Hubris of a high-flyer: how investors brought WeWork founder down to earth
Adam Neumann’s mission was to ‘elevate the world’s consciousness’. Now the office space provider he started must prove it has a future
Adam Neumann was poised to become one of the world’s richest people this year, crystallising a personal fortune of as much as $14bn (£11.3bn) from the flotation of WeWork, the shared working space company he co-founded with a mission to become “the world’s first physical social network”.
But in a bruising fortnight Neumann has been forced to pull the float, quit as chief executive, halt all of WeWork’s lease expansion plans, and seen the company’s credit rating cut to “junk” status. He has also had to fend off a series of increasingly damaging allegations about his personal conduct, including the revelation that he smoked marijuana on a private jet. The company is now selling the $60m Gulfstream G650 plane that Neumann had used to fly around the world to attend tequila-fuelled parties with the likes of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jared Kushner and Will Smith’s son Jaden.