On November 7, 2023, the $300 billion unicorn, Work, declared bankruptcy.
WeWork started as a shared office space in New York in 2010, and once swept the globe on the back of the sharing economy wave, valuing the company at $47 billion (more than 300 billion yuan) at its peak in 2019. Four years later, the company’s decline has been unimaginable, during which time it sold WeWork China, which also spared the latter from bankruptcy.
Only to leave behind investors secretly licking their wounds. In particular, Mr. Masayoshi Sun, Softbank has invested more than $10 billion in WeWork since 2017, which he once considered the next “Alibaba”, but now everything has come to nothing.
Willing to give high valuations, daring to give high valuations, the madness of yesteryear has no one to pay for it.WeWork’s bankruptcy is a crushing blow to SoftBank Group and Masayoshi Son, who owns about 74 percent of the company, and with WeWork’s shares down more than 99 percent this year, the stock could now become worthless. While Masayoshi Son’s early investment in Alibaba’s stock is considered one of the smartest venture capital investments in history, WeWork has become one of his worst.
With the rapid development of the Internet, the rise of the sharing economy through the Internet platform has not only changed the traditional economic model but also brought a lot of convenience to people’s lives. The core of the sharing economy is a sharing platform, which builds a bridge of communication and cooperation between resource providers and demanders and promotes economic development and social progress.
The rise of the sharing economy has also had a profound impact on traditional industries. Some traditional industries are facing great challenges, but at the same time, it also brings new opportunities. The emergence of the sharing economy has forced traditional industries to undergo transformation and upgrading to improve service quality and competitiveness. For example, the traditional cab industry faces competition from shared mobility platforms, but it can also attract more passengers by strengthening its services and improving efficiency. The development of the sharing economy has prompted traditional industries to innovate and reform, promoting economic transformation and upgrading.
At the same time, the development of the sharing economy, mixed eyes, chaos. For example, under the guise of “sharing economy” and “new sales”, the cross-border e-commerce company “Yunjipin” is involved in pyramid selling and has been terminated by a nest, and on the evening of March 19, 2023, the Shenzhen Municipal Public Security Bureau issued a police report stating that the Shenzhen police had carried out a net closing operation against the “Yunjipin” mega network pyramid selling criminal gang. Economic Crime Investigation Bureau issued a police bulletin, saying that the Shenzhen police carried out a net operation against the “Yunjipin” mega network pyramid scheme criminal gang, and captured several major suspects such as Pan Mou. Shenzhen Qianhai Yunjipin E-commerce Co., Ltd. requires members to pay a certain amount of money to qualify to join, through the establishment of a multi-level membership system to form a hierarchy, to develop the number of people as the basis for remuneration and rebates, to lure others to continue to participate in the suspected organization and leadership of pyramid selling activities criminal. In the external publicity materials, Yunjipin claims to be a large-scale comprehensive cross-border e-commerce platform with global positioning and multilingual import and export.
Group Buying, Taxi, Takeaway, ……, over the past decade or so the Internet sharing economy has flourished, changing one industry after another, dramatically improving efficiency, and changing people’s lifestyles, thanks to the development of Internet technology. However, in retrospect, Internet technology has only changed the delivery of material, and enhanced efficiency, but did not create new goods and new substances, is based on the original material to do efficiency gains, and is a centralized sharing model, is also destined to be based on the Internet technology sharing economy is bound to have a ceiling, to be able to transform the business or industry transformation of the almost, but also the end. Sadly, generally speaking, if as a business, the development of a period will have inertia, doing will be conventionally irrational, and can continue forever, there will be saturation or surplus, the bankruptcy of WeWork also announced that the sharing economy saturation or surplus era.
If the Internet sharing economy is compared to a tool, similar to a hoe for planting potatoes, then planting the potatoes is what creates the substance, and it is the potatoes that consumers want to eat, not the hoe. This is the simple relationship between the real economy and the sharing economy.
The maturation of the decentralized technical architecture and the standardization of Internet regulation has accelerated the arrival of the saturation period of the sharing platform. So, the sharing economy of the present will continue to exist, but there is no room for future development!
