From WeWork To Flow: Unpacking Adam Neumann’s Second Act

WeWork was Adam Neumann’s first unicorn. It soared, became a media and investor darling, and attracted a lot of VCs and investors from Benchmark to Goldman Sachs and Softbank. Neumann was able to raise billions of venture capital from the blue bloods of global finance – and mainly because of momentum he was able to generate and seemed to be on his way to a mega-IPO to make everyone rich. He did have his IPO but at a valuation of ~$9 billion compared with the valuation in the final VC round of ~$47 billion. And now WeWork’s valuation is $44.5 million.

During its meteoric rise, WeWork succeeded in making a lot of money for Neumann, but it failed for many of the investors. WeWork’s failure is said to have been caused by many factors, including: