isn't this just the VC playbook:
1. enter market
2. undercut incumbents by burning VC cash
3. wait until the incumbents fail
a. if you're getting close to burning all the available cash, sell to an incumbent and try a different market.
a. if you fail to reach monopoly status plan an exit (SPAC) before it all comes crashing down
a. if your product is free, harvest more of your customers data
a. harvest all the data you can get away with
There is no excuse for VCs not getting up to speed on the GDPR.
> it seems sensible to recommend that if a start-up raises a certain amount of collective funding, say $1bn, the competition regulator needs to take a look at how that money is being used, and ensure it is not being leveraged to undermine the market.
In international trade, I understand this to be the same as the practice called "dumping".
They could throw the world economy into a massive recession and would probably trigger WW3 by simply paying their workers American minimum wage.
Raise money in a similar way?
I don't see why you would try to solve this problem on the front end. It is perfectly fine for WeWork or Uber to throw money at customers and give the average consumer a free lunch. What is failing is on the back end. The whole premise of these business models is "If we get to monopoly scale, we're going to exploit our monopoly". But... we already know monopolies are bad, there's nothing unique to start ups here. The simple answer is just enforce monopoly law. If it turns out that Uber has a huge market share and is using that to price gouge then step in with anti-monopoly laws.
I think the closest thing you can come to this being a start up thing is the Softbank model, where Softbank owns stakes in so many different players in a single market that they effectively are operating a cartel.
What you really want is a healthy market regulator that tackles monopolies so that Venture Capitalists don't think "Grow this until we can exploit our monopoly" is a good strategy.
They have a moat, their locations and global convenience. Same feel, same badge, same almost everything regardless of location.
I wasn't a Wework user until about 5 months ago where I decided to start working from there with a coworker twice a month. Has been a positive game changer!
The sense I get in Toronto is that more & more employers would like to do a model or having employees sync up at co-working locations, but are stuck with their 10 year leases.
Maybe Wework won't survive but I feel like someone will buy them when they go under and be able to operate profitable under normal real estate returns.
The argument that companies would move to co-working spaces during the next downturn is something WeWork argued. But the truth is that during the downturn WeWork is stuck with high long term contracts and their customers either cancel (because it's a downturn) or can move to other cheaper coworking spaces that didn't lock in high costs during the boom times. It's a highly cyclical business and we know that because we can see how other established companies operate in the space.
Regus has been around for a long time.
In Montreal they want me to fill out a contact form and it isn't on demand instant like Wework.
After my first trip to Wework I now can book same minute access to any Wework location and use my card for access. Even though I'm not using it outside of the one city I've gone to the three within Montreal when one has no available space to book.
Don't underestimate the convenience this is the same reason I use Uber & Instacart.
(And the privacy conscious segment of the US market.)
Privacy conscious segment of the US market is a rounding error, despite what HN would have you believe.