The Rise and Fall of WeWork: How Adam Neumann Burned $47 Billion

In January 2019, WeWork was valued at $47 billion — more than Ford Motor Company. Its business was renting desks. Eight months later, its IPO filing exposed a company losing billions, a founder leasing his own buildings to the company he ran, and a $5.9 million payment for the trademark "We." The IPO collapsed, the founder was pushed out with a $1.7 billion exit package, and in November 2023, WeWork filed for bankruptcy. How does a man sell a story so intoxicating that the smartest money in the world pays a tech-company price for an office-landlord business? This is the full documentary story: the kibbutz kid and the commune kid who reinvented the office, the gospel of community that turned desks into a movement, the twelve-minute lobby tour that became a $4.2 billion SoftBank bet signed on an iPad, the $47 billion peak, the catastrophic S-1 that killed the IPO, the boardroom coup that ousted Adam Neumann, the SoftBank rescue, the empty offices of the pandemic years, the Chapter 11 filing — and the lessons every business must learn. In this episode: 00:00 The Fall 00:44 The Birth 01:32 The Gospel of Community 02:16 Twelve Minutes and an iPad 03:04 The Peak 03:47 The Broken Machine 04:34 The Confession 05:22 The Fall of Neumann 06:09 The Rescue 06:53 The Empty Offices 07:37 Bankruptcy 08:18 What Really Went Wrong 09:04 Lessons for Every Business Every fortune has a story, and every story has a lesson. Subscribe to Rise & Fall for weekly business documentaries. Music: "Investigations" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ #WeWork #BusinessDocumentary #RiseAndFall