Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork
A Wall Street Journal Business Bestseller 

“Vivid, carefully reported drama that readers will gulp down as if it were a fast-paced novel” (Ken Auletta) 

The inside story of WeWork and its CEO, Adam Neumann, which tells the remarkable saga of one of the most audacious, and improbable, rises and falls in American business history

  
In its earliest days, WeWork promised the impossible: to make the American work place cool. Adam Neumann, an immigrant determined to make his fortune in the United States, landed on the idea of repurposing surplus New York office space for the burgeoning freelance class. Over the course of ten years, WeWork attracted billions of dollars from some of the most sought-after investors in the world, while spending it to build a global real estate empire that he insisted was much more than that: an organization that aspired to nothing less than "elevating the world's consciousness."

Moving between New York real estate, Silicon Valley venture capital, and the very specific force field of spirituality and ambition erected by Adam Neumann himself, Billion Dollar Loser lays bare the internal drama inside WeWork. Based on more than two hundred interviews, this book chronicles the breakneck speed at which WeWork’s CEO built and grew his company along with Neumann’s relationship to a world of investors, including Masayoshi Son of Softbank, who fueled its chaotic expansion into everything from apartment buildings to elementary schools.
 
Culminating in a day-by-day account of the five weeks leading up to WeWork’s botched IPO and Neumann’s dramatic ouster, Wiedeman exposes the story of the company’s desperate attempt to secure the funding it needed in the final moments of a decade defined by excess. Billion Dollar Loser is the first book to indelibly capture the highly leveraged, all-blue-sky world of American business in President Trump’s first term, and also offers a sober reckoning with its fallout as a new era begins.
 

1137332699
Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork
A Wall Street Journal Business Bestseller 

“Vivid, carefully reported drama that readers will gulp down as if it were a fast-paced novel” (Ken Auletta) 

The inside story of WeWork and its CEO, Adam Neumann, which tells the remarkable saga of one of the most audacious, and improbable, rises and falls in American business history

  
In its earliest days, WeWork promised the impossible: to make the American work place cool. Adam Neumann, an immigrant determined to make his fortune in the United States, landed on the idea of repurposing surplus New York office space for the burgeoning freelance class. Over the course of ten years, WeWork attracted billions of dollars from some of the most sought-after investors in the world, while spending it to build a global real estate empire that he insisted was much more than that: an organization that aspired to nothing less than "elevating the world's consciousness."

Moving between New York real estate, Silicon Valley venture capital, and the very specific force field of spirituality and ambition erected by Adam Neumann himself, Billion Dollar Loser lays bare the internal drama inside WeWork. Based on more than two hundred interviews, this book chronicles the breakneck speed at which WeWork’s CEO built and grew his company along with Neumann’s relationship to a world of investors, including Masayoshi Son of Softbank, who fueled its chaotic expansion into everything from apartment buildings to elementary schools.
 
Culminating in a day-by-day account of the five weeks leading up to WeWork’s botched IPO and Neumann’s dramatic ouster, Wiedeman exposes the story of the company’s desperate attempt to secure the funding it needed in the final moments of a decade defined by excess. Billion Dollar Loser is the first book to indelibly capture the highly leveraged, all-blue-sky world of American business in President Trump’s first term, and also offers a sober reckoning with its fallout as a new era begins.
 

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Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

by Reeves Wiedeman
Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork

by Reeves Wiedeman

Hardcover

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Overview

A Wall Street Journal Business Bestseller 

“Vivid, carefully reported drama that readers will gulp down as if it were a fast-paced novel” (Ken Auletta) 

The inside story of WeWork and its CEO, Adam Neumann, which tells the remarkable saga of one of the most audacious, and improbable, rises and falls in American business history

  
In its earliest days, WeWork promised the impossible: to make the American work place cool. Adam Neumann, an immigrant determined to make his fortune in the United States, landed on the idea of repurposing surplus New York office space for the burgeoning freelance class. Over the course of ten years, WeWork attracted billions of dollars from some of the most sought-after investors in the world, while spending it to build a global real estate empire that he insisted was much more than that: an organization that aspired to nothing less than "elevating the world's consciousness."

Moving between New York real estate, Silicon Valley venture capital, and the very specific force field of spirituality and ambition erected by Adam Neumann himself, Billion Dollar Loser lays bare the internal drama inside WeWork. Based on more than two hundred interviews, this book chronicles the breakneck speed at which WeWork’s CEO built and grew his company along with Neumann’s relationship to a world of investors, including Masayoshi Son of Softbank, who fueled its chaotic expansion into everything from apartment buildings to elementary schools.
 
Culminating in a day-by-day account of the five weeks leading up to WeWork’s botched IPO and Neumann’s dramatic ouster, Wiedeman exposes the story of the company’s desperate attempt to secure the funding it needed in the final moments of a decade defined by excess. Billion Dollar Loser is the first book to indelibly capture the highly leveraged, all-blue-sky world of American business in President Trump’s first term, and also offers a sober reckoning with its fallout as a new era begins.
 


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780316461368
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Publication date: 10/20/2020
Pages: 352
Sales rank: 1,103,430
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Reeves Wiedeman is a contributing editor at New York magazine, and has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Harper's, Men's Journal, and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn but still calls Kansas City home.

Table of Contents

Prologue 3

1 Capitalist Kibbutz 13

2 Green Desk 25

3 154 Grand Street 36

4 "I Am We Work" 43

5 Sex, Coworking, and Rock 'n Roll 54

6 The Physical Social Network 74

7 Reality Distortion Field 85

8 Greater Fools 100

9 WeLive 119

10 Manage the Nickel 129

11 Mr. Ten Times 141

12 Me Over We 162

13 Blitzscaling 170

14 The Holy Grail 181

15 WeGrow 191

16 Game of Thrones 201

17 Operationalize Love 209

18 A We Work Wedding 220

19 Fortitude 232

20 The I in We 248

21 Wingspan 259

22 Always Half Full 277

23 The Sun Never Sets on We 293

24 Brave New World 305

Author's Note 317

Acknowledgments 321

Index 325

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