Adam Neumann says a car ride with Masayoshi Son started WeWork's $47 billion collapse
Adam Neumann reflects on a 2016 car ride with SoftBank's Masayoshi Son that led to a massive, unplanned investment in WeWork. He admits this influx of capital shifted the company's focus from profitability to rapid, unsustainable growth.
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This account provides a cautionary case study on how venture capital-fueled hyper-growth can lead to the collapse of high-valuation startups.
Work co-founder Adam Neumann says he can point to the exact moment his $47 billion company started to come apart, and it came years before the failed IPO. He traces it to a car ride through Manhattan with SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son in late 2016, a meeting of roughly half an hour that ended with a $4.2 billion investment offer signed on an iPad.Speaking to host Steven Bartlett on The Diary of a CEO podcast, in an episode released on September 28, Neumann said that deal changed how he saw his company. Son got out of the car near 54th Street, and Neumann walked the 36 blocks back to WeWork's headquarters. "Every step that I take, it goes higher and higher. And by the time I walk into HQ, 18th Street, I forgot what we were all about," he said.
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