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The Fraud that is Adam Neumann
I have a particular affinity for learning about scammers. Jho Low, Elizabeth Holmes, Grant Cardone…the list is endless, as is our ability to fall for these hucksters.
I read Reeves Wiedeman’s very fine Billion Dollar Loser when it came out, but I don’t think I realized how much I had forgotten about Neumann’s audacity until I recently finished The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion. I did remember to be irritated with Mark Andreesen who really, truly, unbelievably, gave this narcissistic loser hundreds of millions of dollars for his next ex-company. Apparently being really rich and smart doesn’t stop you from giving money to someone whose very recent failures were equisitely catalogued in the WSJ and Weideman’s book, just to name a couple. One can only conclude that Andreesen either didn’t bother to read the material on Neumann, or didn’t care enough about the money and was willing to risk it all.
What was clear was that Andreesen was, like Neumann, completely incapable of walking the talk, in particular, about solving the housing crunch. Maybe that’s why they were perfect for each other: two narcissists who want others to think they are smart philanthropists. Carly Reilly would you please consider doing a video on this investment? I’d sponsor matcha lattes for a week! :-)
Okay, so enough about my angst about Andreesen Horowitz and their willful ignorance about the total fraud loser that is Adam Neumann. On to the very fine book written by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell.
The book starts slowly, as it needed to give us backstory on Adam, then on his fateful meeting with Miguel McKelvey and their quick success with Greendesk, the (actually profitable) MVP for what would become WeWork.
But then it takes us through the chronological spectacular rise and very satisfying fall of this completely bubble-driven company. The authors keep taking us in and out of boardrooms and the Neumanns’ lives and into the deliberation (and total delinquency) of the WeWork board.
You will come away from the book fully informed about how WeWork happened and ended, but probably, like me, will know that it’s a cautionary tale that only a few will read and take to heart. Mark Andreesen certainly didn’t.
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#wework #scams #conartists #adamneumann #andreesenhorowitz
