Executive Briefing
Why WeWork is worth rooting for
Plus: The consumer nuggets in WeWork’s IPO filing.
By Dan Frommer on Thursday, August 22, 2019 at 6:00 pm
Perhaps it’s late-summer listlessness, but WeWork’s IPO prospectus, filed last week, generated an uproar of disapproval not experienced since, well, Uber’s a few months ago.
WeWork’s losses — almost $1 billion so far this year, on more than $1.5 billion in revenue — weren’t unexpected. Everything is growing rapidly.
But the filing exposed a bad look: How founder and CEO Adam Neumann is tangled up in a grotesquely complicated relationship with the company, including playing both sides of real estate dealings and effectively paying himself $6 million to license the trademark “We.”
And the company’s mission — to “elevate the world’s consciousness” — would be one thing if WeWork was an otherwise mundane, aspirational business. But when it’s attached to an organizational structure that looks like this, it’s hard not to roll your eyes and wonder a little.
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