Story of Adam Neumann and his weird company WeWork. How did this guy get so much money for such an ephemeral idea? ( )

In Billion Dollar Loser, journalist Wiedeman chronicles the rise and spectacular fall of the coworking company WeWork. The book focuses heavily on the company's high-profile and highly eccentric cofounder Adam Neumann, whose charisma was crucial for WeWork's meteoric rise and who ultimately came to become arguably the company's greatest liability.

If you enjoyed Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, this might be a good book to consider reading. It lacks some of the moral outrage of the Theranos scandals--WeWork was/is in the business of real estate leasing, not conducting medical diagnostics--but but it definitely has the same schadenfreude component and absurd reflection of the startup/venture capital world. If you want to read about truly over-the-top tech mumbo-jumbo (~elevating the world's consciousness~, ~a physical social network~) and tech personality cults, and wonder how in the world investors fell hook-line-and-sinker for the company, this is a great opportunity for you. (I also learned a lot about how processes like an IPO work, which was, independently, objectively interesting.)

The audiobook pushed it to 5 stars for me--the narrator was great, and I found it surprisingly captivating. ( )

This is a book I've been wanting to read for a while. I love reading about these types of stories. Tales of excess and skirting the edge of what is legal and appropriate among start-up types are fascinating to me and have only become more common since the 2000s and the days of Enron and the great recession.

I knew a bit about WeWork before reading this book. I started reading about them when the company started receiving scrutiny for its attempt at an IPO. My understanding from that time was that WeWork was a real estate company trying to masquerade as a tech company and it had a bit of an unusual founder, something that's not so unusual in this space. That all is basically true and this book is really just an expansion of how all that came to be.

I liked this book because it is a really good case study about one thing that really bothers me about these sorts of start-ups. Venture capitalists and eventually even some more traditional investors are willing to be sold on an idea with very little evidence it can succeed because of the charisma of the founder. These companies operate at a loss for as long as possible to maximize growth, even if that growth is completely divorced from the realities of demand in that market. The goal being that is they can operate that way for long enough, they will be so cheap in comparison that all other similar companies can't compete and then the remaining company is essentially a monopoly and can adjust prices to whatever level they want as there is no remaining competition. These companies rely on private VC funding specifically to avoid having to go public and face actual legal, regulatory, and investor scrutiny. As long as the valuation of these companies continues to rise, people are willing to support them, even if it's all smoke and mirrors.

So many of these founders, including Adam, seem to think they are best suited to know what everyone in the world wants, with seemingly no respect for ordinary human diversity. This book does a really good job showing the grandiose thinking that goes into believing that your company is uniquely capable of changing the world. This line of thinking is ridiculous in my view. All companies that think this way are operating through normal channels. There is nothing really unique here, especially since so many can't actually deliver on their promises. All these people simply want to avoid being held accountable by the limited amount of government regulation for as long as possible, the goal of businessmen since the dawn of the industrial era.

I think the story of WeWork really well illustrates my true dislike of the new economy model of business where the most important thing is inflating your stock price as much as possible while hyping up your mediocre product beyond what it really can be. I'm reading a book called Pump and Dump right now. It's about how the current model of many businesses is essentially a pump and dump scheme. Executives and founders of companies are incentivized to inflate the companies stock as much as possible and because of their preferred stocks, they are able to cash out at the top of valuation while company employees with lesser stock options as well as investors are left holding the bag when the tower of cards begins to collapse. This book was written in 2005, largely in response to Enron and the DotCom bubble. WeWork and similar companies illustrate we haven't exactly solved the problem created by those perverse incentives. ( )

I had heard of WeWork and Adam Neumann from my listening of the podcast, Pivot, with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. Scott did not have many good things to say about the company, particularly its self promoted valuation. The reader does not feel the need to root for the company or it’s owner. One does feel bad for the employees whose primary incentives were to be able to cash out options when the company goes public, as many of them were poorly paid and compensated.

I really enjoyed the book as it does read like a drama. Even though I knew how the story was going to end, I eagerly read till the very end. I did read Super Pumped (Uber) and Bad Blood (Theranos) but I enjoyed the telling of this business story much better.

The rise and fall of Adam Neumann is avery compelling. I agree with the Goodreads reviewer that described him as a “New Age jackass.” Neumann (nor his wife) are sympathetic figures. They were friendly with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner so the hubris probably infected them too. There are plenty of stories of the greed and poor behavior of the Neumanns captured in the book.

I have to question the business judgement of investors, banks and other business people who propped up WeWork with billions of dollars.

Really great business book that does read like a novel...

( )

Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey started an office leasing business in 2010 in New York City. Both Adam and Miguel were entrepreneurs who were running business at the time of their acquaintance. Miguel had an architecture degree from the University of Oregon and Adam had dropped out of Baruch College. But Adam had vision, and for the next ten years Adam's vision propelled We Work to a company valued at over $47 billion. Unfortunately, the vision wasn't enough to sustain the business, and Adam was forced from the company in October 2019. Billion Dollar Loser tells the story of the rise and fall of Adam Neumann and We Work. We Work began as an ideal way creating work communities. Every We Work building featured office space designed to promote interaction among tenants and increase productivity through networking within We Work. Through tireless promotion, Neumann succeeded in making deals and attracting investors. As We Work grew, Neumann expanded his belief in We Work as a vehicle for everything from self-awareness to world peace. We Work continued to raise money from investors even as the company failed to make a profit. Neumann caught the attention of Japanese investor Mayoshi Masa. Masa poured $10 million into We Work. The investment allowed Neumann to persuade other investors to sink money into We Work. We Work added hundreds of workers and expanded its real estate portfolio. Neumann even bought a private jet and several homes. But the rate of spending was unsustainable. When We Work was forced to go public in 2019 to stave off insolvency, the reckless spending and Neumann's erratic behavior became public knowledge. Neumann's charisma no longer persuaded investors, and the IPO was cancelled and Neumann was forced to leave the company he had founded. The book offers a glimpse at how money chases the opportunity to make more money. Neumann and his wife Rebekah walked away from We Work with millions of dollars. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for scores of people who joined We Work in order to be a part of the vision Adam Neumann failed to bring to fruition.