According to Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, if you invested in WeWork, “you’re getting fleeced.”

Ocasio-Cortez slammed the coworking startup’s former $47 billion valuation in a hearing on Wednesday of the House’s Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship, and Capital Markets, per the financial-watchdog site Wall Street on Parade.

During the hearing, representatives discussed the negative effects of private-equity markets on retail investors. As an example, Ocasio-Cortez brought up WeWork, which was valued at $47 billion in January but is now said to be aiming for a valuation as low as $10 billion ahead of its initial public offering and amid investors’ concerns about its cofounders, Adam and Rebekah Neumann.

“They had raised on a previous valuation of $47 billion, and now they just decided overnight ‘Just kidding, we’re worth $20 billion,'” Ocasio-Cortez said during the hearing. “They’ve cut it by over half.”

Renee Jones, an associate dean at Boston College Law School who testified at the hearing, replied that valuations were "highly speculative" but that deregulation had given startup founders too much power.

"When founders control the board, an important source of discipline over the startup's operations is neutralized," Jones said in prepared testimony, according to Wall Street on Parade, adding, "This new era of founder control has created an environment at unicorns that is ripe for management abuse."

WeWork - and Adam Neumann in particular - has gone through a battery of criticism in the run-up to the company's IPO. While it has described itself as a tech company, its business model involves creating coworking spaces by buying up commercial buildings and filling them with tenants. It hasn't made a profit, losing $700 million in the first quarter of 2019 alone. Among other eyebrow-raising practices, WeWork paid Neumann $5.9 million to use the word "we" in its name, but he gave the money back after it was criticized.

Ocasio-Cortez identified a larger problem with private-equity markets: a lack of information for investors.

"We have this big issue where if you are what is known as a retail investor, or pretty much an everyday person, there's this idea that you want to get into the private market, that that is more desirable, that there's more of an upside, but there's a large amount of risk involved," Ocasio-Cortez said. "So if you're an everyday person and you say, 'Hey, I want to get in on the next Uber,' would you have access to a reliable valuation of that private company when you invest?"

Elisabeth de Fontenay, a law professor at Duke, responded that investors wouldn't have access.

Ocasio-Cortez isn't the only public figure to criticize WeWork. Andrew Yang, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, called WeWork's $47 billion valuation "utterly ridiculous" in a tweet on August 21.

Ocasio-Cortez did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.