

And gone worldwide.

"Where there is a smart entrepreneur in Brussels, Mexico City or Mumbai they all can connect and collaborate at a WeWork in Austin– and get funded. WeWork can analyze the global startup space better, see more opportunities and ride big trend waves all using in-house data. Now imagine when Softbank plugs into that matrix of startups as they gestate and WeWork gives birth to mini-unicorns. Yup. VCs"

There's more. No need to crawl through a pipe of shit. Here's why according to Stanley:

"WeWork has already taken the pain out of opening and running an office, which is the equivalent of crawling through a Shawshank style pipe of shit."

Education. Was education mentioned so far? It will be a breeze. Fix real estate and, presto, you've fixed the shitty school experience.

"Sit back, relax and close your eyes and imagine a work where you are bringing your children from you home to your WeWork office and you are dropping them off a their WeGrow school at the base of the building. Imagine a world where it’s 20-40% cheaper than private school, the quality of education is better and the skills they learn are appropriate for the future job market. Are you telling me you aren’t going to send your children there?

It’s a gangster move, fix a shitty real estate experience, then fix a shitty school experience, house them in one building and drop your kids off as you head to the office. The tuition cost is under private school and BOOM! Suck up more consumer dollars."

Man, we totally forgot the WeWork business buddha, Adam the Neumann. He can not run on his mojo alone, Adam needs his Shakti and that's lines of credit. Relax.

"Everyone online is complaining about Adam’s borrowing habits, his line of credit, might as well complain about what type of hair gel he uses and is he Bounty paper or Scott paper towel type of guy.

Shut. The. Fuck. Up." 

Because when Adam takes a shit ... you'll find ideas in the bowl. Dig in.

"When Adam takes a dump in the morning, he leaves more good ideas behind than an average mortal has in their lifetime. This guy has a VISION and he is riding giant global trends that will push him to even higher heights - WeWork Moon, Mars perhaps?"

Is Adam somewhat fishy? NO! That's an N and an O and off into a steamy jungle.

"Adam is the Frank Lucas of American Gangsters, he is focused on one big thing, building out his distribution network, giving you little sneak peeks on his future moves but not laying it out too much, just posting up on various interesting street corners. He has a fanatical approach to getting his customers hooked on his superior product. He is going global into steamy jungles, cutting out middleman and eventually he is going to own the whole damn business."

You heard about Warren Buffett and how he raves about businesses with a moat. Well, Addam has way more inside that moat. Like a neon sign and stuff.

"They have a strongest castle, sitting up there in the tall tower with a neon sign blinking “hustle hardest” and sipping cucumber infused water, they can see 360 degrees around and all around them is One Fucking Big Moat."

You wonder what's an OFBM - One Fucking Big Moat like?

"Moats the greatest protection a company has. The We Company moat is massive, just replicating a portfolio of their scale is a giant capital suck.

The best distillation of why no one will cross the We Company moat for a long time is capital, this is an incredibly capital-intensive business. There will always be some people barbarian at the outer rim of the moat but no will seriously be able to get across and scale a wall.

Let’s assume someone tried to cross the moat and spend the capital to grow a large scale co-working company, they still have to wrestle with the We brand recognition and We economies of scale.

Let’s assume you want to try to catch up. Then what you are competing on? Price? 

The We Company value proposition will get even better."

Oh, lest we forget fintech. Easy-breezy.

"Just start with one or two floors in a building and blow it out as a hub for fintech, pop a WeLab rep in a cube and off they go. Prospective fintech disruptors tour the space of course they are going to lease, you need capital, great! How about we set you up with Bank of America to test your fintech beta. Cue central casting Bank of America guy sitting there in his suit looking for good ideas. All of corporate America is concerned someone is going flip their business upside down so go they will all go in-house find the next best ideas."

The We company will just squash the competition. How so? Just offer fresher lemonade with a twist of ginger. Perhaps throw in an avocado toast.

"Niche coworking is like adding alligators to a moat!

How is a competing co-working company going to handle that? Offer space at $2 per square foot cheaper or fresher lemonade with a twist of ginger? Throw in daily Millennial bait - avocado toast and maybe they will relocate?"

Could there be more in the offing? You kidding? A resounding YES! How you like WeSail? WeSmoke? See, you ain't seen nothing yet.

"In Summary, Hamlet said it best “We know what we are, but know not what We may be” - the future is bright and shiny for the We Company. I’m sure they are working on ideas to expand into many sectors and disrupt a variety of crappy experiences. Some ideas will suck and die and some will take flight. The WeSail idea sounded horrible but maybe there is a WeSmoke idea coming...hmmm. They are slowly building one giant global vacuum to suck up cash by relieving pain and offering a better experience for businesses."

Should you have gotten the impression by now that Stanley is mayhaps a fucking idiot on steroids ... nah.

"Full Disclosure, just because I have always wanted to write that in a semi-ironic way.

I have no idea whether what I am predicting will happen or not, I don’t work for We Company and have never been employed there and never got laid while working out there."

He seems to get a little honest finally. His coda is somewhat prosaic but sums up his intellect.

"After reading this entire post your brains are probably like scrambled eggs and you need to take a piss. Or you are pissing in your scrambled eggs."

At this point you may wonder should I really have taken a ride with this nutball in his DeLorean? Yes, you made the right decision while others fully relied on an S-1 sheet.

"As you step out my DeLorean let me leave you with a parting slap in the face. I have had the unique experience of being in a WeWork and at a competitor and experienced it first hand, which is more than I can say for all the haters – err I mean writers out there who are ripping info from an S-1 and re-barfing what they digested from some second-rate tech blogs."

Chances are you feel like this Tinder profile: "I have long walks on the beach with my boyfriend, until the LSD wears off and I realize I'm just dragging a stolen mannequin around a Wendy's parking lot" and that Adam Neumann has left was kicked out of the company, his private jet is also history, the IPO postponed and the company likely to run out of money in a couple of months.

Unperturbed Stanley would say:

“Even when I was wrong, I got my point across.”

He sure did. As Hamlet said: “We know what we are, but know not what We may be”. Right now the biggest headache of Softbank and perhaps gone next year.

Full beauty here.