Molson Hart

Massive brand advantage. They can pay much less for a Google PPC than peers. Big CAC advantage. Scale gives them leverage over suppliers which means better lease terms (many layers here but don't have time or expertise to give the dissertation this one deserves).

Their scale (and growth) also gives them an advantage in much lower capital vs peers. Scale (and actually understanding how to develop software) give them massive edge in technology. This is the point I've most avoided b/c it's nuanced...

If there's one lesson from the past 20 years of tech it's the compounding value of writing good software. Paul Graham and many others have done it better than I can ever. My favorite example is Mailchimp...

Mailchimp has never had any radical tech, just good software that's gotten a little better every few months for 15 or so years. https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/13/mailchimps-ben-chestnut-on-bootstrapping-a-startup-to-700m-in-revenue/ …

WeWork in process of building huge tech advantage. They have best engineers among their peers by far. They're also working w/best startups in the space and they can either buy or become a massive customer (for those startups; beware of becoming captive to a customer like WW!)

There's huge surface area for them to attack in terms of better software to improve tenant/guest experience + drive down their costs. They are in 1st inning of that process. Why only the 1st? Because they haven't had to rush on that front given their peers are so inept at tech.

Thanks for the response. I'll let you get to the park. - I doubt WeWork can meaningfully negotiate lower PPC from google. And if they could, it's not important enough to matter. - I don't see big returns to technology in their space at all.

Thanks again. Agree w MH: WW buys wholesale, sells retail (w a massive asset-liability mismatch). I do not see how they can buy cheaper or sell more dear. Overhead, marketing, sales? maybe. If it was such a great model, they'd be making money AND the guy would not be buying bldgs