To maintain investors’ faith in him, Neumann generated a formidable stream of Silicon Valley clichés. WeWork was not a company but a “platform.” WeWork would benefit from “network effects.” WeWork was a “first mover,” a “thriving ecosystem,” “digitally enhanced,” and “scalable.”[19] To observers who were not inclined to think too critically, perhaps this sounded persuasive: after all, Silicon Valley behemoths from Google to Facebook had pumped themselves up to a commanding size before they had worried about profits. But the truth was that there was nothing particularly digital about an
...more
