All language subtitles for Generation.Hustle.S01E05

♪♪

[ Suspenseful music plays ]

♪♪

[ "Hustlin'" plays ]

♪ Every day, I'm hustlin' ♪

♪ Every day, I'm hustlin' ♪

Eliot: Through the 2010s,

Silicon Valley was throwing money

at disruptive tech companies.

[ Gong crashes ]

Because you had a few people

really drive these companies to enormous heights,

there became, essentially, this meme

that Silicon Valley creates the cult of a founder.

And then there's Adam Neumann...

Hello, global citizens of this Earth!

...who definitely saw himself in a messianic way,

saying, "This isn't about money.

This is about making the world a better place."

Feeling good, treating other people well,

being grateful -- anybody who gets that

is part of the We generation.

The story with WeWork was one guy who's a remarkable salesman.

The future is about light,

innovation, creativity.

It's going from me to we.

He was so charismatic that all of these staffers...

♪♪

...a huge amount of the tech press,

a lot of the smarter investors in the world,

lost grip on reality.

♪♪

And, suddenly, this thing

they believed in wasn't real.

WeWork represents the natural progression

of this cult of a founder.

If you just keep believing that all these founders

are these superhuman people

and just follow someone and forget the laws of gravity,

what do you think is going to happen, in the end?

♪♪

♪♪

[ Siren wailing ]

♪♪

Man: When I say, "We," you say... Crowd: Work!

-We! -Work!

-We! -Work!

[ Gong crashes ]

My short story is born in Israel, came to the U.S.

I was living with my sister downtown.

And we would go up and down the elevator

and I would notice that no one said hello.

My sister said, "It's not that Americans are not full of heart.

They really are, but... ...it's not considered polite.

You go in the elevator, you keep your mouth shut."

And I said, "Well, why don't we do a test? For the next month...

...we will introduce ourselves to everybody."

And the goal was to find an apartment on every floor

where we can have a cup of coffee.

She got 12 floors. I got three floors.

She also was a supermodel at the time

and -- [ Laughter ]

Within a month, the whole energy of the building changed.

Suddenly, everybody wanted to be part of it.

♪♪

I was always incredibly inspired by Adam's grandiose vision

and I felt the electric energy of his vision

and wanted to be a part of it very much.

On my first day, I got an email at 8:00 that morning,

from Adam, that said, "Good morning.

Let's create the largest

physically networked community

on the planet" -- No period,

just off to the races.

[ Camera shutter clicks ] Adam was a baby clothes salesman

when the recession struck, trying to make it in New York

and it wasn't turning into some giant business.

[ Camera shutter clicks ] Miguel was working as an architect.

They met on a rooftop, at a party.

Someone who he knew through college

was doing pretty well with coworking,

taking an office space and then subleasing it

and making a cool common space.

After college, I was really excited to move to New York,

but that was 2008,

essentially right when the economy was tanking.

So I was cruising Craigslist,

which was the way to find jobs, at the time,

and came across an ad and I thought to myself,

"Huh, this sounds a lot like what Miguel's working on."

Miguel McKelvey was my predecessor

at the architecture firm in Dumbo,

where he really kind of singlehandedly led

the expansion of American Apparel.

And, sure enough, get to the bottom of the Craigslist ad

and it says, "For more info, please contact Miguel"

at what was then weworknyc.com.

We met, essentially, the next day

and we had what I guess would count

as my first job interview with him,

which was riding around in a Zipcar

to pick up some TVs for the first WeWork location.

[ Cash register chimes ] Adam is larger-than-life --

like Miguel, by the way

because they're both 6'5", 6'7",

[ Camera shutter clicking ] you know, very tall.

He also just has an energy and a presence

that really could take over a room.

Danny: The final step was this interview

that I was going to have with Adam.

He is unflinchingly confident.

He is an incredible storyteller

and he was pitching that this was going to be an empire

and that I would be part of building this empire.

Eliot: When he was recruiting, what he would do,

he'd bring people in.

He'd take out a piece of paper

and then he'd start scrawling.

"Here's what your equity is going to be worth

when we're a $1 billion company.

[ Cash register chimes ] Here's what it's going

to be worth when we're a $5 billion company.

[ Cash register chimes ]

Here is when it's

a $10 billion company."

[ Cash register chimes ]

I was told that I would be getting

1% of the company in equity.

And Adam started running through what 1% would've meant,

as a fraction of all the growth

that he was planning on seeing,

on a site-by-site basis.

1% of what was going to be

a multibillion dollar company is huge.

I had dollar signs [ Laughing ] in my eyes, to be honest.

When I went with Adam to the first building

at 154 Grand and Soho, it was dust and sort of mayhem.

The building was, by New York real estate standards,

a kind of C or even D building.

Maybe a Class D.

The elevator literally took 52 seconds

to go from the first to the sixth floor.

Creaky stairs, broken handrails.

A lot of things were in disrepair,

but it had a lot of charm.

My job was as much being on AutoCAD, drafting things,

as it was schlepping huge glass panels upstairs,

running to Ikea, and fitting out Zipcars with table tops.

There was never any downtime.

Eliot: WeWork and Adam were just

super obsessed with growing.

Everything was about the growth.

I thought that this was absolutely going

to be something huge.

Danny: From Adam's perspective,

every site is going to be a higher valuation.

It's going to mean a more compelling story.

And Adam would look out the window and say,

"And you see this empty parking lot?

We're in talks with the city to make this a beautiful park

where you're going to have your lunch."

I don't know if those conversations

were actually happening, but,

it was a beautiful vision.

I don't think the staff was completely brainwashed,

to the sense where they would've followed Adam off a cliff,

but they were brainwashed, in the sense that they believed

what Adam said about WeWork's value.

They followed him off a financial cliff.

[ Laughs ]

Probably the second or third month

that I was working at WeWork, it was 10:00 at night.

We'd been working, generally, that late,

if not later, every night.

And Adam comes up to me and he says,

"How does your girlfriend feel about the fact

that you're working such late hours,

that you're at work all the time?"

I said, "Oh, you know, she gets it."

He says, "What does she think about the fact

that we're going to be growing outside of New York

and we're going to be, you know, all over the world

and you're going to be traveling a lot

and you might not be home for a while?"

And, jokingly, I said, "Oh, we're just going to break up.

Like that'll be it."

Sarcasm is generally lost on him, it seems.

And he got very serious and he said,

"She is dating one of the founding members of Google.

If she breaks up with you, it's going to be

a big mistake for her."

I would arrive at 8:00 on a Monday morning

and Danny and construction,

they would all still be there from the night before,

making sure the table legs were screwed in

and chairs were pushed in

and offices were ready for move-in.

Miguel, particularly -- and I really value this about him --

was very invested in what the actual experience

of being in these spaces was.

And it started off so simple, just with aluminum and glass,

something that brings light into office spaces.

Like how pioneering, right?

But it became a real kind of known aesthetic --

more is more, fun kitsch.

Their design resonates with me, personally.

I'm a very positive, energetic person.

I love the design.

At a root level, I feel like,

when you walk into a place,

that place has to feel good to you.

You have to be uplifted by it.

When you walk in and when you spend 8 hours, 10 hours,

12 hours, 16 hours a day, as some of us do.

Miguel really focused on community

and experience and design,

and Adam really became the face of the company --

the spokesperson, the money guy, the fundraiser.

[ Camera shutter clicking ]

You have different- sized offices.

If it's a four-person or a ten-person,

it's all based on membership.

You have these cool phone booths.

The second I met him, I felt that I had

already known him before, for sure,

and that I could kind of see into the future.

It felt almost like time stopped.

Everyone else I met, I could always feel,

within the first few minutes or an hour,

like where that would hit like a ceiling.

There's no ceiling on Adam.

Adam was introduced to Kabbalah

through Rebekah, his wife,

and Rebekah was super spiritual.

Rebekah: More than anyone I have met in my entire life,

he can literally make things appear out of thin air.

Never seen anything like it.

Lisa: Adam and Rebekah were members of the Kabbalah Center.

They encouraged myself and some of the other folks on the team

to attend Kabbalah classes.

Danny: Adam talked about his involvement in Kabbalah,

how that helped guide a lot of his decision-making.

It always felt like a little bit of a sideshow.

I think that the biggest takeaway was this notion

that your vessel for desire

needs to expand.

"Let's do better.

Let's do bigger.

Let's expand."

Danny: He also talked about how

it gave him access

to upper-crust socialites,

celebrities, et cetera.

His vessel of desire was huge and Kabbalah really

created that for him and, therefore, the company.

In order to get the valuation that they were getting,

they had to portray themselves as a non real estate company.

That really infused the way he sold WeWork

as being something as more than just office space.

But then, they switched from the Swingline

to the Boston stapler,

but I kept my Swingline stapler

because it didn't bind up as much.

I'm a sort of like elder millennial, so,

when I think of work, it's shaped

by like the movie "Office Space" --

some guys in ill-fitting suits

with fluorescent lights overhead

that seem pretty unhappy with their jobs.

Welcome!

First day?

Welcome, first day.

I first met Adam in 2013.

I was covering the way the office was changing

to be a lot more millennial-friendly.

Millennials like design.

Millennials like aesthetics

and WeWork was sort of a precursor

to people caring about Instagram, right?

But I just never, you know,

like found anything that interesting,

until I found out their valuation.

They had a really small number of locations

and their valuation was $1.5 billion.

[ Cash register chimes, musical powerdown ]

I was like, "What on Earth is going on?!"

♪ Yo, Harlem Shake ♪

♪♪

Teddy: That was Day 3 of my job!

I loved it! It was like,

"I can't believe I'm in a place where,

on a random Wednesday,

I'm doing a Harlem Shake video

and it's going all over the Internet."

That excitement and that community was real.

I was sold on the fact that this could be

everywhere on planet Earth.

Woman: The doors opened up

on the WeWork space.

It was like a party in there!

Like I kind of wish my meeting was in there.

Eliot: I think that they realized that investors

are really impressed by growth rates.

If you show that you're doubling every year,

investors are obsessed

with companies that grow that fast.

Teddy: You would never be prepared.

It would always be last-minute.

You would get an email or a call and they would say,

"Time to..."

Which meant, throw a party.

So, you'd take out your corporate credit card,

buy a ton of food, and you'd go office to office.

"Get into the lounge.

Come and have a drink."

Investor opens up the elevator door

and there's 250 people standing in the lobby,

partying, having a good time.

We had a keg of beer on every single floor.

3:00 on a Thursday.

Investors saw him getting new people to fill new buildings

and he kept raising double the amount of money every year.

[ Cash register chimes ]

But, it came at a cost.

[ Camera shutter clicks ]

WeWork was filled with colleagues

who I loved spending my time with

and it made it easier to really pour yourself into the job

because you didn't feel like you were missing that much

from a social life by being at work.

Something very nice about WeWork --

every employee in WeWork has equity,

including the porter,

and it's just a piece of what we are.

It's a very We thing.

But some people are putting in more effort

and some people are putting in less,

and, you know, it's sort of a balance.

When I felt frustrated, I would think about equity more.

When an employee in any company chooses

to put their life towards a company,

maybe takes a lower salary, gets equity promised to them,

I think it's important to really think, as a company,

"Is there something we can do for the employees?"

You know, when I would bring it up,

I was often given the response like,

"We're going to be taking on a new round of funding

and we don't want you to get diluted,"

which I've since come to learn

would not hurt me, [ Laughs ]

but would actually benefit me.

[ Birds squawking ]

It really kind of took a turn for me

when I was asked to go out to LA.

I'd specifically told Adam, "I don't want to relocate to LA.

My friends, my family, my girlfriend,

everyone for me is here in New York.

I'm working enough as it is.

[ Laughing ] Let me hold onto these things."

He essentially said, "Okay, I hear you.

But we need you to do this for a few months."

Adam was not the kind of person who wanted to hear no.

It was, "Yes, and..."

We were always working kind of crazy

to just get everything done and ready.

I always felt that we did a great job

and Adam would acknowledge it.

He would also intertwine a vision

for how we could do it better and faster next time.

I begrudgingly was there,

putting in all the same hours

I would have in New York,

working about 90-hour weeks, burning out.

Some of us were getting headaches, stomach problems.

We were all just like, "We can't keep this up.

Like this is really taking a toll on us.

Let's go to Adam and Miguel."

I said, "I need to have one day a week

that I'm able to take off."

I think it was really received as a kind of threat

and it was interpreted as an ultimatum.

And I was fuming.

I think there's a very thin line between cult and culture.

What made people believe was

they want to be part of something.

They would call it a culture.

They would call it a community.

They wouldn't call it a cult.

But, eventually, it got to the point

where people were confused.

Once people came in

who really did start questioning those things,

they either were removed or they were silenced.

[ Gong crashes ]

I think the thing that all of us know is,

if you want to succeed in this world,

you have to build something that has intention.

You have to build something that has true meaning behind it.

And what puts us together, all of us here,

is every one of us is here because it has a meaning,

because we want to do something

that actually makes the world a better place,

and we want to make money doing it.

[ Cheering ]

[ Cash register chimes ]

♪♪

I've always sort of --

I'm not really good at being a follower of things.

♪♪

I grew up going to church and I was always the kid

who was either questioning or raising my hand.

I think Adam is probably

a naturally charismatic cult leader.

He's got a lot of charisma.

Works on some people, doesn't work on others.

CASE was a building information modeling firm.

It was a small office where everyone really liked each other

and everyone supported one another.

We started out doing a bunch of work for WeWork.

But there was not a single person on our team

who worked on a WeWork project who liked WeWork.

The expectations were ridiculous,

the timelines were ridiculous,

and, when CASE finally said, "WeWork is going to buy us,"

almost the entire office went to the bar Salt

and about, I don't know, half the employees cried.

Cried.

[ Gong crashes ]

♪♪

The first all-hands meeting that we were invited to,

there was, indeed, a gong.

It's really called a TGIM,

Thank God It's Monday, meeting.

Said nobody ever.

I think the gong had to do with like,

if you did something cool, you got to hit the gong.

I have no idea what those parameters were.

[ Gong crashes ] [ Cheering ]

But it was mandatory for every single WeWork employee.

This whole pep rally type thing that goes along with it.

-When I say, "We," you say... -Work!

-We! -Work!

-We! -Work!

So it's --

It's just a chant that everybody --

It's dumb as shit, is what it is.

There's no point in explaining it.

It's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever done

in a corporate environment, in my life.

Anyone who just spends half an hour looking

at how WeWork makes money

could probably come to the conclusion that,

"Okay, their main business model is taking an office lease

and splitting it up into smaller pieces

and renting it at a slightly higher rate to someone else."

But by 2014, 2015,

WeWork was worth $10 billion...

Newscaster: The company is now the largest

commercial landlord in the city.

...doubling its valuation

in the course of a year, or close to it.

It's opening offices in India, Japan, Korea.

Eliot: He didn't see it as a Silicon valley-like company.

It took a couple years of realizing

that's what investors are really looking for.

Then, you started to see them portray themselves

as a tech company.

This guy's turned a real estate business

into an actual technology platform.

This is exactly what sort of unlocked

these hundreds of millions of dollars.

Certainly, being valued like a tech company,

at $5 billion.

Any plans to go public?

So, no plans to go public.

For now, our focus is on growing the business.

And he managed to sell them on the idea

that this isn't real estate, it's tech,

which is just completely divergent from the truth.

I'm confused because, when I read all about you,

it says you are a provider of shared office space.

-That's okay. -That's okay, but that's

not big enough for you? -It's not about not big enough.

It's just not what we do.

We're as much a coworking space

as Amazon is a bookselling store.

And then, I think reporters probably contribute

to the cult of the founder as well because like

when we write a story, we want a character, right?

And like Adam is an incredible character.

It's an extremely strong business model Yes.

financially, not just spiritually.

[ Laughter ]

He says funny stuff,

like putting a WeWork on Mars,

for him to run

for president of the world,

to become a trillionaire,

and to live forever.

That's not normal.

But, because he believed so strongly

that they were going to reach these goals,

people write about it and you get this cycle

of excitement and growth

and money and people and power

and it just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

[ House music pulses ]

The vision was that we should think about it as a product.

And that we should productize all of our spaces,

we should have components,

we should have a modular library,

and how could we really be building these sort of iPhones

for people to occupy and work in?

I think people want to work on something bigger.

They want to believe that they can make an impact.

Great movements,

for good and for bad,

are oftentimes driven by a leader

that can motivate people and get them excited and to work hard

and to work on something bigger than themselves.

[ Music stops ]

I think being a CEO -- I mean, first there's that whole concept

that we all tell stories to live

and, as a CEO that's particularly true.

A lot of the job, broadly defined,

is about telling stories

and I think Adam was a fantastic storyteller.

The simplest way to think of it is

we were the Lyft to their Uber.

We were both out in the world, trying to convince companies,

"You should be buying your employees' workplace experience

as a service or a product."

So I went to a meeting with Adam --

this happens a lot with competitors --

and I mentioned that we had just done an acquisition

that I was pretty excited about.

He said, "You know, we're doing a lot of M&A.

Have you heard of Wave Garden?"

So I said no, you know, I hadn't heard of it

and he said, "Oh, well, let me show you".

He pulled up YouTube and said, "They make waves."

♪♪

The video, you know, it's someone surfing.

They're like hanging 10 and there's music going.

I was just like, "Man, whatever this company does,

they are really taking this wave metaphor like really far."

And it became clear

that it wasn't a construction technology company.

It wasn't accounting software with a sexy name. It...

It was a wave pool company.

I could tell Adam was really excited about that

and really proud of that and he loves surfing.

But, for me, that was one of those defining moments

of like, "Whoa."

They invest a lot in fruit water and beer, but like

I can't see them buying a wave pool company,

but it turns out that they did.

He thought that this indoor wave pool

was great, and wanted to invest in it.

So this is where you start to get

into, "The founder is making a decision

that I really don't think was benefiting WeWork, the company."

Adam was very two-faced and he'd say it was all about "we,"

but, for Adam, it was all about him

and so Adam, you know, takes me into an office and he's like,

"I want to show you what we do here,"

and he wants to show me a video of their summer camp.

He can't figure out how to use the computer.

He calls his assistant, "Stella!"

And she comes running in and, you know,

just clicks open on QuickTime.

-♪ La ♪ -You see this video

of all these people having fun

and Adam riding around on a boat.

[ Laughing ] So I just

went on a sailboat for the first time ever.

-Wakeboarding. -Wakeboarding and water skiing.

Hit my head really hard and then had to lay down

and drink coconut water afterwards.

This is an office space company and he's showing to the press,

"Here is our summer camp, where we drink and party

and have fun with music and smile."

Danny: Summer camp was an opportunity

for all WeWork locations to come together.

Honestly, they were two of the...

♪ Na na na na na na ♪

Party together, do kind of creative

business building activities together.

Everyone arrived at summer camp by riding in these buses

and Adam arrived in a sea plane, you know.

He would take a sea plane and then land on the lake

and people would help him take his luggage out.

Eliot: Adam and Rebekah would speak onstage

and they'd be these revered figures.

Big iconography,

[ Camera shutter clicks ] deification of Adam,

and so it was very much a cult of personality.

Summer camp didn't have anything to do with WeWork.

It had all to do with Adam.

Ellen: They would fly in

musical acts on helicopters --

Florence and the Machine and Lorde -- big names.

Lin-Manuel Miranda performed there one year.

I am trying to get across to you how much I love you

[ Laughter ] and how I feel about you.

Find me a bank that buses you up to a summer camp

and lets the booze flow and says,

"Hey, Chromeo is playing, The Weeknd is playing.

Don't you want to be a part of this?"

Adam: The feeling that you have right now

of being together, the...

[ Echoing ]

...that's what WeWork is. [ Cheering ]

Joanna: I think Adam wants wealth and adoration.

He wanted to be loved and wanted to be rich.

If everybody else drank the Kool-Aid,

Adam was swimming in the Kool-Aid.

You also were expected to be smiling.

Woman: Dance again, one more time,

like you're absolutely fucking loving it,

even if you're not.

If you weren't attending summer camp,

you had to have a real reason to not be able to go,

and it had to be in writing.

There were no excuses not to go. I think they

probably didn't give a shit if you were a nursing mother

or you just had your pancreas out.

Like you were going to summer camp.

And if you didn't clock in every day...

For summer camp.

For me, I was getting frustrated.

I didn't really have a job title.

I didn't really have a job description.

Dave asked me to do several things in his system.

That was how I came across getting Dave's password.

Click on the email and it's Dave's email

and, before I can shut it,

I notice something about layoffs.

[ Gong crashes ]

At that point, layoffs are currently happening

and people are sort of disappearing,

but we haven't been told why.

The logical thing is that we're losing money

hand over fist, which we are,

but nobody says that.

Now, here's the key --

if you're having financial issues

and you are not telling your employees

and if you're an idiot and you've decided

to give the whole company stock

and then you decide to lie to the whole company,

that's your fault.

And I finally said, "You've got to tell the employees."

[ Whimsical tune plays ]

Ellen: Summer of 2016, I got a phone call from Joanna.

She was like, "I found out they're going to lay off

7% of their workforce

and they're not being honest with their financials."

She was like, "I have things I want to show you."

I think it actually surpassed rage.

I don't even know what the hell is past rage,

but whatever it was, I was like an inferno of it.

I wanted them to be held accountable.

Ellen: There was a document that showed

that WeWork had made these financial projections for 2016,

for revenues and profits and then, those projections

had been very aggressively scaled back.

He had these outrageous goals -- to be able to open 10 buildings,

then 20 buildings, then 100 buildings.

$50 billion a year in revenue in five years.

There were things that would just systematically break.

Adam:

On top of that, there were these recordings of Adam

warning his employees,

"We really need to cut back on our spending."

They called what Joanna did "corporate theft."

[ Suspenseful hip hop plays ]

Joanna: I was immediately branded.

"She is against us."

I was brought up in TGIMs

to talk about how I was against them.

We responded to the leak

that, in WeWork, you need to be

a 10 professionally and a 10 culturally --

something Rebekah speaks about a lot --

and, if you're not in both places,

then it's not going to work with us in the long run.

Ellen: After the story ran, there were a few things that happened.

One, the legal team at Bloomberg told me

I was not allowed to contact Joanna.

WeWork sued Joanna the very same day.

WeWork referred the case to the FBI,

alleging, I guess, the criminal Fraud and Abuse Act

and the FBI came to my house.

I talked to two gentlemen

who came straight out of central casting.

I swear to God, if I hadn't known they were actually FBI,

I would've thought I was being punked by a television show.

She shared this pretty prophetic information early on

and it didn't like seem to hurt WeWork's rise in any way.

[ Cash register chimes ]

Six months later, WeWork was already

starting negotiations with SoftBank,

biggest investor in venture capital.

[ Speaking Japanese ]

Interpreter: The Vision Fund deal is the preparation

for a God-given opportunity

similar to the gold rush era.

Essentially, what happened is

Masayoshi Son was really looking to diversify SoftBank.

At that exact time,

Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia

was really hankering to change the economy of Saudi Arabia.

And Masa Son, as he's known,

convinced him to give him $45 billion.

At that point, he meets Adam.

Masa really buys into the cult of the founder

and sees Adam as the visionary that so many others did.

Basically, on the spot, offers him over $4 billion.

Adam got $4 billion after a 12-minute meeting.

That makes everyone look really rich on paper.

It also made Adam really rich not on paper.

Adam and Miguel sold over $300 million of stock

when SoftBank came in.

Adam bought a townhouse in the West Village,

three homes in the Hamptons,

$21 million home in California with a room...

Masa Son, richest tech investor in the world,

told Adam, "You aren't crazy enough.

You need to think even bigger."

That's a really dangerous thing to do to Adam,

who already was spending incredibly recklessly.

Then, Adam's already big ego grew into egomania.

He decided that WeWork needed to buy a $63 million jet,

the absolute top-of-the-line Gulfstream.

So, the afterburners went on on the WeWork engine.

Jamie: Adam and I kind of decided we were going

to spend the day together, touring each other's locations,

and we were going to go in WeWork's private jet.

You know, the plane had to leave from the Hamptons.

Anytime a private jet is involved,

there's probably some kind of flex.

We had breakfast.

We're talking about our businesses

and the mutual respect we have.

And then, [ Snaps fingers ] it flipped.

He says, "Because I have this respect for you

and your business and because I like you,

I feel I owe it to you to tell you something.

If things don't go well between us,

I have 150 people on speed dial

and, at the push of a button,

their job is going to be to destroy Industrious,

until you don't have anyone left and you've lost the business

you've spent the last five years building."

You kind of think it's a bluff,

so you laugh a little, you know, you're kind of like,

"Oh, okay," and then, just

they're straight-faced

and you're like, "Oh, no, he really means this."

So I said, "I don't think you guys would really do that,"

and he explained to me that, "No, no, you have to understand.

That's exactly what we're going to do.

We just got this big investment from this fund

and the one thing that the head of that fund told me

is that he liked how crazy I am,

but he wishes I were even crazier,

and you should know I'm not bluffing."

♪♪

And they weren't bluffing.

[ Gong crashes ]

I thought that I deserved everything because I came

from a very simple background

and, when I came here, I said, "I'm getting the American dream

and I deserve and me, me, me."

By the time I was 28,

five years after I arrived to New York City,

I was 30 pounds lighter than today,

I was smoking a pack of cigarettes a day,

my hands were shaking violently, and I was confused and lost.

My first three businesses were a complete failure.

I then meet my wife.

And, within five minutes --

now, I say five minutes to be nice,

but it surely took ten seconds.

She looks at me and, within two minutes, she goes, "You know --"

She looked me straight in the eye and she said...

"You have potential, but you're full of shit."

"You, my friend, are full of shit."

[ Laughter ]

You know, when WeWork started, it had two cofounders --

Miguel McKelvey and Adam Neumann.

And then, later, they added Rebekah Neumann, his wife,

to the sort of cofounder list.

You just talked about connecting

to the super consciousness,

which we love.

Is there any tip, at all,

you could give, how to get there?

I can tell you that I think it's infinite,

which means that there's

never a shortage. Mm.

When I first read that Rebekah was a cofounder,

I thought, "That's interesting."

She wasn't there working with us in the very beginning very much.

I'm sure, from a fundraising perspective,

she had a good hand in that,

given she's Gwyneth Paltrow's cousin

and has an extensive network, I think,

with probably some high net worth individuals

that likely funded the business from the very beginning.

For me, personally,

WeWork is a physical structure

through which we can put positive energy

and consciousness into the world.

Energy and color create feelings.

Newscaster: Back at WeWork, Adam Neumann is also hoping to change

the balance of modern life,

adding apartments called WeLive;

schools called WeGrow;

and, in the future,

whole cities powered, as he puts it,

by We.

When Adam decided that we were going

to now be called the We Company,

I think a lot of people were like,

"What the fuck does that even mean?

Like how do you trademark 'We'"?

♪ Do ooh ooh, do do ♪

It didn't make any sense because WeWork was the company

and then everything else was like a side project.

I truly only started understanding what it is

to run a business after I met Rebekah.

Rebekah met me and said, "Adam, I'm sorry you're confused.

It's about doing what you love,

bringing intention, connecting the two."

The infusion of Kabbalah in Adam's life

gave a lot of backing to the "we" side of WeWork.

He was just spending a lot of money to realize that vision.

The need to start a school came from my husband and I

not finding the right place to send my child,

so it really was...

...and giving that we created this school.

By the way, we didn't have places to sit

because Rebekah decided to open up

an elementary school for rich kids in our building.

And I talked to one investor and he was like

"I was talking to Adam about this

and I did not realize he was talking

about using WeWork's money to do this.

I thought he was going to be using his own money

and then, only later, I found out

they were using WeWork's money

to build an elementary school."

It was like beyond the...

Joanna may have thought that her story might tip the scales,

but that didn't stop them from getting, you know,

a $20 billion valuation

and then like a $47 billion valuation.

[ Cash register chimes ]

They had raised so much money

that they had extra money that they could use

to give away as prize money for these marketing events.

It was, you know, totally unnecessary

to their regular business.

Finalists!

Creator Awards was this "Shark Tank"-like event

where small businesses and nonprofits

pitch onstage for investments.

WeWork couldn't be happier

than to give you the $50,000. It's yours!

We were giving away around $1 million a month,

but not taking care of the details, once they were done,

and then, the people who won were sort of left in the wind.

They would invite celebrity judges,

like Ashton Kutcher and P. Diddy.

There would be like a musical act.

JD: Adam loved being considered a celebrity.

You're a creator and you're a creator

and you're a creator and we're all creators.

And what does that mean?

The riders for his greenroom

were ridiculous.

The spending was just outrageous.

I come from a penny-pinching family.

My mother used to drop me off, in a Budweiser van,

at school every day.

It was painful for me to see how much money

we were spending all the time,

especially because we were bleeding

so much money every single month.

Are you actually turning a profit in the business?

We are definitely turning a profit.

This is my fifth business.

I'm bored of the businesses

that don't turn a profit.

I don't believe in them.

In the beginning of 2019,

the company was getting ready to IPO

and it really needed to clean itself up.

But, WeWork, every year, they would double their revenue

and then they would double their losses

and sometimes their losses

were growing even faster.

They had convinced themselves

that losses didn't matter.

So you wouldn't be afraid to invest

at the latest valuation?

I wouldn't be afraid at all.

I mean, actually, it's really funny,

I've been watching the press around this last fundraise

and I actually think it's hilarious.

It's the second-largest venture capital investment

of all time.

I'm an investor in Uber, so I know

what the first largest one was.

So the notion that anybody's projecting that they don't have

confidence in the company, I think, is crazy.

I have confidence in the company.

First of all, thank you, Ashton.

It's amazing.

There was an enormous amount

of erratic behavior

by the man in charge

of this $47 billion company

that was trying to go public.

Ellen: He did not want to go public,

but WeWork was burning money.

In order to keep growing, it needed to raise more money.

Money-losing tech companies, like Uber and Lyft,

may have struggled to win over investors

since going public earlier this year,

but that isn't stopping WeWork.

The We Company publicly filed paperwork on Wednesday

for its long-anticipated IPO.

For a company to go public is a big deal.

This is the first time that they have to reveal

their financial information.

It's kind of an arrival point.

One of my investors happens to be sitting in the front.

He's a big fan of the IPO, came in very early.

Yeah, yeah. That might be

why he's smiling. -That's why he's smiling.

-Yeah. -See that big smile?

WeWork had spent years

negotiating their valuation with one investor.

It was like Adam Neumann, Masayoshi Son,

and, if they agree that WeWork is valued

at $47 billion, like, great.

Going public is kind of the opposite.

You need to agree on a valuation that many people have input on.

I was the growth guy.

So it's like, "Keep growing, keep growing,

and we're going to grow to the IPO."

I don't think that there was a clear plan

and I think it backfired.

The S-1 is this amazing document,

from a reporter's perspective,

because it's the first

public document that

companies need to release

that has all this information

about the finances

and the inner workings of the company.

I was reading it on my phone

and I saw this paragraph and I was like, "Wait, what?"

The S-1 revealed that Adam's personal holding company

had trademarked the word "we."

And then, later, when WeWork had changed its name

to the We Company,

Adam sold the "we" trademark to his own company

for $5.9 million in stock.

Pretty sure this says that he

benefited financially, personally,

at the expense of his company.

The We Company.

As WeWork's lawyers and staff were toiling away

to show that the company was going to be

a great bet for investors,

Adam was taking a number of steps

that were really for...

...and his own enhancement of power.

Side dealing. I mean putting his family

in key positions, leasing his

personal property back to the company.

He was extremely focused on his own net worth.

There was a clear deception.

Adam had these super voting shares,

which means that like, basically,

he controls the company,

even if he sells most of it.

If a real estate company was going public

and the CEO of that company sat on the Compensation Committee,

in effect allowing him to determine his own salary,

would that be considered something

the SEC might want to look into?

The succession plan that was outlined in the S-1 was that,

if Adam died or was no longer able to serve as CEO...

His wife and, ideally, his children

would be able to run WeWork in the future.

He didn't own most of the company.

He owned like 20% of the company.

If he's then taking things that the company produces

and putting them into his pocket,

he's basically stealing 80% from those investors.

The valuation for the company in the IPO might be dropping.

-That's a crazy valuation. -It is right?

It might be dropping lower.

What I'm hearing is the demand

is not there, at this point,

at even $25 billion...

Oh! Oh, boy. ...a valuation of $25 billion.

And then, there was this shift

among Adam's supporters on the board of directors.

Adam Neumann is expected to step down

as We Company's CEO.

The fall was so precipitous.

Within a week or so after that, they had also withdrawn the IPO.

This guy, Adam Neumann, walks away with a billion plus

and, now, we've got the workers on the street with nothing.

He received a $1.7 billion payday

to walk away from the smoking rubble of his company.

Or, as he preferred to call it, not a company,

a state of consciousness.

♪♪

I get an email late the night before,

asking us to come at a certain time.

You know, we get there,

it's like a fabulous check-in service.

It was like a well-oiled machine.

You sat there for 20, 30 minutes, you know,

while they spoke to us about how we were being laid off.

And it wasn't just us in that one office, that one day.

It was happening worldwide, simultaneously.

Adam sat me down. He says,

"You're going to have tens of millions of dollars.

I'm going to make sure that you get to sell your equity.

You've worked hard. You've earned it."

And then I get the call, like, "Hey, it's not happening.

The deal fell through."

And it was a bit of like, "Okay. Well.

Got to rethink the plan."

I wrote an email to Adam and Miguel --

"I need to get the equity that I was promised."

They said, "Let's have a meeting about this."

And, in that meeting, they said,

"We can't meet this list of requests

and we think it's best that we part ways here."

[ Melancholy tune plays ]

I felt devastated.

Like I openly wept in that meeting.

Sounds way overly dramatic for, you know,

any kind of meeting that you

should have with an employer, but.

For me, this wasn't just like, "Wow, this is a great spot

and I'm so glad I get

Pinot Grigio on tap, and cold brew."

It was beyond that for me.

It was more like, "I'm finally able

to move forward and move my family forward,"

which made the layoff all the more devastating.

Is Adam someone whose head is in the clouds

and who has these crazy visions,

but doesn't know how to execute on reaching them

or is he someone who purposely promises the moon,

but then knows that he's not going to deliver?

That's the billion-dollar question, as they say,

whether or not he didn't do the math or check the numbers,

or said, "Well, this house of cards may fall,"

and, at that point, he's been compensated.

I was promised things that didn't ultimately come about.

I could definitely feel deceived by his actions

and think he was being manipulative, in that way.

I still miss the energy of WeWork.

Without sounding melodramatic,

it was kind of like my one first love.

He created something that's on the stratosphere level

of Google, Facebook, Uber.

He'll go down in history as one

of the greatest salesmen of all time.

I can imagine that this was all a big hit to his ego.

Then again, Kabbalah would teach you

that ego is something that you need to keep in check

and lead from spirit and consciousness.

♪♪

You know, you think about cults

as rallying around

a very charismatic leader.

It's sort of bent reality.

It was divorced from reality.

Whether it's story, persuasion,

if you had an ounce to give,

the company took a gallon.

It was absolutely willful blindness

for basically everyone involved.

Whether you want to call that a cult or not,

I think it's more that, instead of elevating

like an idea or a concept, we tend to elevate a human.

These people are complicated

and they end up making bad decisions.

If WeWork was a cult, then,

I guess I wouldn't know

that I was in a cult.

WeWork is a cult, in a lot of ways, right?

It's a cult in the unbelievable charismatic leader

that people always want to get close to,

that people want to know.

It's a very us versus them,

"If you're not with us you're against us."

Every single one of those motherfuckers

is going to make millions, if not billions,

off the wreckage of WeWork,

while thousands of people have lost their jobs.

♪♪

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