Adam Neumann (WeWork)

The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion
by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell
Published 19 Jul 2021

Journal published its story: Farrell et al., “Some WeWork Board Members Seek to Remove Adam Neumann as CEO.” trekked to midtown to see Jamie Dimon: Maureen Farrell et al., “The Fall of WeWork: How a Startup Darling Came Unglued,” Wall Street Journal, Oct. 24, 2019. meet his three closest investors: Ibid. filed into the carriage house: Farrell et al., “Fall of WeWork.” posted stories on Neumann’s ouster: Eliot Brown et al., “WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO,” Wall Street Journal, Sept. 24, 2019; David Gelles et al., “WeWork C.E.O. Adam Neumann Steps Down Under Pressure,” New York Times, Sept. 24, 2019.

…

Needleman and Eliot Brown, “WeWork to Cut Around 17% of Workforce,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 21, 2019. filed an employment complaint: David Yaffe-Bellany, “WeWork’s Ousted C.E.O. Adam Neumann Is Accused of Pregnancy Discrimination,” New York Times, Oct. 31, 2019. still flying around on private jets: Jennifer Gould, “Ex-WeWork CEO Adam Neumann Flees NYC to Escape ‘Negative Energy’: Pals,” New York Post, Dec. 17, 2019. They were flying commercial: Jessica Bennett, “Ousted WeWork CEO Adam Neumann Travels to Israel,” New York Post, Dec. 27, 2019. EPILOGUE “My own investment judgment”: Phred Dvorak and Megumi Fujikawa, “SoftBank Founder Calls His Judgment ‘Really Bad’ After $4.7 Billion WeWork Hit,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 6, 2019.

…

could find no single New York school: Eliot Brown, “Surfing, Schools, and Jets: WeWork’s Bets Follow CEO Adam Neumann’s Passions,” Wall Street Journal, March 5, 2019. cost up to $42,000: Ibid. “It was pretty much a mess”: Interviews with Shanklin, March–Aug. 2020. “more of a universe or village”: Hadley Keller, “Bjarke Ingels Group Creates a Miniature, Indoor Natural Ecosystem for WeWork’s WeGrow School,” Architectural Digest, Oct. 29, 2018. Adam Braun as the school’s chief operating officer: Rebekah Neumann, “Welcoming Adam Braun to WeGrow,” WeWork website, May 16, 2018. “would all sound so beautiful”: Interviews with Shanklin, March–Aug. 2020.

Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom
by Grace Blakeley
Published 11 Mar 2024

Gabriel Sherman, “ ‘You Don’t Bring Bad News to the Cult Leader’: Inside the Fall of WeWork,” Vanity Fair, November 21, 2019, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/11/inside-the-fall-of-wework. 3. Britney Nguyen, “The Career Rise, Fall, and Return of Adam Neumann, the Controversial WeWork Cofounder Who Is Back with Another Real-Estate Startup,” Insider, August 16, 2022, https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-ceo-adam-neumann-bio-life-career-2019-8?r=US&IR=T. 4. “The Unicorn List: 13: WeWork,” Fortune, accessed July 9, 2023, https://fortune.com/ranking/unicorns/2016/wework/. 5. Sheryl Wudunn, “MEDIA; An Entrepreneurial Exception Rides the Internet in Japan,” New York Times, July 26, 1999, https://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/26/business/media-an-entrepreneurial-exception-rides-the-internet-in-japan.html. 6.

…

Amy Chozick, “Adam Neumann and the Art of Failing Up,” New York Times, November 2, 2019, updated May 18, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/02/business/adam-neumann-wework-exit-package.html. 11. Ibid. 12. Julie Bort and Meghan Morris, “Former Employees from WeWork Share Stories about Adam Neumann Running around Barefoot, Yelling at Employees, and Demanding Cases of Tequila,” Insider, September 30, 2019, https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-employees-share-stories-about-barefoot-adam-neumann-2019-9?r=US&IR=T. 13. Taylor Telford, “Adam Neumann’s Chaotic Energy Built WeWork. Now It Might Cost Him His Job as CEO,” Washington Post, September 23, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/09/23/adam-neumanns-chaotic-energy-built-wework-now-it-might-cost-him-his-job-ceo/. 14.

…

Peter Eavis and Michael J. de la Merced, “WeWork I.P.O. Is Withdrawn as Investors Grow Wary,” New York Times, October 1, 2019, updated October 21, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/business/wework-ipo.html. 21. Eric Platt, “Adam Neumann’s $1.6bn WeWork Exit Package Could Get Sweeter,” Financial Times, December 24, 2019, https://www.ft.com/content/eecf1f22-2332-11ea-b8a1-584213ee7b2b. 22. George Hammond and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, “SoftBank and WeWork Co-Founder Adam Neumann Agree Divorce Deal,” Financial Times, May 27, 2021, https://www.ft.com/content/b0c047d0-6e7e-42c1-89c8-ee5f96d01a12. 23. Sergei Klebnikov, “WeWork Lays Off 2,400 Employees in Latest Round of Cost-Cutting,” Forbes, November 21, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2019/11/21/wework-lays-off-2400-employees-in-latest-round-of-cost-cutting/?

Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork
by Reeves Wiedeman
Published 19 Oct 2020

Adam, Miguel, and Rebekah were scheduled to host a panel; the vegetarian food trucks were told to hold off on serving meals, leaving their employees to fend off desperate bribes from drunk and hungry WeWorkers. For those attending their first Summer Camp, the crowd had a strange energy, erupting into a cheer of “Olé, olé, olé” when the three founders appeared onstage. An employee from India started chanting, “Let’s go, WeWork, let’s go!” Another, from California, screamed, “You’re changing the world, Adam!” Neumann had certainly come to believe in his ability to do just that. “The influence and impact that we are going to have on this earth is going to be so big,” he said, wearing a T-shirt that read LET’S MEAT IN THE MIDDLE. A few weeks earlier, after the shocking news that both Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain had died by suicide, Adam had stood up at a company town hall and told his employees that if they were ever feeling depressed or suicidal they should reach out to him directly.

…

Half a dozen tenants had kept offices at 154 Grand since it opened, nine years earlier, even though there were now many newer options nearby: one office at 154 Grand was being occupied by a WeWork employee who was managing the construction of a new location down the block. New York magazine had assigned me to write a feature story about WeWork, in part because Adam Neumann’s empire seemed to be slowly closing in: there were suddenly a dozen WeWorks within a mile of the magazine’s SoHo building, where Oscar Health, the health insurance provider founded by Josh Kushner, Jared’s brother, had a brand new Powered by We office. When I finished my tour of 154 Grand Street, I noticed that I had several missed calls from an unknown phone number.

…

In May, WeWork held a “bake off” among three firms—JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley—for the lead left position. JPMorgan was the top candidate, given the bank’s long history with WeWork. In addition to its 2014 investment, JPMorgan had assisted WeWork with various loans and other financing arrangements. The bank had also lent Adam $97 million in low-interest mortgages for the many homes that the Neumanns were buying, and helped facilitate a personal $500 million line of credit backed by Adam’s WeWork stock. Adam had taken to calling Jamie Dimon his “personal banker.” When it came time for JPMorgan to make its pitch for the lead left position, its bankers suggested that WeWork could go public at a valuation north of $46 billion and as high as $63 billion.

Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet―and Why We're Following
by Gabrielle Bluestone
Published 5 Apr 2021

If there was ever a through-line to all of McFarland’s schemes, it’s that they occurred primarily over the internet, were valued not by their worth but by his enthusiasm, were targeted at his fellow millennials, and appeared to be designed to acquire as much money and attention in as short of a time period as possible. In that way, Billy was not unlike other start-up founders such as Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes or WeWork CEO Adam Neumann, both of whom also rode waves of hype to become rich and famous at the expense of their investors. But McFarland was a peculiar sort of millennial entrepreneur, one who started out just as Instagram began to gain attention—and with it, the rise of performative wealth among the underage scions who first sparked the Rich Kids of Instagram Tumblr page and subsequent reality television show.

…

And they never let the truth stop them from a good marketing campaign. A recent BookForum piece described one of these overhyped men as having “three key traits: he was tall, grandiose, and drank tequila.” Incredibly, this line referred to neither McFarland nor Musk, who’s been trying to launch an alcohol line called “Teslaquila.” (It was WeWork’s Adam Neumann.) But back to Musk. He’s considered a genius because he made a bunch of money on PayPal and once shot a car into space. But I’d argue his real talent is marketing and figuring out how to get federal subsidies to keep his companies afloat. Because when you really look hard at his legacy, it’s not as impressive as the headlines would have you believe.

…

Levin, "Re: William McFarland; United States District Court, Southern District of New York, 17-CR-00600-NRB and 18-CR-00446-JMF," letter submitted to court, August 20, 2018. 74. Alex Sherman, "WeWork’s $47 Billion Valuation Was Always a Fiction Created by SoftBank," CNBC, October 22, 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/22/wework-47-billion-valuation-softbank-fiction.html. 75. Adam Neumann, Baruch College Commencement 2017. Speech, Baruch College, New York, NY, June 12, 2017. 76. Kevin Roose, "Do Not Disturb: How I Ditched My Phone and Unbroke My Brain," New York Times, February 23, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/business/cell-phone-addiction.html. 77.

The Pyramid of Lies: Lex Greensill and the Billion-Dollar Scandal
by Duncan Mavin
Published 20 Jul 2022

On a Vision Fund web page, Greensill said Masa was a ‘partner and a mentor’: ‘He has worked with us, and particularly with me, to think about our core business and how we can actually take that core business and tackle other inequalities and other challenges that exist in the global market.’ The appreciation went in both directions. At internal SoftBank events, Son put Lex on a pedestal alongside other stars of the Vision Fund, especially WeWork founder Adam Neumann, who was still then in favour, and Ritesh Agarwal, the head of India’s OYO Hotels. The three were featured in a presentation to SoftBank shareholders that referred to them as pioneers of artificial intelligence leading ‘the biggest revolution in human history’. Son also pointed to Greensill as an example of how portfolio companies could benefit from the network effect they could achieve by working together – the so-called ‘Cluster of No. 1’ strategy.

…

Some senior executives who left on bad terms felt that Lex used their stock as leverage, to secure their silence about Greensill’s riskier strategies and tactics – keep quiet and he might let you keep the shares. Another source told me that Lex took the idea for giving out so much stock from WeWork’s Adam Neumann, whom Lex described as a friend. Even very junior staff flew business class and stayed in expensive hotels. He even once flew his tailor from the UK to New York to make bespoke suits for the Greensill team there. Staff were supposed to pay half the cost of the suits, with Greensill footing the rest, but no one ever got a bill.

The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future
by Sebastian Mallaby
Published 1 Feb 2022

The early-stage investment might be intelligent and well judged, but the late-stage outcome could be a mess because latecomer investors were too hands-off to oversee the company responsibly. The following year, this danger turned out to be more than just theoretical. Around the time that Theranos and Zenefits went awry, Bruce Dunlevie of Benchmark was preoccupied with a unicorn called WeWork. Benchmark had first invested in WeWork in 2012, mainly because of its mesmerizing co-founder Adam Neumann, a six-foot-five-inch former Israeli naval officer with hair like Tarzan. WeWork’s rather humdrum business was to rent out short-term office space, enlivened with perks such as fruit water, free espresso, and the occasional ice-cream party. But Neumann had a way of elevating his mission.

…

Thanks to this cleanup, Uber’s IPO went relatively well: the company ended its first day of trading in May 2019 with a valuation of $69 billion. It was less than its peak private valuation of $76 billion, but it was still a formidable sum—one that allowed Benchmark to celebrate a 270x return on its investment.[86] At WeWork, in contrast, the megalomaniacal Adam Neumann disdained Khosrowshahi-style reforms, so the IPO process punished him appropriately. Required to publish its financials in the run-up to its road show, WeWork produced a document that telegraphed its uncanny resemblance to a cult. “Adam is a unique leader who has proven he can simultaneously wear the hats of visionary, operator and innovator, while thriving as a community and culture creator,” it incanted.

…

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 23 Michael Moritz, email to Sequoia leaders, Sept. 17, 2017. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 24 Steven Bertoni, “WeWork’s $20 Billion Office Party: The Crazy Bet That Could Change How the World Does Business,” Forbes, Oct. 24, 2017. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 25 Bertoni, “WeWork’s $20 Billion Office Party.” BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 26 Amy Chozick, “Adam Neumann and the Art of Failing Up,” New York Times, Nov. 2, 2019. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 27 Farrell and Brown, “Money Men Who Enabled Adam Neumann and the WeWork Debacle.” BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 28 The value of this downside protection soon became evident.

Tech Titans of China: How China's Tech Sector Is Challenging the World by Innovating Faster, Working Harder, and Going Global
by Rebecca Fannin
Published 2 Sep 2019

Within two years of plunging into the foreign market, WeWork bought Chinese coworking startup Naked Hub from Shanghai-based luxury resort operator Naked Group for a cool $400 million, a move that gave WeWork an immediate lift. WeWork scooped up 25 Naked Hub locations in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong to add to its own 13 spots in China. It didn’t take long for WeWork CEO Adam Neumann to take a lesson from Naked Hub’s operation in trendy Xintiandi, which was making bundles of money from renting office space on a flexible, come-as-you-like basis, with no monthly contract. WeWork quickly launched the feature as WeWork Go, which lets China-based customers check for open desks by mobile app, go to the location, and register by QR code.

On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything
by Nate Silver
Published 12 Aug 2024

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT the River is very white: In the Astral Codex Ten survey, 88 percent of readers identified as white and 88 percent as male. Other parts of The River are more racially and ethnically diverse—poker, for instance—but nearly all of it is quite male. Alexander, “ACX Survey Results 2022.” GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT cofounder of WeWork: Andrew Ross Sorkin et al., “Adam Neumann Gets a New Backer,” The New York Times, August 15, 2022, sec. Business, nytimes.com/2022/08/15/business/dealbook/adam-neumann-flow-new-company-wework-real-estate.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT revival of nationalist governments: Sabina Mihelj and César Jiménez-Martínez, “Digital Nationalism: Understanding the Role of Digital Media in the Rise of ‘New’ Nationalism,” Nations and Nationalism 27, no. 2 (April 2021): 331–46, doi.org/10.1111/nana.12685.

…

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT before imploding spectacularly: Gennaro Cuofano, “How WeWork’s Implosion Turned It into a Shell of Its Initial $47 Billion Promise,” HackerNoon, March 11, 2022, hackernoon.com/how-weworks-implosion-turned-it-into-a-shell-of-its-initial-$47-billion-promise. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT a pregnant employee: Brendan Pierson, “WeWork, Former CEO Adam Neumann Accused of Pregnancy Discrimination,” Reuters, November 1, 2019, sec. Technology, reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1XA2OA. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT expanded far too quickly: Amy Chozick, “Adam Neumann and the Art of Failing Up,” The New York Times, November 2, 2019, sec.

The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy
by David Gelles
Published 30 May 2022

The forced curve meant that ‘Helping your fellow worker become more productive can actually hurt your chances of getting a higher bonus.’ ” Microsoft phased out the practice after it led to broad disillusionment within the ranks, but newer companies have not learned the lessons of history. At WeWork—the shared office space company—cofounder Adam Neumann set a goal of laying off 20 percent of the company’s workforce every year. “We met those expectations, and I’m not proud of it,” said one member of WeWork’s human resources staff. And at Amazon—one of the world’s largest corporations—worker well-being seems to be but an afterthought.

Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller
by Alec Nevala-Lee
Published 1 Aug 2022

The Participation Revolution: How to Ride the Waves of Change in a Terrifyingly Turbulent World
by Neil Gibb
Published 15 Feb 2018

The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance
by Eswar S. Prasad
Published 27 Sep 2021

Fed Up!: Success, Excess and Crisis Through the Eyes of a Hedge Fund Macro Trader
by Colin Lancaster
Published 3 May 2021

Dress pants, button-down shirt and fleece vests. Walk around Mayfair or watch Billions. You’ll get it. Lifecoach prefers Hermès. Just look for the scarf. We are sitting at our normal table in the restaurant, waiting for the food to arrive. A headline has just hit on WeWork, and all of us are checking our phones. WeWork is run by a guy named Adam Neumann, and its largest shareholder is a company called SoftBank, run by Masayoshi Son.5 SoftBank has been pouring money into fast-growing tech companies. Masa Son famously lost $70 billion, the most money lost in stock market history, during the dotcom bust. He’s back at it again and swinging for the fences.

The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It
by Robert B. Reich
Published 24 Mar 2020

Wonder Boy: Tony Hsieh, Zappos, and the Myth of Happiness in Silicon Valley
by Angel Au-Yeung and David Jeans
Published 25 Apr 2023

Over three-day “camps,” executives from other companies would learn how Zappos managed HR, how to give their employees more impetus to focus on customer service, and how to achieve a “wow” factor. On the final day, attendees went to Zappos’s legendary quarterly all-hands meetings, led by musicians and rousing speeches—years before concert-style corporate gatherings were made famous by WeWork and its enigmatic CEO, Adam Neumann. To try to keep up with Tony’s cascade of ideas, Mark devised a system in which he wrote all of Tony’s suggestions on a whiteboard and asked Tony to rank them by urgency. But no matter how hard he tried, he could never remain as calm as Fred, who seemed to have an intuitive system for mentally sifting through Tony’s ideas and deciding whether it was possible to execute them.

Aiming High: Masayoshi Son, SoftBank, and Disrupting Silicon Valley
by Atsuo Inoue
Published 18 Nov 2021

He had a clear vision in 2014 for where the telecommunications industry would be in the future and things in 2020 came to pass just as he had foreseen. Having successfully resurrected Sprint, the next lost cause Son parachuted Marcelo Claure in to rescue was WeWork. WeWork was originally founded in 2010 as a co-working space by Adam Neumann, with SoftBank making its first investments in the company in 2017. At the start of 2019 an additional investment was made in the order of $2 billion and plans were afoot for WeWork to go public, but after a number of major issues with Neumann the company was plunged into a crisis.

Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World
by Henry Grabar
Published 8 May 2023

Amazon: How the World’s Most Relentless Retailer Will Continue to Revolutionize Commerce
by Natalie Berg and Miya Knights
Published 28 Jan 2019