WeWork

Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey founded WeWork in New York in 2010, offering flexible shared office space to startups and freelancers. What distinguished WeWork from other serviced office providers was Neumann's pitch: WeWork was not a real estate company, it was a technology company — a physical social network for entrepreneurs, a community, a movement. Investors found this enormously compelling. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son met Neumann for 28 minutes and decided to invest $4.4 billion, reportedly writing the terms on a napkin.

WeWork filed for its IPO in August 2019 with a valuation of $47 billion. The S-1 prospectus revealed losses of $1.9 billion on revenue of $1.8 billion. It also revealed that Neumann had trademarked the word "We" and sold the trademark to WeWork for $5.9 million. It revealed WeWork had loaned Neumann $380 million personally. The IPO was withdrawn within weeks. The valuation collapsed. Neumann was forced to resign — and paid approximately $1.7 billion to leave, including a $185 million consulting fee for a company he had just destroyed.

WeWork filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 2023, listing liabilities of $18.6 billion. The COVID-19 pandemic had devastated the flexible office market precisely when WeWork was most exposed, and the company's fundamental model — borrow long, lend short, in a cyclical industry — had been fatally fragile from the beginning. Business schools now teach the WeWork story alongside Enron as a case study in corporate governance failure.

WeWork emerged from Chapter 11 in June 2024, having cut $4 billion in debt and shed expensive leases to reduce future rent obligations by approximately $12 billion. Real estate software company Yardi Systems became WeWork's majority owner with a 60% stake. Adam Neumann attempted to buy the company back for over $500 million and was rejected. WeWork shrank from 850 locations to approximately 600 globally, focusing on profitable markets. The hype, the wave pool, the tequila on private jets — all of it was gone.

By early 2025, WeWork's CEO announced the company had been EBITDA positive for six consecutive months. The company was no longer growing aggressively, no longer claiming to be a tech company, and no longer associated with elevated consciousness or the energy of "We." It was simply a coworking company — smaller, quieter, and focused on not going bankrupt again. Neumann had moved on to a new startup, Flow, developing community-focused rental housing. The greatest startup collapse in history had ended not with drama, but with profit margins and a drastically reduced ambition.