Billion Dollar Loser - Reeves Wiedeman

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• The prologue describes a visit to WeWork’s New York headquarters in April 2019 for an interview with CEO Adam Neumann. Neumann’s office was large and luxurious, contrasting with the small spaces WeWork rents out.

• Neumann was late, giving time to observe WeWork’s playful, amenity-filled office. Employees seemed busy but it was noisy and chaotic.

• Neumann had grown WeWork into a major global company renting out shared office space, but his vision went far beyond that to reshape society. He compared WeWork’s potential to Amazon’s.

• Neumann inspired followers with his ambition but also caused fear in some executives. He was known for tequila shots in meetings.

• WeWork had expanded rapidly, becoming a major office tenant in cities globally. Revenue doubled annually for a decade. Neumann raised over $11 billion, mainly from Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Vision Fund.

• The prologue foreshadows Neumann’s fall - an attempted IPO disaster, his ouster, and WeWork’s struggles in a pandemic world not wanting shared office space. But Neumann was still confident in April 2019, on the cusp of these events.

• Adam Neumann took driving lessons as a teenager in Israel from instructor Arie Eigenfeld. He was eager to gain some independence and control through having a car.

• Neumann was a reckless driver, speeding, ignoring signs, and putting pedestrians at risk. Eigenfeld had to grab the wheel several times to avoid accidents.

• This recklessness foreshadowed Neumann’s approach later as CEO of WeWork, where he moved extremely fast, took big risks, and focused on rapid growth above all else.

• Neumann’s success at WeWork was largely due to luck and timing, as he expanded aggressively just as the economy recovered from recession. However, his risky strategies also led the company to the brink of collapse when it tried to go public.

• His behavior showed parallels to his reckless driving: moving fast without regard for signs of danger, overestimating his abilities, and putting others at risk through his actions. However, at WeWork there was no instructor to intervene and grab the wheel.

In summary, Neumann’s reckless driving as a teenager presaged the same attributes that initially brought him huge success as a startup founder, but ultimately led to WeWork’s failures when left unchecked. His enormous ambitions and hunger for speed and scale worked for a time, but lacked the discipline and caution that would have brought sustainable growth.

• Adam Neumann stood out among his peers in high school with his confidence, long hair, and charm. Classmates predicted he would either end up a millionaire or in jail.

• Adam had a difficult childhood, with divorced parents and constantly moving. He was dyslexic and struggled to make friends.

• After high school, Adam attended the Israeli Naval Academy but left before completing the full term. He moved to New York to join his sister Adi.

• In New York, Adam attended Baruch College and took entrepreneurship classes. He entered a competition with the idea for communal living spaces but lost when a professor said it wasn’t feasible.

• Adam embraced New York, practicing his negotiation skills and socializing. He and Adi were a dynamic duo, known for their confidence and ambition.

• Adam took away formative lessons from his time on a kibbutz in Israel about the tension between community and individual rewards. He later described WeWork as a “capitalist kibbutz.”

• Adam Neumann moved from Israel to New York City with his sister Adi in the mid-2000s. They became part of the fashionable social scene.

• Adam tried to establish his own identity apart from his sister. He told people he wanted to get rich and boasted about partying, but was unhappy.

• In his mid-20s, Adam decided to start his first business - a company called Krawlers that made baby clothes with knee pads. The product was not very successful.

• Adam dropped out of Baruch College to focus on the business full-time. He pivoted to making more conventional baby clothes under the brand Big Tent.

• Facing visa issues, Adam consulted immigration attorney Stella Templo, who helped him get an O-1A extraordinary ability visa.

• Adam partnered with designer Susan Lazar to combine their baby clothing brands under Big Tent. He moved operations to Brooklyn.

• The 2008 recession hit Adam’s business hard. He looked for ways to pivot and find new opportunities.

• Adam Neumann started a baby clothes company called Krawlers in 2008, but it struggled and he burned through initial investments from his family and Rothschild money. Desperate for cash, he rented out part of his office space, becoming a landlord for the first time.

• On a date with Rebekah Paltrow in 2008, she called him out for being “full of shit” and broke. Adam claimed to be an entrepreneur, but Rebekah saw potential in him. They soon got engaged, with Rebekah believing Adam could “help save the world.”

• Miguel McKelvey was raised in a communal, “gypsy-like” family in Oregon. He studied architecture but got excited about startups during the dot-com bubble.

• After college in 1999, Miguel co-founded an English learning website called English, baby! He hoped it would raise VC funding and go public, but the dot-com bubble soon burst.

• Miguel still wanted to move to New York and “build something great.” He and Adam would eventually cross paths there and co-found WeWork.

• Miguel McKelvey and Adam Neumann were childhood friends who reconnected as adults in New York City in the mid-2000s.

• McKelvey had studied architecture but ended up working at an English learning startup called English, baby! in Oregon. He was dissatisfied and wanted to get back to architecture and move to New York.

• Neumann had started a baby clothes company but was struggling to get it off the ground. He had an idea to create more communal living spaces.

• The two started hanging out in Brooklyn, where they were both living. They came up with the idea to start a coworking company called Green Desk when their landlord offered them space in an old coffee factory building.

• McKelvey quickly put together a business plan and design overnight, securing their landlord’s support. He left his job to focus on Green Desk full-time, designing the space and recruiting tenants.

• Neumann continued running his baby clothes startup but was heavily involved with Green Desk as well. The two complemented each other, with McKelvey’s stability and design skills balancing out Neumann’s brashness and salesmanship.

• Green Desk aimed to create communal workspaces with an eco-friendly vibe, tapping into demand from small companies and entrepreneurs looking for flexible office solutions.

• Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey sold their stakes in Green Desk in 2009 and netted around $500,000 each, which they poured into their new venture WeWork.

• They struggled to find landlords willing to lease to their unproven business idea, but eventually connected with developer Joel Schreiber, who invested $15 million for a third of the company.

• Schreiber’s involvement gave them credibility, and they were able to lease a rundown building at 154 Grand Street in SoHo as WeWork’s first location.

• Adam dazzled prospective tenants with ambitious visions like putting a gym in the basement and building a park across the street, while Miguel handled the renovations and logistics of getting the first location open.

• They opened one floor at a time, starting with just a few members renting desks. But Adam positioned WeWork as much more than just an office rental company.

• His energy and charisma were crucial to convincing early tenants and investors to take a chance on the unproven concept of communal office spaces. Miguel complemented him by focusing on operations and making Adam’s vision a reality.

• Adam Neumann positioned WeWork as leading a community-focused “We decade”, in contrast to the individualistic “I decade” of the 1990s/2000s. He wanted to move past the recession caused by this self-focus.

• Early WeWork employees were puzzled by Adam’s bold claims but attracted to the company’s community-building mission. With low salaries and no stock options, this sense of purpose was key to recruitment.

• Adam imagined WeWork growing to 100 locations and a $100 billion valuation. His ambition overwhelmed some employees but attracted interest in the real estate industry.

• Adam asked early employees about how their significant others felt about their long work hours, already envisioning WeWork’s global expansion.

• WeWork sought to attract artists and creators with its community vibe. The minimalist aesthetic and exposed brick appealed to those wanting authenticity.

• Adam’s intensity and self-belief were core to WeWork’s identity. He told an early employee: “I am WeWork” - its embodiment and spiritual leader.

• Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey founded WeWork in 2010, turning an opportunity to lease an empty commercial space in New York into a co-working startup.

• They assembled an eclectic early team of friends, family, and random connections, with everyone doing a bit of everything to get the company off the ground.

• Miguel oversaw design and construction to build out WeWork’s spaces at a breakneck pace per Adam’s demands, sometimes requiring all-nighters from the team.

• Adam focused more on fundraising, partnerships, and selling the vision of WeWork, while Miguel kept the company grounded operationally.

• Adam built a close inner circle at WeWork, hiring friends from Israel for key roles and expecting loyalty/secrecy from employees.

• A hierarchy and culture emerged where Adam was the outsized personality and Miguel a stabilizing counterbalance. WeWork moved fast but some employees worried its core values were getting lost amid the growth focus.

• Coworking emerged in the mid-2000s as a way for freelancers to work together in a communal but productive setting, bridging the gap between solo work and an office environment. The term was coined by Brad Neuberg, who started one of the first spaces in San Francisco.

• Early coworking spaces like Neuberg’s and Teh Hat Factory operated on a small scale, often out of rented apartments or lofts, with minimal amenities. The founders didn’t see coworking as a viable big business.

• Miguel McKelvey visited a coworking space aimed at programmers that had a nightclub-like aesthetic. Other early spaces in New York like Green Space shared a sustainability focus with Green Desk.

• Adam Neumann claimed he didn’t know about other coworking spaces before starting Green Desk, but he was aware of the business model through classmates like Malka Yerushalmi.

• Coworking was fundamentally about openness and community, not profit. But Adam and Miguel envisioned scaling up the model into a global brand.

• Adam Neumann toured a coworking space run by Avi Yerushalmi in New York City in 2001 and again in 2007, without disclosing he was scoping out the business model. Yerushalmi later felt betrayed when Neumann launched WeWork in 2009 using a similar concept and membership agreement.

• Neumann was able to raise millions in early funding from friends and family, including $1 million from his wife Rebekah Paltrow Neumann. Other coworking operators lacked these connections to capital.

• Rebekah Paltrow Neumann is the cousin of Gwyneth Paltrow. She had an affluent upbringing but struggled to find a career path after college. She married Adam soon after meeting him.

• Rebekah invested in WeWork and served as a steadying influence on Adam, though she was not heavily involved in the company’s operations early on. She continued trying to make it as an actress while Adam built WeWork.

• In 2010, Adam and Rebekah Neumann hosted a lavish party at WeWork’s New York studio to celebrate the launch of Corduroy magazine and showcase WeWork. It was a “social coming out” for the Neumanns and WeWork.

• Rebekah was pursuing acting and launched a production company, Boheme Films. She directed a short film starring Sean Lennon and Rosario Dawson that cost over $100,000. The Neumann’s invited WeWork staff to the premiere.

• As a condition of their engagement, Rebekah insisted Adam work on his spiritual life. She brought him to meditation and Kabbalah classes.

• The Kabbalah Centre provided early investors for WeWork. Kabbalah’s teachings about community and energy inspired Adam’s vision for WeWork. Kabbalah practices and language became part of WeWork’s culture.

• The Neumann’s privileged status at the Kabbalah Centre connected them to wealthy celebrities and investors. Adam became deeply dedicated to Kabbalah to prove himself.

• Adam Neumann was deeply influenced by Kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism. He took Kabbalah classes and consulted regularly with his teacher, Yardeni. Kabbalah gave Neumann a sense of purpose and influenced how he ran WeWork.

• In Kabbalah, all people have a divine spark and talents are seen as divine energy. Kabbalah rabbis are believed to wield great influence over followers. Neumann became “like a prophet” through Kabbalah.

• At the 2011 Coworking Europe conference, Neumann pitched WeWork as the largest coworking operator in the U.S., surprising attendees. His speech sounded more like an investor pitch than addressing comrades.

• At the Global Coworking Unconference Conference, Neumann encouraged attendees to partner with WeWork as it expanded nationally. This felt like a warning to potential competitors.

• Early coworking pioneers saw WeWork as commercializing the concept and lacking real community. Neumann seemed focused on rapid growth and viewed others as potential threats.

• WeWork expanded quickly, signing long leases at low cost. This risky strategy depended on continued economic growth so WeWork could become “too big to fail.” Neumann prioritized growth over profits.

• Adam Neumann pitched WeWork as a “physical social network”, comparing it to famous tech partnerships like Jobs/Wozniak and the Beatles. This was an attempt to portray WeWork as a tech disruptor rather than just a real estate company.

• The “physical social network” notion stemmed from WeWork’s early focus on community and networking among its members. Miguel McKelvey had missed the social media wave with English, baby! and saw WeWork as a chance to capitalize on connecting people.

• Neumann wanted to tap into the massive valuations that tech startups were getting compared to real estate firms. He started socializing with the “big kids” like Sean Parker to gain access to tech funding circles.

• WeWork wasn’t really a tech company but Neumann promoted it as such, claiming it just “happened to need buildings” like Uber needed cars. This was a stretch but helped attract VC money.

• WeWork threw a big 2nd anniversary party in 2012 to celebrate its new “physical social network” branding and court tech investors. The party had a Silicon Valley vibe with magicians and lots of alcohol.

• Adam Neumann wanted to meet Sean Parker, the founder of Napster and early Facebook executive, to pitch him on investing in WeWork. Parker was not interested despite Adam’s pitch that WeWork was “The Social Network, but the physical social network.”

• In late 2011, Adam met with Michael Eisenberg, a partner at top Silicon Valley VC firm Benchmark. Eisenberg convinced his skeptical partners at Benchmark, especially Bill Gurley, to meet with Adam and Miguel in San Francisco.

• Gurley was skeptical of WeWork’s high proposed valuation and lack of technology, but Bruce Dunlevie was intrigued by the strong unit economics and sense of community at WeWork.

• Benchmark invested $16.5 million in WeWork’s Series A at a $100 million valuation, lower than Adam wanted but still a huge step up. Miguel gave Adam some of his own equity to get him to accept the deal.

• The Benchmark investment brought more sophisticated business practices but also pressure on Adam to turn WeWork into more of a tech company. WeWork still had a long way to go on the technology side at that point.

Here are the key points from the excerpt:

• Benjamin Dyett, owner of the coworking space Grind, organized a meeting of coworking space operators he called the “Five Families” in 2014. This was meant to build community and share best practices.

• Adam Neumann of WeWork showed up late with assistants. He then dominated the conversation, warning the others that a market correction was coming and they needed to be cautious.

• Neumann talked about WeWork’s rapid growth, opening a new space every 18 days. He said WeWork would have more than 40,000 members by the end of 2014 and outlined his vision for WeWork to be a global platform.

• The other operators were amazed and unsettled by Neumann’s grand vision. Many realized they couldn’t compete with WeWork’s capital and rapid growth.

• Neumann’s bold predictions and disregard for profitability stood in contrast to the other operators focused on building sustainable businesses. His grand vision demonstrated his confidence and ambition, but also showed how far ahead and disconnected he was from the others.

• Adam Neumann was aggressively expanding WeWork, signing long 20-year leases and gobbling up space while he could, not worrying about the escalating rents to come. This rapid growth concerned some competitors.

• WeWork needed more funding to support this growth and Adam’s vision. Benchmark Capital had invested, valuing WeWork at $150M in 2012. In 2013, WeWork turned down a Goldman Sachs offer to invest at a $220M valuation, holding out for more.

• In 2014, JPMorgan and others invested $150M at a $1.5B valuation, making WeWork a “unicorn” start-up valued over $1B. JPMorgan wanted to get more involved with tech startups.

• Adam celebrated WeWork’s rise with a lavish birthday party in Turks and Caicos. WeWork was now rubbing shoulders with top NYC landlords, who had once been skeptical.

• WeWork began granting employees stock options, telling them they could become millionaires. This excited employees, though WeWork underpaid them, promising options would pay off later.

• In 2014, WeWork held its third annual corporate retreat called Summer Camp at a children’s camp owned by relatives of Rebekah Neumann. It had grown to include over 1,400 employees, members, and friends.

• Summer Camp offered traditional camp activities like archery and singalongs, but also embodied WeWork’s fun, startup culture with parties, drinking, drugs, and hookups. Employees saw it as a rare, dream weekend away from adulthood.

• WeWork avoided using the term “sales,” but hired experienced execs from Uber in 2014 to ramp up WeWork’s “community team” and occupancy rates as it expanded rapidly.

• The Uber execs tried to create a standardized “playbook” for WeWork’s growth, but employees resisted the comparison to Uber since WeWork’s business was much less uniform across locations.

• WeWork was growing extremely quickly, opening over 100 new buildings in 2014 compared to 10 in 2013. Adam Neumann compared it to the growth of ancient empires.

• The rapid expansion led to a chaotic “consumption phase” that employees described as building an airplane mid-flight. WeWork often strong-armed its way into real estate deals in its rush to expand.

• WeWork was growing rapidly, opening new co-working locations at a fast pace and hiring architects, salespeople, engineers, etc. Employees were inspired by the company’s ambitions and worked hard to meet tight opening deadlines, even if it meant cutting corners.

• In late 2014, WeWork raised $355 million at a $5 billion valuation, allowing some early shareholders to cash out. Adam Neumann engineered changes to get 10 votes per share, giving him 65% voting control. This “supervoting” structure had become common with startup founders worried about losing control.

• WeWork’s meteoric rise invited comparisons to Regus, a co-working company founded in 1989 that grew fast during the 1990s dot-com boom but collapsed when that bubble burst. By 2014, the mature Regus had rebranded as IWG and recovered profitability, but its market cap still trailed WeWork’s despite much higher revenue.

• WeWork was clearly doing something different with its hip, community-oriented spaces. But it wasn’t clear whether its aesthetic edge justified its towering valuation compared to the mature IWG. Concerns were mounting about whether WeWork was another dot-com bubble in the making.

• WeWork’s actual financials and business model did not match the rosy picture Adam Neumann presented to investors. Insiders acknowledged WeWork was essentially the same business as Regus, a competitor that had struggled in recessions.

• Adam relied on his charismatic pitch and Michael Gross, WeWork’s CFO, to convince investors. Gross added a veneer of refinement and confidence that balanced Adam’s eccentric style.

• Private valuations in the 2010s involved suspending disbelief, as investors sought the next Uber or Airbnb. Adam positioned WeWork as able to capture a huge share of the massive global real estate market.

• Despite warning signs, investors were primed to take risks in the post-recession era of hypergrowth and low interest rates. They feared missing out on the next big thing and pushed profitability farther into the future.

• Adam tailored his pitch to different investors, talking up WeWork’s real estate potential or its technology. He introduced a valuation method based on WeWork’s “community-adjusted EBITDA” that inflated its worth.

• WeWork was rapidly expanding in 2015, taking on high costs for real estate. Adam Neumann told investors that WeWork could grow as fast as funding allowed, as demand was very strong.

• SoftBank considered investing but initially passed. WeWork raised a $434 million Series E round at a $10 billion valuation from investors like Fidelity, despite internal concerns that this valuation was too high.

• Early employee Ted Kramer left, concerned about inequitable compensation and Adam’s exaggerated claims. Investor Bill Gurley admitted Adam was “very convincing” despite questionable math.

• After the round, Adam made inaccurate claims about profitability and future funding needs. The Neumanns bought luxury homes as their personal wealth grew.

• WeWork moved headquarters but overstayed sharing space with The Guardian. One day a clash led to near-violence between employees, concerning The Guardian executives about WeWork’s culture.

• Adam Neumann’s ego grew as WeWork became more successful, leading him to act arrogantly and skip industry events. He talked more about immortality and his interest in living forever.

• At WeWork’s 2015 Summer Camp, Adam went missing overnight but was found safe after a search. His behavior was becoming more erratic.

• WeWork had disputes with labor unions over using non-union construction labor and contractors to keep costs low. When WeWork cleaners tried to unionize for better wages, WeWork canceled their contract.

• Adam tried to justify WeWork’s actions to the protesting cleaners by saying he had come to America “chasing the American dream.” But the cleaners pointed out his wealth while they lived in cramped conditions.

• WeWork pushed a “your company is your family” idea to discourage unionization. Employees worked long hours and became best friends, expecting big payouts when WeWork went public.

• The overwork culture led to sarcastic use of motivational mantras. Adam’s behavior and the company’s labor practices revealed a disconnect between its progressive rhetoric and hard-nosed business tactics.

• After Hurricane Sandy damaged 110 Wall Street in 2012, Adam Neumann convinced the building’s owner, Bill Rudin, to let WeWork fill it with 5 floors of office space and 20 floors of WeLive apartments.

• WeLive was an idea Neumann had since 2009 to create small communal apartments with shared common spaces. He envisioned it becoming bigger than WeWork, with 34,000 residents by 2016, but only two locations opened by then.

• Converting an office tower into a residential building proved complicated and expensive. WeLive had issues like lack of natural light, building code restrictions, and insufficient plumbing. Last-minute changes were made before opening 110 Wall Street in 2016.

• To fill WeLive units, WeWork employees were offered discounted rent of $500/month to share studios. But finance projections showed the business might not be economically viable at higher rents.

• WeLive was one of many concepts Neumann wanted to expand WeWork into, like WeLearn, WeBike, WeEat, WeMove. He even hired someone to design a signature WeWork fragrance.

• But WeLive and other expansions struggled to materialize as quickly and profitably as WeWork’s core office rental business.

• WeWork pursued many side projects and new business ideas beyond its core office rental business, such as energy drinks, a film studio, and private clubs. Many employees felt these were distracting and took focus away from WeWork’s main operations.

• Adam Neumann was very interested in acquisitions and buying companies. WeWork looked at buying Etsy and Magnises but ended up acquiring Case, an architectural software company, in 2015. Many Case employees were skeptical of the acquisition.

• WeWork made some early preparations for an IPO in 2015 but Adam was reluctant to go public out of fear of losing control.

• WeWork raised $600 million from Hony Capital in China in late 2015. Some board members objected as they thought China expansion was risky but Adam was excited by the challenge. The deal valued WeWork at $16 billion.

• The private fundraising bonanza allowed WeWork to keep growing rapidly without having to go public right away, even though it was still losing lots of money.

• Jackie Hockersmith started working at WeWork in January 2016. At orientation, she was given Setting the Table, a book arguing that treating people with respect is key to business success.

• A few days later, Hockersmith attended WeWork’s winter Summit held in an unfinished building. There were motivational speeches, parties, and over-the-top antics from Adam Neumann.

• The next day, a snowstorm hit but WeWork rented out hotel rooms so the Summit could continue. There was more partying at WeLive with executives drinking and smoking marijuana.

• Artie Minson, WeWork’s new president and COO, tried to bring more professionalism and sobriety to the company’s projections as it moved towards an IPO. He told Adam to stop his reckless antics.

• WeWork began hiring more experienced executives from outside Adam’s inner circle, though some like the CMO left quickly, finding the culture chaotic.

• Adam continued to promote WeWork as more than just an office rental company, focusing on the community and network effects in the press.

• WeWork was struggling to deliver on its promises of building a thriving physical and social community. Its tech infrastructure was patchwork, it had security flaws, and engagement on its internal social network was low.

• As WeWork grew rapidly, it was bleeding money from high spending, discounts, and vacant spaces. Adam Neumann warned employees about excessive spending but was seen as hypocritical due to his lavish lifestyle.

• Joanna Strange, an employee frustrated with WeWork’s culture, leaked emails about layoffs and financial struggles. This exposed that WeWork was not immune to realities of the office leasing business.

• The leaks made WeWork paranoid, as it scrambled to identify the source and shore up information security. But it validated concerns that WeWork’s high valuation was disconnected from its financial realities.

• WeWork continued expanding at a breakneck, unsustainable pace, while suffering from cultural issues, financial losses, and challenges living up to its branding promises. The stage was set for larger problems down the line.

Based on the provided passage, it seems that Masayoshi Son, the founder of Softbank, gave a lengthy speech envisioning how his company could use the information revolution and artificial intelligence to bring happiness to people and overcome human sorrow. He believed a technological paradigm shift was coming that would connect people and ideas globally. Son aimed to invest in entrepreneurs who shared his ambitious vision of using technology to improve the world. The passage discusses Son’s past success investing early in companies like Alibaba, his reputation for making bold bets, and his sprawling vision for Softbank’s next 300 years. Ultimately, it depicts Son as an unconventional leader looking to back founders who have world-changing aspirations aligned with his own.

• Masa Son was born in 1957 in Japan to a Korean immigrant father. He set his sights on becoming a successful businessman from a young age.

• In his teens, Masa came to California to study, graduating from UC Berkeley. He started several companies as a student, selling a translation device he had patented.

• After graduating, Masa returned to Japan and founded SoftBank, which grew into a major software distributor. He cultivated relationships with American tech leaders like Bill Gates.

• In the 1990s, SoftBank invested billions in hundreds of internet startups. Masa earned a reputation for making bold bets, some of which paid off hugely like Yahoo!.

• SoftBank lost over $70 billion when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, but Masa persisted, continuing to take risks in tech in the 2000s.

• Masa positioned himself as a bridge between the US and Japanese tech worlds. He built relationships with entrepreneurs and invested prolifically.

• Even after massive losses, Masa retained his appetite for ambitious investments and faith in the power of technology and entrepreneurship.

• Masayoshi Son (Masa), CEO of SoftBank, had a reputation for making huge, risky bets on visionary entrepreneurs like Jack Ma of Alibaba.

• In 2010, Masa laid out a 300-year vision for SoftBank, imagining it could become a telepathy company by 2300. He was looking for “Masayoshi Son 2.0” entrepreneurs to help realize this vision.

• In 2016, Adam Neumann met Masa in India and convinced him that WeWork could be an enormous global business. Masa told Adam to set his sights even higher than he imagined.

• Soon after, Masa announced a $100 billion Vision Fund, financed largely by Saudi Arabia, to invest in transformative tech companies.

• Masa saw an alignment between his 300-year vision and Adam’s ambitious goals for WeWork. Their meeting set the stage for SoftBank to invest billions in WeWork.

• The massive Vision Fund would allow Masa to accelerate his vision of the technological singularity and monetize it. Like Adam, Masa made huge bets based on his belief in entrepreneurs’ visions rather than traditional business metrics.

• SoftBank and its Vision Fund had taken large stakes in banks, railroads, and airlines. Masa liked to think of the Vision Fund’s companies as a “flock of migratory birds flying in formation.”

• Masa was impressed by WeWork’s rapid expansion and saw it as an opportunity for the Vision Fund to invest billions in real estate. After a 12-minute tour of WeWork, Masa sketched out a $4 billion investment.

• Some at SoftBank doubted the wisdom of investing so much in WeWork, seeing it more as a real estate company than a tech company. But Masa was convinced by Adam’s vision and pushed for an even bigger investment.

• To satisfy Masa’s demands, Adam pushed his team to make increasingly unrealistic growth projections. SoftBank largely accepted these projections and closed the huge investment despite some skepticism internally.

• Masa encouraged Adam to think even bigger and aggressively expand WeWork’s footprint tenfold. He told Adam not to be afraid to use crazy marketing tactics to drive growth.

• In January 2017, WeWork held its third annual Summit in Los Angeles, flying all 2,000 employees there for a weekend of parties and bonding. This signaled the end of the cost-cutting “Managing the Nickel” era.

• The Summit took place right before Trump’s inauguration, which was disturbing to many WeWork employees. Some attended the Women’s March in LA during the Summit, which angered WeWork’s lawyer Jen Berrent. She accused them of making a selfish “‘Me Over We’ decision” by doing so.

• Adam Neumann received an invitation to the White House from Jared Kushner, a fellow young real estate developer he was friendly with. During the campaign, Adam had boasted of his connection to Kushner and said he had suggested WeWork could redesign the VA hospitals if Trump won.

• After Trump’s win, Adam toned down his liberal messaging and removed mentions of social impact from the WeWork pitch deck. He realized the new administration represented potential opportunities.

• With SoftBank’s money secured, Adam seemed calmer and the chaos at WeWork settled down. But he also cashed out $361 million in stock, funding an increasingly lavish lifestyle with multiple homes.

• Adam’s surfing trips showed how he liked using expensive equipment and help to conquer nature easily, rather than the patience and struggle real surfing required. This was symbolic of his desire for shortcuts in business as well.

• Adam Neumann was inspired by two models of success in the late 2010s: Masayoshi Son and Donald Trump. Both exhibited boldness, hubris, and a willingness to take risks.

• Like Trump, Adam adopted an authoritarian leadership style, demanding absolute loyalty and surrounding himself with yes-men. He also invoked “fake news” to dismiss criticism.

• From Masa, Adam adopted a “blitzscaling” mentality - growing at all costs to establish market dominance. He began making bold investments copied from Masa’s Vision Fund playbook.

• Adam’s ambition and ego grew exponentially. He claimed WeWork would have more impact than governments and mused he could someday be “president of the world.”

• Adam believed WeWork could solve major world problems like the refugee crisis. But employees felt he lacked nuance and oversimplified complex issues.

• In a 2017 commencement speech, Adam advised graduates to have a purpose and make a profit, yet WeWork was far from profitable itself.

• Overall, Adam’s increasing grandiosity and detachment from business fundamentals foreshadowed WeWork’s coming crash. His embrace of Masa’s blitzscaling and Trumpian leadership proved a toxic combination.

• A few weeks after WeWork’s huge SoftBank deal, Jamie Hodari of competitor Industrious met with Adam Neumann early one morning before a flight. Neumann tried to get Hodari to partner with WeWork, threatening to undercut Industrious with free rent offers if he refused.

• Hodari did not accept the offer, doubting Neumann would actually lose that much money competing with discounts.

• WeWork employees like Lindsey Isbell were then sent to cities like Atlanta to poach Industrious customers with lavish free rent offers. This was one front in a broader marketing assault against competitors.

• WeWork targeted other rivals like Knotel and Bond Collective in similar ways, sending employees to take tours and poach tenants with big discounts.

• Neumann was furious when rival The Office Group was acquired by Blackstone, and claimed to have “destroyed” them with his competitive tactics.

• Lawsuits were another tactic, with WeWork claiming trademark infringement against competitors with similar names like UrWork.

• The competitive tactics undercut WeWork’s lofty rhetoric about changing the world and doing what you love. Rivals saw Neumann as pretending to be something he was not.

• SoftBank’s massive investment allowed WeWork to pursue incredibly aggressive growth, far beyond what was financially prudent. They were flooded with capital and pushed to expand at all costs.

• This distorted the market, making it nearly impossible for competitors to keep up with WeWork’s relentless expansion and heavy subsidies. It introduced a new model of “capital as a moat” rather than sustainable business practices.

• WeWork loosened diligence, overpaid for space, and offered astronomical commissions, bringing in little to no revenue on deals. Hiring and operations remained chaotic as everything was focused on growth.

• Benchmark partners grew concerned about Adam Neumann’s leadership, but didn’t want to oust another founder after the Uber situation. They critiqued his strategies but had limited power.

• WeWork’s approach epitomized the prevailing “blitzscaling” mentality - prioritizing rapid growth over sustainability. The Vision Fund allowed companies to disregard profitability and normal business rules.

• There were clear risks to this irresponsible growth, but the forces of the time pushed Adam to pursue it aggressively despite warnings. The money distorted incentives.

It appears the passage summarizes the following key points:

• Adam Neumann met with Elon Musk to propose a partnership where WeWork could help build communities and living spaces for humans on Mars, but Musk was not interested.

• WeWork was trying to establish itself as a tech company and win over Silicon Valley, including hiring engineers and leasing expensive office space, but was struggling to attract top tech talent and build out its internal software systems.

• WeWork claimed it was developing a technological “platform” and using data to improve its spaces, but the results were underwhelming so far.

• Overall, WeWork wanted the validation and valuation of a tech company but was having difficulty convincing Silicon Valley it was one, beyond just using office spaces.

• Adam Neumann acquired several companies in an attempt to grow WeWork and compete with the likes of Airbnb, including Meetup, a coding academy, a marketing company, and Wavegarden, which makes wave pools for surfing.

• The acquisitions confused WeWork employees, who didn’t understand how some of them, like the $13.8 million surf wave company, fit into WeWork’s business model. Many felt Adam was just trying to spend Masa’s money.

• Adam also tried to buy other startups like Slack, Zoom, and Comfy, a building management software company. The Comfy founders wanted cash, not just WeWork stock, which Adam refused, leading to a tense negotiation.

• While WeWork was acquiring companies, its own technology projects were not proving very successful in generating revenue or providing a competitive advantage. The engineering team grew a lot but struggled to build anything that really moved the needle.

• Overall, Adam’s attempt to spend his way into the Silicon Valley elite through acquisitions was seen as haphazard and confusing by employees. The deals did little to help WeWork’s core business or justify its massive valuation.

• In 2017, WeWork suddenly launched an elementary school called WeGrow without much preparation. It was the idea of Rebekah Neumann, Adam Neumann’s wife. The school started with just 7 students in one classroom.

• Rebekah envisioned WeGrow growing into a global network of private schools, allowing families to move around the world while keeping their kids in WeGrow schools. The lack of planning and grand vision surprised WeWork employees.

• Rebekah positioned herself as a founder of WeGrow and WeWork, though she had not been involved with WeWork in its early days. This new positioning and mixing of spirituality into the business concerned some employees.

• Rebekah hired friends rather than experienced educators to run WeGrow. The launch was chaotic, with priorities shifting constantly. The focus seemed to be on things like shoes rather than curriculum.

• WeGrow was emblematic of WeWork’s increasing grandiosity under Adam Neumann’s leadership and lack of planning. Rebekah’s sudden prominence and blending of spirituality into the business also worried employees.

• In 2017, WeWork leased an entire 11-story building it operated to IBM to house 600 employees. However, the building had issues like spotty Wi-Fi and broken elevators.

• It turned out the building was owned by Adam Neumann, who had purchased it for $70 million before leasing it to WeWork, his own company. This was an ethically dubious conflict of interest situation.

• Neumann had been secretly collecting rent from WeWork for years by being a part-owner of some of the buildings WeWork leased. For example, he co-owned WeWork’s Varick Street location and made $25+ million when they sold it after 2 years.

• The WeWork board had previously pushed back on Neumann trying to buy part of a Chicago building WeWork would lease, citing conflict of interest. But once Neumann gained control of the board, he was able to continue this practice of self-dealing.

• By 2018, Neumann had made over $100 million this way by leasing WeWork buildings he had an ownership stake in back to his own company. This frustrated employees who saw the conflict of interest.

In summary, Adam Neumann secretly profited millions by owning buildings he leased to WeWork, his own company - a clear conflict of interest the board initially tried to stop but later acquiesced to once he gained more control.

• WeWork began buying buildings through a new arm called WeWork Property Advisors, spending over $850 million on Lord & Taylor’s former flagship store in New York.

• The plan was to raise up to $100 billion from investors to buy more buildings. This was seen as a way to rapidly increase WeWork’s valuation, since owning real estate would boost revenue and be valued at a high multiple.

• Adam Neumann brought in experienced real estate executive Rich Gomel, likely as a potential future CEO to replace Neumann. But Neumann ended up marginalizing Gomel by putting him in charge of the new real estate division.

• Other experienced executives like Artie Minson clashed with Neumann over his reckless spending and high-risk strategies. Neumann shuffled executives in and out of his inner circle frequently.

• Jen Berrent became Neumann’s top lieutenant, controlling legal and HR. She developed a reputation as Neumann’s “henchwoman” who helped him consolidate power and suppress dissent, like ongoing litigation against a former employee who criticized the company.

• Adam Neumann valued Jen Berrent for her legal sharpness and loyalty. At a 2018 executive retreat, Adam called out executives who joined him surfing as “warriors”, exemplifying his preference for loyalists.

• WeWork was filled with Adam’s friends and family in leadership roles. Nepotism was joked about but accepted.

• WeWork held its 2018 Summit in New York, announcing its shift to pursue large enterprise clients with a new “Powered by We” offering. This brought some internal debate but Adam insisted it was necessary.

• Miguel McKelvey, WeWork’s co-founder, moved from design lead to Chief Culture Officer. His role had diminished as the company grew, and he was not entirely comfortable with the public-facing expectations.

• The “Powered by We” pitch argued WeWork could help solve culture problems like Uber’s. Miguel objected to the notion WeWork was “selling out” to big business - “Don’t they need us too?”

• WeWork wanted to sell not just office space but also cultural transformation to major corporations. The new “chief culture officer” role was key in this pitch.

• Miguel McKelvey was Adam Neumann’s co-founder at WeWork, but preferred to stay out of the spotlight and let Adam be the face of the company. Miguel was skeptical of Adam’s ambition at first but came to accept it when he realized the impact they could have together.

• As WeWork grew, Miguel struggled to adapt his quieter persona to inspire large crowds like Adam could. Miguel took on the role of Chief Culture Officer to help foster WeWork’s culture as it expanded globally.

• Miguel had no HR experience but aimed to get to know WeWork’s thousands of employees. He wanted to “operationalize love” as a slogan for employee culture.

• Adam put people in unfamiliar positions, like fashion designer Adam Kimmel as Chief Creative Officer. Kimmel instituted an aesthetic overhaul.

• There were issues with Kimmel not meeting with female employees due to his relationship rule. Neumann challenged HR for wanting to fire Kimmel over this.

• Adam surprised everyone by announcing WeWork would ban meat. The rationale was vague and environmentally it made little sense. Employees resented the top-down proclamation.

• The meat ban exemplified how WeWork still revolved entirely around Adam despite attempts to empower other leaders. Adam’s charm worked on employees, but audacious unilateral moves like the meat ban caused backlash.

• Augusto Contreras joined WeWork in 2018 and quickly fell in love with the company’s culture and mission. He proposed to his girlfriend at WeWork’s Summer Camp that year, feeling like he was “surrounded by my extended family” despite only being at WeWork for 7 months.

• WeWork’s 2018 Summer Camp was its last. Adam Neumann and his wife Rebekah had extensive demands for their VIP campsite, including luxury vehicles, dedicated staff, and hundreds of dollars worth of liquor. This exemplified the over-the-top culture.

• At Summer Camp, employees treated Adam like a cult leader, chanting his name and saying he was changing the world. Adam embraced this reverence, telling employees to reach out to him directly if they were suicidal.

• The Summer Camp illustrates how WeWork’s culture had cult-like elements that quickly engulfed employees. This “cult vibe” was working well for the business in terms of productivity and retention, even as it took a toll on employees’ personal lives.

• At WeWork’s 2018 Summer Camp, Adam Neumann proposed ambitious goals like solving world hunger and housing all orphaned children within 2 years. His wife Rebekah said a woman’s role is to help men manifest their calling.

• WeWork was facing ongoing allegations of gender discrimination and sexual harassment, including a lawsuit from a former employee Ruby Anaya. The company responded poorly, with Miguel McKelvey sending an email claiming she was let go for poor performance.

• Longtime employee Augusto Contreras was fired for charging meals with his fiancée to his company card, despite WeWork’s claims of being a family. He felt betrayed.

• Meanwhile, SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son was touting WeWork as the next Alibaba and moving SoftBank’s headquarters into WeWork offices. But WeWork was still losing billions and running out of cash.

• To secure new debt financing, WeWork had to release more sober financial statements acknowledging its history of losses. The era of magical thinking needed to end.

• WeWork was losing a lot of money but used creative accounting metrics like “Community Adjusted EBITDA” to make its financial picture look better. This was widely criticized as an attempt to mislead investors.

• SoftBank and WeWork were planning a massive new investment called Project Fortitude, which would value WeWork at over $40 billion and make Adam Neumann one of the richest people in the world.

• The deal would buy out many existing WeWork shareholders, leaving just Neumann and SoftBank as the main partners going forward. This would allow Neumann to maintain control.

• However, the deal was contingent on SoftBank not investing in any WeWork competitors, and Neumann not leaving to start a competitor.

• The investment would enable WeWork’s continued rapid growth and expansion into areas like real estate purchases and acquisitions. Neumann even wanted to rebrand WeWork as the “We Company.”

• The deal was threatened by the political fallout from the murder of Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudi government, given SoftBank’s close Saudi ties and the Saudi funding of the Vision Fund that would finance the WeWork investment. This made Neumann and others wary about close association with the Saudis.

• Adam Neumann was in talks with Saudi Arabia about incorporating WeWork into Neom, a futuristic city being built in Saudi Arabia. He believed WeWork could play a major role and be worth billions.

• Adam thought he, Jared Kushner, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman were millennial leaders who could bring peace to the Middle East. But the Saudis were not as interested in WeWork as Adam believed.

• SoftBank and Adam agreed to a new $3 billion investment and worked on a larger deal called Fortitude where SoftBank would invest up to $20 billion. But many within SoftBank opposed the deal as too risky.

• As negotiations continued, WeWork prepared for a potential IPO as a backup plan to show SoftBank it had options.

• In December, the Fortitude deal looked done but then SoftBank pulled out due to the falling stock market and opposition within SoftBank. Adam was stunned as he thought the deal was secured.

Here are the key points from the passage:

• In December 2018, after the collapse of the Fortitude deal with SoftBank, Adam Neumann met with Masayoshi Son in Hawaii. Son agreed to invest an additional $2 billion in WeWork, but none of it would come from the Vision Fund.

• WeWork filed a draft S-1 with the SEC at the end of December to maintain certain benefits as a “young” company. This pushed the IPO process forward, despite Adam hoping to avoid it.

• At the WeWork Summit in January 2019, the company tried to spin the collapse of Fortitude positively. The rebrand to The We Company was announced as a distraction. The new mission statement “to elevate the world’s consciousness” came from Rebekah and her spiritual beliefs.

• Many employees were confused by aspects of the Summit, like Rebekah’s odd interview with Anthony Kiedis. The collapse of Theranos made some worry about similarities between the two companies.

• But Adam remained confident, comparing WeWork’s challenges to the immense time and pressure needed to create a diamond.

In summary, after the failure of the SoftBank deal, WeWork pushed forward with its IPO plans but tried to reframe the narrative by rebranding and announcing a vague new mission statement. Many employees were uncertain about the company’s direction.

• Wallace, a longtime WeWork employee, reflects on the company’s meteoric growth since 2011 but says Adam Neumann was not surprised, given his “limitless ambition”.

• The author tours a WeWork location in New York and gets calls from current/former employees wanting to share experiences about the company’s issues like poor corporate culture and exaggerated tech aspirations.

• Many in real estate happily cashed WeWork’s checks but were hesitant to criticize Neumann publicly, fearing his growing power or wanting to work with him.

• Jake Schwartz of General Assembly sees WeWork’s risk-taking as a “long con” that signals problematic values about success to future entrepreneurs.

• Neumann tells the author he’s eager for the IPO but remains secretive about numbers, still dreaming big with plans for a future “WeCity”.

• The author explores Neumann’s luxurious lifestyle and quest to expand into LA with a flashy former talent agency building, signs of excess before a risky IPO.

• Adam Neumann celebrated his 40th birthday with a 3-week global trip on his private jet with his family. WeWork employees spent days downloading entertainment for the kids.

• The trip started in the Dominican Republic for a week of surfing. They then headed to Europe, canceling a planned stop in Israel due to measles fears.

• During the trip, Adam negotiated with SoftBank to invest another $2 billion in WeWork at a $47 billion valuation. The deal gave SoftBank control of the company if Adam stepped down as CEO.

• WeWork was losing over $200 million per month at this point. Executives were concerned about running out of money before the IPO.

• The IPO prospectus revealed Adam’s self-dealing. He owned properties leased back to WeWork and had cashed out over $700 million ahead of the IPO.

• The IPO was delayed after the prospectus was poorly received. WeWork’s hoped-for $47 billion valuation dropped to less than $20 billion.

• Adam took out loans ahead of the failed IPO, concerned banks would stop lending to him. One loan was secured by his interest in WeWork.

• Adam was forced to resign as CEO in September after public backlash. He received a $1.7 billion golden parachute to relinquish control.

• Adam Neumann celebrated his 40th birthday in April 2019 by taking two dozen family and friends, including major WeWork investor Michael Gross, to a luxury resort in the Maldives. This extravagant trip occurred while WeWork was preparing for its IPO.

• There were disagreements within WeWork about whether to rein in spending versus expanding aggressively ahead of the IPO. Artie Minson wanted to shore up finances while Adam wanted to continue expanding rapidly.

• On April 29, WeWork officially announced plans to go public. The goal was an ambitious IPO by end of July to capitalize on market momentum.

• WeWork met with marketing firm Imagination about IPO prep. Imagination employees laughed at the timeline, saying it was impossible that quickly. But WeWork pushed ahead aggressively.

• In May, Uber’s poor IPO was an omen, worrying WeWork and SoftBank, who were big investors. But Adam believed WeWork could avoid Uber’s fate by doubling down on growth rather than pulling back.

• A key question was WeWork’s real valuation, since private valuations were meaningless. SoftBank had pushed it to $47B, but public investors would scrutinize the numbers closely. The IPO was a way to find money after private fundraising was tapped out.

• WeWork’s latest $47 billion valuation from SoftBank was murky, with half of the $2 billion investment by Masa marked at $47B and half at a lower $23B valuation. Some WeWork execs wanted to publicize the lower figure but Adam and Masa pushed the higher number.

• Big banks like JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley competed for WeWork’s IPO business, pitching potential valuations from $18B to as high as $96B. JPMorgan ultimately won with a $6B loan package contingent on a successful IPO.

• Adam tried to get investments from tech giants like Apple and Salesforce to boost WeWork’s IPO, but no deals materialized. He was more focused on their brand name than an actual partnership.

• WeWork held an analyst day in July that went well, with no tough questions and analysts asking for selfies with Adam. This restored some confidence in the IPO after the collapse of the SoftBank financing deal.

• With the banks onboard and analyst day success, WeWork was now sprinting to get its IPO paperwork ready to file to go public.

• WeWork was rushing to file its IPO prospectus (codenamed “Wingspan”) before running out of money by end of year. The goal was to go public by September 18.

• The S-1 filing contained extensive financial disclosures required by the SEC. Rebekah Neumann, Adam’s wife, took charge of the artistic side, wanting to showcase WeWork’s brand and spirit. This led to expensive professional photo shoots around the world and constant revisions that frustrated the printers.

• The filing also had to address WeWork’s governance. Adam Neumann wanted to maintain voting control through supervoting shares. JPMorgan and others pushed back on this, warning it would depress valuation, but Neumann stood firm believing in himself.

• There were concerns that Rebekah’s involvement in the IPO branding was a distraction from the urgent need to finalize the critical S-1 document. But Adam let her proceed, trusting in her vision.

• Overall, there was a rushed and chaotic process to complete a complex regulatory filing combined with an artistic branding exercise, reflecting clashing priorities as WeWork tried to thread the needle to complete its much-anticipated IPO under Adam Neumann’s singular leadership.

• WeWork’s S-1 filing for its IPO, named “Wingspan,” was released in mid-August 2019 and was met with intense criticism and mockery.

• The filing revealed massive losses ($2 billion in 2018), Adam Neumann’s self-dealing, and other problems that made WeWork look more like a family business than a serious public company.

• Google told WeWork that the negative public sentiment was the worst they had ever seen for a company in this position, and that even huge ad spending couldn’t fix it.

• Many were struck by the gap between WeWork’s lofty rhetoric about community and consciousness versus the reality of its risky underlying business model based on commercial real estate arbitrage.

• The market plunge on the day the S-1 came out underscored concerns about WeWork’s vulnerability in a downturn.

• Adam tried to reassure employees, claiming haters just didn’t understand WeWork’s mission, but many felt the business itself hadn’t been clearly explained without Adam’s salesmanship.

• The length and jargon of the S-1 seemed to obscure rather than illuminate WeWork’s business. Critics saw more family business than public company ready for scrutiny.

• In retrospect, the flawed S-1 marked the beginning of the end for WeWork’s prospects and Adam Neumann’s control.

Based on the summary,

• Working at WeWork could be very demanding and all-consuming, but Rebekah Neumann believed it was worth it.

• Rebekah relayed a story from Adam Yardeni about the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Yardeni said the serpent’s curse was not losing its legs, but losing the need to reach for anything. True satisfaction comes from striving for things just beyond your grasp.

• After WeWork filed its IPO prospectus, an investment fund analyst met with Adam Neumann and came away unimpressed. Neumann struggled to articulate what differentiated WeWork.

• In meetings with potential investors, Neumann often rambled and left little time for questions. His desperation was showing, worrying some that it was hurting WeWork’s valuation.

• Masayoshi Son summoned Neumann to Tokyo and suggested delaying the IPO due to the negative response. But Neumann wanted to push forward, leading to disagreement between the two.

• Neumann held an all-hands meeting to rally employees, but many were growing disillusioned knowing IPO spoils would go to top executives like Neumann.

Here are the key points from the summary:

• Adam Neumann charged WeWork $5.9 million for We-related trademarks, which raised concerns for the SEC. The SEC also questioned WeWork’s assumption of 100% workspace utilization as unrealistic.

• The SEC took issue with WeWork’s use of the non-GAAP metric “contribution margin”, which excluded many real costs like sales, marketing, and full lease costs. WeWork defended it but eventually had to make changes.

• Neumann went on an international roadshow to pitch investors on the IPO, but faced skepticism. By early September, banks were telling WeWork the valuation may have to be $20 billion or less, far below the previous $47 billion.

• Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized WeWork’s valuation drop as an example of how private markets are screwing over public investors.

• Overall, WeWork faced major obstacles with the SEC, valuation concerns, and lack of investor interest leading up to the planned IPO in September 2019. Neumann and the company were forced to make changes but struggled to generate excitement.

• AOC criticized WeWork’s massive valuation drop from $47 billion to $20 billion, saying it would fleece everyday investors if the IPO went through at the higher valuation.

• Adam became paranoid as negative info was leaked, holding meetings at his home and suspecting surveillance. He brought back a former assistant, Medina Bardhi, to help navigate the situation.

• Much of the IPO criticism centered on the oversized influence of Adam and Rebekah Neumann. Adam brushed off governance concerns at a town hall.

• Adam eventually agreed to concessions like removing his supervoting shares and Rebekah’s role in succession planning. WeWork still hoped to IPO quickly.

• But Adam struggled to film his part for the IPO roadshow video, missing multiple shoots. On the day of filming, he went off script, frustrating staffers waiting for him. The delays jeopardized getting SEC approval in time for the planned IPO.

Here is a summary of the key events:

• The morning after Adam Neumann’s chaotic roadshow taping, WeWork executives met with JPMorgan bankers who said the IPO should be postponed due to lack of investor demand.

• Adam met with Goldman Sachs bankers and resisted making further governance changes or postponing the IPO.

• JPMorgan bankers insisted Adam relinquish his extra votes and postpone the IPO to the fall when third quarter earnings might help. Adam unhappily agreed.

• At a videoconference all-hands meeting, a disheveled Adam gave a rambling speech admitting mistakes but remaining optimistic about WeWork’s future.

• The next morning, Masa learned of the damning WSJ article on Adam’s behavior. At a Vision Fund conference without Adam, consensus was that Masa had to remove him.

• Adam watched his roadshow video, unperturbed by the WSJ article, despite a similar situation leading to the ousting of another founder he invested in earlier that year.

• After Adam Neumann resigned as CEO, Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham took over as co-CEOs. They postponed the IPO indefinitely and held a town hall meeting where Minson promised employees the company would make an “all-time amazing comeback.”

• However, WeWork was in a dire financial situation without the $3 billion it had hoped to raise from the IPO. JP Morgan brought in restructuring advisors who found WeWork could run out of money by Thanksgiving without new funding. This was far worse than Neumann’s previous estimate that WeWork had 4-5 years of funding.

• Minson and Gunningham began slashing costs, removing Neumann’s friends and family from the company, closing WeGrow school, and selling off acquisitions and assets like the Gulfstream jet.

• SoftBank stepped in to bail out WeWork, first with a $1.5 billion loan and then a $9.5 billion rescue package to take majority control. This valued WeWork at just $8 billion versus the $47 billion valuation from January.

• WeWork laid off 2,400 employees as it closed non-core businesses and struggled to right-size itself. Many blamed Neumann’s mismanagement for the company’s downfall. WeWork continued struggling after the rescue package with the pandemic dealing another blow.

• After Adam Neumann stepped down, WeWork’s new leadership struggled to stabilize the company. They considered bankruptcy and worked on massive layoffs (codename “Huxley”).

• SoftBank provided a $5 billion debt financing package to save WeWork, but only if Neumann fully departed. Neumann negotiated a deal where he sold $970 million of his shares, got a $185 million consulting fee, and agreed not to start a competitor for 4 years.

• WeWork slowly unraveled after Neumann’s exit. Many employees left, headquarters emptied out, and they gave up the original location. Miguel McKelvey also eventually departed.

• Neumann moved back to Israel, seeking refuge from his damaged reputation in New York. He hoped to rebuild his image and make a comeback. In early 2020, his spokesperson reached out to set up an interview to tell Neumann’s side of the story.

Here are a few key points from the author’s note and acknowledgments:

• The book is based on over 200 interviews with WeWork executives, employees, landlords, investors, bankers, lawyers, and others. It also draws from documents, emails, recordings, news reports, and other materials.

• Many WeWork employees were eager to share their experiences, often anonymously, to ensure the full story was told. They provided invaluable insights into WeWork and the era of venture capital-funded startups in the 2010s.

• The author is thankful to his fellow journalists who reported on WeWork over the years, as their work informed and enriched this account.

• The author expresses gratitude to his researchers, fact-checkers, colleagues, mentors, and bosses over the years who helped shape his career and make this book possible.

• In particular, the author thanks the team at New York magazine, where he has spent much of his career and first started reporting on WeWork.

In summary, the note and acknowledgments highlight the extensive reporting and sources behind the book, thank those who shared their WeWork experiences, and acknowledge those who supported the author’s journalism career and work on this book.

• Reeves Wiedeman expresses gratitude to the many people who helped him write and publish this book, including editors, fact-checkers, publishers, agents, and friends who provided support.

• He thanks several editors at New York magazine by name for their guidance and support in developing and publishing articles that formed the basis for this book.

• He acknowledges his family, especially his late mother who showed him the value of community, and his wife whose “heart and intellect” shaped the book.

• Overall, the paragraph conveys the author’s appreciation for the many people and relationships that made this book possible, from conceiving the ideas to publishing the final product. It highlights the collaborative effort behind bringing a book to life.