WeWork: or The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn

source: WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn

Overall I thought this was well done. It's shocking how a company can grow to a giant but is made of fluff. I enjoyed everything except the end. It seemed like they had no idea how to end it and decided to do something with masks? Just strange.

It's like the director didn't know what point to make. A lot of it was just anecdotes about the culture. Almost nothing about how they gained or lost money. Just people talking about how they liked or didn't like madam. What's worst, is so many young adults whining and crying about Adam letting them down by not changing the world. Give me a break. It's a start up. Start ups fail.

A few years ago while traveling around Southern California, I noticed the WeWork sign popping up on buildings. At first, I thought it was an employment agency moving in, then I was told that it was floors of suites for rent. I thought that was great because when I was in College, I had heard of "Fegen Suites". Those were the first in floors of offices Lawyers/Attorneys and Government rented. Fegen Suites shared a common reception area (usually two or three receptionists behind a nice large desk), a few folks in another room answering their phones and taking messages if they wanted (They could have the phones ring through to them if they chose) and could share an administrative area with copy machines, computers, etc. On that floor. It had conference rooms. It was a cost saving measure for young lawyers/attorneys starting out. These grew popular as top entertainment companies and government offices started using them for "extra office space". Then new Production Companies were using them for their offices, and many small businesses started to rent them, all for the same reason. They did have 'top' real estate salespeople/companies to help rent these suites, and they were consistently full -- even a wait lists. That's what led me to believe that's what WeWork sounded like, but possibly now have been updated for the digital generation of those just starting out. Boy was I wrong! I watched this documentary, and it was like watching a horror show on so many levels! I had no idea WeWork was like this at all! The documentary takes you through the two founders Neumann and Miguel, but centering mostly on Neumann and his sales techniques into having young people buy into this WeWork experience. It came across like a Real Estate Cult with Neumann at the head. I had never seen anything in real estate quite like this (and I saw the beginning of house flipping!! Guys, it didn't start as legit as the shows now show.) This "salesman", Neumann seemed to cultivate a mesh between a pyramid scheme and a cult where he and his wife (who did a few movies and was related to Gwyneth Paltrow - big whoop!) conned banks out of now millions off the sweat of wide-eyed, well meaning young people who fell for his con and did all the work while he took all the glory. What a racket, as as with all rackets this plummeted fast. The documentary does a good job of telling the tale of WeWork through employee and others interviews, spots of Neumann's ego appearances on programs and films of employee camps, etc. But Neumann and his wife "did not participate in the making of the documentary". Why should they? What can they say to make any real sense out of this? I've seen just about enough to see why WeWork fell so quickly from grace. However, Neumann and his wife will still walk away with a big payday and according to the documentary have already set their sights on something new.

SXSW 2021 Greetings again from the darkness. It's quite possible that many scams originally begin with someone's good intentions. However it's just as likely, and maybe even more so, that many scams begin with only the intention of raking in millions or billions for the founder. The dream of becoming the next Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, or Mark Zuckerberg is simply too enticing for some. Filmmaker Jed Rothstein profiles the rise and fall of WeWork, or more accurately, its charismatic commander, Adam Neumann. Offering a nice overview for those unfamiliar, the film uses multiple clips of Neumann speaking so that we get a real feel for how so many fell under his spell. Neumann was an immigrant from Israel, and certainly bought into the ideal of living the American Dream. Labeled a visionary, and always full of ideas, Neumann co-founded WeWork with Miguel McKelvey. They were known affectionately as Mr. Outside and Mr. Inside, respectively, due to McKelvey's focus on operations and infrastructure and Neumann's ability as a salesman and the (and hair) of the company. The idea of co-working space was not new, but it had never been pitched or marketed the way that Neumann did. He appealed to the rebellious nature of millennials, who couldn't picture themselves in the traditional corporate office environment of the establishment. Neumann capitalized on their FOMO, and rammed home the message of "Do what you love." He preached to the choir with his promise of the next revolution being the "We revolution." Journalists from Forbes, The Atlantic, and The Wall Street Journal are interviewed, as are former We staff members and clients. Mr. Rothstein does a nice job of tracking the progression of the company via graphics showing valuation each year beginning with a few million in 2012 through a peak of $47 billion in 2018. He also explores how, within a 6 week period, the company went from that peak to near bankrupt. A business model based on "community" with the goal of changing the way people work and live, turns out to be smoke and mirrors if legitimate business practices aren't followed. That's not to say his communal approach doesn't work, but as so often happens, greed and the lust for power, create the downfall. Rothstein points out that the company's own S-1 filed prior to the planned IPO was the red flag that had previously gone undetected. This is as much a psychological study of Neumann as it is a business case study. Every time Neumann bristled at being called a "real estate company", we should have known. With his cash infusion from Japan's SoftBank still not leading to traditional profitability, we should have known. When his bizarre actress wife, Rebekah, became more involved with decisions and publicity, we should have known. Hindsight is crystal clear, and by the end, we realize Neumann has more in common with the notorious Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos than with Steve Jobs. The Jesus Complex seems obvious, but as humans we want so much to believe the words of an idealist ... especially a cool one. There is a lot to unpack in this documentary, and it's worth it - even if it helps us learn our lesson yet again.

I was married to someone who was a great salesman trying to start a business. We made a great plan. He was great at making sales but he saw success as the amount of sales he made not the actual net profit of the business which is I think very common in entrepreneurial personalities. I ran the administrative side of the business and many times tried to explain to him many times that it doesn't matter if you had half a million dollars in sales if at the end of the day you spent more than you made. He kept selling to people who I had put on COD because they hadn't paid their accounts. Also, growing to fast is a recipe for disaster because if you have a ton of product on the shelf you have to pay for it when the invoice comes and you haven't sold it. Great talkers are often not great businessman even though they can convince people that they are until the ish hits the fan. Next thing you know Adam will start his own arm of Scientology or run for President. When people are selling you happiness or saying they are going to make the world a better place for everyone read everything carefully before you sign on the dotted line.

What a @#$% was the founder A combo of Henry Ford and Heinrich himmler with the utopian self serving vision. Capitalised on young easily influenced followers and greedy landlords and a stupid vc.

Overall it's not a poorly done documentary but it is certainly brief and boring. There just really wasn't much of a story line curve worth paying attention to.

If you liked docs like "Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room" or the Fyre Festival doc (particularly the Hulu one) you're going to love this. Early on in the movie you can just *sense* that something is amiss, which is hilariously said out loud to an employee by a security guard at one of their retreats. Or maybe it's the Billy McFarland-like public persona that Adam Neumann eerily possesses. Like with Fyre Festival, Neumann sold his idea as much, if not more as a *lifestyle* to both the public and employees (who, like the innocent, well-meaning people at Fyre, get completely screwed in the end). The difference being that WeWork actually had a viable product that was very successful until they wildly over-expanded. There's even a bizarre celebrity wingman who acts as Neumann's public wingman much like Ja Rule with McFarland. Even creepier is how Neumann's wife slowly begins to worm her way into the company management, in very "Spinal Tap"-ish style. It's basically a disaster movie in the classic sense, where company supposedly providing utopia to clients and employees seems to have no limit for growth and success until the long-ticking time bomb goes off (much like Enron). And like with Enron, at first the business media just ate write out of Neumann's hand, as he appeared on many networks pegged as a genius who had basically created the next Uber, or AirBnB. Which he kind of did, until... I won't spoil exactly what happened. Another disaster where you wonder why nobody saw this coming. And like it always does, yeah: some did.

Throughout watching all i kept thinking was how would Tommy Wiseau rent office space? And what kind of summer camp would he run? And what would his S1 look like?