We don’t work. Lucky we!

I haven’t been following the WeWork saga very closely. I was aware of their stratospheric paper valuation – $47B – that the market was placing on this unicorn of unicorns, a real estate company that rents out shared office space, largely to tech startups.

I had a client that had space in WeWork before they grew up and got their own offices. The place was plenty cool – there was a kitchen where all these techie hipsters hung out sipping cold brew. It goes without saying that the only time I was there, I was one of a handful of folks who appeared to be over the age of 40. Make that 30.

Anyway, WeWork (now calling itself We Co.) had to hold up on:

…its hotly anticipated initial public offering after filings last week showed billions in losses and potential conflicts of interest for Adam Neumann, its controversial and charismatic chief executive. (Source: WaPo)

I had no interest in blowing through WeWork’s prospectus, but it did show that the company “had blown through more than $2 billion in 2018,” and “cast serious doubts on the company’s business model, profitability and stability.”

Oh, that. (I’m old enough to remember working for a small tech company with the wild ambition of becoming “the next billion dollar software company.” That was when a billion dollars was a big deal. When we blew through $45 million in venture funding, it was considered totally shocking. We survived – barely – by paring down radically, and ended up being purchased for a couple of million dollars a few years down the road. Hey, I was happy to get my $45K. This was a long, long time ago, but I remain gobsmacked by the numbers that get bandied about these days.)

Anyway, Adam Neumann may be on his way out as CEO and given a BS-y title like “nonexecutive chairman” so that someone else could be brought in to straighten things out, and figure out how to launch We Work’s stalled IPO.

Neumann sounds like the ultra visionary, the ultra disrupter, the ultra crazy man, the ultra annoyance.

I worked for some narcissistic a-holes over the years, but nothing quite like this.

Yes, you have to think big, but Neumann’s goals include “becoming the world’s first trillionaire, taking WeWork to Mars, living forever, being Israel’s prime minister or president of the world”.

Maybe it’s just me, but a little grandiosity goes an awful long way…

He’s also invested in a number of companies that own real estate that WeWork leases, which looks to some (i.e., potential investors) like self-dealing.

Neumann was even paid nearly $6 million by WeWork for the trademark rights to the word “We” during the company’s rebranding. (He later paid the money back, the company said in an updated filing.)

Neumann has certainly built something with WeWork. They manage millions of square feet of property throughout the US and in over 30 countries worldwide. But like Uber et al., at some point you need to turn a profit.

And the culture, with the CEO running around gushing about trillionaire-ing and office space on Mars sounds to me like a true horror show.

Everyone has to go to “camp” each summer to party and work on crafts. (Ugh! One of the worst off-sites I ever experienced was one where they handed us all a box of Tinker Toys and instructed us to build a helicopter. Where’s Leonardo DaVinci when you need him?)

At camp, you might have to listen to Deepak Chopra. (Admittedly, listening to Deepak drone on would have been better than listening to, say, Scott McNealy, the founder of Sun Microsystems, who was the guest speaker at one hideous sales kickoff I had to attend. He began his remarks (this was January 2001) by talking about how glorious it was to have morality restored to the White House now that GW was in office.)

Neumann has suggested, at various times, that WeWork could help stop world hunger, solve the problem of parentless children and end the refugee crisis.

“I need to have the biggest valuation I can, because when countries are shooting at each other, I want them to come to me,” Neumann said, according to New York magazine.

I, I, I, I. Yikes!

As for that $47 billion valuation, it’s now plummeted to about one-third of that amount. Not that $15 billion is exactly down to earth, but it’s a far cry from $47 billion.

But it’s no surprise that there’s been some reckoning, and not just because of concerns over “serious doubts on the company’s business model, profitability and stability.” No, a couple of years ago Neumann:

…told Forbes that his company’s valuation was “more based on our energy and spirituality than it is on a multiple of revenue.”

Energy and spirituality? Talk about intangibles. (We always seemed to have plenty of chicken-with-a-head-cutoff energy, so was the problem with my little go-nowhere companies that we had insufficient spirituality?)

And speaking of energy and spirituality:

Neumann’s wife has also been closely involved in WeWork. It should come as no surprise that Rebekah Paltrow Neumann is “the cousin of Gwyneth Paltrow, the actress and founder of the natural health and lifestyle brand Goop,” which has a definite aura of oddball, weirdball spirituality. There is certainly something decidedly Goopy about the WeWork enterprise.

And energy?

The Wall Street Journal reported that [Rebekah Neumann] ordered that a number of employees be fired after brief interactions with them because “she didn’t like their energy.” It is unclear whether her orders were followed.

Bet I would have been on that list. I always worked hard, but I’m guessing that my actual energy would have been weighed and found wanting.

I certainly understand why younger folks are drawn to companies where they have a chance to strike it rich. Who wouldn’t want to have their life-nut covered by the time they’re 30? The son of a good friend was one of the first employees of a startup that recently went public, and he’s pretty much set. Well deserved! He’s a great guy (who had one of the most fun weddings ever – colossally excellent band).

But if you have to put up with an environment like WeWork?

All I can say is, we don’t work. Lucky we!