Michael Hiltzik: WeWork carries Silicon Valley's 'unicorn' craze to its absurd limits

For all you killjoys and Cassandras looking for the apocalyptic end to Silicon Valley's "unicorn" craze, WeWork is beginning to look like a godsend.

Until recently, the company looked like the most glittering unicorn in the high-tech herd since the heyday of Uber, with a private market valuation of $47 billion.

That might seem strange for a firm whose core business is subleasing office space, but WeWork dressed up that dull business model in a Cinderella gown of high-falutin' rhetoric about how its mission isn't merely to give office drones a nice place to plant their bottoms but "to elevate the world's consciousness."

Hearing this uttered by WeWork's charismatic co-founder Adam Neumann, venture investors snarfed it up with solid gold ladles. It helped that the richest venture fund of all, Softbank's Vision Fund, was a big investor.

WeWork seemed destined to a world-beating initial public offering as early as this month. Goldman Sachs, the lead underwriter, originally let it be known