Billion Dollar Loser
Ratings14
Average rating4.2
This inside story of the rise and fall of WeWork reveals how the excesses of its founder shaped a corporate culture unlike any other. Christened a potential savior of Silicon Valley's startup culture, Adam Neumann was set to take WeWork, his office share company disrupting the commercial real estate market, public, cash out on the company's 47 billion dollar valuation, and break the string of major startups unable to deliver to shareholders. But as employees knew, and investors soon found out, WeWork's capital was built on promises that the company was more than a real estate purveyor, that in fact it was a transformational technology company. Veteran journalist Reeves Weideman dives deep into WeWork and it CEO's astronomical rise, from the marijuana and tequila-filled board rooms to cult-like company summer camps and consciousness-raising with Anthony Kiedis. Billion Dollar Loser is a character-driven business narrative that captures, through the fascinating psyche of a billionaire founder and his wife and co-founder, the slippery state of global capitalism.
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The book reads like a fictional out-of-this-world thriller you can't put down. From an investor who gets showered with fire-retardant foam after committing a check, to CEO Adam Neumann instructing the building designers to implement a duct in his office to surreptitiously suck out the smell of weed.
Then again, I feel the book shows a predominantly negative sentiment towards all the effort Neumann put into building WeWork. The line between a convincing and visionary founder and an entrepreneurial conman is inherently vague, but author Wiedeman does not always view Neumann's actions as more nuanced.
One of the best reads of the year. this is the antithesis of 2010's start up culture. Entertaining as can be
I found this didn't grip me as much as Bad Blood did (the book about Theranos, another dodgy startup with a charismatic founder). Probably because the stakes were lower and they actually did have a real product (albeit one that's not really profitable).
At the end, Neumann walks away with hundreds of millions of dollars and WeWork still exists as a company so it doesn't quite have that satisfying feeling of justice either!
Nonetheless it was still an entertaining read.
