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The Cult of We
The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion | Eliot Brown, Maureen Farrell
5 posts | 9 read | 6 to read
The riveting inside story of WeWork and the brash founder who briefly turned it into the country's most valuable startup before his own epic unraveling, from the Wall Street Journal reporters whose scoops hastened the company's downfall. In 2001, Adam Neumann arrived in New York after five years as a conscript in the Israeli navy. Just over fifteen years later, he had transformed himself into the charismatic CEO of a company worth $47 billion--at least on paper. With his long hair and feel-good mantras, the 6-foot-five Neumann, who grew up in part on a kibbutz, looked the part of a messianic Silicon Valley entrepreneur. The vision he offered was mesmerizing: a radical reimagining of work space for a new generation, with its fluid jobs and lax office culture. He called it WeWork. Though the company was merely subleasing "amenity"-filled office space to freelancers and small startups, Neumann marketed it like a revolutionary product--and investors swooned. As billions of funding dollars poured in, Neumann's ambitions grew limitless. WeWork wasn't just an office space provider, he boasted. It would build schools, create WeWork cities, even colonize Mars. Could he, Neumann wondered from the ice bath he'd installed in his office, become the first trillionaire or a world leader? In pursuit of its founder's grandiose vision, the company spent money faster than it could bring it in. From his private jet, sometimes clouded with marijuana smoke, the CEO scoured the globe for more capital. In late 2019, just weeks before WeWork's highly publicized IPO, a Hail Mary effort to raise cash, everything fell apart. Neumann was ousted from his company--but still was poised to walk away a billionaire. Calling to mind the recent demise of Theranos and the hubris of the dotcom era bust, WeWork's extraordinary rise and staggering implosion were fueled by disparate characters in a financial system blind to its risks, from a Japanese billionaire with designs on becoming the Warren Buffet of tech, to leaders at JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs who seemed intoxicated by a Silicon Valley culture where sensible business models lost out to youthful CEOs who promised "disruption." Why did some of the biggest names in banking and venture capital buy the hype? And what does the future hold for Silicon Valley "unicorns"? Wall Street Journal reporters Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell explore these questions in this definitive account of WeWork's unraveling.
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Cinfhen
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Pickpick

Just realized I never reviewed my IRL June bookclub choice.This was a fascinating read. Much like Bad Blood and Empire of Pain, the authors (journalist) break down and humanize another example of corporate greed. WeWork is the story of Adam Neumann, a charismatic charmer with little business background or expertise who was able to dazzle and fool investors into bankrolling huge amounts of money into his company without it every being profitable.

Cinfhen Absolutely riveting!!!! (edited) 2y
squirrelbrain Ooh I have this on Kindle! 2y
Cinfhen I think you‘ll find it very readable @squirrelbrain 🤓 2y
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britt_brooke Sounds up my alley! #stacked 2y
Cinfhen It‘s a bit heavy on the business side @britt_brooke which a few of the bookclub ladies have mumbled about but I still found it fascinating! Apparently this one is more about Neuman‘s shenanigans 2y
britt_brooke @Cinfhen I like the business-y stuff, so hopefully I‘ll be good. Thanks for the heads up! 2y
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Oryx
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Picked this one up for 99p today, and it's proving to be addictive reading so far

squirrelbrain I got this one too… I‘m sure it will languish on the TBR for a while though….🤷‍♀️ 3y
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Verity
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Pickpick

How have I been gone for four weeks? Whoopsie Daisy!

Anyway: I‘d already read Billion Dollar Loser, which also covers We Work and yet I still got new perspectives from this. This answers some of the questions Wiedeman didn‘t – partly because it had more time to see what happened, but also takes a bigger look (I think) at how the financing of these sorts of companies is done and why investors went for unicorn start ups that weren‘t making profits.

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Verity
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Latest non-fiction reading!

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Megabooks
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Mehso-so

I read a fair number of business books, and this one didn‘t do it for me. I much preferred Billion Dollar Loser (tagged below), which is more a profile of CEO Adam Neumann. His eccentricities are the star of this story, not the figures from funding rounds. I just found myself tuning out. This is heresy for me because I still love her, but Therese Plummer was not a good narrator match for the #audiobook.

Cinfhen Appreciate your review!! I bought Billion Dollar Loser on a #DailyDeal a few months ago!! Must get to it 3y
Megabooks @Cinfhen 👍🏻👍🏻 3y
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