Unlimited weed and delusions of grandeur. Adam and Rebecca Neumann, the scandalous couple behind WeWork

In 2019, WeWork was one of the unicorns (these young high-growth tech companies, editor’s note)Silicon Valley’s most desirable, establishing itself as the queen of coworking, valued at more than $47 billion. Four years have passed since then, and the American company filed for bankruptcy at the beginning of November. Blame opaque accounting, the lack of an economic model and years of staggering debt carefully hidden by former chief executive and co-founder Adam Neumann, 44. For nearly a decade at the helm of WeWork, the Israeli-American spent too much, but “jumped overboard early enough to get rich,” he comments. The reactions . With his wife Rebecca, the man has a huge fortune of $2.2 billion. Forbes:. But when it comes time to comb the fallen startup, the Neiman couple’s excesses no longer stand out.

Series pitch WeCrashed:Inspired by the couple, it sounds like a foreboding downfall chronicle from the very first scene. Adam Neumann (Jared Leto) is relaxing in bed in his $35 million apartment in New York’s posh Gramercy neighborhood, where he lives with his wife Rebecca (Anne Hathaway). And that is when the board of directors of his company is waiting for him, which should decide his fate. A life of excesses appears in a few minutes. A businessman is awakened by a servant, like Louis XIV in his bedroom at Versailles. The valet carefully opens the curtains, then hands a piece of weed to his boss, who takes his first dose of the day. The stage is set.

New York’s elite

Adam Neumann was born on April 25, 1979 and grew up in Israel. Agreed A mirror , he goes to school near the Gaza Strip, and his mother, who is raising him alone after a divorce, works in a local hospital. After working in the Israeli Navy for five years, he arrived in New York in 2001. He was 22 years old at that time. There, Neumann enrolled at a public university, Baruch College, where he majored in business. It was then that he conceived the concept of WeLive, a shared accommodation offering, during an entrepreneurship competition organized by his university. everything is included (internet connection, cleaning service, common areas for entertainment or even unlimited drinks). But the project was not accepted. Adam Neumann ends up dropping out of school in search of a “good” idea that will make him rich. His first businesses, folding-heeled shoes and then children’s shoes with reinforced knees, failed.

The young man next to him is making a contact book. She hangs out in clubs where she mingles with the jet-set thanks to her sister Addie, who poses for women’s magazines. But above all, he meets his future wife, Rebecca Paltrow (a year younger than himself), someone’s cousin Gwyneth. The couple married in 2008 and two years later founded WeWork, a company specializing in shared offices. The beginning of glory (finally).

Hurry real estate!

Things move very fast at WeWork. The concept caught on, the dollars poured in, and offices mushroomed. The startup struck and attracted several employees from McKinsey, Volkswagen, Pinterest, Google, Deloitte, Visa, IBM, Microsoft and BlaBlaCar. In August 2017, the Japanese Softbank holding even invested 4.4 billion dollars in the New York company.

Since the money is flowing freely, the Neimans benefit from it. The couple acquired several properties, including two in New York, one in the Hamptons, and a luxury mansion north of San Francisco that included a guitar-shaped living room, swimming pool, and waterslide. on three floors: a spa, a racquetball court or even an orchard.

At WeWork, they deliberately enjoy their power from within. Adam Neumann skates through the corridors of his company’s headquarters, makes midnight conference calls, conducts interviews behind the wheel of his white Maybach, speeding… Set free describes a manager with the demeanor of a “student throwing a spring break party”; A tequila-soaked showdown with Jared Kushner, heir to a real estate empire and son-in-law of Donald Trump, who has yet to enter the White House.”

The eccentricities don’t stop there. According to the book A billion dollar loser By Reeves Wiedemann At a company seminar in 2014, Neumann “picked up a psychedelic mushroom on the first night of camp and passed around a vodka-filled water gun” without flinching. We also learn that employees on site had “cannons filled with cans of Coors Light beer and Smirnoff Ice vodka,” while “a dozen shisha pipes were lined up on the table.” Another whim of the boss. he who is a vegetarian forbids his employees to eat meat. Until one of his employees saw him devouring a “giant leg of lamb,” we’re still reading Set free.

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Madness of us and autumn 2019

2021, in their book investigation Our worship. journalists Wall Street Journal Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell make further discoveries about the Neumans’ lifestyle. We reveal that the sultry couple returned their private jets to VistaJet in “fraternity-worthy conditions, with alcohol splatters, vomit and torn curtains.” During one flight, the marijuana smoke was so thick that the crew had to wear oxygen masks to breathe. So many escapades that eventually reached the ears of major shareholders and caused Neiman’s downfall. In 2019, Adam was forced to resign by his investors while the company was preparing to list in New York. Rebecca, meanwhile, is stepping down as head of brand and influence at WeWork, as well as CEO of WeGrow, the private school she founded in Chelsea in 2017. The pandemic and the rise of remote work will ultimately disrupt the startup’s economic model.

But the Neimans have more than one trick up their sleeve. As mentioned THE: reactions , they immediately reinvest their golden parachute into new real estate businesses. Adam Neumann created Flow, a startup that aims to revolutionize the lives of residential renters, and it’s clearly working. In August 2022, one of Silicon Valley’s leading venture capital funds, Andreessen Horowitz, invested $350 million. A far, far cry from the hell of WeWork, which filed for bankruptcy on November 7th. Adam and Rebecca Neumann, parents of six children, never left New York. And stretch between their many homes.