
Rebekah Neumann's search for enlightenment fueled WeWork's collapse - danso
https://www.bustle.com/p/rebekah-neumanns-search-for-enlightenment-fueled-weworks-collapse-22581874
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Barrin92
The one thing I don't get about these companies is how all the employees, in
particular higher ups and investors buy this stuff.

I mean if you read these articles about Neumann and his wife, elevating the
world's conciousness, smoking weed everywhere, buying artificial wave
companies for no reason, he doesn't even sound like a real person, he sounds
like a Silicon Valley tv show character.

There's a lot of podcasts and articles about the famous people involved in
this, but I just would like to hear what regular employees and managers think
about this. How are you working at these companies for months and don't think
you're in a cult?

The same thing about Theranos, I read the John Carreyrou book and it just
sounds insane. How are people at a company for months that sounds like a Kafka
novel, I truly don't get it.

~~~
luckydata
The problem here is optics. Let's say you believe the stuff they tell you
while they recruit you, you're happy to get a new job, higher salary etc...
and join WeWork. Then you walk into the place and it's a total shitshow. Crap.
Now you have to decide if you want to take a hit on salary and position to get
a job somewhere else and charitably leave WeWork out of your resume, or you
try to make it to 1-2 years of tenure when you can actually leave and hope
nobody will ever ask too many questions.

The funny thing about this is the incentives in the hiring market compound the
problem tremendously, because most recruiters don't care to think about what
situation you might be leaving, they only look at tenure and if too short they
will immediately think you're a "problem employee".

~~~
commandlinefan
I totally agree with you, but - I used to know a guy who made the same tough
decision when he started with a company called Enron back in the 90's. He
decided he should stick it out for a little while for appearances and then,
when the company managed to tank the entire world economy, he actually had
trouble finding new work _because_ he had that black stain on his resume. I
suspect WeWork alumni are having similar problems - it's really a no-win
situation for the low-level "grunts".

~~~
perl4ever
I just don't believe "low-level grunts" have serious problems that way. It
wouldn't be _rational_.

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mrosett
I love WeWork collapse porn as much as anyone, but the author of this piece is
sloppy with the details.

> All the while, its valuation (as calculated by Goldman Sachs) inflated to
> $90 billion.

You don't get to count the numbers bankers put in an IPO pitch powerpoint as a
"valuation".

> [describing Adam] shamanic figure who wooed so many overconfident white guys
> in Silicon Valley

Masayoshi Son isn't white and doesn't live in Silicon Valley.

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jimkri
Has anyone else noticed how deceptive the Paltrow family has been?

1\. Bob Paltrow - Pleaded guilty to felony tax evasion over his liberal use of
the junk mail company to finance his lifestyle. (was sentenced to six months
in prison). In March 2019, roughly 700 employees of a company factory in
Ciudad Juárez were told to take a three-day weekend, only to return to an
empty warehouse

2\. Gwyneth Paltrow - GOOP.

3\. Rebekah - WeWork.

~~~
apacheCamel
I find the whole web as a whole extremely fascinating. How it is all
connected, how this group of society works and what they all _do_ with their
vast amounts of money and connections. It seriously just boggles my mind
sometimes. A lot of good can come out of it all, and then you have GOOP. I'd
really hope I would act differently but it is impossible to tell.

~~~
jimkri
I find it interesting too and really don't understand it.

I really feel like they learned everything from Bob and the family. He sold
junk mail and was able to pay for their great lifestyle. So the kids learned
that they can sell junk, but were able to take that to the next level with
strong marketing and design.

GOOP is junk with great marketing and design. WeWork is similar, they market
it as something that its not.

The marketing idea made me think of the documentary: The Century of the self
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s))

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CommieBobDole
I feel like the fact that everything they did made no financial sense, and
that they embodied the old joke about losing money on every transaction and
making it up with volume is probably the main driver of their collapse.

The impact of any of the other bizarre stuff they were doing was probably
minimal.

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ArmandGrillet
> [They were] buying assets WeWork would in turn lease back from them. But as
> Rebekah explained in an interview with Fast Company, “We don't have a line
> at all between work and life. It's not even a blurred line. There is no
> line.”

There was also no line between business and theft.

~~~
perl4ever
That must be hyperbole, I haven't paid much attention, but compare to Carlos
Ghosn.

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jdkee
FTA: "giving her titles like “strategic thought partner” and a staff she
charged with such inane tasks as disassembling her phone, painting all the
pieces white, and reassembling it again."

Boy, if that isn't a red flag, I don't know what is.

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KoftaBob
What frustrates me to no end is that instead of those billions going towards
capital intensive startups that are _actual_ moonshots, it was funneled into
some bullshit real estate ponzi scheme.

There are so many big problems that need solving, and also require large up
front capital to do so. Think vertically integrated healthcare/hospital
systems that remove insurance from the equation, nuclear fusion, new models
for higher education, cancer treatments, etc.

Think of how many SpaceX and Tesla-esque startups didn't get off the ground
because that money went to a damn coworking space company. Come on.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Funny you write this comment, as I thought about exactly this the other day
while out for a jog. These aren't VC problems, these are politics problems
("Think vertically integrated healthcare/hospital systems that remove
insurance from the equation [1], nuclear fusion [2], new models for higher
education [3], cancer treatments [4], etc."). I want my government funding
these ideas, not some VC partner you have to pander to. Have a moonshot idea?
DARPA/ARPA-E

Tesla and SpaceX weren't government funded per se (kudos Elon), but they took
advantage of US government subsidies/financing (Tesla) and NASA contracts
(SpaceX), which I take no issue with. But those are the exceptions, not the
rule.

[1] Single payer Medicare For All, with a HHS (Health & Human Services)
central EHR/EMR system

[2] US ITER

[3] Khan Academy, Coursea, Udemy (non-profits, not gov)

[4] US NIH (who provided the vast majority of the resources researching
treatments for HIV/AIDS)

~~~
KoftaBob
and it's great to encourage government initiatives to tackle those problems,
but I'm not implying private startups should _replace_ those initiatives, but
rather complement them.

The mighty NASA and Russia's space program hadn't (and still haven't) figured
out how to build reusable self-landing rockets (for a # of reasons), and yet a
company with startup-level resources like SpaceX did.

Part of it is because startups _have_ to succeed at their goal, or they die.
Government entities don't die if they don't pull off medicare for all.

In addition, startups don't have the slow and bulky bureaucracy of government
in their way. Think of what those advantages can bring about in healthcare,
energy, and other moonshot fields, if they just had the funding.

Hence why it's so important for big funds like SoftBank to invest in those,
not nonsense startups with nothing more than a cult leader.

~~~
toomuchtodo
You're not arguing for arrangement of government vs startups though, you're
arguing for passion, determination, fortitude, and grit (and domain expertise,
of course). The organizational structure (private vs public) is less
important. Government can operate as efficiently as some of the leanest, most
nimble startups, and private companies can operate as poorly as the worst run
parts of government. I too can provide examples of private companies that are
enormous, dysfunctional, and yet still lumber on (Boeing) similarly to how
some parts of government have operated. The private sector is not a silver
bullet for innovation and efficiency.

Regarding SpaceX, Elon Musk is a cult leader, and rightly so; he gets shit
done (I have previously said he is our least terrible billionaire). Hire more
people into government who get shit done, and get out of their way (see: US
Digital Service/18F, for example).

Regarding bureaucracy, some amount of regulation is beneficial. "Most fast,
break things" gets old when you're committing fraud like Theranos. If one
desires a little less bureaucracy, that is what incubators like DARPA are for.
Think of what horrors startups would foist upon us chasing valuations and
profits without any regulation whatsoever.

Disclaimer: I am biased. I don't believe in American Exceptionalism, nor
rugged individualism.

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jiveturkey
> Today, Rebekah and Adam Neumann are living in temporary social exile in Tel
> Aviv after starring in the most sensational corporate collapse probably
> ever.

ha. but not financial exile. ($1.7bn parachute according to TFA.) billion with
a `b'. let that sink in.

interesting though that the financiers in this debacle haven't suffered the
same fate.

strong article. i do wish they'd talked more about adam.

~~~
Mvandenbergh
It's basically the smarter version of what Elizabeth Holmes did. If you're
going to grift, play by the rules. It is not illegal to do what the Neumanns
did, take dumb money and use it to enrich yourself while the company collapses
as long as you don't lie and follow the rules.

If Holmes hadn't made the amateurish mistake of actually lying rather than
just handwaving vaporware, and had managed to pull some liquidity out during
later rounds into Theranos, she'd be rich and untouchable.

Remember, it's not illegal to be bad at business or technology and it's not
illegal to be ridiculously optimistic to the point of delusion about the
future. What is illegal is being "optimistic" about events which have already
occurred.

As a result, they are smoking weed by the coast of the med and shopping for
vineyards and Holmes is going to jail.

~~~
jiveturkey
yep. in the article they call it a collapse, but i wouldn't dispute it if they
argued that it was a success.

------
jariel
The Yoga school sued for sexual harassment and shut down, the Kabbalah sued
for illegal labour, parents life long con-artist ... 'never left the East Side
bubble'.

These are the same people that excessively promote woke ideals, and they
believe their own egos to the core.

It's not the message that's bad, it's the utter 'nice toxicity' of the
messengers.

These people are just as bad as Donald Trump, they're the other side of the
coin, they deserve the same treatment.

Why don't we see parodies of these people weekly SNL?

I think the 'bubble' has a lot of influence and is protecting their own
reputation by not spending a lot of time lingering on the issue.

------
e40
Did WeWork collapse? They just took an entire new floor over in the building I
work. They had 2 floors before. Now have a third. This is in Oakland, CA. In a
very expensive, hip locale.

~~~
astura
Collapse probably isn't the right word because they are still in business, but
they certainly tripped.

They were forced to cancel their IPO, sell their stake in all non-core
business, oust their CEO/founder with a billion dollar golden parachute, and
lay off like a quarter of its employees.

What collapsed was the cult of personality around Adam Neumann.

------
stopads
Calling it a "victimless grift" as this writer does is just naive and silly.
The thousands of people who got laid off while Adam got billions in golden
parachute funds is the very definition of the word victim.

Just because we've grown accustomed to decades of golden parachutes and
widening income inequality and excessive equity based compensation to dodge
taxes at the high end doesn't mean any of this is normal or victimless. The
victims are everyone who isn't an executive.

~~~
corporateslave5
Adam Neumann played SoftBank and gave them what they had coming. We need
people like Adam to keep the markets from bubbling too much. It’s part of the
checks and balances in a healthy capitalist system.

~~~
jasonmp85
I love this comment which just straight-up comes out and says that lying
sociopaths and narcissists are an integral part of a “healthy capitalist
system”.

Tankies couldn’t have written a better indictment.

~~~
Mirioron
There's some truth to the comment. You can't have people become so complacent
that they just trust people on their word. You need somebody to actually
verify that what they're doing could actually work.

Take Theranos for example. That whole thing is a huge case is scientific
illiteracy. What they were suggesting was essentially impossible to achieve,
yet people invested in it anyway. Nobody demanded to even see it working
properly as a prototype. There are enormous kickstarter campaigns for things
like "self-filling water bottles" or "solar roadways" and people fall for
them.

~~~
lotsofpulp
> Nobody demanded to even see it working properly as a prototype.

Quite a few people did and recognized the fraud that it was long before it was
public. But there were quite a few vested interests in making sure the price
the equity would sell at was more than what they purchased at.

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luord
This is the kind of story that gets weirder the more one reads it, and that's
of course because all of it actually happened.

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calvinbhai
surprising that such a long writeup about the wework debacle doesn't mention
Masayoshi Son holding founders at ransom to take his Softbank money.

Why would anyone refuse such money? Not sure what's Rebekah got to do with the
WeWork debacle.

(good to know all the star kids connections. IMO, most rich white people in US
can do any financial crime and get away with it)

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ada1981
I love how this tries to blame Adams wife. LoLz.

