Adam Neumann
Founder of WeWork, Flowcarbon, and Flow.
Corporate History
WeWork
Trademarked the brand “We” and sold it to his company for US$5.9 million.[1] WeWork managed to get the money back, after a public outcry.[2]
Nevertheless, Neumann made off with over $1 billion USD during the 2019 collapse of WeWork, even as the company had to fire over 6,000 workers.
According to former executives of WeWork: “Nothing could happen without Adam"; "You don’t bring bad news to the cult leader."[3]
Investors
FAWNED OVER BY A STAR-STUDDED roster of investors, Neumann had managed to collect more than $10 billion over nine years, one of the largest investment hauls ever for a U.S. startup. Finance giants like Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, and Wellington were investors. Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba; Steve Cohen, the hedge fund giant; Harvard University— they all had bet on Neumann. Wall Street was even more enamored: the CEOs of both JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs lavished him with attention. And Masayoshi Son, chairman of the Tokyo-based SoftBank Group and the most prolific tech investor in the entire world, had taken a particular shine to him, anointing Neumann the planet’s next great tech CEO. Admirers compared Neumann to Jeff Bezos or Steve Jobs—a business titan who could see around corners and would chart a revolutionary course.[4]
Customers
By the beginning of 2019, WeWork had grown enormous, with 425 locations in twenty-seven countries around the globe. Its work spaces, with their instantly recognizable bluish glass-walled offices and common areas that looked like Brooklyn coffee shops, were rented to more than 400,000 people. Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft were snapping up space from WeWork to house their own employees.[5]
FlowCarbon
International Politics
Messiah Complex
In another meeting, Neumann said three people were going to save the world: bin Salman, Jared Kushner, and Neumann. Shortly after the news broke in October 2018 that Saudi agents tortured dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and carved his body with a bone saw, likely on order from the crown prince himself, Neumann told George W. Bush’s former national security adviser Stephen Hadley that everything could be worked out if bin Salman had the right mentor. Confused, Hadley asked who that person might be, according to a source familiar with the meeting. Neumann paused for a moment and said: “Me.”[6]
Sources
- ↑ https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-property-wework-namechange-idUSL1N2H50YS
- ↑ https://www.businessinsider.com/wework-ceo-gives-back-millions-from-we-trademark-after-criticism-2019-9?r=US&IR=T
- ↑ https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/11/inside-the-fall-of-wework
- ↑ "The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, And the Great Startup Delusion," p. 16 (EBook)
- ↑ "The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, And the Great Startup Delusion," p. 16 (EBook)
- ↑ https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/11/inside-the-fall-of-wework