Adam Neumann (WeWork)

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The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion by Eliot Brown, Maureen Farrell

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, AOL-Time Warner, asset light, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Burning Man, business logic, cloud computing, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, Didi Chuxing, do what you love, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, East Village, Elon Musk, financial engineering, Ford Model T, future of work, gender pay gap, global pandemic, global supply chain, Google Earth, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greensill Capital, hockey-stick growth, housing crisis, index fund, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Larry Ellison, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, Maui Hawaii, Network effects, new economy, PalmPilot, Peter Thiel, pets.com, plant based meat, post-oil, railway mania, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, rolodex, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart cities, Snapchat, SoftBank, software as a service, sovereign wealth fund, starchitect, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, super pumped, supply chain finance, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, Vision Fund, WeWork, women in the workforce, work culture , Y Combinator, Zenefits, Zipcar

Journal published its story: Farrell et al., “Some WeWork Board Members Seek to Remove Adam Neumann as CEO.” trekked to midtown to see Jamie Dimon: Maureen Farrell et al., “The Fall of WeWork: How a Startup Darling Came Unglued,” Wall Street Journal, Oct. 24, 2019. meet his three closest investors: Ibid. filed into the carriage house: Farrell et al., “Fall of WeWork.” posted stories on Neumann’s ouster: Eliot Brown et al., “WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO,” Wall Street Journal, Sept. 24, 2019; David Gelles et al., “WeWork C.E.O. Adam Neumann Steps Down Under Pressure,” New York Times, Sept. 24, 2019.

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Needleman and Eliot Brown, “WeWork to Cut Around 17% of Workforce,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 21, 2019. filed an employment complaint: David Yaffe-Bellany, “WeWork’s Ousted C.E.O. Adam Neumann Is Accused of Pregnancy Discrimination,” New York Times, Oct. 31, 2019. still flying around on private jets: Jennifer Gould, “Ex-WeWork CEO Adam Neumann Flees NYC to Escape ‘Negative Energy’: Pals,” New York Post, Dec. 17, 2019. They were flying commercial: Jessica Bennett, “Ousted WeWork CEO Adam Neumann Travels to Israel,” New York Post, Dec. 27, 2019. EPILOGUE “My own investment judgment”: Phred Dvorak and Megumi Fujikawa, “SoftBank Founder Calls His Judgment ‘Really Bad’ After $4.7 Billion WeWork Hit,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 6, 2019.

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could find no single New York school: Eliot Brown, “Surfing, Schools, and Jets: WeWork’s Bets Follow CEO Adam Neumann’s Passions,” Wall Street Journal, March 5, 2019. cost up to $42,000: Ibid. “It was pretty much a mess”: Interviews with Shanklin, March–Aug. 2020. “more of a universe or village”: Hadley Keller, “Bjarke Ingels Group Creates a Miniature, Indoor Natural Ecosystem for WeWork’s WeGrow School,” Architectural Digest, Oct. 29, 2018. Adam Braun as the school’s chief operating officer: Rebekah Neumann, “Welcoming Adam Braun to WeGrow,” WeWork website, May 16, 2018. “would all sound so beautiful”: Interviews with Shanklin, March–Aug. 2020.

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

Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, asset light, barriers to entry, Black Lives Matter, Blitzscaling, Burning Man, call centre, carbon footprint, company town, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, digital nomad, do what you love, Donald Trump, driverless car, dumpster diving, East Village, eat what you kill, Elon Musk, Erlich Bachman, fake news, fear of failure, Gavin Belson, Gordon Gekko, housing crisis, index fund, Jeff Bezos, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Benioff, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, Maui Hawaii, medical residency, Menlo Park, microapartment, mortgage debt, Network effects, new economy, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, reality distortion field, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, SoftBank, software as a service, sovereign wealth fund, starchitect, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, subscription business, TechCrunch disrupt, the High Line, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, Uber for X, uber lyft, Vision Fund, WeWork, zero-sum game

Adam, Miguel, and Rebekah were scheduled to host a panel; the vegetarian food trucks were told to hold off on serving meals, leaving their employees to fend off desperate bribes from drunk and hungry WeWorkers. For those attending their first Summer Camp, the crowd had a strange energy, erupting into a cheer of “Olé, olé, olé” when the three founders appeared onstage. An employee from India started chanting, “Let’s go, WeWork, let’s go!” Another, from California, screamed, “You’re changing the world, Adam!” Neumann had certainly come to believe in his ability to do just that. “The influence and impact that we are going to have on this earth is going to be so big,” he said, wearing a T-shirt that read LET’S MEAT IN THE MIDDLE. A few weeks earlier, after the shocking news that both Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain had died by suicide, Adam had stood up at a company town hall and told his employees that if they were ever feeling depressed or suicidal they should reach out to him directly.

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Half a dozen tenants had kept offices at 154 Grand since it opened, nine years earlier, even though there were now many newer options nearby: one office at 154 Grand was being occupied by a WeWork employee who was managing the construction of a new location down the block. New York magazine had assigned me to write a feature story about WeWork, in part because Adam Neumann’s empire seemed to be slowly closing in: there were suddenly a dozen WeWorks within a mile of the magazine’s SoHo building, where Oscar Health, the health insurance provider founded by Josh Kushner, Jared’s brother, had a brand new Powered by We office. When I finished my tour of 154 Grand Street, I noticed that I had several missed calls from an unknown phone number.

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In May, WeWork held a “bake off” among three firms—JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley—for the lead left position. JPMorgan was the top candidate, given the bank’s long history with WeWork. In addition to its 2014 investment, JPMorgan had assisted WeWork with various loans and other financing arrangements. The bank had also lent Adam $97 million in low-interest mortgages for the many homes that the Neumanns were buying, and helped facilitate a personal $500 million line of credit backed by Adam’s WeWork stock. Adam had taken to calling Jamie Dimon his “personal banker.” When it came time for JPMorgan to make its pitch for the lead left position, its bankers suggested that WeWork could go public at a valuation north of $46 billion and as high as $63 billion.

Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet―and Why We're Following by Gabrielle Bluestone

Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Bellingcat, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Burning Man, cashless society, coronavirus, COVID-19, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, fake it until you make it, financial thriller, forensic accounting, gig economy, global pandemic, growth hacking, high net worth, hockey-stick growth, hype cycle, Hyperloop, Kevin Roose, lock screen, lockdown, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, Mason jar, Menlo Park, Multics, Naomi Klein, Netflix Prize, NetJets, Peter Thiel, placebo effect, post-truth, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Russell Brand, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social distancing, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, tech billionaire, tech bro, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, Vision Fund, WeWork

If there was ever a through-line to all of McFarland’s schemes, it’s that they occurred primarily over the internet, were valued not by their worth but by his enthusiasm, were targeted at his fellow millennials, and appeared to be designed to acquire as much money and attention in as short of a time period as possible. In that way, Billy was not unlike other start-up founders such as Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes or WeWork CEO Adam Neumann, both of whom also rode waves of hype to become rich and famous at the expense of their investors. But McFarland was a peculiar sort of millennial entrepreneur, one who started out just as Instagram began to gain attention—and with it, the rise of performative wealth among the underage scions who first sparked the Rich Kids of Instagram Tumblr page and subsequent reality television show.

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And they never let the truth stop them from a good marketing campaign. A recent BookForum piece described one of these overhyped men as having “three key traits: he was tall, grandiose, and drank tequila.” Incredibly, this line referred to neither McFarland nor Musk, who’s been trying to launch an alcohol line called “Teslaquila.” (It was WeWork’s Adam Neumann.) But back to Musk. He’s considered a genius because he made a bunch of money on PayPal and once shot a car into space. But I’d argue his real talent is marketing and figuring out how to get federal subsidies to keep his companies afloat. Because when you really look hard at his legacy, it’s not as impressive as the headlines would have you believe.

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Levin, "Re: William McFarland; United States District Court, Southern District of New York, 17-CR-00600-NRB and 18-CR-00446-JMF," letter submitted to court, August 20, 2018. 74. Alex Sherman, "WeWork’s $47 Billion Valuation Was Always a Fiction Created by SoftBank," CNBC, October 22, 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/22/wework-47-billion-valuation-softbank-fiction.html. 75. Adam Neumann, Baruch College Commencement 2017. Speech, Baruch College, New York, NY, June 12, 2017. 76. Kevin Roose, "Do Not Disturb: How I Ditched My Phone and Unbroke My Brain," New York Times, February 23, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/business/cell-phone-addiction.html. 77.

The Pyramid of Lies: Lex Greensill and the Billion-Dollar Scandal by Duncan Mavin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Adam Neumann (WeWork), air freight, banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, Boeing 737 MAX, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, carbon footprint, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, democratizing finance, Donald Trump, Eyjafjallajökull, financial engineering, fixed income, global pandemic, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, Greensill Capital, high net worth, Kickstarter, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Masayoshi Son, means of production, Menlo Park, mittelstand, move fast and break things, NetJets, Network effects, Ponzi scheme, private military company, proprietary trading, remote working, rewilding, Rishi Sunak, rolodex, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, supply chain finance, Tim Haywood, Vision Fund, WeWork, work culture

On a Vision Fund web page, Greensill said Masa was a ‘partner and a mentor’: ‘He has worked with us, and particularly with me, to think about our core business and how we can actually take that core business and tackle other inequalities and other challenges that exist in the global market.’ The appreciation went in both directions. At internal SoftBank events, Son put Lex on a pedestal alongside other stars of the Vision Fund, especially WeWork founder Adam Neumann, who was still then in favour, and Ritesh Agarwal, the head of India’s OYO Hotels. The three were featured in a presentation to SoftBank shareholders that referred to them as pioneers of artificial intelligence leading ‘the biggest revolution in human history’. Son also pointed to Greensill as an example of how portfolio companies could benefit from the network effect they could achieve by working together – the so-called ‘Cluster of No. 1’ strategy.

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Some senior executives who left on bad terms felt that Lex used their stock as leverage, to secure their silence about Greensill’s riskier strategies and tactics – keep quiet and he might let you keep the shares. Another source told me that Lex took the idea for giving out so much stock from WeWork’s Adam Neumann, whom Lex described as a friend. Even very junior staff flew business class and stayed in expensive hotels. He even once flew his tailor from the UK to New York to make bespoke suits for the Greensill team there. Staff were supposed to pay half the cost of the suits, with Greensill footing the rest, but no one ever got a bill.

The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future by Sebastian Mallaby

"Susan Fowler" uber, 23andMe, 90 percent rule, Adam Neumann (WeWork), adjacent possible, Airbnb, Apple II, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, Blitzscaling, Bob Noyce, book value, business process, charter city, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, cloud computing, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Colonization of Mars, computer vision, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, deal flow, Didi Chuxing, digital map, discounted cash flows, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Dutch auction, Dynabook, Elon Musk, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, family office, financial engineering, future of work, game design, George Gilder, Greyball, guns versus butter model, Hacker Ethic, Henry Singleton, hiring and firing, Hyperloop, income inequality, industrial cluster, intangible asset, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, junk bonds, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, lateral thinking, liberal capitalism, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Marshall McLuhan, Mary Meeker, Masayoshi Son, Max Levchin, Metcalfe’s law, Michael Milken, microdosing, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, mortgage debt, move fast and break things, Network effects, oil shock, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, plant based meat, plutocrats, power law, pre–internet, price mechanism, price stability, proprietary trading, prudent man rule, quantitative easing, radical decentralization, Recombinant DNA, remote working, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Metcalfe, ROLM, rolodex, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, SoftBank, software is eating the world, sovereign wealth fund, Startup school, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, super pumped, superconnector, survivorship bias, tech worker, Teledyne, the long tail, the new new thing, the strength of weak ties, TikTok, Travis Kalanick, two and twenty, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban decay, UUNET, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, Vision Fund, wealth creators, WeWork, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, Y Combinator, Zenefits

The early-stage investment might be intelligent and well judged, but the late-stage outcome could be a mess because latecomer investors were too hands-off to oversee the company responsibly. The following year, this danger turned out to be more than just theoretical. Around the time that Theranos and Zenefits went awry, Bruce Dunlevie of Benchmark was preoccupied with a unicorn called WeWork. Benchmark had first invested in WeWork in 2012, mainly because of its mesmerizing co-founder Adam Neumann, a six-foot-five-inch former Israeli naval officer with hair like Tarzan. WeWork’s rather humdrum business was to rent out short-term office space, enlivened with perks such as fruit water, free espresso, and the occasional ice-cream party. But Neumann had a way of elevating his mission.

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Thanks to this cleanup, Uber’s IPO went relatively well: the company ended its first day of trading in May 2019 with a valuation of $69 billion. It was less than its peak private valuation of $76 billion, but it was still a formidable sum—one that allowed Benchmark to celebrate a 270x return on its investment.[86] At WeWork, in contrast, the megalomaniacal Adam Neumann disdained Khosrowshahi-style reforms, so the IPO process punished him appropriately. Required to publish its financials in the run-up to its road show, WeWork produced a document that telegraphed its uncanny resemblance to a cult. “Adam is a unique leader who has proven he can simultaneously wear the hats of visionary, operator and innovator, while thriving as a community and culture creator,” it incanted.

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BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 23 Michael Moritz, email to Sequoia leaders, Sept. 17, 2017. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 24 Steven Bertoni, “WeWork’s $20 Billion Office Party: The Crazy Bet That Could Change How the World Does Business,” Forbes, Oct. 24, 2017. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 25 Bertoni, “WeWork’s $20 Billion Office Party.” BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 26 Amy Chozick, “Adam Neumann and the Art of Failing Up,” New York Times, Nov. 2, 2019. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 27 Farrell and Brown, “Money Men Who Enabled Adam Neumann and the WeWork Debacle.” BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 28 The value of this downside protection soon became evident.

Tech Titans of China: How China's Tech Sector Is Challenging the World by Innovating Faster, Working Harder, and Going Global by Rebecca Fannin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, bike sharing, blockchain, call centre, cashless society, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean tech, cloud computing, computer vision, connected car, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, Didi Chuxing, digital map, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, El Camino Real, electricity market, Elon Musk, fake news, family office, fear of failure, fulfillment center, glass ceiling, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, industrial robot, information security, Internet of things, invention of movable type, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, megacity, Menlo Park, money market fund, Network effects, new economy, peer-to-peer lending, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, QR code, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, sharing economy, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, smart transportation, Snapchat, social graph, SoftBank, software as a service, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, supply-chain management, tech billionaire, TechCrunch disrupt, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban planning, Vision Fund, warehouse automation, WeWork, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator, young professional

Within two years of plunging into the foreign market, WeWork bought Chinese coworking startup Naked Hub from Shanghai-based luxury resort operator Naked Group for a cool $400 million, a move that gave WeWork an immediate lift. WeWork scooped up 25 Naked Hub locations in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong to add to its own 13 spots in China. It didn’t take long for WeWork CEO Adam Neumann to take a lesson from Naked Hub’s operation in trendy Xintiandi, which was making bundles of money from renting office space on a flexible, come-as-you-like basis, with no monthly contract. WeWork quickly launched the feature as WeWork Go, which lets China-based customers check for open desks by mobile app, go to the location, and register by QR code.

The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy by David Gelles

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Adam Neumann (WeWork), air traffic controllers' union, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Boeing 737 MAX, call centre, carbon footprint, Carl Icahn, collateralized debt obligation, Colonization of Mars, company town, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, disinformation, Donald Trump, financial deregulation, financial engineering, fulfillment center, gig economy, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, income inequality, inventory management, It's morning again in America, Jeff Bezos, junk bonds, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, low interest rates, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Milken, Neil Armstrong, new economy, operational security, profit maximization, profit motive, public intellectual, QAnon, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, remote working, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, self-driving car, shareholder value, side hustle, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Ballmer, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, TaskRabbit, technoutopianism, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are the 99%, WeWork, women in the workforce

The forced curve meant that ‘Helping your fellow worker become more productive can actually hurt your chances of getting a higher bonus.’ ” Microsoft phased out the practice after it led to broad disillusionment within the ranks, but newer companies have not learned the lessons of history. At WeWork—the shared office space company—cofounder Adam Neumann set a goal of laying off 20 percent of the company’s workforce every year. “We met those expectations, and I’m not proud of it,” said one member of WeWork’s human resources staff. And at Amazon—one of the world’s largest corporations—worker well-being seems to be but an afterthought.

Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller by Alec Nevala-Lee

Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, American energy revolution, Apple II, basic income, Biosphere 2, blockchain, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, Charles Lindbergh, cloud computing, Columbine, complexity theory, Computer Lib, coronavirus, cotton gin, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, declining real wages, digital nomad, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, East Village, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, Evgeny Morozov, Frank Gehry, gentrification, gig economy, global village, Golden Gate Park, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, hydraulic fracturing, index card, information retrieval, James Dyson, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Kitchen Debate, Lao Tzu, lateral thinking, Lean Startup, Lewis Mumford, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, megastructure, Menlo Park, minimum viable product, Mother of all demos, Neil Armstrong, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, Own Your Own Home, Paul Graham, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, reality distortion field, remote working, Ronald Reagan, side project, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Ted Nelson, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the medium is the message, Thomas Malthus, universal basic income, urban planning, urban renewal, We are as Gods, WeWork, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks

The Participation Revolution: How to Ride the Waves of Change in a Terrifyingly Turbulent World by Neil Gibb

Abraham Maslow, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Albert Einstein, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, carbon footprint, Clayton Christensen, collapse of Lehman Brothers, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data science, Didi Chuxing, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, gentrification, gig economy, iterative process, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, Khan Academy, Kibera, Kodak vs Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Minecraft, mirror neurons, Network effects, new economy, performance metric, ride hailing / ride sharing, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, Susan Wojcicki, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, trade route, urban renewal, WeWork

The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance by Eswar S. Prasad

access to a mobile phone, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, algorithmic trading, altcoin, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Bretton Woods, business intelligence, buy and hold, capital controls, carbon footprint, cashless society, central bank independence, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, deglobalization, democratizing finance, disintermediation, distributed ledger, diversified portfolio, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, eurozone crisis, fault tolerance, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial independence, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Flash crash, floating exchange rates, full employment, gamification, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, index fund, inflation targeting, informal economy, information asymmetry, initial coin offering, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, litecoin, lockdown, loose coupling, low interest rates, Lyft, M-Pesa, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, mobile money, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Network effects, new economy, offshore financial centre, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PalmPilot, passive investing, payday loans, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, price anchoring, profit motive, QR code, quantitative easing, quantum cryptography, RAND corporation, random walk, Real Time Gross Settlement, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, robo advisor, Ross Ulbricht, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, seigniorage, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart contracts, SoftBank, special drawing rights, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, uber lyft, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, Vision Fund, Vitalik Buterin, Wayback Machine, WeWork, wikimedia commons, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Fed Up!: Success, Excess and Crisis Through the Eyes of a Hedge Fund Macro Trader by Colin Lancaster

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, always be closing, asset-backed security, beat the dealer, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, bond market vigilante , Bonfire of the Vanities, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy the rumour, sell the news, Carmen Reinhart, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, collateralized debt obligation, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deal flow, Donald Trump, Edward Thorp, family office, fear index, fiat currency, fixed income, Flash crash, George Floyd, global macro, global pandemic, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Growth in a Time of Debt, housing crisis, index arbitrage, inverted yield curve, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, liquidity trap, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, margin call, market bubble, Masayoshi Son, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, National Debt Clock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, oil shock, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, price stability, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Sharpe ratio, short selling, short squeeze, social distancing, SoftBank, statistical arbitrage, stock buybacks, The Great Moderation, TikTok, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, two and twenty, value at risk, Vision Fund, WeWork, yield curve, zero-sum game

Dress pants, button-down shirt and fleece vests. Walk around Mayfair or watch Billions. You’ll get it. Lifecoach prefers Hermès. Just look for the scarf. We are sitting at our normal table in the restaurant, waiting for the food to arrive. A headline has just hit on WeWork, and all of us are checking our phones. WeWork is run by a guy named Adam Neumann, and its largest shareholder is a company called SoftBank, run by Masayoshi Son.5 SoftBank has been pouring money into fast-growing tech companies. Masa Son famously lost $70 billion, the most money lost in stock market history, during the dotcom bust. He’s back at it again and swinging for the fences.

The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It by Robert B. Reich

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Adam Neumann (WeWork), affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Boeing 737 MAX, business cycle, Carl Icahn, clean water, collective bargaining, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, ending welfare as we know it, financial deregulation, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, immigration reform, income inequality, independent contractor, Jeff Bezos, job automation, junk bonds, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, Michael Milken, mortgage debt, Occupy movement, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paris climate accords, peak TV, Ponzi scheme, race to the bottom, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, stock buybacks, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, union organizing, WeWork, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

Aiming High: Masayoshi Son, SoftBank, and Disrupting Silicon Valley by Atsuo Inoue

Adam Neumann (WeWork), air freight, Apple II, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, business climate, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, fixed income, game design, George Floyd, hive mind, information security, interest rate swap, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Kōnosuke Matsushita, Larry Ellison, lateral thinking, Masayoshi Son, off grid, popular electronics, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, social distancing, SoftBank, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, TikTok, Vision Fund, WeWork

He had a clear vision in 2014 for where the telecommunications industry would be in the future and things in 2020 came to pass just as he had foreseen. Having successfully resurrected Sprint, the next lost cause Son parachuted Marcelo Claure in to rescue was WeWork. WeWork was originally founded in 2010 as a co-working space by Adam Neumann, with SoftBank making its first investments in the company in 2017. At the start of 2019 an additional investment was made in the order of $2 billion and plans were afoot for WeWork to go public, but after a number of major issues with Neumann the company was plunged into a crisis.

Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World by Henry Grabar

A Pattern Language, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Albert Einstein, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, big-box store, bike sharing, Blue Bottle Coffee, car-free, congestion pricing, coronavirus, COVID-19, digital map, Donald Shoup, edge city, Ferguson, Missouri, Ford Model T, Frank Gehry, General Motors Futurama, gentrification, Google Earth, income inequality, indoor plumbing, Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, Lyft, mandatory minimum, market clearing, megastructure, New Urbanism, parking minimums, power law, remote working, rent control, restrictive zoning, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Seaside, Florida, side hustle, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, SimCity, social distancing, Stop de Kindermoord, streetcar suburb, text mining, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, TikTok, traffic fines, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, Victor Gruen, walkable city, WeWork, white flight, Yogi Berra, young professional

Amazon: How the World’s Most Relentless Retailer Will Continue to Revolutionize Commerce by Natalie Berg, Miya Knights

3D printing, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, asset light, augmented reality, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, business intelligence, cloud computing, Colonization of Mars, commoditize, computer vision, connected car, deep learning, DeepMind, digital divide, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, driverless car, electronic shelf labels (ESLs), Elon Musk, fulfillment center, gig economy, independent contractor, Internet of things, inventory management, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Kiva Systems, market fragmentation, new economy, Ocado, pattern recognition, Ponzi scheme, pre–internet, QR code, race to the bottom, random stow, recommendation engine, remote working, Salesforce, sensor fusion, sharing economy, Skype, SoftBank, Steve Bannon, sunk-cost fallacy, supply-chain management, TaskRabbit, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, trade route, underbanked, urban planning, vertical integration, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, WeWork, white picket fence, work culture