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“I’ve never used the word ‘greed’ to describe Adam.” On February 1st, 2010, Lisa Skye received an email from her new employer, WeWork CEO and founder Adam Neumann, at 1.20am of her first day of work. “Good morning, let’s create the largest physical networking community on the planet,” it read, with no period on the end. The tiny grammatical error was no accident of course, and was just a prelude of what was to come.
“It was like [we were] off to the races,” Skye recalls on a long distant call from the United States. For the businesswoman – who now sits at the helm of her own successful co-working community, Primary – she felt excited by Neumann’s energy. He was tall – six foot five to be exact – and incredibly confident, and according to Skye, it was his charisma and conviction that will see him remembered “as one of the greatest salesmen in history.” It’s a massive claim. While Neumann’s company (which ran seemingly successful for nearly a decade) did not fail over overnight, it did wipe a $47 Billion USD valuation to near bankruptcy in just six weeks.
The American commercial real estate company WeWork was founded at the beginning of a decade, after the Great Recession, and on the cusp of a new era of entrepreneurship. Neumann, a keen Israeli entrepreneur himself, leased out a building in the heart of SoHo, New York City to realise his empire. As just the second ever employee of WeWork, Skye had worked closely with the CEO in the early days. They would take brisk walking meetings around the block – just one example of his natural energy – before she was left to her own devices to close sales for the first of many co-working spaces dotted throughout the city.
“When I was hired, Adam said to me, ‘We want to open in three weeks, the first floor will have 17 offices, and we want to be full with a wait list.’ That was the taste [of the first few months],” she said, nervously laughing under her breath. “I’m sure he was off raising more money, and finding the next space because we took a deal for a second place within the first four to six months that I was there.”
During her tenure she had only seen Neumann’s wife, Rebekah, from afar. At the time Rebekah was a writer and producer, working on a short film documentary from the WeWork head office. She was eventually hired by the company as a “strategic thought partner” and Chief Brand and Impact Officer who directed the company’s mission and values. She also oversaw the new-age school dubbed, WeGrow, and is now famously known for reportedly firing an employee whose “energy” she deemed “off”.
“I didn’t know how she was involved in the beginning other than being married to Adam, of course,” Skye says. “And I assumed because she is Gwyneth Paltrow’s cousin and they had money, that there was financial support. If not directly from her, then she certainly had access and introductions to a strategic financial investor.”
The ongoing growth of WeWork was swift and by 2019 it had expanded into 23 countries and 127 cities. Skye remained at the company as the Founding Community Manager for 14 months where she was still only one of 25 employees. Meanwhile, Neumann remained “laser focused on the vision”.
“His management style was visionary,” Skye adds. “He would take a moment to acknowledge that we had completed a floor or opened a floor, but he was always on to the next. How could we do more and more? And obviously that’s what drove him for a decade, to create what he created.”
Despite the spectacular fall of the cult-like WeWork empire, which saw Neumann step down as CEO in September 2019, Skye is careful not to use the word “greed” to describe the founder’s collapse. In fact, she paused for several moments, careful to phrase her next sentence. She believes the Achilles heel – the fatal flaw – of WeWork was his “inability to authentically create a We culture that also included him.” She says that he did create a global We community, it exists, but as Neumann stepped away from the business, he did so with a “billion-dollar golden parachute”.
In October 2021, Bloomberg reported that WeWork was valued at $9 billion, less than a fifth of what investment firm Softbank purchased it for in 2019. As of March 3, 2022, Forbes estimated Neumann’s worth at $1.4 billion USD.
“Arguably there’s massive success in what he achieved,” she argued. “The most unfortunate part of the fall was the people who didn’t feel acknowledged, appreciated, included in the upside of what was created.
“And they’re all ambitious, smart, driven, highly ethical,” Skye continued. “It’s amazing that he could attract such quality talent because any leader knows that finding quality, devoted, committed, incredible, good talented people is the most difficult part of running a business.”
What makes the rise and fall of Adam Neumann so intriguing? So titillating that the cautionary tale is retold again and again, and this year, forms the subject of an AppleTV+ series titled, WeCrashed?
“I think that’s human nature to some extent is to be fascinated with how we can experience extremes,” the former WeWork employee muses. “It’s human nature to be fascinated with the polarities that we experience in life. And as it relates to business, to be able to achieve and raise money and have success at an incredible level, what must it be like to then experience the huge fall.”
Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway star as Adam and Rebekah Neumann in Apple TV+’s new series about WeCrashed, streaming now on Apple TV+.
