Billion Dollar Loser Quotes

“You get to a question of, is that what capitalism is supposed to do?” Schwartz asked. “There’s so many little ways that a company like this tells the next generation of entrepreneurs what success looks like. One way to ask this question is, in the system we have set up, do the people who were successful reflect the values we want? Should we care, or not care, if someone makes a lot of money exploiting the system?” Schwartz didn’t mind if Adam got rich; he wanted to get rich, too. “The reason I care is that if the most successful companies are the ones that just drive really hard, and play fast and loose with the truth,” Schwartz said, “then maybe the whole idea that capitalism is great, or even useful, is really challenging to uphold.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“One person at WeWork wasn’t worried about the company’s future. “Do you know how long it takes a diamond to be created?” Adam asked a reporter during Summit. “Half a million to four million years. I love that analogy—to make something very precious, you have to apply a lot of pressure.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“He had watched a rat enter and exit the room by flattening itself like a pancake to squeeze beneath the door; he googled “Can rats flatten themselves?” discovered that they could, and devised a solution to close the gap.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“The long hours at the hospital could be exhausting, and one night after work, Avivit was reading the tale of Snow White as a bedtime story to her daughter when she blurted out, “Snow White had growth in her liver and went to hospice.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“The nature of the private markets is that if nine smart investors pass, it only takes one relatively dumber investor, and suddenly we’re valued at $16 billion,” the finance team member said”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“Adam viewed the costs of WeWork’s expansion as an obstacle with a simple solution. He told potential investors that WeWork could grow at whatever rate they wanted, so long as they were willing to fund it: demand for the company’s offices was so strong that the only restriction on its growth was how much money it could spend building new ones. “Adam’s attitude was, ‘Tell me how much revenue you want me to produce, and I’ll tell you how much capital I need,’” one member of WeWork’s fundraising team said”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“They suffered from a fear of missing out on the next Facebook or Uber or Netflix. “There is a fool in every market,” Gurley wrote, quoting Warren Buffett. “If you don’t know who it is, it is probably you.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

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― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Fall of WeWork

“The reason I care is that if the most successful companies are the ones that just drive really hard, and play fast and loose with the truth,” Schwartz said, “then maybe the whole idea that capitalism is great, or even useful, is really challenging to uphold.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“Steve Jobs had once asked his most senior employees to come up with a list of Apple’s top ten priorities, then said the company could manage only three.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“But Adam had another reason to be excited. A deal this large would typically diminish the founders’ control over the company. Miguel wasn’t especially concerned, having already transferred some control to his cofounder. But as part of the deal, Adam engineered a change to WeWork’s charter with the help of Jen Berrent, WeWork’s new general counsel, that gave him ten votes for each share of the company he owned. The arrangement would give him roughly 65 percent of the votes on any company matter. These “supervoting” shares had become popular in Silicon Valley, where founders feared losing control of their companies. Mark Zuckerberg had negotiated a similar deal, as had Travis Kalanick at Uber. Many investors were so eager to get in on the small group of start-ups that could make plausible arguments for world domination that they often believed they had no choice but to accept such founder-friendly terms. But giving so much control of a company to an entrepreneur who had never run a business of this size before was a risk. As the deal was finalized, Bruce Dunlevie, Neumann’s first major investor, tried pushing back on the arrangement. But Benchmark wasn’t eager to lose favor with Neumann, and it didn’t have much standing in the fight, having just given Travis Kalanick similar control at Uber. Dunlevie relented, but not before offering a warning to Berrent and WeWork’s board. “I’ll just leave you with this thought,” Dunlevie said. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“Adam would say later that it was around this time that he began to struggle with his ego.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“But functional Wi-Fi was a basic office requirement, not a valuation multiplier.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“Rebekah spoke about their embrace of the sharing economy and lack of interest in material wealth. “We believe in this new ‘asset-light lifestyle,’ ” Rebekah told one interviewer, at a time when the Neumanns owned five homes. “We want to live off of the land. I’m like a real hippie.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Fall of WeWork

“When he tried to offer an example of how WeWork separated itself from other office space operators, he mentioned how much fun people had at its recent Halloween party, where Busta Rhymes performed.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Fall of WeWork

“Anyone who got in the way of WeWork’s expansion was liable to be shoved aside: WeWork kicked two nonprofits out of their offices in downtown San Francisco when it offered to pay the building’s landlord double the rent in order to take over the space from the organizations, both of which worked to prevent tenants from being evicted from their homes in San Francisco.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“A lot of people got caught up in the hype and Adam’s charisma, but when you looked at the numbers, it was always kind of clear.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“WeWork’s core business was simple. It leased space, cut it up, and rented out each slice with an upcharge for hip design, flexibility, and regular happy hours. Other companies had risen, and in many cases fallen, by offering more or less the same service, which amounted to a straightforward arbitrage: lease long, rent short, and collect the margin.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Fall of WeWork

“The next day, Adam met with Jamie Dimon on the forty-third floor of JPMorgan’s headquarters. Adam told Dimon that he wasn’t sure there was any way forward for him as CEO. Dimon agreed. No one scandal or decision had taken Neumann down, but it had been a year full of one blemish after another on the heels of a decade in which he could do no wrong. “How could this happen?” Adam told Dimon, according to a person familiar with the conversation. “I did everything you told me to do.” “Adam,” Dimon said. “You did nothing that I told you to.” This wasn’t strictly true. JPMorgan, SoftBank, and WeWork’s other investors had enabled and encouraged Adam for years. It was only when his erratic behavior threatened their own reputations that they turned on him.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“That afternoon, Neal DosSantos, a young architect who worked at a firm in Manhattan, was strolling back to his office after eating lunch in Gramercy Park when he spotted Adam heading briskly uptown on the sidewalk and talking animatedly into his phone. WeWork’s CEO was walking past Pete’s Tavern, one of New York’s oldest bars, wearing a gray T-shirt, black pants—and no shoes. DosSantos recognized Adam by sight. He had friends at WeWork and had considered applying for a job there over the years. Given all he had heard about the founder, the moment seemed to sum everything up: Neumann was moving quickly and talking fast, the only CEO who would casually walk the streets of New York barefoot during the most trying week of his life. (One of Adam’s publicists at the time explained away the incident to me by arguing that this was simply who he was: “Adam grew up on a kibbutz and likes to walk barefoot. He is a kibbutznik. Should we ask him to stop?”)”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“Back in New York, Adam was attempting to move on. It was September 18, the day he hoped the company would go public. One employee looked on as Adam spent part of the day in his office, watching clips from the road-show video he had finally filmed a few days before, if weeks too late. He didn’t seem as concerned about the Journal article as those around him were, even though he didn’t have to look far to understand what could happen when things went south for the charismatic founder of a high-flying company. In January, Adam had personally invested more than $30 million into Faraday Grid, a Scottish firm trying to reinvent the delivery of renewable energy—another company in his mini Vision Fund. The investment valued Faraday Grid at $3.4 billion, thanks to supposedly revolutionary technology the company was loath to share many details about; whatever it was, Adam promised it would “fundamentally change the way we access and use energy in the future.” Neumann had found an easy kinship with Faraday’s founder, Andrew Scobie, an Australian with a big personality and lofty ambitions. In his office, Scobie prominently displayed a quotation that he attributed to Adam Smith: “All money is a matter of belief.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“That afternoon, Berrent called Adam and told him to come to JPMorgan. The biggest problem, the bankers insisted, was Adam himself. One junior Goldman Sachs banker had become so perturbed by Neumann’s behavior during the road-show taping that he had called a colleague at JPMorgan to ask whether Adam was high while filming the video. Noah Wintroub had already told Neumann that he needed to stop smoking so much pot with WeWork’s IPO on the horizon. After Adam arrived at JPMorgan headquarters, Artie took him into another room to ask whether he had been high; Adam insisted that he hadn’t been.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“SoftBank, however, had invested more than $10 billion into WeWork and gotten nothing in return. The Vision Fund was down nearly $2 billion in the most recent quarter, during which Uber’s stock had slipped. SoftBank shares were down 10 percent since Wingspan’s release. Both WeWork and SoftBank executives were coming to grips with the realization that its IPO might be priced at a level far below its $47 billion valuation. While SoftBank’s preferred shares gave it some protection—it could get its money out before the company’s employees—a valuation below what SoftBank paid for its shares would mean that the firm’s investment was underwater, much as”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“What kept Schwartz up at night, at the end of a decade of unrestrained growth for the global economy, with enormous fortunes built out of nothing, was what WeWork’s rise would signal to the next generation of entrepreneurs.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“But WeWork’s rise didn’t shock Schwartz, who had spent part of his career in finance. This was how the system worked. Adam had persuaded one investor after another to believe in his vision; each time he did, previous investors were able to mark up their stakes to escalating valuations, selling shares along the way and passing the risk on to the next fool. Even if WeWork went public and the IPO tanked, Adam owned roughly a fifth of the company, with preferred shares that would allow him to get out before most of his employees. “Let’s say it trades down to a $5 billion valuation,” Schwartz said, throwing out a number more in line with where the London Stock Exchange valued IWG. “Employees will suffer. Investors take a bath. But Adam’s still worth a billion.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“When I finished my tour of 154 Grand Street, I noticed that I had several missed calls from an unknown phone number. I stepped outside to call the number back. It belonged to a longtime WeWork executive who heard I was working on a story about the company. He was interested in sharing his experience, but hesitant to speak openly. He stood to benefit handsomely if WeWork successfully made it to an IPO; plus, he had seen how the company treated Joanna Strange and other employees who broke ranks. He believed the business was a good one, but found the ideas WeWork had been spinning up about being a tech company, or revolutionizing education, or improving corporate culture to be laughable. “WeWork has the worst corporate culture I’ve ever encountered in my life,” he said. I heard a similar story from a former WeWork employee I met for an off-the-record conversation a few days later at a coffee shop in Dumbo, near the original Green Desk. “I’ve been involved in some of WeWork’s previous puff pieces,” he said when we sat down. He wanted to know if my article would be one of those.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“Oscar Health, the health insurance provider founded by Josh Kushner, Jared’s brother, had a brand new Powered by We office.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS, the Neumanns boarded Wildgoose I for another winter holiday in Hanalei Bay. Adam was planning to surf again, this time with Laird Hamilton, one of the sport’s legends. WeWork was finalizing a deal, modest by Fortitude standards, to lead a $32 million investment round in Laird Superfood, Hamilton’s company, which sold turmeric and mushroom-infused coffee creamers. Adam’s wave pool investment hadn’t panned out, and WeWork slashed the value of its stake to zero after Wavegarden had trouble selling its $16 million “coves.” But the Laird Superfood bet had less to do with surfing than with doubling down on the nutritional coffee-creamer industry, much as Masa poured money into multiple food delivery apps. If the DeCicco brothers couldn’t change America’s food paradigm, maybe Laird Hamilton would.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“But the flock of Silicon Valley unicorns had grown so large that Benioff himself had become nervous. The kind of rapid expansion that venture capital made possible wasn’t sustainable without discipline. In the middle of the decade, Benioff had issued a warning: “There’s going to be a lot of dead unicorns.” Neumann had begun pitching WeWork as a new breed of SaaS business: “space as a service.” The idea was that companies of all sizes would no longer handle their own real estate portfolios but would instead turn over the management of their physical space to WeWork, transforming the company into something like a real estate cloud—a “platform.” This was a goal shared by every ambitious start-up of the decade, no matter how specious the claim. Facebook, Uber, and Airbnb identified as platforms, as did Beyond Meat, the pea-protein burger maker (“plant-based-product platforms”); Peloton, the indoor exercise bike company (“the largest interactive fitness platform in the world”); and Casper, the mattress company (a “platform built for better sleep”). It was no longer good enough for companies to simply be what they were.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

“Can’t beat them? Drown them in cash. Almost none of the companies spending so profligately was anywhere near profitable, and the discounts made it difficult for anyone to figure out the natural demand for their product. The deals also made it hard for competitors to keep up. Hodari and other WeWork rivals said they lost only a small chunk of their tenants to WeWork’s marketing blitz, but if the campaign continued, none of them would have the cash reserves to survive what amounted to predatory pricing. Prior to SoftBank’s arrival, back in the era of Managing the Nickel, WeWork executives had been talking about finding a more balanced growth trajectory. T. Rowe Price, which invested in WeWork in 2014, had pushed for a more sustainable strategy and was so skeptical of the SoftBank-funded bonanza that they sold as much as they could when SoftBank agreed to buy stock from existing shareholders.”
― Reeves Wiedeman, Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork