The Cult of We: WeWork Adam Neumann and the Great Startup Delusion

WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER If I had to make a list of top five business books of all time this would be on it. Its just so damn engrossing.Christopher Mims Wall Street Journal tech columnistThe definitive inside story of WeWork its audacious founder and what its epic unraveling says about a financial system drunk on the elixir of Silicon Valley innovationfrom the Wall Street Journal correspondents(recently featured in the WeWork Hulu documentary)whose scoop-filled reporting hastened the companys downfall.LONGLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES AND MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDWeWork would be worth $10 trillion more than any other company in the world. It wasnt just an office space provider. It was a tech companyan AI startup even. Its WeGrow schools and WeLive residences would revolutionize education and housing. One day mused founder Adam Neumann a Middle East peace accord would be signed in a WeWork. The company might help colonize Mars. And Neumann would become the worlds first trillionaire.This was the vision of Neumann and his primary cheerleader SoftBanks Masayoshi Son. In hindsight their ambition for the company whose primary business was subletting desks in slickly designed offices seems like madness. Why did so many intelligent peoplefrom venture capitalists to Wall Street elitefall for the hype? And how did WeWork go so wrong?In little more than a decade Neumann transformed himself from a struggling baby clothes salesman into the charismatic hard-partying CEO of a company worth $47 billionon paper. With his long hair and feel-good mantras the six-foot-five Israeli transplant looked the part of a messianic truth teller. Investors swooned and billions poured in.Neumann dined with the CEOs of JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs entertaining a parade of power brokers desperate to get a slice of what he was selling: the countrys most valuable startup a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and a generation-defining moment.Soon however WeWork was burning through cash faster than Neumann could bring it in. From his private jet sometimes clouded with marijuana smoke he scoured the globe for more capital. Then as WeWork readied a Hail Mary IPO it all fell apart. Nearly $40 billion of value vaporized in one of corporate Americas most spectacular meltdowns.Peppered with eye-popping never-before-reported details The Cult of We is the gripping story of careless and often absurd peopleand the financial system they have made.

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