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🔗 Adam Neumann and the Art of Failing Up

If you are more a fan of watching than reading I recommend the YouTube videos "The Spectacular Rise and Fall of WeWork" by Bloomberg and "WeWork - The $47 Billion Disaster" by ColdFusion. They cover pretty much the same things as this New York Times article and more.

Famously, in 2017, Mr. Neumann spent just 12 minutes walking Mr. Son around WeWork’s headquarters, prompting an investment of $4.4 billion. Afterward, an elated Mr. Neumann zoomed uptown in the back seat of his chauffeured white Maybach, blaring rap, with an iPad open to a rendering of the hasty digital spit-swear he’d just made with Mr. Son.

I don't understand how such dumb people get access to so much money and then give it to other dumb people. How did we get here as a society? How did we mess up so bad that failing upwards is so prevalent?

He envisioned customers residing in WeLive apartment buildings that would drive down suicide rates because “no one ever feels alone.” He imagined a WeGrow school and an effort to shelter the world’s orphans. (“We want to solve this problem and give them a new family: the WeWork family.”) There was talk of a WeBank, WeSail, WeSleep, an airline.

These sounds like the ideas someone has when they are high.

For those who were intoxicated by this pitch, Mr. Neumann added a hefty dose of self-help spirituality that he picked up from his wife, Rebekah Paltrow Neumann, a cousin to the Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow, and a certified Jivamukti yogi. “My intention was never to find a way to make the most money,” Ms. Neumann said last year. “My intention when I met him was just, ‘How do we expand this good vibration to the planet?’”

Improbably enough, there are those who still have faith in Mr. Neumann as a businessman. “I actually think he’s probably one of the greatest entrepreneurs I’ve ever met,” Marc Benioff, the co-chief executive of Salesforce, told Business Insider on Oct. 15. “He’s an incredible evangelist. He’s an incredible visionary. He’s hired a lot of amazing people. He’s built an amazing brand, right?” Mr. Benioff did allow: “Unfortunately, there were some things, obviously, in the company that you probably would have preferred to change if he could do it all over again.”

This is the same Marc Benioff who built a $1.1 billion tower and then said to the downtrodden of San Francisco, "I want you to know you are not alone—we are thinking of you. I hope you see this tower as a beacon, a symbol of hope, and know that there is a company and a city, a group of people, and organizations all together as one San Francisco that leads with our core values.”

I am so sick and tired of these fake-woke Silicon Valley fuckwits. Don't you dare build your fucking Tower of Babel and claim it is for everyone else. It is for your own god damn ego you sick fuck.