EDITOR’S NOTE: In this episode of The Diary Of A CEO, host Steven Bartlett sits down with WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann for a wide-ranging conversation about his turbulent childhood, his redefinition of success, and the lessons he carried out of building and losing a $47 billion company. Neumann recounts the 12-minute car ride with SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son that changed everything, the moment his ego took over, and how his wife Rebecca and his spiritual practice carried him through WeWork’s collapse. He also opens up about his new venture, Flow, and agrees on air to a 24-hour technology-free Shabbat challenge. This interview was premiered September 28, 2026.
TRANSCRIPT:
Adam Neumann’s Early Origin Story
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:01:29 – 00:02:49) Adam Neumann, I’ve had the privilege of getting to know you briefly over the last couple of months, and it struck me almost immediately that you are unlike almost any other founder or CEO or really person I think I’ve ever met. There’s a depth to you. And a philosophy and a perspective that is just incredibly rare. My question to you is, for you to be an anomaly, if we accept that, am I right in thinking that you had some sort of anomalous early origin story? What is that story that shaped this man that sat in front of me?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:02:50 – 00:03:41) For me first, when I get to know someone in the beginning and they say, where is it coming from? Who are you? I usually start the same. First of all, I’m a husband. It’s my first job, what I’m most proud of. Then I’m a father. I’m a father of 6. Then I’m a friend. Friendships are very important for me. And after that, I’m an entrepreneur. I think each one of us has a phenomenal soul. I think it’s perfect. And I think what really we see when we look at people is the distance between where we think they’re holding to where their potential is.
And I think it’s that gap between those 2 things that actually defines a person. And for me, throughout my life, sometimes out of my control when I was young, and sometimes with my control when I got older, I’ve always been striving to close that gap.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:03:41 – 00:03:52) So you talk about not having control. Your early context is quite unstable from what I read because your mother suffered from bipolar. Can you bring me into that world so I can understand the sort of context that Adam was raised?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:03:52 – 00:04:26) Happily. So, we’ll start, like every story, it has 2 sides to it. And my mom and my father are both doctors. And growing up, I always saw both of them taking care of the patients. And it would feel sometimes like the patients came ahead of us. So, for example, my sister and I, we were never sick. No matter how sick we were, we’d look at my mom, she was an oncologist, and she would say, my patients are sicker, go to school. And that was sort of the beginning of it. When I was in the 2nd grade, my parents got a divorce.
It was very difficult for my mom, and she needed a change of scenery. So we actually moved to the United States.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:04:27 – 00:04:28) You know this photo here?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:04:28 – 00:04:29) I do.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:04:29 – 00:04:48) And this one here, you’ve got a kid. This is you as a child that is beaming with a smile, sort of ear to ear. Often when I see photos like that, my curiosity is what you can’t see and what that young kid, that young boy there is not saying, but what he’s feeling underneath all of those Those emotions?
Growing Up With a Bipolar Mother
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:04:49 – 00:09:36) What I could tell you is, I think for me, I think the challenge started in the house. So we talked about my mother being bipolar. I only observed my mother’s moods when we moved to the United States. There was no one around. It was only my mom and my sister and I. And all day she would work with the patients, and at night at 8 PM, she would come home and all hell would break loose. And I remember, there’s many stories, but I remember that she would tell my sister and I we had to wash the dishes. That was our one chore.
And we wouldn’t, no matter what, because kids sometimes rebel by action when they can’t rebel by words. And she would come home, “You didn’t wash the dishes!” And she would take the dishes and throw them on the floor. And then she would cry and start cleaning the dishes and mopping them. And it was— every night ended with some version of action like that. And for 2 years, I remember how crazy my sister and I thought the whole experience was. And we didn’t have any friends who were sharing that experience.
Until one day, she bought this nice set of dishes. And she comes home again to throw the dishes, and we notice she’s only throwing the cheap dishes. She’s not throwing the ones that she liked, which gave us a little hint that maybe there’s a little more control over what’s happening than this out-of-control situation.
So if I had to guess what was happening with these kids— because now in hindsight, I know my mom and my dad very well— probably there was a lot of arguing in the house, probably as a kid, because I now see my kids that are very young, I’m sure a child finds it very confusing when the parents are not aligned as a team. Because as a child, all you have to lean on are your parents.
But I think the most important thing to say, if my mom wasn’t the way she was, and if I didn’t go through all those challenges that I went through growing up— and I went through a lot.
As bad as that was, when I was 22, 23, I remember being very angry about my childhood. Only when I met Rebecca, my then-girlfriend to then-wife, she very quickly introduced me to a spiritual practice. The way she introduced me, by the way, was after a week of dating, she came to me and she goes, “Look, you’re really nice, you have a lot of potential, but you’re not the guy for me.” I was very surprised at the time. I was living in New York, my sister was the supermodel, we were hanging out. I thought a lot of myself.
And I said, “What do you mean I’m not the guy for you?” And she said, “Well, you don’t have a spiritual bent. You’re very focused on material things. You want to be successful, but you’re not actually understanding the game of life. The guy I’m interested in is going to want true happiness and true fulfillment. And true happiness and true fulfillment does not come from material things.” It was so different from anything anyone has ever told me, that instead of running away or doing this or doing that, I thought for a second.
And I said, “Well, how would one come to explore this spiritual life that you’re talking about?” And she said, “Well, you need a practice.” And for me, that practice started being Kabbalah, but for all of us, there can be different practices. The thing I learned very quickly in the practice is the difference between meant to be free choice. And I think a lot of people don’t understand it, but how can there be— we talk a lot about in spirituality, about it’s meant to be and there’s free choice.
How could there be free choice and things be meant to be at the same time? The way I explain it is you get to a fork in your life, and you choose left over right, and everything works out. Meant to be. You get to that same fork, and you choose right, and you crash on your face horribly. Everybody’s watching. And you stop, and you actually learn lessons from it. And you take accountability, and you say what? Whatever happened to me happened for a reason, and I’m going to learn from it. I’m going to be stronger.
Almost like a sword that’s getting forged. And the more times you hit it, and the more hit you put on it, the stronger it gets. And then you learn those lessons, and you go back into the game of life, and you apply that in again. Suddenly, you take the catastrophe or the tragedy or the curse, and you make it into a blessing. You turn it into a made-to-be. When the world did crash on me as an adult, it was nothing compared to what I had to deal with as a child. I was like, it’s okay. I have a wife, I have kids, I have close friends.
We’ll take a deep breath, and we’ll start from scratch again. And that kind of fortitude, I think, regretfully, comes through going through very difficult things. So, if you’re listening to this right now, and you’re going through something really difficult, and it feels dark, I encourage you to remember that the darkest moment of the night is a second before dawn.
The Parts of His Childhood He Rarely Shares
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:09:37 – 00:09:44) I feel like there’s things in your early context that you haven’t shared before because you said there’s things that we don’t usually share.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:09:44 – 00:09:53) Not publicly, but meaning I have in front of— so I used to share everything in front of our employees at WeWork. So there’s things I shared in front of 10,000 people. I’m not sure it ever made it to the press.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:09:55 – 00:09:55) What is missing?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:09:56 – 00:09:58) You really want to go there? I’m happy to.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:09:59 – 00:10:00) If you’re happy to, I’m happy to.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:10:02 – 00:11:37) I’ll share 2 things that I’m not sure, but maybe could be helpful for other people that are going through similar things. So, the hitting and stuff. And so, when someone’s bipolar, by the way, they get very angry or very happy very fast. When they’re happy, they’re the happiest. You have fun and everything’s amazing. And my mom would play games with us, and it was phenomenal. But also, and that I think happens a lot with bipolar, there’s the suicide threats.
And then there’s one thing when you threaten to— So, again, if you’re 2 children and your only parent threatens to commit suicide, who is going to take care of you? What is going to happen if suddenly that happens? And I have a lot of memories, but one that just came back to me not too long ago, we were in the kibbutz, which is where we were living after we came back from the US. My mom wanted us to have a special experience, so we went to this community where everybody shares a lot of things together.
It’s also the beginning of why I love communities. And we get into this big fight, and my mom basically says she’s going to kill herself, and she takes the knife. And I remember she’s holding this huge knife, and I’m like, no, no, don’t do it. And I remember— I just remember feeling that I have to stop it, that it is up to me, and if I don’t stop it, then she’s going to kill herself right there in front of my sister and I. So I grabbed the knife, and we’re fighting left and right.
And my sister Adi is sitting right there, and she’s crying, and she’s crying. And I’m, no, and she’s saying, yes. And the whole thing is so crazy.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:11:38 – 00:11:38) How old were you?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:11:39 – 00:11:46) 12 at that moment. That’s one. There’s more if you want to go deeper, but that was one.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:11:47 – 00:11:47) I invite you to go deeper.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:11:51 – 00:13:57) When I was in between 2nd grade to 4th grade, I was sexually— I think you call it molested— by an older— than a teenager. So she was at least 6 or 7 years older than me. This one, I didn’t even know that what was happening was wrong. And many years later, Rebecca and I are in the Hamptons, and somehow the story comes up. And she goes, Adam, you understand that this is not normal for a child at that age. And I didn’t even fully understand. And that taught me— that explained to me a lot about children.
And again, we go back to the responsibility of parents. And the responsibility of society to take care of the children, and schools to understand what’s happening. And whenever we see anyone, we’re so good at walking into a room, seeing someone else, and judging. Oh, they’re not acting the way I would act. They’re not acting right. They’re not speaking right. Everybody’s so busy judging everybody. I want to encourage every single person, next time you’re about to judge, you don’t know who that person is. You do not know where they come from.
You do not know what happened to them as a kid. God forbid they were molested. God forbid they dealt with a lot. All these things, you don’t know where they started. You only know where you see them now. And it could be that if you really got to know them, and you’d have known the distance they went from here to here, you would have been extremely impressed with them, and you’d have not measured them that way. And this is why I think it’s so important for all of us, when we walk into rooms, to really go after unity.
You and I can say the same sentence in a way that tears people apart or brings people together. It takes more effort to speak in a way that brings us together. But if we don’t start acting like this, if we keep dividing and keep splitting, I’m worried.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:13:59 – 00:14:41) Sounds like as an adult, you’ve been able to understand that early experience and sort of create a new sort of perspective or lens on what happened to you and what it means. And as you said, you’ve orientated it around the fact that it’s happened for a reason, or at least there’s something to have learned from it. Was that always the case? I sometimes reflect on my own experience and think that for the first season of my life, I was dragged. And then at some point I got hold of the steering wheel and I was able to drive.
And one of them was unconscious and the other was more intentional and thoughtful. And I’m wondering through your early teens and 20s, whether you had the wisdom and the perspective that you have now on your early experiences and how that’s evolved over time.
How Adam Neumann Defines Success
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:14:42 – 00:15:47) I probably went to sleep crying every single night for probably until I was 14 or 15. And I remember, and if you ask my sister, what would I say? I completely forgot. She said I told her, “One day I’ll become very successful and will take care of us.” That was what I used to say. I literally didn’t remember. This is something she told me. I think that’s how I interpreted that control and how I’m going to fix all these challenges that I had. But we launched a school, Rebecca and I— more Rebecca, I help. It’s a 5th school.
In the school, we teach kids how to be connected to themselves, how to be part of something greater than themselves. If someone just taught me this as a kid, and I would have understood then that there’s this bigger picture, I think I would have been able to handle it a lot better and skip the challenging years faster, move faster into the point where I realize that I don’t control what happens, but I can control how I react to it. So back to your point of driving. Are you driving?
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:15:49 – 00:15:52) Don’t know. Now you question it, I’m questioning myself.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:15:52 – 00:15:55) I would question it. My follow-up question to you would be, how do you define success?
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:15:56 – 00:16:26) My definition of success these days, it’s funny, I was thinking about it this morning when I got on the lift on my way here. I thought, do you know what it was? Because my fiancée turned to me this weekend and she went, Steven, I think you have enough now. And then she paused and then she retracted the statement. But it got me thinking about what enough is. And actually, I thought, well, it’s the motion forward in the pursuit of goals that matter to me, that are challenging, surrounded by people, that is the success.
And that’s like a daily thing. There’s no podium in this game that I’m playing.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:16:26 – 00:16:31) By the way, when she said she thinks you have enough, was she referring to material things?
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:16:31 – 00:16:31) Yes.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:16:33 – 00:17:55) I think society has taught us that once we gain that success, once we gain those material things, we get to this number, suddenly that hole that we all feel inside of us will be full. Now, I know it’s very hard to hear, especially for people who haven’t gotten there yet. Like, oh yeah, you got there already, so now you’re saying it. I’m only going to share with you what I have learned, and from all the most successful people that I know, and I’m lucky to know quite a lot of them.
I have not seen one that got happy or fulfilled from attaining a number or a material thing. I don’t believe that’s how the game of life works. So, when your fiancée said— it’s not like her, because I think she’s more on the spiritual side. Tell her that I said I’m surprised she said that. I think she had something deeper to say, and she was holding back. When she said, I think you have enough, I would really go back to redefining success. So, back to that.
I’ll tell you how I define it in a second, but I think if we can agree on the definition of success, then we can start having a discussion of, A, are we there and are we headed there? And B, how do we do better to get there? And if we agree on our definition of success, then now we can start working together towards the same goal. If one of us defines success by making the most money and the other person defines success by being the most fulfilled, the most happy, the most light that they can be than playing 2 different games.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:17:55 – 00:17:56) What’s your definition?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:17:57 – 00:19:03) When you’re at your deathbed, and you’re 1 minute before it’s all going to go, and you know you’re out of time, all you have left is the love that surrounds you at that moment: your children, your grandchildren, your friends, your friends’ children, all the love that surrounds you at that moment, and all the love that you have cultivated for your entire life. And I think it’s that love, which then moves on to whatever it is that happens after. So, my definition of success is, in that last moment, right before you go, how do you feel?
Do you feel full and surrounded by love, and like life has been this amazing journey? Or is there regret, or is there this? And I’ll tell you the one thing that happens right before we pass away: the ego goes away completely. No more secrets. And again, in the spiritual study, we say, what’s the definition of hell? Back to how we started this. You get to see, you get to glimpse for a second the ultimate potential that your soul had, how perfect it was, and how high you could have gone, and where you really got to.
And the distance between those two, that’s hell.
The Whiteboard Sketch Behind WeWork
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:19:05 – 00:19:12) When you were 31 years old, in 2010, and you sat down with your partner, Miguel.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:19:12 – 00:19:13) Miguel McKelvey.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:19:13 – 00:19:22) And you made this sketch on a whiteboard for WeWork. If I’d asked you then what your definition of success was, would you have turned to me and said love, or would you have said something else?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:19:22 – 00:19:45) I believe I would have said something else. So my big shift is when I met my wife. So by this point of this picture that you’re showing me, I was 4 years into Rebecca teaching me about the Game of Life. So I’m starting to advance. So I could tell you what I was thinking. It wouldn’t have been love. But it would have been we. And the point about Christmas Cult, if you look at that picture, it’s going to say, we work, we live, we give, we share.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:19:45 – 00:19:45) I don’t remember.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:19:45 – 00:19:56) I haven’t seen it for like 10 years. It was never about desks and chairs. It was always about creating a world where people make a life and not just a living. It was about something greater than ourselves.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:19:56 – 00:20:04) If we just jump sort of backwards in time from that day by about 10 years, if I’d asked you what you want to be when you’re older, What would you have said?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:20:04 – 00:20:05) At 21?
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:20:05 – 00:20:05) 21.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:20:05 – 00:20:11) It’s embarrassing. I’ll tell you if it’s embarrassing, though. I’m embarrassed for my 21-year-old self.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:20:11 – 00:20:12) What did you want to be?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:20:12 – 00:20:13) A billionaire.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:20:13 – 00:20:14) You wanted to be a billionaire at 21?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:20:14 – 00:20:15) I did, regretfully.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:20:15 – 00:20:17) Why?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:20:17 – 00:20:24) I thought that making the money is going to compensate. I thought it was going to fill that hole from my childhood.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:20:24 – 00:20:26) What about at 16, if I’d asked you?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:20:26 – 00:20:59) I think I said millionaire then. I don’t think I knew the word billionaire at 16. I think the numbers were because the world changed. But I thought that making money was going to fill that hole from the childhood that back then seemed very difficult, and very aggressive, and very— with all these negative words that we can use about difficult and abusive childhoods. And I thought that making money would solve it. But then I did 3 businesses afterwards who did not succeed until I met Rebecca. And Rebecca was like, you’re chasing money.
You will never have it. And even if you get it, it will never make you happy.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:20:59 – 00:21:01) You will never have it.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:21:01 – 00:21:07) And she said, chasing money is like chasing cool. You’re cool. You’re just like that. You didn’t change. I don’t think you’re working too hard on doing it.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:21:07 – 00:21:08) Thank you so much.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:21:08 – 00:21:10) You don’t like putting on shoes. I don’t like putting on shoes.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:21:10 – 00:21:10) Thank you for the shout-out, please.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:21:10 – 00:22:10) It’s all good. So she said, you’re chasing money. It doesn’t work like that. Also like chasing a girl. You really want someone, you have to take a deep breath. But she said to me, even if you were to get money the way you’re chasing it, it not only will not fulfill you, it will be negative for you. So I said, well, what should I do? She said, “Well, you’re a very talented individual. You should figure out what your superpower is.” It’s the first time I’ve heard anyone use the word superpower.
She goes, “You need to take your superpower, you need to connect it to something that’s really meaningful for the world, something you’re passionate about, but something that can make a difference. You need to bring those 2 things together. You need to only focus on making that a reality. Employees will want to work with a company that’s doing that. Investors want to invest in a company that’s doing that. And consumers want to buy from a company that’s doing that. The rest will follow.”
And then she said, “Success the way you define it then, that money success you think is it, will fall on you from the sky more than you can ever imagine.” I was like, I want to marry this woman. I proposed 3 months after we met.
From Green Desk to WeWork
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:22:11 – 00:22:22) And the idea of we was central to this drawing that I have in front of me, which is a drawing you did on a whiteboard when you were 31 years old, 2010, with your partner Miguel after selling your company. I think it was called Green Desk.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:22:22 – 00:22:23) Green Desk.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:22:23 – 00:22:24) You sold it for how much? It wasn’t like—
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:22:24 – 00:22:25) $1.5 million.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:22:25 – 00:22:25) Okay.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:22:25 – 00:23:07) There were 3 partners. So we each got half a million, half a million, half a million. But our partner didn’t want to pay us the whole amount upfront, so he only gave us $300,000. The rest was installment over 4 years for Miguel and I. And I remember telling Miguel, Miguel, you keep the money because I’ll waste it. First time I ever made money. You keep the money because I will waste it, and we’ll keep it for our next business.
And the way the universe works, by the way the universe speaks to us, these signs start happening, and you sort of— one thing leads to another. It’s almost serendipity. Our first WeWork building, to get the building, the landlord wouldn’t give it to us unless we gave a check of exactly $300,000, the same $300,000 that was sitting in Miguel’s account. It went from there to there, and WeWork was created.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:23:09 – 00:23:09) So tell me what that is.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:23:10 – 00:25:22) Okay, we’re in Green Desk. Just to remind everybody what Green Desk is, Green Desk was created in May of 2008. The world was crashing. That was the downturn. And before it started, Miguel and I got to know each other. He was an architect, and I had a baby clothing company, and we’re in the same building. My roommate introduced us, and we would just talk about doing great things. And there was a landlord there. And every day he would see me, goes, “Adam, your baby clothing company sucks.” And I said, “Mr. Gutmann, why do you say that?”
He said, “Well, my wife, we have 8 kids, she loves buying baby clothes. She didn’t once buy from you. I don’t know how you pay me rent. Your baby clothes suck.” And I would say, “Well, Mr. Gutmann, you own all this real estate around here?” He goes, “Yes, I do.” I said, “Your real estate sucks.” He goes, “Why do you say that?” I said, “It’s all empty.” And we would do that for 4 months, back and forth. One day he looks at me, goes, “Adam, if I gave you one of my buildings, you keep saying that it sucks, what would you do with it?”
So he takes me upstairs and he shows me this beautiful floor plate. And I said to him, “How much do you get in rent?” He goes, “$5,000 a month.” I said, “Well, it’s empty, but let’s say you would get $5,000. Look, I’m a small business. I don’t need this much. Let’s divide it to 15 small places, spaces. We’ll charge $1,000 each. We’ll put a receptionist. We’ll pay the receptionist $2,500. We’ll get $15,000. That will leave us with $12,500. You will get $7,500 and we’ll get the difference.” And he was like, let me think about it.
He calls me the next day, he goes, “I love it, but instead of one floor, take the whole building.” It had 5 floors. We’ll put the receptionist downstairs so we can share the expenses. It will be even better. And we put 5 ads on Craigslist. We launched Green Desk. It was 92% full within a week, started cash flowing positive, which was a new thing for me because this was my 4th business, never had cash flow positive. Cash flowing positive within a month. And became very successful very fast.
After about 6, maybe 12 months, we started thinking bigger, Miguel and I. I said, we’ll take Green this national. We went to our landlord, said, I’m not interested. We asked for $20 million. We said, we’ll split the business 50/50. He wasn’t interested. So we started, and very soon after, he said, I’ll buy it from you. And we started planning this.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:25:22 – 00:25:24) And you drew this on a whiteboard?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:25:24 – 00:26:07) Miguel drew this on the wall, not even a whiteboard. The walls were made of glass. This was drawn on the glass. So, all of our walls in Green Desk were also whiteboards because everybody was about creating and inventing. And what you see here is that social life, commercial, friends is here. This proves the fact Ben Horowitz, in the interview that you saw he did with me in the podcast, he says to me, “Adam, you’ve always had one idea.” And then at the end, he apologized and said, “Adam, I didn’t mean to say you only have one idea.
Of course, you have all these ideas.” I said, “Ben, you’re right.” This is not that different from what Flow is. This is all about the friends and all about the living and all about the working, life essentials. Well, I haven’t seen this for a long time. Fintech, travel, everything in between.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:26:07 – 00:26:26) So for anyone that’s watching, listening and can’t see, it’s a circle that has lots of circles in it. And it says all the little circles are like travel, health, social life, friends, co-work, co-workers, supporters, Life essentials, work rituals.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:26:26 – 00:26:29) Work rituals. Again, someone can read it better than me, but that makes sense.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:26:30 – 00:26:31) And this was the idea for WeWork.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:26:31 – 00:26:40) This is the idea for WeWork. So sometimes people said, oh, you grew out of desks and chairs. You shouldn’t have gone to all these categories. The idea started— this was before there was one desk.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:26:41 – 00:26:43) What is the essence of this?
Dreaming Big, Then Going Back to Basics
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:26:43 – 00:27:43) We wanted to make a world, at least in our opinion, that really needed community. This was to deliver on a mission of create a world where people make a life and not just a living. This was a full lifestyle, life circle, and it was very aspirational. And it’s how, by the way, for any one of our listeners or your listeners that is starting a business, start with a vision. Dream as high as you can, go all the way to the stars, because if you don’t shoot for the stars, you’re never going to get to the moon. Go far.
Then take a deep breath and go back to basics. What do I need to do first? What do I need to do second? What do I need to do third? The secret of life and entrepreneurship is to be able to be in both places at the same time. On the one hand, I’m going to go so far. On the other hand, I’m just starting, so I better roll up my sleeves and get the broom and start brooming. It’s both of them. I need to go knock on doors. I need to go meet people. I need to— do whatever work needs to be done in the beginning to get the business started.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:27:44 – 00:27:56) Let’s talk about both then. So you’ve got the trenches and then you’ve got, let’s say, the clouds or the moon, as you refer to it. Why is it important to dream big? Why is the scale and the size of the dream important?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:27:56 – 00:28:16) So I believe it’s the secret of manifestation. So when people ask me, Adam, what is the secret of manifestation? How do you make something out of nothing? I think the order is First, you have to believe. If you and I have a big idea, first we have to believe it. Then, that takes time to believe. True belief, by the way, do you know when belief is measured?
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:28:16 – 00:28:16) No.
Belief Is Measured in the Darkest Moments
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:28:17 – 00:29:30) When it’s really tough. Belief is not measured when everything’s— I remember this, and I’ve shared this story before, but your audience is so wide that I’m sure a lot of them haven’t heard it. When, right after the whole explosion of WeWork occurred, and it was like 5 days in, and the whole thing was crashing on us, and there’s a million articles, and the whole thing is happening, My spiritual teacher, who I haven’t spoken at this point almost for 2 years after I studied with him for 8 years, calls me. He said, “Adam, how are you doing?”
I said, “I’m not doing so well right now. It’s crazy.” He said, “Oh, great. That’s why I called you.” I said, “Why did you call me?” His name is Eitan. I said, “Eitan, why did you call me?” He said, “I called you to make sure that you remember the 2 things we learned for 8 years.” I said, “Eitan, we didn’t learn 2 things for 8 years. We studied twice a week. We learned endless things.” He goes, “No, you missed it. We learned two things.” I said, “Please remind me,” because one was love thy neighbor as yourself, and the rest is commentary.
Took a second for it. I said, “Let’s talk about this for a second. What does love thy neighbor as yourself mean to you?” Such a famous saying. We’ve heard it so many times.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:29:31 – 00:29:55) When I think about it, the way that I understand it is to. Have empathy and compassion for all of the complexities, both the good, the bad, the indifferent, and that which you don’t understand, which is like how I would treat myself. Like, I understand that I’m a complex person and that I’m multifaceted and imperfect and that I have strengths and weaknesses, and I’m okay with all of it. And in others, we’re less okay with all of it.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:29:55 – 00:31:16) Beautiful. Let’s say it a little bit in different words, but that was right on. Love thine neighbor as yourself means that you first have to love yourself. To love yourself, you have to acknowledge not only the great strength that you have that you love, you must acknowledge your weaknesses, your failures, your mistakes. And the only way you can love yourself after all of those is if you’re able to forgive yourself.
So the true secret of loving oneself is to forgive yourself, to not carry guilt, to really be able to know that all of these are lessons for you to grow and change and go to your next level from. Back to the sword analogy, that you’re a sword and you’re getting forged, and every single time you get hit, you just get stronger. Once you feel that, and you’re able to love yourself, then you’re able to love everybody else. That was the first thing he told me we learned.
The second thing he said to me, which we said before, is, I want to remind you that the darkest moment of the night is the second before dawn. Belief is not measured when everything is going up, and everybody’s telling you what a genius you are, and everybody wants to be your friend, and everybody wants to be your investor. Belief is measured when it’s all crashing, when even your friends are questioning you, when the phone is not ringing.
And if a person is able to have true belief then, And he says to me, if you’re going to be able to take this experience and really hold your belief, hold your positivity, hold your happiness, be the person I know you can be, you can’t imagine what the future stores for you.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:31:17 – 00:31:20) What did you believe in, in your hardest moment?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:31:21 – 00:33:01) In God, and in myself, in my wife, in my kids, and in the fact that even though I don’t know at this moment why this thing happened, I am going to be stronger for it. And I remember that morning, this phone call was late at night. The next morning at 6:00 AM, I walked down to my 3— I went from 13,000 employees to 3 employees in 1 week. I walked down to the 3 employees who were my partners in the family office, not even employees, partners. I walked down to them and I’m smiling. And they’re stressed out.
We would meet every day at 6:00 AM that we’re done, we’re bankrupt, it’s finished. They only joined me 3 months before. They came to manage what they thought was a $5 to $10 billion family office, and they’re dealing with negative $400 million compounding interest, full bankruptcy situation. And I thought about them, all my— not all, a lot of friends that I had that were really there with me and enjoyed with me and grew with me and made money with me, when I really needed that one small moment, a lot of them weren’t there.
And these 3 almost strangers who I didn’t really know were standing right there by my side. And they see me smiling, they say, “Adam, why are you smiling?” They’re like, they thought I really lost my mind. It was done. And I said, “I’m smiling because I remember that the darkest moment of the night is a second before dawn.” And I remember that belief is actually measured when things are difficult, not when everything is working.
And I believe, and I know it’s going to work out, and I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but this is all going to work out for the best. And we’re going to learn a lot from this, and it will actually prepare us when a real difficulty happens, so we’re ready to go and deal with it. And about 10 days later, we started coming out of it in a very positive way.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:33:02 – 00:33:09) I want to go to the top of the story because I really want to walk through some of the key moments. But I noticed your energy shift a little bit when you started describing those 3 people.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:33:10 – 00:33:19) Here’s another thing that I’ve learned. If you now haven’t, you’re facing this as we speak right now. I bet you have lots of friends. I bet you have lots of friends.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:33:19 – 00:33:20) Depends how you define friends.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:33:20 – 00:34:35) Exactly. Well, I’ll tell you a secret about them. And I’m sorry to say that. We’re only going to know which one of them are your friend and which ones are not, where if, God forbid, you crash and you actually need them. And then I can also tell you if you’re going to crash or not. If you go big enough, really, really big, you crash. Whenever someone tells you, oh, Adam, it’s never going to happen to me. My ego is never going to get the best of me. I’m never— I’m always going to stay in control. Young, successful people like to say that to me.
I say, oh, You haven’t gone big enough. Because if you really, really— that’s part of the definition of going really, really big. Life is not about if we fall down. We’re supposed to fall down. Life is about how we get up. And the more times we fall down, the more times we get to get up. And if you practice getting up enough times, then you might not fall. Then you get very good at it. And then you can go and really go for the stars.
So with the friends, the reason my energy changed about those 3, I didn’t know them that well, and they stuck by me. I have a weakness with loyalty. I’m very loyal. So if you were there for me when things were tough, I’m a sucker for that. I’ll be there for you, even if you mess up, to a fault almost.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:34:36 – 00:35:07) A lot of founders who start businesses have this thing that pop culture has called imposter syndrome, where they kind of do doubt themselves. And this sort of sits in contrast to this idea of having belief, because sometimes they don’t believe. And they are plagued with insecurities and doubts, and they kind of go back and forward, and they think, really, am I the person to do this? I’ve never done it before, which is— that comes with pursuing something great. You had never done it before.
So what do you say to those people who are struggling with doubt? Because they’re hearing, listen, you have to believe. Did you have doubt when you drew this?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:35:07 – 00:35:41) Fascinating question. My level of certainty was so high when I was doing WeWork. I was sure it was going to work. It was— a lot of times, I think people confused my certainty as a different word. I was just— I was that sure that the product is needed for the world. When I started Flow, which was different and came after everything, and after also we had a family— when I started Wework, I had no kids. It was just Rebecca and I. It was very easy to throw myself into something and work 18- to 20-hour days, 7 days a week, and love every second.
There was nothing else.
Why WeWork Grew So Fast
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:35:42 – 00:36:04) WeWork grew astronomically quickly, really atypically quickly, especially for that type of company. And I wanted to hear directly from you, why? What happened? What were the factors that contributed to this meteoric rise? I think a couple of years after you founded the company, I became a customer of it, both in New York, but also in London. What didn’t I see? What was it?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:36:05 – 00:37:03) So WeWork started in February of 2013. 10. And it’s, for anybody listening, I think this is the way that it should and could work. I think from the first day, we were so clear, as you pointed out with the circle, on the fact that this mission is bigger than us. And when you’re part of a mission that’s greater than yourself, urgency doesn’t just become something like, oh, we have to do it now because I said so, or because we said so.
When you feel that your mission really needs to come out to the world, then you have to do it now because there’s no time to waste, because it’s really important. And we just started with our first, and part of my energy is I bring people together. I really like creating community. But I also, I love to move fast when we’re clear on the direction that we’re moving. And I don’t believe anything is impossible.
So, when you connect that mission of something being greater than yourself, speed, and not accepting a no, You put those things together, then real magic happens. I think that’s one. Two—
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:37:04 – 00:37:05) I want an example of that.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:37:05 – 00:39:08) I’ll give you one. Many examples, but let’s start early WeWork, because I think this all started there. But before the example, one more thing I was going to say that made WeWork, to answer your question, it’s the team. The team was so dedicated. The team believed so much. It was their essence. It was their experience of being part of something greater than themselves. And when you can bring a group of people together to all run in the same direction, direction, you almost can’t stop anything. I’ll give you an example.
It’s our second WeWork building. We need to do the floor. We only had $90,000. We didn’t have any more money. And all the quotes were $200,000 a floor, whatever the number was. And I said to Miguel and to the few people there, we have to do it for this price. And they said, you can’t. We got 5 quotes. It’s not the price. I said, well, how much is the floor? And everybody’s like, the floor is between $30,000 to $45,000, these wood floors. It was an important part of the design. I said, why? They said, what do you mean why? These are the quotes.
I said, well, can you break down the quote for me? They said, what do you mean? I said, well, how many pieces of floor? How many nails? How much glue? How much rubber? How many hours of work per person? How much does each person cost? No one could answer. I said, okay, I have an idea of how we can negotiate this differently. I called the top 3 guys and said, guys, I would like you to meet. Earn 15% above the cost. I think that’s a fair margin, 15%. Do you agree? So, of course, I agree. It’s like, great. And all 3 of them, by the way, said yes.
I said, great. Well, I’m going to need to see the cost of each piece. I’m going to go quote it myself, and we’re going to get to 15%. Very quickly, the cost went down to that first floor, instead of $30,000 to $45,000, was $12,000. The guy says to me, “Adam, no one’s ever worked with me that way.” Before you know it, they joined us, and we had our own internal construction company, and we realized that only by controlling it could we get the right price and move fast enough. So, it’s not taking no for an answer.
Answer, but also using logic to really look into it. Now, it could be that if I looked into it, I wouldn’t have been able to get a better price. But what I’m describing is the challenge in construction in general and globally, and it’s part of the things that Flow is solving today.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:39:08 – 00:39:11) Elon would call that reasoning from first principles. I heard a similar story.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:39:11 – 00:39:54) He would. He would call it like that. And from what I know, in Flow, we look up to Elon as an entrepreneur. We think he’s unbelievable. And whenever someone gives Elon as an example, say, no one is Elon. That’s not an example we use. We just look at him for inspiration.
I happen to know that he can put an engineer— because I have a friend whose daughter works for him in SpaceX— he can put an engineer to work on one problem for 6 months, one screw, one connection, but the result ends up being not twice as simple as anything NASA has done, but like 500 times as simple and cheaper and faster and lighter. So yes, it’s going back. You can call it first principles. You can call it asking every question. But if you’re the entrepreneur and you’re going to run, or if you’re an employee or a partner, Ask why.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:39:55 – 00:40:07) People don’t because they don’t want to be rude or inconvenience others, or they’re too concerned with being liked. So pushing back on a supplier or conventional status quo in any way is seen to be inconvenient.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:40:07 – 00:40:51) I’m going to try to say a different reason why they don’t, because they don’t ask themselves why. It’s going to go back— this discussion can keep going back to the same basics. A person who’s comfortable asking himself why is he doing something, questioning himself or herself, seeing negative things, seeing problems, and then enjoying the process of growing out of them will have no problem asking someone else why. And whenever you ask someone why and they don’t want to answer you, what are you hiding? This is a discussion.
I usually, when I go into topics like this, start by telling the vendor, whoever it is, I want you to make money. No one’s trying to make you lose money, but we’re on a mission. And if I’m going to pay even 20% more than I should, then that’s 20% less of another building, another community, another neighborhood that Flow is not going to take part in.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:40:51 – 00:41:58) This really does make a lot of sense to me. We have this Slack channel in our company called Paper Walls. And the whole idea is that we’re trying to encourage our team to push on paper walls. A paper wall is something that looks solid, but reveals itself to be completely made of paper the minute you try it, you ask why, you push on it. And there’s a story of a kid that worked for me in one of my companies for 4 years. And he animates video. I said to him, how long is it going to take you to animate a video for us that’s 30 minutes?
He said, it takes 9 days. Right? He worked for me for 4 years. It took him 9 days to animate the video. We decide we want to launch a weekly channel. I need him to do it in 3 or 4 days max so that the rest of the team can do it. I say to him, how long is it going to take you? He says, 9 days. And then because we’d established this culture in our company of pushing on paper walls, I said to him, why? And do you know what he said to me? I think I said something like, what would it take to do it in 2?
And he went, “Steven, you just need to buy me a new laptop.” I have an old laptop. I thought, f***ing hell, I’ve been paying him for 4 years and he’s been— think about how much time I’ve lost in those 4 years just simply because I didn’t ask that question. But also to your point, he never mentioned it. He never knew he was in a paper wall himself.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:41:59 – 00:43:17) First year of WeWork, we opened 1 building. Year 9 of WeWork, we opened 2 buildings a day in 130 cities. 50 countries, 70 languages, 100,000 square foot per building. So, that’s 200,000 square foot a day, 20,000 square meters for your European listeners, a day. A lot of the same people who were only capable of doing the 1 and 2 were leaders by that time of being able to do one of the fastest physical global growths the world’s ever seen. Same people.
As you learn to, in your words, go through paper walls, as you learn that anything is possible, suddenly this is the secret of high growth and momentum. Whatever you can do today, if your company starts growing fast, you’ll be shocked what you’ll be able to do in 3 months, 9 months, and in 2 years, you’re going to look back and not believe that that was your capacity. And I keep telling people, and they tell me, oh, I can’t do this, and this takes 3 months. I say, guys, I’ve seen this done before. Forget I know we can do it. It’s easier now.
I’ve already been there. Now you just need to believe. And it goes back to the belief. Then we’re going to need to put the systems and the processes. And today with technology, and this is where I think AI is very exciting, you could shortcut a lot of these things and do much better work. But back to what you said about your company, I bet— when’s the last time you sat with them in a circle? How many employees?
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:43:17 – 00:43:19) About 200 in total.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:43:19 – 00:44:23) So, 200 is a big number. But if you took 30 of them, sat in a room, and actually asked them, what are you working on personally? What is your internal paper wall? What is your internal challenge? What’s stopping you? And they got comfortable talking about it. And then as a group, first of all, all their peers would hear. And before you know it, their peers would help them. Hey, I remember that you said that this is a challenge for you. You’re insecure, you don’t talk in public, you’re a little judgmental. You’re too hard on yourself.
Every person has another story. Before you know it, the moment you get them used to grow internally, it will affect your business to grow externally. In WeWork, the business grew faster than I could grow. That’s where everything went wrong. I actually think whenever a company grows faster than its founder, one of two things will occur. Either it will crash, because that’s what happens. Or if somehow miraculously that founder is able to keep it all together, in my experience, they’re not fulfilled and happy.
And if they’re not fulfilled and happy, why do it?
Redefining Hard Work
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:44:23 – 00:44:36) How important for the founders listening and for the people that want to build or become is hard work? Because there’s a real debate around hard work. Some people say, work-life balance is the ultimate. Some people say if you’re a founder, you’ve got to give 100-hour weeks.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:44:37 – 00:45:42) Ah, by the way, new answer to that question. It is the most important thing, but we have to define hard work. Hard work as a founder is not just limited to how many hours you put in the office. Hard work as a founder is how much time do you put on the business, how much time are you putting on yourself? As you grow, you will be a better leader, you will be a better money raiser, you will be a better express— you’ll express your business better. So hard work is the only way to do it, and you can’t be 50%.
And here’s something, else that your founders know. When I had to decide if I’m doing Flow again or not, the reason it was so hard is because I knew that there’s no such thing as being 80% in or 90% in. Either you’re 100% in and you’re all in, or it’s not going to work. So, how important is hard work? Most important thing. What is hard work? Some of it is on the business, some of it is on you. If you’re married, it’s also on your relationship. If you have kids, it’s also with your kids.
By the way, for those listeners who have kids, if you’re ever wondering what you need to work on, just listen to your kids. They know.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:45:42 – 00:45:57) There you were alluding to this, sort of magical thing that happens when one focuses on something. You were saying if you’re like 90% in, it like doesn’t work, but if you’re 100% in, it works. What is the magic that isn’t obvious with that?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:45:57 – 00:46:45) When you’re 100% in, there’s no time for doubt. There’s no time for questions. There’s no time for fear because you’re so in it. When you’re, oh, I can find this work-life balance while doing it, you’re not going to do something great. And if you are, if you were to achieve something, it’s not close to your potential. But again, I’m redefining what 100% in meant. We talked about Warren Buffett. Was he not 100%? And of course he is. Does he have a full schedule? No way.
He keeps it open so he can have the important meetings, so he can read, so he can connect. There are different ways to be 100% in, but you must in life, in my opinion, be 100% in. That’s why I love surfing. In surfing, when you’re on the board on a wave, if you’re not present and you’re not in flow, you’re knocked off that board.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:46:46 – 00:46:50) What about founders that are doing 2 different businesses, pursuing 2 different missions?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:46:50 – 00:47:08) Remember what I told you we say in Flow? You’re not Elon. I would tell them, you’re not Elon. Elon can do 2 different, very few people. I know, I— he’s one of the only examples I have, Jack Dorsey. Some of the best on the planet can do, but it’s very hard to do 2 businesses at the same time. It’s hard enough to do one.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:47:10 – 00:47:14) And I guess even in those cases, they built up tremendous resources by doing one really, really well.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:47:14 – 00:47:45) Again, my question about— I don’t know which founder you’re thinking, but you’ve met people like that. Really, where I— when I’ve met people doing 2 that are somewhat succeeding, they’re spending no time on their own personal growth. So the extra time they have because they did their first business so well, they’re using it to do another business, which usually in my experience is an excuse not to actually experience life for what it is. If you’re already doing one and it’s meaningful and it’s fulfilling, why do you need another?
What are you hiding from? What is it that you’re not actually doing would be my question. Now, if they, maybe there’s a, maybe they’re a miracle.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:47:46 – 00:50:08) We often say, on one end you’re saying go fast, and I hear that from great founders like yourself and Elon and those guys. They say go fast. Push on paper walls, go as fast as you can. But then also there’s other areas where you go, you have to go slow to go fast.
Choosing the Right Partners and Investors
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:50:08 – 00:50:19) Well, also know your weaknesses. I obviously did not succeed in building great technology in WeWork. That is a known fact. So if I’m going to partner again and I’m going to build a business larger than WeWork, put the right partners.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:50:19 – 00:50:20) Know what you don’t know.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:50:20 – 00:50:27) Know what you don’t know and let them lead. When we hired our CTO, we had 4 different CTOs. I let Ben do the final interview.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:50:27 – 00:50:48) Okay, this is what I was going to ask because One of the things I hear from founders a lot is they know they don’t know X, let’s say it’s finance. And then they do an interview with someone and the person says, I’m the best at finance. They have no idea if they’re the best at finance because they don’t know finance, the founder. So what did you do to mitigate the trap of accidentally hiring someone that you weren’t able to assess their competence?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:50:48 – 00:50:56) I chose partners that say the truth. When Marc and Ben and I do a board meeting, and Marc is our board member and Ben joins us.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:50:57 – 00:51:05) For context, I should say say, Marc and Ben are 2 of the world’s most famous investors, and they have backed you with your new venture, Flow. Yeah, just for those who don’t know.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:51:05 – 00:52:45) Marc and Ben have invested $470 million into Flow at the Series A and Series B. And I, Adam, and my family personally invested $350 million because part of when we created the business together, we wanted to be aligned. We buy together, we sell together, we do everything together. We have our board meetings. They usually start at 8:00 AM. They end at 5:00 Very long board meeting. We talk about everything. We love it as a team. We really respect them. We truly prepare for these meetings.
We don’t spend too much time because, again, when you’re really busy, you don’t have time. So it’s not like we spend a month. We go a week before, look, take stock of everything we did that quarter. It’s always shocking to see how much you did because when you’re not really measuring, you’re just doing. When you stop for a second and look what you did, wow, we did quite a lot in 3 months. So very useful. We put together our board deck. We send them to them a few days before. They actually read them, and then they come for the meeting.
So, it’s like 8:30 to 5:00. And then when it’s done, I go to dinner with the two of them. And the dinner starts by me saying— we sit down, usually wherever it is— please tell me what I can do better. And the first time I asked them, they were a little bit uncomfortable. The second time, I literally remember Marc going like this— Marc Andreessen— like this, like he was ready. Ben taking out his notes. That’s a true partnership. And we do it every single time. And when you have the previous— you said some of the biggest investors.
In my opinion, a16z, number one investor on the planet. And if you’re an entrepreneur today and you can, that’s who you want your money from. If you’re an entrepreneur today and you take it from Benchmark, the company that took me out, that took Travis Kalanick out, Jack Dorsey out.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:52:45 – 00:52:46) Travis from Uber, Jack from—
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:52:46 – 00:53:08) Travis from Uber. Jack Dorsey from Square, Twitter, Block, and many more, and many more. So when you choose your investors, look at their history. Are they the kind that support entrepreneurs like you? Are they going to take you to the next level? Or do they have a history that actually clashes with the entrepreneur? If they have a history that clashes with the entrepreneur, park them.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:53:09 – 00:53:23) So there was 2 key things I pulled out from there. The first was around And this idea of knowing when to go fast and slow, and you use technology as an example. The second thing, which opened up the story about a16z, is the right people and partners.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:53:24 – 00:53:24) So important.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:53:24 – 00:53:25) More.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:53:25 – 00:53:31) If I had to choose one, right investors, right employees, right partners, most important thing.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:53:32 – 00:53:36) What did you learn about employees? What is a great team member?
Leading by Influence, Not Control
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:53:37 – 00:53:41) If I have a problem with an employee, there’s only one person to blame, and that’s me.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:53:42 – 00:53:44) And what are the mistakes that you made in choosing employees?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:53:45 – 00:53:54) I think it’s how I was leading that I’ve been learning more about. Where I used to lead from top to bottom, I now am learning how to lead bottom to up.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:53:54 – 00:53:55) What’s the difference?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:53:56 – 00:54:33) Top to bottom means you think because someone reports into you, they have to do what you say. But it’s not true. This is not a dictatorship. They have free will. They can go work if they’re talented. If you hired someone, they’re really talented, they’ll go work elsewhere. Where, especially great leaders. The more talented they are, the more the top to bottom does not work. They won’t be willing to do it. They shouldn’t. Great talent is not willing to be managed like this.
Great talent wants to be inspired, wants me to see the full version of themselves even more than they see it. And they want the room to make mistakes, but also to grow. But they also need feedback. If you have someone amazing and they’re f***ing up, sorry, they’re missing—
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:54:33 – 00:54:34) You can swear, it doesn’t matter.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:54:34 – 00:55:26) I can swear, yeah, my kids are going to listen. It’s all They’re f***ing up. Are you going to tell them? Or because you’re not comfortable with conflict, you’re going to wait for 90 days, and every time they’re going to make that mistake, you’re going to get so upset that by the time you communicate to them, it’s too late. The moment they made a mistake, if you respect them, give them the feedback, because that’s the best thing for them. By the way, when you give them the feedback, give them room to give you feedback.
If you’re going to manage these employees, and you want to attract the best talent in the world, Remember that power comes from influence, not control. If you think they need to do what you said because you’re their boss, you’ve already lost, and it’s a matter of time till it doesn’t work out. If they’re okay with it, just because you’re the boss, you have to tell them what they do, and they accept that power, they’re not the right employee for you, and you’re not the right boss for them. There’s no chance you’re getting the best out of them.
Meeting Masayoshi Son of SoftBank
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:55:27 – 00:55:51) One of the parts in your journey that I have reflected on a lot because it’s a fascinating story is the day that you meet Masa at SoftBank. And I’m keen to understand the context of where the business was before you met Masa at SoftBank. That particular story has always inspired me for a multitude of different reasons. But where was the business at? Was it, it was 2017?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:55:51 – 00:56:15) I want to tell you about the day I met Masa and I’m going to connect it to, I think, the biggest mistake I ever made in WeWork. I’ll bring it together. Masa is one of the best investors in the world. He’s also one of the biggest investors in the world. In my story, Masa is the hero, even though a lot of people who didn’t know the story correctly might have misunderstood. So in my story, Masa took a bet on me, and he did amazing, and he deserved to have become very successful from it.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:56:16 – 00:56:17) And he leads SoftBank.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:56:17 – 00:57:02) Masa is the leader of SoftBank. So if you want a little history of Masa, Masa is the leader of SoftBank. He becomes very well known to the world where he buys a tech conference, actually, in Vegas. And he buys this tech conference for, I think, about $880 million. And at the same time, he has his own tech businesses, and he owns a phone company, and he starts growing and growing.
He’s famous to have gone to Steve Jobs and said, I’m going to take the iPhone— when the iPhone just came out, he knew it was going to be a hit— and I’m going to give it to every subscriber in Japan. He invents the leasing model for it and gives an iPhone. Then everybody signs to his service ’cause everybody wanted the iPhone. So, a lot of things. And then he gives Jack Ma $20 million that over time I think becomes $200 billion for Alibaba, which at its peak is worth about $80 billion.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:57:03 – 00:57:03) Wow.
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:57:03 – 00:57:20) So at the time when I meet Masa, this is 2016. Let’s start with the night before. The night before I meet Masa in New York City, I have a board meeting the day before. This is the old board, and we’re all sitting together. I just raised at $16— I raised maybe 6 months before at $16 billion valuation.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:57:21 – 00:57:21) How big is WeWork?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:57:22 – 00:57:35) It’s about to do that year about $950 million in revenue. And the reason I know is because WeWork doubled in revenue every single year. So WeWork, the business model was working very well and the 4 walls were working very well.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:57:36 – 00:57:38) What’s the distinction, sorry, between the 4 walls and everything else?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:57:38 – 00:57:43) When you have a retail business, you could have your stores could be doing really well, but your state not making money.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:57:43 – 00:57:44) And your what’s not making money?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:57:45 – 00:59:29) State. So let’s say you’re in New York City. So let’s talk high growth for a second. When you’re growing as fast as we’re growing, you’re always putting new buildings on the map. A new building has a ramp-up. Usually ramp-up of a retail store or a food or a restaurant could take 2 years, 3 years. And we like to talk about ROI, return on investment, and how long does it take. A great time to return your investment would be 24 months, 36 months, and then you can grow.
WeWork at its peak was returning its money somewhere between 6 months to 9 And then afterwards, it was going up to 12-month and 18-month. So if you’re going to grow— we grew New York City to 130 buildings. So you can have 30 buildings. If the following year you’re adding 30 more buildings, those new 30 have to, per definition, lose money for at least the first 6 months, if not 9 months.
So you could be very profitable in these buildings, but not profitable in these because they need time, which means New York City, the city, doesn’t look as a city profitable, or the country, if you’re looking at your P&L, doesn’t look as a country profitable, which is why in a high-growth business, you got to get very specific and in the details, and you got to really understand what’s working, what’s not.
Even in a building, you can have one floor that’s profitable because you opened it first, and the new floor that you opened after, not profitable yet. WeWork’s technology was never able to count this way. Flow’s technology, if I threw it on WeWork today, I could tell you which square foot is— forget which building is profitable or which floor is profitable. I could tell you which corner It knows everything because it’s a connected system. It’s not disconnected. Back to what we were saying.
I’m sitting with the board, and we decide that we want to turn the business— we’re going to go out and raise money, turn the business profitable, and take it public.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:59:30 – 00:59:31) How are you going to turn it profitable?
ADAM NEUMANN: (00:59:31 – 01:01:58) All you have to do in a high-growth business that’s working to turn it profitable is stop growing. You just stop adding new buildings, and you give time to all the buildings to catch up. Remember, I explained that in WeWork, your problem was not demand, it was supply. So the moment you don’t add more supply, the demand is greater than the supply, everything fills up. The moment everything fills up and you didn’t add anything new, you go cash flow positive. As simple as that.
So we sit in that board and we decide that I’m going to go and raise, and the number was $300 to $400 million, stop the growth, meaning stop signing leases, maybe even move to management deals, something we’ll talk about in Flow in a second. And then take it public. This is 2016. That was the day before. At the same time, at some point, Masa’s right-hand guy, his name is Ron Fisher, sends an email, a text to one of our guys and says, hey, Masa wants to come see Adam. This is at the same time that Masa is raising the Vision Fund.
For those who don’t know, the Vision Fund was his $100 billion venture fund. Largest venture fund ever raised. Masa wants to see Adam. I say, great. And we schedule 90 minutes in the morning, the next morning. And we do the— we get ready in the morning. Masa is coming. Everyone’s excited. And I’m like, this is amazing. Maybe that investment we just talked about yesterday will come today. His team says, just to let there will be no discussions of investing. I say, okay, no problem. As it gets closer to the morning, we keep getting text messages.
He’s not going to have 90 minutes. He’s going to have 75 minutes. He’s going to have 60 minutes. He’s going to have half an hour. And I’m like, okay, whatever it is, sounds great. The same time, President Trump wins for the first time. This is the end of December. And Masa had a meeting with him. They wanted to talk about the future of America. He said, I’m so sorry, I have a meeting with Trump, President Trump, and I only have 12 minutes.
Again, we all find ourselves in situations like this when, oh my God, I had all this planned, and I was going to do this tour, and I was going to show these numbers, I’m going to do all these things, and suddenly it all changes. I take a deep breath. Let’s make it the best 12 minutes we can. But I can’t help myself. I go, tell me something, Masa. If you’re meeting President— future President Trump, do you have Jared Kushner introducing you to him first? He goes, Adam, it’s so funny you’re saying that.
Everybody told me that it’s better if Jared introduces me. I don’t know him. We’ve been trying to get in touch.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:02:00 – 01:02:00) No.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:02:01 – 01:02:06) I said, give me a second. I’m very lucky to count Jared as one of my close friends.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:02:06 – 01:02:07) Jared’s married to Ivanka Trump.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:02:08 – 01:02:53) Jared married to Ivanka Trump, and he’s the advisor, I think, to the president. But right now, he’s helping do peace both in the Middle East and in Europe. So I text Jared, and I was like, “Masa is here.” Ta ta ta ta ta. We spend five minutes on that. Jared says, “No problem. Send him. I will introduce him to the future president.” Now we have seven minutes left. I say, “Masa, we only have seven minutes. We’re only going to stay downstairs. But this is we work.” He looks at me.
Me, goes like this, smells the air, he goes, “You know what this smells like?” And I’m like, oh no, what is he going to say? They were serving waffles that day. Is he going to say it smells like waffles? It’s like, what is he going to say? He goes, “Smells like dreams. This is a factory. WeWork is not an office space, it’s a factory of dreams.” And I’m like, whoa.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:02:53 – 01:02:54) He’s speaking your language.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:02:54 – 01:03:21) Oh no, not my language. One step above my language. He took the dreamer and went one step above the dreamer. He outdid the— He Adam’d Adam. He killed it. And I’m like, oh yeah, I love the smell of dreams. No one’s ever defined the business better than that. And he goes, “Look, Adam, we don’t have time. I’m driving up there to 50th Street, wherever it was. Do you want to come with me to the car? We’ll talk in the car.”
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:03:21 – 01:03:22) Did he not go around the building and check?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:03:22 – 01:06:24) Couldn’t have time. 7 minutes. We were only downstairs in the lobby, the entrance. But if you had the opportunity in 2017, 2016 to walk into our HQ, the energy was electric. You could not walk in there and not feel— I never felt a factory of dreams, but I felt community and people coming together. It felt like people are doing their life’s work. It didn’t feel like a work environment. It felt like people are really connected.
And when you make a connected environment, then it really takes things to the next level, and everybody wants to be there. So, that’s what it was. It’s not what it is today, but that’s what it was. So, he says, come with me to the car. I said, no problem. I get into the car, and I remember the back of my hand, they said, no investing. His team said, don’t talk about raising money. Raising money. So I start talking a bit about WeWork. He’s like, “Adam, what’s the number?” I said, “What do you mean?”
He goes, “What’s your valuation and how much money are you raising? I’m here to do business.” He said, your team said— like, ah, I am the boss. I’ve done this many times myself. I’m the boss. Let’s talk about it. I said, “Well, listen, our last valuation was $16 billion. We just launched China, that’s a 2 billion-dollar company. We have Latin America and we’re in Europe. We have a global company and then we have a China entity.” Goes, “Great. How much are you raising?” I said, “Three to four hundred million.” “Three to four hundred million?
That’s not going to work. Don’t you want to build a global business?” I was like, “Of course, I would love to build a global business.” Goes, “Don’t you have a business in China?” I said, “Of course.” Said, “What about Japan?” Said, “I don’t have a business in Japan yet.” He said, “I think it’s going to work very well in Japan.” I said, “I’m sure it’s going to work well in Japan. It’s working everywhere. But I don’t have the team.” He goes, “What about Southeast Asia?” I said, “Sounds amazing, but I’ve never been there.”
He goes, “Well, I think it’s going to work there.” I said, “Again, I’m sure it’s going to work there.” And before you know it, he says, “I think we should do about $3 billion.” And that was a big number. Remember, I was the night before with the board, $300 to $400 million. Stake less than number one. And again, I don’t blame Masa for any of this. Every decision I made was my decision. He’s an investor. He saw a great business, and he wanted to go big. I respect that. I’ve done it myself, not at those numbers, but I’ve done it myself.
If you decide you have a mission or a vision and you’re going to go raise out $300 million, and the next day someone offers you $3 billion, before you say yes, take a deep breath and ask yourself again that question of why and what is my intention and what is that going to do to the business and am I ready to take that much? And so, it says $3 billion. We then keep talking about all the different needs and the different stuff. It ends up after— this is Now we met for 12 minutes and the ride is 16 minutes.
So if, yeah, total 28 to 36 minutes, the whole thing. And we agree on it. He says $4 billion, $4.2 to be exact.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:06:25 – 01:06:26) $4.2 billion what?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:06:26 – 01:06:27) Dollars.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:06:27 – 01:06:28) That he wants to invest?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:06:28 – 01:06:58) In WeWork, that’s WeWork China, WeWork Japan, and WeWork Southeast Asia. Remember, we were a cash machine. You put cash into us and we— just to— I’ll go back to it in a second, but we were doing $980 million that year. We hit our numbers. We forecasted we’re going to do $1.8 billion next year. We did our $1.8 billion. It was working so well, the model. All you needed was cash to build it. You needed to build these spaces and you needed to do— if you’re going to grow that big, he had big aspirations and I had big aspirations.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:06:58 – 01:07:03) Did you tell him that? Did you tell him that it was a cash machine? No, you didn’t need to. Did you tell him that if you put cash in, you get cash out?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:07:04 – 01:08:32) I didn’t need to. Masa understands business better than most people in the world. But again, it was obvious because if you looked at the history of WeWork, every single time you put money into it, it grew. The mistake was we were signing leases. We were taking long-term commitments against short-term commitments. We should have done something else, and we’ll talk about it in a second, what we should have done, and it’s what we’re doing in Flow. But this question was, there’s people— because a lot of people didn’t understand the money raised.
The money raised was to build tremendous businesses all over the planet. And those businesses, the moment you stopped growing them, turned profitable. Today, WeWork’s profitable. Those businesses, all you had to do was stop growing. We were at a high-growth stage. That’s what high-growth entrepreneurs do. That’s what the market wanted at the time. And that’s what everybody knew we were doing. It was not a secret what we were doing. And it was growing exponentially. So we ended up agreeing on $4.2 He takes an iPad, he writes it all down.
This is all in that same car, right? He writes it all down, he signs his name, and he hands me the pen to sign mine. I look at it, I sign. He walks out of the car, says, thank you very much, and goes to his meeting. This is now about 54th Street. Our HQ is on 18th Street. I’m just standing there. I can’t believe what just happened. It was not what I planned. And I start walking. I was like, I’m going to walk downtown. I’m going to take a second.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:08:32 – 01:08:32) I’m going to walk.
When Ego Took Over
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:08:34 – 01:09:47) And every step I take, because until this point, this is 2016, we were 5 years of mission-driven mission. You asked me about the fundamentals. We had all the right fundamentals in WeWork because we had the right culture. And when you have the right culture, you can deal with any We were mission-driven. We could break through any wall. We were teamwork. We worked late at night. We were together. We were friends. We were one team.
And I’m starting to walk down from 54th Street to 18th Street, and every step I take, suddenly, the ego starts coming up. Oh, $20 billion valuation, billion valuation in Japan on top of that, billion-and-a-half valuation in Southeast Asia on top of that, $5 billion valuation in China on top of that. So, I built this $1 billion of that $4.2 billion was going to everybody, including to myself. And I owned about proportionately about 25% of the company at the time. So, big numbers, numbers. I’ve never seen numbers. Miguel was getting a lot.
All our employees, the investors, many times more than they ever invested from that billion. And every step that I’m taking, the ego comes up. Oh, I feel so strong. I feel so big. You start doing your own math, $20 billion, 25%.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:09:48 – 01:09:49) What’s—
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:09:49 – 01:11:33) But that’s $5 billion. Then there’s all the other ones. What’s my net worth? And before you know it, the guy that sat in the car was a mission-driven entrepreneur who really believed in creating a world where people make a life and not just a living. Every step that I take, it goes higher and higher. And by the time I walk into HQ, 18th Street, I forgot what we were all about. Here is why ego is, on the one hand, very good, and on the other hand, very dangerous. Ego and desire are the same word. Big ego just means big desire.
Having huge desire is important to build huge things, but you have to manage it and control it. When I walked in, I got confused. It suddenly became about the money. All the stuff that Rebecca told me, all the stuff when we met, all the years of spiritual practice, everything, to the garbage. And what happens when the ego gets the best of you? You become blinded. What does that mean? You make mistakes and bad decisions. And in a high-growth business, you need to make 100 decisions a day.
And as we said before, at least 98 of them need to be correct. Suddenly you’re blinded, and suddenly only 95 of them are correct, or 90. Those mistakes— because you’re growing so fast, the mistakes grow very fast The other thing, we were a company led from the top. All great companies are led from the top. The moment I lost it, everybody lost it. And it just spread. And the moment— that’s the beginning of the end. And look, it took 3 years after that for everything to unfold, but it was that moment that was the moment that went.
The Advice He Didn’t Take
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:11:35 – 01:11:42) Is there anything that could have been said or done to have made you, when Masa offered you that $4 billion in that cab— Are you ready for this?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:11:44 – 01:12:56) Sure. I used to be closer. We don’t speak as much anymore today. I used to be much closer to Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce. He heard about Masa’s offer, and he called me and said, “Adam, I only know you for a little bit, and I know you’re not going to listen to my advice, but I want you to fly to Japan and say no to Masa. I want you to take your company public. What was your last valuation?” I said, “$16 billion.” He goes, “Great. I want you to take your company public for $5 billion.
I want you to sell 20% of it at $1 billion, and I want you to learn how to be a public CEO. I promise you 2 things. One, because your last valuation was $16 billion, at $5 billion everybody’s going to think this is a great deal. People are going to rush to invest, including myself. You’ll learn, because it’s very different to be a public CEO than a private CEO. You’re going to learn about profitability. You’re going to learn all these things, because I think you’re a very fast student.
And I guarantee you, before you know it, your valuation will be much larger.” And he said, “But I know you’re not going to listen to me.” And I didn’t. Was there a world that I could have said no? Not the kind of person that I was then, and not with the tools I have.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:12:56 – 01:12:57) Why didn’t you listen to him?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:12:58 – 01:14:51) We didn’t know each other for long enough. I think it takes a lot of trust to listen to when someone gives you counter-advice. And by the way, there was another person also who said no, but we’ll put that aside for a second. But here’s what I think is more important about it. Let’s say I said no, and let’s say WeWork would still be around. WeWork could be a $100 billion company today. Corona would have happened. We would have renegotiated all of our leases.
Instead of leases, we would become management deals, and we would have led the return to office. We would have led that concept because obviously people work— I know we spoke about it— much better face-to-face than remote work. And we would have been the leaders of the movement of return to office. And WeWork was a great company, and even it would have launched WeLive, so our version of flow. But I, Adam, wouldn’t have learned all those lessons. I wouldn’t be— I am so much happier today.
Even as we’re speaking, I’m noticing, everything you’re talking about makes me feel full. Even the wor— even the challenging parts. I am so happy that they happened because they made me exactly who I’m meant to be. Falling is not bad. That’s the thing that you and I are actually talking about. Falling is probably the most important part of life. And most of us learn a lot more from falling than we do from succeeding. The thing that’s bad is not when you fall, it’s how you get up. If you just fell and you’re, oh no, everybody saw me fall.
I’m now going to hide under the covers for 4 years until everybody forgets whatever it is that happened, that’s what’s horrible. That leads to the tragedy. That leads to the trauma. If you fell, you look around, you’re like, wow, everybody saw. You clean up, you get up, and you say, let’s do it again. If you have that in you, nothing will stop you. And it might take 10 times and 20 times and 50 times, but if you fall enough times, then you might avoid falling.
Finding the Signal in the Noise
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:14:52 – 01:15:33) I’m thinking also about a founder that’s 21 years old. They’ve got a startup or an idea that they want to start. Like when I was 21 years old, my mum tells me, 18, if you do this, I won’t speak to you again. She was warning me against business because she had struggled in business herself. So that’s a proxy of love, I guess. And then you’ve got other people here telling you that it’s going to be amazing and you’re going to make millions. When you’re in that situation and you’ve got noise, how do you find the signal?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:15:33 – 01:16:18) 2 ways. One, they have to go back to the mission. So, if one had a mission, and then someone offers them something, and it’s off mission, and you’re like, oh, I’m going to do it anyway because it’s good money, but it’s off mission, that already is a warning sign. But I think the other one, which is something that I have more today than I used to back then, one needs a practice. Part of the way to drown the noise is with a practice. I’ve been enjoying meditating lately in the past year, and I’ve been getting better and better at it.
And meditating is something that takes time. Meditating helps drown the noise. And then the thoughts that I do get while I meditate tend to be very healthy thoughts that are headed in a good direction. There’s many things. I do the hyperbaric chamber.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:16:18 – 01:17:10) Steve Jobs talked about meditation and his sort of spiritual practices. And it’s something that I actually, in the last year, I started really looking into. And when I say looking into, I mean I started looking into what he did and why he did it, because he’s someone that I look at and go, it was like he was able to see around the corner. And for a guy running a big company, how was he able to make these really unpopular calls today that proved out to be true tomorrow?
And one of the conclusions I arrived at is that he spent just as much time in the trenches as he did in the clouds, i.e., he stood away from the picture enough so he could see the picture. And that’s something that I thought, oh gosh, that kind of correlates to what you were saying earlier about your redefinition of hard work, not just being in the office and being there 24/7, but actually when you’re on the surfboard, you’re doing hard work because you’re giving yourself time to see the full picture.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:17:10 – 01:17:28) And when you’re honest with yourself about your weaknesses, like I spoke about my speech, it can elevate things, but it could also break things. We’ve seen that happen before. So hard work is also also, personal growth is very hard work. And most people don’t have the courage to even look in honestly, let alone change.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:17:30 – 01:17:41) What is the exact mechanism that you think would result in me being more successful at 40, in business, let’s say, if I did exactly what you said and focused on personal growth?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:17:41 – 01:17:57) You’re going to have to start by redefining— the moment you said in business, I’m going to have to push back. We are not going to measure your success just in business. We’re going to measure your success in life, in relationship, in friendships, in effect on the world, and in business.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:17:57 – 01:18:26) Do you know why I’m asking this question? Because there will be some people that are listening right now, and they have heard founders come on and people say, you need to just take a moment, meditate, do these things, focus on personal growth. And for whatever reason, because of their trauma, because of how they were raised, the lens that they will receive that message through, or the thing that will be the carrot, will be a promise that it will make them better at the thing they currently care about.
Now, we might be tricking them a little bit because we’re going to get them to do the work and they’ll realize that other things matter. But just for those people that have that lens—
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:18:26 – 01:20:29) No, we’re going to say something, and I hope people have said it here before, but I’m not sure they did. But tell me if people said it. We’re going to— all these founders that are listening, falling is not just okay, it’s the best thing that ever happened to you. If these founders can all redefine success, think about if in school, instead of learning about all the successes— I spoke about Steve Jobs, and he’s a real hero of mine. But would I have wanted his life? How old was he when he passed away?
How was the relationship with everybody around? How did he affect people? Now, I don’t know. I wasn’t a friend. I don’t know him. And I am not judging or measuring. I’m just telling you, We cannot measure a person just through their business achievements. We must look at people holistically. So I’m telling all these young founders, forget take time to meditate. You asked how I do it, and I said how we quiet the noise, and I answered meditation. But that is not my first advice to them.
My first advice to all of us— by the way, you talk a lot about 21-year-olds. With AI coming in, everybody’s about to be a founder. Everybody can start a business. It’s true for everyone. It’s true for 12-year-olds, and it’s true for 60-year-olds. This is for everyone. Have the courage to actually look inside and say, where can I become a better version of myself? Don’t work on 3 things. Work on one thing. And choose that thing and work on it. And by the way, if you do, when you fix it, how are you going to know that it’s better?
Because you’re going to see the next thing you need to work on. It is like an onion. And every time you peel it, you will see another layer, and another layer, and another layer. That is the advice I’m actually giving them. And I’m promising them that if they look deep enough, what they’re going to find is their calling. And when they find their calling, when you match that calling with that energy of wanting to be a founder, that’s when everything works.
As we are able as human beings to do that, find our true journey, find our flow, the world is open for us.
Ego, Money, and the Wavegarden Investment
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:20:30 – 01:20:39) So let’s zoom back into the story. You’re walking down towards 18th Street. You’ve just raised all this money. You feel like a king. That’s the way you feel.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:20:39 – 01:20:39) But just on paper, right?
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:20:39 – 01:20:40) We just signed.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:20:40 – 01:20:41) It didn’t actually happen yet.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:20:42 – 01:20:49) What was, you said over the next year, you said that was the start of the end. Over the next 3 years, decisions changed specifically in terms of business.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:20:49 – 01:20:50) It became about money.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:20:50 – 01:20:51) It became about money.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:20:51 – 01:20:52) It became about valuation.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:20:52 – 01:20:54) And that was the start. That was a slippery slope.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:20:54 – 01:20:55) It’s not my truth.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:20:56 – 01:21:00) And that means that you grew even faster? You opened up even more leases?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:21:01 – 01:21:08) We blew up. We went even faster. We went really fast. We went very fast.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:21:09 – 01:21:19) One of the things that I read or something from when I was doing the research is that you had lots of sort of tangential ideas at that time, maybe because of the money, things like surfing and—
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:21:20 – 01:21:37) This was before WeWork ever started. I had all these ideas. Anybody who tells the story that we had a lot of ideas in 2016 because we raised money doesn’t know that this was done before WeWork ever started in a green desk office. And all the ideas we had were right here.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:21:37 – 01:21:41) This doesn’t look like focus to me. I feel like if I showed my investors this now, they would shout at me.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:21:42 – 01:22:09) Could be. Today I would choose what is the real focus of all these things? Things, the person. And if we can actually, and I would do today, I would do it one foot ahead of the other. It’s a little bit more like we’re doing flow. But when you build a business, it’s art, not science. If you’re going to have some investor who tells you, oh, you put this first and this second and this third, they’re limiting you. You do need to have a very strong foundation. And that’s, as you said before, both as a human being and as a business person.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:22:09 – 01:22:17) So for anyone that can’t see, you just circled the sort of stick person in the middle of all of these ideas. And you said, really, I would have focused on this person.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:22:18 – 01:22:28) I would really have focused on the person and only added things that made— so we had a mission, create a world where people make a life and not just a living. We should have just only added things that are in support of that mission.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:22:28 – 01:23:05) It reminds me of Amazon and Jeff Bezos, their famous saying of working backwards from the customer and what’s the customer’s pain points. We’ve just hired a wonderful person, our CTI from Amazon. She’s called Arda. And she says to me that at Amazon, there’s always often an empty seat at the meetings, and that is the customer. So they leave an empty seat so that they can make the decisions through the lens of this person. So they’re always in every meeting. So you don’t get distracted of who you’re doing it for.
And that’s kind of what you described. It’s actually become, since she’s joined our business, it’s always front of mind for all of us. It’s just like work backwards from the customer. Because sometimes you might work forward from your own ego. Like, I like like that.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:23:05 – 01:23:37) Remember, I’m going to give you my best advice. I’ve met— I’ve had the pleasure to meet Mr. Bezos, and he’s phenomenal, and he’s one of the best operators on the planet by far. Some would say the best. My best advice for you, build a culture that is authentic and true to you. So I love that you’re focusing on the customer, but I can tell as we’re speaking, you’re very honed in on your user. Multiple times you’ve told me how your listener is going to interpret what we’re saying. You are aligned with your listener. I have no doubt about it.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:23:37 – 01:23:43) Isn’t that a form of working backwards from the customer? Because I’m sat here about thinking 21-year-old Dave, Jenny, I’m thinking about, and every time you answer a question—
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:23:43 – 01:23:45) Again, I’m sorry, I don’t want to—
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:23:46 – 01:23:46) No, please do.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:23:47 – 01:24:09) No, we’re being very— I’m repeating myself and I don’t mean to be boring. And if we did this podcast 3 years ago, maybe I would go all over the place. If you actually today went to the depth of your truth? What is your correction? What do you need to work on? Where are you going? And then you found that, and then you brought that back into your team. I am telling you, I don’t even know how far it would be.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:24:10 – 01:24:12) So are you saying I don’t need to work backwards from the customer? What are you saying?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:24:13 – 01:24:24) I’m saying your truth has to be yours first. I’m not pushing against this theory of, of course, we need to work. Again, my truth. I know a lot of times people keep telling me what the customer wants. I, Rebecca and I build what we think is correct.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:24:25 – 01:24:25) You don’t listen to the customer?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:24:25 – 01:24:57) No focus groups. No way. There’s a famous saying, I think it’s Henry Ford: “If I asked the customer, they would have asked for faster horses.” Never invented the car. No what you want. I think it’s about finding our own truth. I think when a person finds his own truth, they can express it. Of course, I’m not going to tell you we shouldn’t listen to the customer. In Flow, we have a lot of things. I could tell you 10 things that the customer has pointed out to us that, of course, are right, and we do. But again, we have an opinion.
If we listen to our customer and flow, we’d have prettier buildings so more influencers can take more pictures.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:24:58 – 01:25:02) So you’re saying hear your customers, but don’t always listen to them. Is that a distinction?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:25:02 – 01:25:32) I am saying, do you know yourself? I’m saying everyone rushing, building all these businesses when they don’t even know who they are leads us to going into dinners and talking about nothing, going into parties and doing whatever it is that we’re doing. And instead of living life to the potential, life is so beautiful and amazing and full that if you’re going to now be busy listening to your customer because you want to build a business because you want to make money, not only do I think it’s not going to work for you, where’s the fun in that?
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:25:33 – 01:25:36) I think I’m asking this in part selfishly for myself.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:25:36 – 01:25:37) Okay, for you, I’m ready.
Opportunity, Distraction, and Staying Focused
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:25:38 – 01:26:09) So at a stage in my business, where we’re being offered lots of money from lots of people, our last valuation was about $450 million or something like that. And so I reflect on your story a lot because because I, although the numbers were wildly different, you were at a moment where, you could raise whatever money you wanted. And with that comes opportunity and distraction dressed in the same dress, potentially.
And in this particular season of your story, I go, oh, Adam, bought this, apparently bought like a surfing thing and a thing over here.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:26:09 – 01:26:58) Let’s say something just because you said it, because I love it. The surfing thing we bought for $7 million was 48% of a company called Wavegarden. We bought it because we thought you could build amazing communities around surf. Wavegarden today does north of, as far as I know, north of $500 million in sales for 2027. I think this year maybe around $250. They’re extremely successful. The founders are so happy.
I saw them not too long ago because when I stepped down, WeWork famously sold it back to them for $5 million, even though it was worth so much more. They own 100% of their business. Their business is thriving, and I stand behind mind. And I’ll tell you again today, the best amenity for, if we wanted to build a big global community, real estate, best amenity number one, school. Because if you have a great school, everybody wants to live around good school.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:26:58 – 01:27:28) Let me double-click there then. Even though Wavegarden was a great idea, like great, spotted a great business that went on to be very, very successful. In our situation, there’s lots of those. And I would end up giving a different business. Yeah. Like in my world, there’s lots of these, like we could do that and that and that and that. And do you know what? Objectively, maybe they’re all good ideas. But when we talked about this point of focus, I would then be splitting myself 10%, even though they have a great answer for you.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:27:28 – 01:28:29) Best recommendation to you would be the same one I gave you when we spoke about your fiancée. I think you need a little bit time for yourself for a second. I think you need to soul search and see exactly where you want to go. Ask yourself what I just said. Assume that in 6 years you’re huge. What for? And why. And when you answer what for and why, then go back to today and say, well, who’s the right partner to get me there? That’s the only way to make that.
Because if you make your decision based on anything else, you might suffer what happened to me, God forbid. And we don’t need this for you. First, understand who you are. Then decide where you want to go, because of it. Then go back to all of the investors and see who’s the right investor. And again, I’m going to say it again, ’cause I think it’s worth it. I think you should choose, all of us should choose our partners, our friends, and our business partners based on how they will treat us in our worst day when we show the worst, not the best.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:28:30 – 01:28:53) If I don’t pause for a second and I don’t do the work and I don’t get clear on what my mission is and why I’m doing it before I make these decisions now, do grow. To grow. Yeah. And that could be for anyone listening that’s at the start of their journey. It’s going well. They’re being pulled by opportunity, not by mission. What is the mistake around the corner there that I’ll end up making that you referenced that you said you made that I can’t currently see?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:28:53 – 01:29:40) So I think the rule of thumb that we gave is, well, we’ve said a few things. If your business started with a mission, then you’re already doing better than most because a lot of people don’t have a real mission. So, first step, you needed to have had a real mission. Now, let’s say you actually had a real mission, and you found that truth. And now you’re there, and now this growth is offered for you.
If the growth of the business is going to grow faster than you’re capable of handling— handling is ego, handling is money, handling is relationships, handling— there’s a lot of handling, we can translate it in many ways— then, in definition, something is going to crack. There will be a short circuit. So before you jump on that growth without understanding that growth, you have to make sure that you’re ready for it and that it’s actually correct for you.
The Technology Shabbat Challenge
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:29:41 – 01:29:46) What is the most effective practice you’ve ever deployed to know yourself better?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:29:47 – 01:32:18) For me, Adam, and it’s just my truth, about 10 years ago, I started keeping Shabbat, which for those who don’t know, it means that on Friday, we disconnect from technology for 25 hours. Hours, and I just spend my time with my family, my friends, and taking part of something greater than myself. That disconnection actually makes a lot more connection than anybody understands. So, the best practice I can suggest is technology Shabbat. Forget religion. This has nothing to do with religion.
If you take 24 hours off of your phone, completely off, put it aside, we say put it in the cookie jar. Here’s what I forecast. When’s the last time you were off your phone for 24 hours, by the way? Oh, God. Okay, we’re going to have to lead by example. So, if we’re going to ask people— this is connecting, by the way, to my idea— we’re going to have to lead by example. So, here’s what I suggest to the founders, to everyone. Choose a day, make it Saturday, make it Sunday, make it middle of the week. It’s easier on the weekend.
Make it the day that’s true for you and take your phone away for 24 hours and put it in a place that you genuinely are not going to touch it. Give it to a friend if you can’t trust yourself. The first 2 hours, the amount of times your hand is going to go to your pocket thinking your phone is there will show you how addicted you are, because it’s an actual addiction. But then what you’ll notice, especially if you scheduled it in advance, you planned a dinner with your friends, some activities that include going out to nature, little things.
From my experience, when those 24 hours are over and you take back that phone, 2 things will happen. One, you’re going to feel amazing at hour 22, 23, and 24. Amazing. You’re going to take out that phone, it’s going to take you exactly 10 minutes to drop back down to the wrong frequency. That’s one. 2, some of the best ideas you’ve had in some time are going to come to you, including who you should be surrounded with, what business you should focus on, what is your next move. For me, the best practice is that 24 hours once a week.
Now, again, remember, I have 6 kids, I’m married. That 24 hours where it’s us together has been phenomenal. And I think in front of everybody, everyone, if you committed to do 24 hours one time, and then report back to all of us, A, how hard it was, which will be a definition for the addiction, but B, was it positive? Because you talk a lot about giving your listeners tools. Well, I think we should test the tools on ourselves first, and only if they work, we should really recommend them for everybody.
But I have a feeling it would be amazing for you and even better for your fiancée. I bet she wants it, by the way. I bet she’s even asked for this.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:32:18 – 01:32:19) She’s asked me a million times.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:32:19 – 01:32:21) Well, why haven’t you said yes if she asked you a million times?
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:32:23 – 01:32:25) Why haven’t I said yes? What’s the answer?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:32:26 – 01:32:27) Whenever someone—
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:32:27 – 01:32:28) Because I don’t see the upside.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:32:28 – 01:32:30) It’s because you’re religious, not spiritual.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:32:31 – 01:32:32) Hmm.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:32:32 – 01:32:49) Whenever someone can change something, I think they’re religious. I keep saying to people, I’m spiritual, not religious. I’ll change. I can change. I can go. I’m not stuck in a box. Whenever you’re stuck in a box and you’re not ready to change something, of course you can’t see the upside. Give you an example. Fasting. Have you fasted?
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:32:49 – 01:32:49) Yes.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:32:49 – 01:32:53) Does your brain get very clear? Fasted from water and food or just water? Just food?
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:32:54 – 01:32:55) Both, yeah.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:32:55 – 01:32:57) Have you ever done a whole day no water, no food?
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:32:57 – 01:32:59) Yes. No food. And I’ve done ketosis as well.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:32:59 – 01:33:36) So ketosis also, it’s a little different. Have you noticed when fasting after 12 hours, 18 hours, 24, depending how clear your head becomes? Your body doesn’t want it. Your body doesn’t see an upside in it, but you’ve tested it and you know that you get clarity from it. You know that there’s a benefit benefit to it. Same thing here. Saying, I don’t see the benefit of putting my phone away from 24 hours, is the way an addict will speak about, I don’t see the benefit of stopping to take the drug.
Trying it, and after doing it 2, 3 times, being like, that didn’t work for me, I respect that. But you, by the way, I think you know that it would work.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:33:37 – 01:33:50) Yeah, this is what I was going to say is like, conceptually, of course I know it’s going to work. I’ve like sat here with the neuroscientists that have done the studies. I think there was probably a more honest answer that I’ve just sort of uncovered, which is it would be very uncomfortable. And even the thought of it is like really uncomfortable.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:33:51 – 01:34:20) But now you and I are going somewhere. How do we know what to do in life? Whenever we feel that we’re in a crossroad, a decision, one is comfortable, one is not, keep going after the uncomfortable one. Path of most resistance, path of least resistance. Always go after the path of most resistance. Long journey, short journey, go after the long. But you know what happens? It takes less time, it ends up being easier, and has a lot more value. There are rules to the game of life. No one taught us.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:34:20 – 01:34:21) So I— we go back to the table.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:34:21 – 01:34:25) Wait, are we getting a commitment? I need a commitment. If Francis is listening, can we do one time?
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:34:25 – 01:34:27) She’s listening. I don’t know about the show. We can do one time.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:34:27 – 01:34:28) Okay, perfect.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:34:28 – 01:34:29) We can do one time.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:34:29 – 01:34:31) Can we make sure to do it this month in September?
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:34:31 – 01:34:32) Well, that’s a great question.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:34:34 – 01:34:35) If it’s uncomfortable.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:34:35 – 01:34:38) Yes, we can. Just before I shake, because I want to make sure I honor my word.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:34:38 – 01:34:40) No, because we’re going to both keep our word.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:34:40 – 01:34:41) Can I define?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:34:41 – 01:34:41) Let’s define.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:34:41 – 01:34:42) Define it.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:34:42 – 01:34:50) You just said something I teach my my kids, before you— if you’re having a problem keeping your word, do a better job defining it before you ever say it. So go right ahead.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:34:50 – 01:34:55) It’s not going on my phone or my computer or any electronic device for 25 hours.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:34:55 – 01:34:57) You can drive, you can turn on the lights, do everything else.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:34:57 – 01:34:58) I can talk about business.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:34:58 – 01:35:00) No, no, we’re not asking you to.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:35:00 – 01:35:00) Pen and paper.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:35:00 – 01:35:06) I’m not asking you to keep Shabbat. I said technology Shabbat. We’re just going off.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:35:06 – 01:35:08) I can brainstorm on a whiteboard.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:35:08 – 01:35:20) Encouraged. Encouraged to brainstorm. Now, again, next level will be we’ll take business out of it so you can really connect. But let’s do the Okay, so wait, let’s define it. No screens, which includes your computer, your iPad, your watch, whatever. Yeah, that watch.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:35:20 – 01:35:21) Good.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:35:21 – 01:35:25) I like it. Does your car have like a big screen? Because some of the cars are like big iPads.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:35:25 – 01:35:27) I won’t be in my car because I’ll be in Europe in September.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:35:27 – 01:35:29) So we’re done. Okay, great deal.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:35:29 – 01:35:30) Deal. I’ll let you know how it goes.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:35:30 – 01:35:31) Let all of us know.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:35:31 – 01:35:32) I will.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:35:32 – 01:35:33) Now we can go back.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:35:33 – 01:36:15) So let’s go back to this because I really wanted to nail this point of focus. Please do. I’m obsessed. I’m pretty obsessed with this point of focus. In part, I remember this Jony Ive video I watched. I’ve sent it around for the last couple of years to all of my team. Jony says, “Steve had this remarkable ability to focus.” And he said, “Focus isn’t saying no to things you don’t want to do anyway.
It’s saying no to things that with every bone in your body you want to do, and you wake up thinking about, but you say no to them because we’re going to do this.” And famously in Steve Jobs’ story, when he came back into Apple after being fired, he was sat in a room with all of his executives. They’ve all got a million initiatives they’re working on. And famously, he goes up to a whiteboard and draws 4 things— I think it was a 4-quadrant thing— and he says, “This is what we’re going to do. Everything else is canceled.”
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:36:15 – 01:36:16) Canceled it.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:36:17 – 01:36:30) One of the things that I’d concluded from the period after you’d raised all this money was that there was a lack of focus because you ended up doing lots of things at the same time. And that’s something that I find myself almost at like the foothills of being tempted to do. So that’s why I wanted to ask you the question.
Creators Need Protectors
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:36:30 – 01:38:10) Let’s answer it. So first of all, we talked about superpowers and super weaknesses. I cannot tell you that my superpower is focus. It’s not my superpower. I actually have the opposite of it. My challenge is, and Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen helped me understand this, I’m very good at zero to one. So the problem with many entrepreneurs, many entrepreneurs have a lot of ideas. The problem with me having a lot of ideas, they actually become a reality.
So one entrepreneur has— Ben was telling this to me, he said, another entrepreneur is going to come with 9 new ideas, and the next board meeting, maybe he one of them. You have 9 ideas, we didn’t say anything in the board meeting, we come next board meeting, there’s 9 new businesses. So, focus is something that I need to work on. So, now let’s go a little deeper. And this is how I do my own personal growth. I’m a creator. I’m not a protector. I’m really good at creating. I’m not that great at protecting.
Rebecca’s grandfather famously said, “It takes 1 lion to make a fortune and 10 lions to watch it.” His name was Andre Hertz. 1 lion to make a fortune, 10 lions to watch it. Saying, because I’m now aware that I’m more a creator than a protector, there needs to be someone else around the table, on the team, whose job is to say, Adam, sounds great, and maybe we should do it in 3 months, or in 6 months, or in 9 months. But right now, we really need to focus not on one thing— I’m not a one-thing kind of guy— but let’s say on 3 things.
Where other people can only do one at a time, I’m probably very good at 3 to 5. But once you go above that number, 10 to 15, 15, which I could fall into that trap, not going to succeed. So, for me, with my personality, I would have to surround myself with people I trust to say, no.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:38:10 – 01:38:11) Did you have that at WeWork?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:38:12 – 01:38:37) A little, but not really. Because again, remember, back to that horrible moment where I walk back into the office and the ego got the best of me, what happens next when you lose yourself? You start attracting the wrong people. So the people that were hired after that were just there for the money. The energy that was being projected was, let’s go public, let’s do this, let’s do that. The energy that’s projected was wrong.
The SoftBank Offer, the IPO, and Stepping Down
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:38:37 – 01:38:45) You filed for an IPO, and I think SoftBank invested a further $2 billion into WeWork.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:38:45 – 01:38:51) So you really are trying to get to the story. The challenge with what you’re trying to do is there’s so much context to the story missing. I’ll give you the little piece.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:38:52 – 01:38:52) High level.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:38:52 – 01:38:56) No, I understand. I’m all good with that. I’ll give it to you if this is your podcast.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:38:56 – 01:38:57) No, no, no, no.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:38:57 – 01:38:58) Hey, pal.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:38:58 – 01:38:59) I’ll tell you what I want to get. I just want to understand.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:38:59 – 01:39:04) Tell me where you’re going after, and then I’m going to tell you something that I mentioned once, but no one has your viewership, so we’ll mention it again.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:39:04 – 01:39:06) I want to close this now.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:39:06 – 01:39:20) Yeah, I’ll close this for you. I’ll close this for you. So we, Masa gives the money. Yeah. We lose our mission a little bit, but he’s very clear what he wants. He wants the fastest. He wants the largest company on the planet.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:39:20 – 01:39:20) A trillion-dollar company.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:39:20 – 01:39:22) I can deliver big company.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:39:22 – 01:39:22) I can do it by then, back then.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:39:23 – 01:41:06) And by the way, no one said numbers like that. Today we’ve seen companies 5 years old that are getting to those numbers. Look how the world’s moving. What was impossible and no one could talk about and made fun of 10 years ago suddenly is everyday reality. Not a big word anymore, but it’s a huge number obviously, and very few companies are going to be there and stay there. But more as time moves forward, more and more. Masa invests and the money ends up coming in only in 2017.
Takes quite a long time between when the investment is offered in 2016, that piece of paper, to the money coming in in 2017. But we deliver on our $960 million in sales. And the following year, we deliver on our $1.8 billion or $1.92 billion, whatever the exact number we said. We hit our number. And Masa comes and says, wow, you really delivered on your number. I said, of course, Masa-san, we always deliver on our number. And he said, “Well, Adam, I’ve invested with Vision Fund in a lot of companies. Everybody promised me to double revenue.
You’re one of the only ones who did it.” I said, “Well, that’s what we did.” He said, “Well, so our expenses grew.” I said, “I have no problem with the expenses.” When the time is right, we’ll stop the growth and profitability will catch up, as we explained that happens in businesses that are actually successful. And he comes and basically comes up with this idea. He says, how about we buy— your investors are going to want an IPO and they’re going to want an exit. They’re going to want focus. I have no problem with how wide we’re going.
How about we buy the company for 20 billion. And this is the story that a lot of people don’t understand. “How about I buy the company? I’ll give it a $20 billion valuation, which is very similar to the valuation it came in before.” But I said, “$20 billion, isn’t it a little low?” He said, “No, no, $20 billion of actual cash. We’ll give $10 billion to the investors, and we will put $10 billion on the balance sheet.”
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:41:07 – 01:41:08) In the bank account, basically.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:41:08 – 01:45:04) In the bank account. You, Adam, won’t sell. Your employees can sell some so they make money. All the investors are out, you and your management team will go down to 30%. Me and the new me, SoftBank Vision Fund, whoever is going to do it, will own 70%. And when you hit goals that we agree, you and the management team will go from 30% to 51%, and we will go to 49%. And I understand that we’re growing too fast, and I understand that we’ll have too much expenses, but I’m putting my money where my mouth is.
And I don’t care because I think this is going to be one of the biggest companies in the world. This happens— this is a very important part of the story. This happens in March of 2018. This is before the IPO. You can’t bring this story back if you don’t understand this part. March of 2018, he only invested— the money really came in in the middle of 2017, or like Q2. This is only a year after he’s with us. He’s on the board. He has 2 board seats. They know everything that’s happening in the company. No secrets. I take the offer to our board.
So look at this amazing thing. $20 billion. Remember, they invested pre-money valuation of $84 million. This is $20 billion. They invested at $84 million. By this point, they’ve already pulled out because of all the secondaries. They’ve already pulled out somewhere between $300 to $500 million. I’ll check the exact numbers so you have it. Maybe even more, maybe even $700 million by this. They’ve pulled out a lot. Whatever the number was, at least $350 million on an investment of $20 $1 million. I take it to them, the offer.
I said, Marcel, sounds like a great offer, but I, Adam, I’m going to stay in the company, I mean the management team, so we can’t make a deal like this. So in boards, when someone has a deal that they’re staying behind, you need to create a special committee. And a special committee is created. The board member from Benchmark and another board member that we had, which out of respect to him, I’m not saying his name.
And they create a special committee, and they decide to negotiate a $20 billion all-cash deal that would’ve made money for everyone. Remember, Masa came in at $20 million. He’s the only one who’s not making money from this deal, and he’s staying in. Everybody else came in at $50 million, $100 million, $400 million, $1 billion. Everyone’s making money. And there— and this word is a dangerous one, but it’s greed. Because the company at that point is losing about $2 billion a year, forecasted to lose over $3 billion the next year.
He knows the forecast. He wants to put $10 billion to give it run rate of 3 years so we can build whatever we want between the two of us. He’ll be the majority shareholder. They say no and negotiate a $20 billion deal from March till October. For a company losing $2 billion. Now, I don’t know how you value companies. We could talk about how we should value companies because there are very valuable companies who are losing money, of course, at high growth. But still, they have a company losing $2 billion.
Masa-san is offering them $20 billion in return for that pleasure. And they negotiate, these 2 special committees, special board members. Now, I’m not part of it because I’m staying in the deal, so I have zero part of it. In a normal world, if I were to sit on your board and I’m sitting on your board and someone comes and gives this crazy offer to buy me and all the other friends out, and I invested in you now in this $400 million and you gave me a deal at $20 billion and I’m making $2, $3 billion on my $50 million.
First, I come to you and I say, Steven, thank you. Thank you for being such a great entrepreneur and doing this for me, is number one. But number two, I say, Steven, I’m a little offended that you don’t want me with you anymore. Is this really what you want? And if you would tell me, yes, Adam, this is what I want. And this is how a16z— this is why they’re so amazing. They go with the founder. I’ll tell you, Steven, it’s not what I wanted, but I’m grateful for all the money you’ve made for me.
You’ve worked extremely hard, and I wish you good luck. And maybe next time when you do your next business, come back to me again. They don’t do that.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:45:05 – 01:45:05) That.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:45:05 – 01:46:51) They don’t ask me what I want. They negotiate because they think they can push my stuff from $20 billion to $30 billion. Their number was $32 billion. I don’t know how they invented it. They were thinking $100 billion. Remember, they’re the same ones sitting around the board that never gave the feedback on the technology. They’ve never done any of— they have one thing in their eyes and one thing only, and that’s dollar signs.
But the problem with greed and dollar signs, if you’re greedy, you even lose what you have in So they’re negotiating this $20 billion. I must have from the first day said, guys, this is my final offer. There is no $21 billion, even $20 billion is crazy. It’s as high as I’m going to go because I believe in Adam and I believe in me and we’re going to build together. They do that until October. And somewhere around the end of September, beginning of October, they realize he’s not moving.
Stock market is starting to go down and Japan and this and these growth businesses are starting to take a hit. They see that things are changing. Changing, then they decide to engage and actually negotiate the deal. By the time they’re done to document is December 24th, 2018. SoftBank stock is really down for reasons that had nothing to do with us. There is no world in which they could do a $20 billion cash deal and Masa still stays in his place. And Masa calls me and said, “Adam, I’m so sorry, I cannot do the deal anymore.”
It was offered in Again, what these 2 board members should have done is gotten on a plane the next day, came to Masa’s son and said, Masa, please sign. You know everything about the board. You’re in the board. You don’t need any diligence. Here’s our bank account. Here’s the signature. We’re disappointed we’re not staying with Adam, but if that’s what he wants and that’s what you want, good luck to both of you. Thank you for the very fair price. We’ll take our benchmark at the time, at least $2.4 billion they would’ve put.
We’ll take our cash and walk away.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:46:52 – 01:46:52) No.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:46:53 – 01:46:55) No, Travis said very— in an interview I just saw—
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:46:56 – 01:46:56) Travis Kalanick.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:46:56 – 01:46:57) Travis Kalanick.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:46:57 – 01:46:59) Being the CEO of Uber, the founder of Uber.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:47:00 – 01:48:13) And he said that being an entrepreneur is like playing 8-dimensional chess. Being a venture capitalist is like watching the game. Again, remember, as you’re choosing your investors, choose the one who play 8-dimensional chess, not the watchers. So they didn’t do that. Masa calls me. It’s December. He says, I can’t do the deal. And I actually understand him. I actually say, I understand, because they did waste all that time.
Then I found myself in trouble because from when he offered the deal, remember, he was going to have 70%, we were going to have 30%, and the goal was a revenue goal that we needed to— we were already all working towards that goal. We signed the leases, we made the commitments, we were already rushing. We found ourselves in a way that if we weren’t to— he gave the $2 billion because to try not to really ruin the business. He’s already put a lot of money in the business already. We found ourselves being forced to go public.
So, we actually went public when we weren’t ready. That’s what actually happened. So, it’s very important, this piece of the story, because without that context, then you don’t understand. And again, it’s back to all the founders you’re talking about. You got to choose your investors wisely, because if you choose the wrong investors, when the time comes for that big move, if they’re not going to prioritize you. They’re going to do what’s best for them and everybody’s going to lose.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:48:14 – 01:48:17) Why weren’t you ready when you say ready?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:48:17 – 01:49:06) To go public? Yeah. Now you’re going back to systems. We were growing way too fast. Our tech was not catching up with us, so we couldn’t measure things correctly. There’s this thing called SOX compliant when you go public. Our systems weren’t able to do the thing I told you before, to show that one building is profitable, but the neighborhood is not. One city is profitable, but the state is not. I wasn’t able to divide. But now in hindsight, connecting to what we talked today, iAdam wasn’t ready.
And if the founder is not ready, the business is not ready. By the way, I tried to push not to go public. Masa called me, said, please don’t go public. All the people around me, some of them that came after this point, and not all, but a lot of them were all go public, go public, go public. I was getting pushed by the wrong people. Back to surround yourself with the wrong people. But we weren’t ready.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:49:06 – 01:49:18) But the timeline is pretty crazy because obviously COVID is around the corner here. It’s called COVID-19 for a reason. And we’re in— that’s at the end of 2018. You file in January. SoftBank does invest a further $2 billion into WeWork.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:49:18 – 01:49:22) That $2 billion was because they passed on the deal before. It’s not because we filed.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:49:23 – 01:49:25) So that was kind of, I guess, compensation.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:49:26 – 01:49:32) Respect between Masa and myself. In May 2020. Another great deal that Masa signed. Wanted, but they didn’t have to.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:49:33 – 01:49:51) In May 2019, you have almost 500 locations, 400,000 members, 12,000 employees around the world. And then in August 2019, WeWork publicly filed its S-1, company valued at around $47 billion. The WeWork, the S-1 showed some losses.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:49:52 – 01:49:56) A lot of losses, not some losses. Showed the truth. The company was losing money.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:49:56 – 01:50:14) Showed that WeWork had lost $690 million in the first 6 months of 2019, bringing the total losses to almost $3 billion in the past 3 years. WeWork was making losses of $219K every hour it operated. The S-1 revealed that you’d also trademarked the word We and sold it back to the company.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:50:14 – 01:50:15) That’s not true.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:50:15 – 01:50:16) Which you deny?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:50:16 – 01:50:17) No, it’s not.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:50:17 – 01:50:17) It’s not true?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:50:17 – 01:50:21) No, no, no, it’s not denying. If you want, we could talk about— there’s a story, but that’s not true.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:50:21 – 01:50:23) No, no, if it’s not true, it’s not true. I don’t really care about the stuff.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:50:24 – 01:50:56) But again, all these little details, just so we understand, just for the founders who are watching, right? So now you’re telling a story about something that happened to me. There’s supposed to be huge emotion that I’m supposed to have with this. Even if it’s not correct, if it’s what people said, some of it is correct, not correct, so much context is missing. Not the point. Life is not about what other people say or what the press say or even what you say. It’s about what kind of person I know I am.
And the reason I want to tell this to you and to the listeners is we can all be that person. Please keep going.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:50:57 – 01:51:15) September 2019, WeWork announced it was postponing its IPO as a result of investors questioning the company. And then, I mean, around this time COVID shows up, but then you resigned as CEO of WeWork in 2019 after the IPO didn’t pan out.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:51:15 – 01:51:32) So that’s not why I resigned. So I stepped down. And what people don’t know is I I had full control over the board and the votes. So, I had to choose to step down. People sometimes think I was fired because The Wall Street Journal said so. Not true. Stepped down. I had full control. Controlled the board and controlled the—
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:51:32 – 01:51:33) Why did you step down?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:51:34 – 01:51:58) So, when people understand the context, and again, this is an old story, but I’m happy to go there. The only reason a person in control chooses to step down is because they think that it’s the best choice at the time. And again, this is part, by the way, of the play— this is the same playbook that now we’re going to say his name again, Travis, the founder of Uber. Famously, Bill Gurley comes and puts a piece of paper in front of him.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:51:58 – 01:51:58) Who’s Bill Gurley?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:51:58 – 01:54:56) He’s one of the Benchmark partners. He famously puts a piece of paper in front of him, I think, and either you step down or we do this, this, and this, threat that makes him step down. I have a different version of it, but they’re pushing me very, very hard to step down. And at the beginning, I’m like, I’m not stepping down. And then I have a meeting with one of the heads of the 2 biggest banks in the world.
And he sits with me and he says to me, “Adam, if you step down, then we will fund $2 billion into WeWork, which will give it time to move profitable.” Step down, by the way, from being CEO, become chairman. And I, at the time, had personal debt, which is a story for another day. Time, but I had personal debt of $460 million to that bank and to other banks. And I said, but what about my personal debt? My board member was next to me and the guy who runs my family office was next to me. We said, what about our personal debt?
And he said, “Don’t worry about it. We’ll figure it out.” There was also an advisor to my board and he came in front of the whole board and he said, “I spoke to the bank. They said it’s all good. Everything will work.” So, I stepped down out of choice because I thought it was going to fund WeWork. I thought it was going to take care of Masa. I thought it was going to take care of the employees. I thought it was going to take care of everybody. And it sounded like it was in the best of everybody. But I wasn’t going away.
I was just stepping down from being CEO and becoming executive chairman. I do the board call, I step down, and 10 minutes later, a legal letter comes from the bank. And basically says, “Because of your breach of contract, because of the change of control— something very technical, something we talked about to them before and they said no problem, but we didn’t have it in writing— you now have 15 days to pay us back our debt, that $460 million, or we will take your shares.”
And because of my super voting rights, my shares were 5% to 1, which means that by taking away my shares, they would have taken control over the company. Now, what I’m describing to you, and you talked a lot about founders, but you didn’t know a lot of the names. It’s important to know the names and the history because I’m not describing to you something that happened for the first time. This famously happened to multiple entrepreneurs in history. This used to be the venture capital playbook.
Today, there’s a new crop of venture capitalists and they’re very different, but old-school venture capital This is— a lot of times, this is how it used to go. That was the surprise. That’s how we found ourselves suddenly so low, because we— I stepped down because I thought it was the best for everybody. And a second after I did it, we got stabbed in the back. And the only lesson there, if you’re going to stab the king, kill. If you’re not going to kill, we’re going to take a deep breath. We’re going to learn our lesson.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:54:56 – 01:54:57) Sense.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:54:58 – 01:56:08) We’re going to know what’s really important in life. We’re going to come back again. And that’s what actually happened there. And the only reason the story is a little challenging for you is because we never corrected it publicly. And the reason— corrected some of it, but not all of it. And the reason we didn’t correct it publicly— for what?
The best way I can talk about the past is by what I do today, by how we’re speaking right now, by how my kids are, by the businesses I build, by the nonprofit I do, by the friendships I have, by the relationships I hold, And the reason a lot of entrepreneurs come to take money from us, and again, we don’t invest anymore, but we have a huge inbound of people wanting us to invest in them, is because we don’t talk about our successes all the time. We talk about the lessons. Measure us by how we’re going to be next to you when time is very tough.
So that’s what actually happened there, and I found myself out of it very quickly. And from there, without making the story confused, Masa came, Masa saved us, saved the day. He paid the debt to all the banks, $460 million. And in return, I gave him my control of the company. I gave him whatever shares in— I gave him whatever he asked for because we were done and the company was done and he came to save it. And then the rest, they were— was running under them.
The Bank Demand and the Night He Cried
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:56:10 – 01:56:13) You get an email from the bank within sort of, I think it was 9 minutes, I read.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:56:13 – 01:56:13) 9 minutes.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:56:14 – 01:56:18) 9 minutes asking for you to immediately repay, I think, was it about $450 million?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:56:19 – 01:56:22) $450 million compounding daily because you’re default.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:56:22 – 01:56:26) Just for anyone that doesn’t know what compounding daily means, so I have 435 million.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:56:26 – 01:56:31) If you read it, it’s only for my Rick Rubin interview because the first time I said it was only a few months ago. I never spoke about this.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:56:31 – 01:56:34) Okay. Compounding daily means every day.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:56:34 – 01:56:56) So if you have debt of 10% annual, or let’s do 12%, so it’s easy, which would calculate to 1% a month just to keep things really easy. Compounding daily is when your debt suddenly goes, back then I think it’s 5% became 50%. 15 and you calculate it on daily increments. So each time it compounds again and again and again, it ends up that when you do the calculation for the year, it’s more than the debt number.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:56:57 – 01:56:59) Your debt is growing by more than a million a day?
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:57:00 – 01:57:01) No, it’s not. We would have to—
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:57:01 – 01:57:01) Over the course of a year.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:57:01 – 01:57:15) It’s not a million a day, but let’s say it’s 15%. Let’s just use clean numbers. Let’s say it’s 15% over $400 million, which would’ve been $60 million. It’s actually more than $60 million. And if you divide it to it, it’s huge numbers that we don’t have Okay, so you have no money.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:57:15 – 01:57:19) No money. And the bank have asked you for four hundred and let’s say four hundred and fifty.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:57:19 – 01:57:20) And gave us fifteen days to pay.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:57:20 – 01:57:21) Given you fifteen days to pay.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:57:21 – 01:57:22) Or they take everything.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:57:23 – 01:57:25) You say this is what broke me.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:57:26 – 01:57:27) When did I say that?
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:57:27 – 01:57:30) I think you said on the podcast. Yeah, you said on the podcast. You said this is what broke me.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:57:30 – 01:57:35) That was a direct quote. I don’t know if I meant. I wonder if it meant I was broke because I don’t think that’s what broke me.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:57:35 – 01:57:39) You described waking up in the middle of the night crying because you thought you had lost everything.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:57:39 – 01:59:04) Yes, that’s my. More accurate. So, at the moment where that happens, we were okay. A few days later, I wake up in the middle of the night next to Rebecca, crying. Now, we talked about my childhood. We talked, you and I, today about our childhood. We didn’t get the tears out. I don’t cry, not for that. First time Rebecca ever sees me cry. She looks at me and she’s like, “Why are you crying?” And I said, “We lost everything.” I think that’s what I said there. I said, we lost everything. She goes, “What do you mean, everything?” “Everything.”
“Everything?” She goes, “The cars?” I said, “The wheels on the car. Everything.” She goes, “Yeah, but remember we said you’re going to put $100 million on my name just in case?” I said, “Yeah, I remember.” She goes, “And at least we have that.” I said, “I never did it.” She said, “You never did that?” I said, “Never did.” She said, “Okay, but it’s no problem. You didn’t sign a personal guarantee. We said you’d never sign a personal guarantee.” I said, “I signed the personal guarantee.” It’s a long story how that happened, repent, but I signed.
Again, this is why who you marry is so important. How many partners do you know who a second ago thought they were worth whatever that number was and lived a high life and find out in one minute, no preparation, that not only is it all gone, it’s all gone, and on top of the fact that it’s all gone, the promises that was made to them in the relationship were not kept? So it’s gone and money was not to the side, and a personal guarantee was signed. Because if I’m signing a personal guarantee, I’m signing for both of us.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (01:59:04 – 01:59:04) We’re married.
ADAM NEUMANN: (01:59:05 – 02:00:17) And a personal guarantee was signed that was agreed to not to sign. This is why you have to choose your partner really well. Choose your partner for the day something like that happens, not for any other day. I’m lucky that I chose well, or she chose me, or the universe chose us. She looks at me and she goes, “Okay, this is a surprise. My mom owns a house in upstate New York. She bought it 30 years ago. She has no mortgage. Let’s go live with my mom. Take a few months, think about it.
If you want to go back into business, I know you’ll be successful. And if you don’t, we’ll move to Costa Rica. I will homeschool, and we will surf every morning and surf every night, and we’ll have a great life. Either way, don’t worry about it.” And at that moment, this is when I think I grow up for the first time. And you asked about this, and as we’re talking, you’re helping me understand something. You talked about the child and the pain.
As a child, when we’re facing these very difficult things, we have no one to count on, only our parents. For a moment, I think I was that child again.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (02:00:19 – 02:00:19) Crying.
ADAM NEUMANN: (02:00:20 – 02:01:46) But I wasn’t a child anymore because I had an amazing wife and kids that I could lean back on, that have my back, even if I messed up, even if I didn’t keep my word, even if I didn’t do things the way they’re supposed to, even if I took all the potential in the world and messed it up or lost it, even though it was ours for the take. And the moment I realized that, I felt a little stronger. I felt better. I stopped crying. I was like this. I stopped crying. I was like, okay. But Rebecca sees that I’m still not smiling.
She goes, “By the way, when I met you, you were broke. I think you’re much more sexy when you’re broke.” Then I smiled. Now I was happy. Then I walked downstairs. And now you’re completing the story from before. That morning after, when I go to my 3:00 AM 2 things happened before that morning. One was the story with the spiritual teacher who taught me that the darkest moment of the night is a second before dawn, and that belief is measured when we’re down, not when we’re up.
And two, I knew that I could rely on Rebecca, which means I had a foundation, and I had a real partner, and I can make it through anything. So, when my 3 employees said, why are you smiling? I didn’t add everything. I told them the darkest moment of the night is the second before dawn, and I believe. But I also told them, and my wife thinks I’m sexy.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (02:01:50 – 02:01:56) For a kid that didn’t have much stability, that was a moment where you realized your foundation was probably rock solid, I think.
ADAM NEUMANN: (02:01:57 – 02:02:29) I go back to where you started. Biggest decision any of us can make in our life is who’s our partner. And how do we know who We now said 2 things. One, do they make us the best version of ourselves? 2, how will they be in that very tough day if everything was gone and all that is left is not only our nice side? We talked before about the dark side and the light side. How are they going to treat us if for a moment, it’s just the dark side? If the light is not turned off, but diminished?
STEVEN BARTLETT: (02:02:29 – 02:02:37) I could see all the emotion in your face when you recount that moment and how much that means to you. Probably more so than anything else you’ve said.
ADAM NEUMANN: (02:02:38 – 02:03:00) Sometimes Rebecca is quick to anger with me, and I can be upset for a second. But when I have a second to take a deep breath and remember how— what a great wife I have, and what a great partner I have, there’s nothing she can do that can actually keep me upset for more than a little bit. ‘Cause our relationship ship has been tested in fire.
Rebecca Stands Her Ground
STEVEN BARTLETT: (02:03:02 – 02:03:17) There’s another remarkable story I remember you saying about her giving you some advice to stand your ground in the post-WeWork era where there was negotiation still going on about, I think, your compensation that you were going to get. And she gave you some really, really good advice about standing your ground.
ADAM NEUMANN: (02:03:17 – 02:03:17) She did.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (02:03:18 – 02:03:26) What was that for those that haven’t heard that story? It inspired me because I do tend to think my fiancée is always right. And so when I heard that, I thought, huh.
ADAM NEUMANN: (02:03:26 – 02:04:12) So first of all, it’s very hard to stand our ground when we think we have a lot to lose. It’s back to that fear. Rebecca has many superpowers. One of them, she has no fear. To a fault. She’s all truth. She sees people for who they are. And therefore, she’s honest, and she’s not afraid of her truth. If someone’s not going to be our friend, if someone’s not going to talk to us because of it, she doesn’t care. She calls it as it is.
And at the end of this whole negotiation, when it came time to finish everything, my litigator at the time, today he’s my partner, his name is Eric Seiler, he called me, and we talked, and we said, I think we can get to a deal. And we talked about the deal, and we got to the deal.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (02:04:13 – 02:04:14) With who? Between who and who?
ADAM NEUMANN: (02:04:14 – 02:06:40) Between— so, fast to finish the story for everyone. I stepped down. The world— I get the letter from the bank. We have nothing. Masa-san comes in, saves the day, funds the company. Funds us, pays our debt, but we don’t get— we get money, but we don’t get the big number, and agrees on April 1st, 2020, to pay myself and all the other investors $3 billion cash, out of which we would’ve been 30%. So, $1 billion for us. Corona happens really in March, and on the last day of March 2020, we get a letter from SoftBank Saying that this is force majeure.
For those of you who don’t know what force majeure means, is when an event happens that’s greater than life, that’s out of control, like a flood or something. Force majeure, force of nature, something unexpected. And they don’t have to pay the money, and they don’t send the three billion. I remember by this point I’ve taken so many hits. Ah, one at this point I’m already practiced. I look up to the heavens and I say, “Thank you.” God, what do we need to learn from this one? This one I want to be ready to learn.
And the lesson there was apparently litigation is what we need to learn from this one. And we go into a very complicated litigation. When the litigation ends with a settlement of a billion and a half— so instead of the $3 billion, it ends up being half, so everybody gets half, but it’s done— we negotiate a certain negotiation, and it was going to take a certain time for the money to come in. And Rebecca was just about to give birth.
This was 4 days before she was giving And I walk in with my best friend, Andrew Finkelstein, who was there with me for this whole experience. And we walk in to tell— ’cause this is corona, so everything’s on Zoom. So, Eric Seiler, the litigator, is in his house in New York. We’re in the Hamptons. They’re in Japan. Everybody’s all over the place. And we walk in to tell Rebecca the settlement that we agreed, and we settled, but the money will come in 2 months, and this will happen, and that will happen. And she says, no.
And we’re supposed— if we don’t close the deal Monday, we’re going to court. And court was not, A, not going to be great for anyone, and B, it wasn’t great for WeWork because if we weren’t going to go to court, another investor was going to come. They’re going to take the— WeWork at least stood a chance. And she goes, no, we’ve already had— they were supposed to pay April 1st. For 2020, they didn’t pay.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (02:06:40 – 02:06:41) The $3 billion.
ADAM NEUMANN: (02:06:41 – 02:10:26) The $3 billion. Why are you now settling the $3 billion with another agreement to delay payment again? What if they don’t pay? And now you missed your court date. Either they pay and then it’s settled, we’ll all say thank you and everybody will walk away. And it’s not just paying to us. That billion and a half is to all the employees and all the investors. It’s half a billion to us and a billion to everyone else. Either— and I know for all of us, listening, that these are outrageously large numbers. I completely acknowledge and understand.
Either they pay or they don’t. And I say to her, what do you want to do? We agreed on it. And she goes, “Tell them you agreed on it, but your wife didn’t. You didn’t do the money-aside that we talked about. You signed the personal guarantee. It’s not just your money, this is our money. And I don’t accept this settlement. Go back and tell them that either they pay it tomorrow— this was like a Thursday, this was Wednesday— before we had to schedule a C-section, so Friday, 8:00 AM.
Either they pay it before Friday, 8:00 AM, or we’ll see everybody in court on Monday.” And she said, “Also tell them that any horrible thing that’s ever been said about you has been on the press and public. It’s all out there.” So Eric Seiler calls me and he says— actually, Rebecca called him and he said, “Adam, I have a question for you. Who do I work for, you or Rebecca?” He said, “Well, you work for me and I work for Rebecca, so you work for Rebecca.” Because that’s what I thought— she called me and told me I’m a lousy lawyer.
I said, “You’re not a lousy lawyer. She just doesn’t like our settlement, but we did get to a resolution.” I go, “What do you think we should do?” He said, “You have no choice. You should tell them there’s no deal.” I said, “What are they going to do?” He said, “They’re going to explode.” I said, “And then?” He said, “I don’t know.” Either they’ll meet you in court and this was a horrible decision, or they’ll break and send the money. I said, what do you think is going going to happen? He said, I’ve never been in this position.
He said, I don’t know. I said, okay. Got on the phone, we told them what we told them. They hung— they screamed, blah, blah, blah, we’re going to sue you for this and sue you for that. They hung up the Zoom. I called Eric, what now? He goes, now we wait. Okay. 2 hours later, Marcelo calls, and Marcelo is not the person who made the original investment in me. Marcelo Claure is He was, at the time, he was a very big personality in SoftBank. Today, he has his own business.
Every time that I’ve had an interaction with him, he’s always kept his word and always did the right thing. Even when I didn’t agree with him, he told it to me straight. So, I respect him a lot. And Marcelo calls me, he’s on the walker— he’s like a tall guy, like he’s on this walker. He goes, “Call Rebecca.” I was like, “Are you sure, Marcelo? She’s like on the couch.” “Call Rebecca.” I was like, “Okay.” I call Rebecca— she’s coming in again right before birth— and she’s standing there next to him.
And he goes, “Rebecca, I wanted to tell you that you and Adam were ahead of your time.” He’s so correct. He said, “The world is lonely. The world is disconnected. People need we. People need to bring people together. People need community. You’re 10 years ahead of your time.” I don’t think we were 10 years, I think we were 5 years ahead of our time, because the world’s moving so fast. “I just want to tell you the money will be in the bank before you give birth. I’m sorry we had to go through all of this. This is just business.
Nothing here was personal. We’ll take the keys. Hopefully we do well by the company, but we’re good.” Gets off the Zoom. I looked at her. I say, “Now what?” She goes, “Fine. Sign the documents.” I said, “But you said we can’t do it if the money’s not in.” What if she goes, “No, no. We’re all good now.” We signed. At 4:30 AM, the money hits the account. We all get on a Zoom. At 8 AM, I’m in Mount Sinai Hospital, great hospital. Rebecca is giving birth to Moses. Everybody took a deep breath, and we’re here today.
Five Lessons and Closing Thoughts
STEVEN BARTLETT: (02:10:28 – 02:10:36) Adam, I have— I’m going to wrap up, but I have these 5 pieces of empty card, and I wanted to give you the opportunity to write on it. Are you okay with writing, or shall I write it for you? You’ll write for me.
ADAM NEUMANN: (02:10:37 – 02:10:37) Okay, I’ll write for you.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (02:10:39 – 02:10:39) Dyslexia.
ADAM NEUMANN: (02:10:39 – 02:10:40) Okay.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (02:10:40 – 02:10:47) Just the 5 most important lessons that you have learned over since the beginning of WeWork. Well, I guess from the beginning of your career.
ADAM NEUMANN: (02:10:47 – 02:10:58) How about we just do the 5 lessons I feel we learned today by talking? Sure. Lesson 1, choose your life partner, friends, and business partners for the worst day in your life, not for the best.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (02:10:59 – 02:11:01) Okay. Great advice.
ADAM NEUMANN: (02:11:02 – 02:11:17) Lesson 2, life is not about when we fall. Down. It’s about how we get up. Okay, number 2. Choose the life partner that will make you the best version of yourself. The one that you need, not the one that you think you want.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (02:11:18 – 02:11:18) Okay.
ADAM NEUMANN: (02:11:20 – 02:11:29) Control doesn’t come from power. It comes from influence. And influence needs to be earned every single day from the beginning.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (02:11:30 – 02:11:35) And last but not least, We all have a destiny and a journey.
ADAM NEUMANN: (02:11:38 – 02:11:43) Get to know yourself so you can start living yours. That one’s for you.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (02:11:43 – 02:12:44) Yeah, I thought so. Adam, thank you so much. I am— I couldn’t be more excited by all the wonderful things you’re doing at Flow at the moment. Got some wonderful photos here of like the team and I’ve looked into the business. I also had your partner, your partner, one of the greatest investors of all time, Ben Horowitz, write me this beautiful letter where he talks about the amazing journey he’s had with you and why he backed you and how amazingly collaborative you’ve been, what a sponge you are for learning, and how he strongly believes that you are now building a generational business that will change the world and how proud he is to be associated with a man like you.
He us all, Ben Horowitz, we should never judge a founder by his worst moment. But with Adam, that was easy because his light shined and shines so brightly. You have overdelivered in every sense of the word, including on your promises. Thank you, Adam.
ADAM NEUMANN: (02:12:44 – 02:13:01) That’s beautiful. I want Steven to thank you. I know we had a real discussion because I learned a few things for the first time. And you made me talk out loud about a few things that I’ve almost never had. I appreciate it. And I’m going to think about it. And I’m going to learn from it.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (02:13:01 – 02:13:06) What’s your last word? Is there anything at all that you wanted to leave the audience with?
ADAM NEUMANN: (02:13:07 – 02:14:44) We all came to this planet with a purpose and a destiny. We started this life as this perfect light. Noise came, challenges came, people came, ego came, everything came. It is up to all of us to have the courage to look inside, see whatever are the things that are stopping us from really becoming the best version of myself, of ourselves. Surround ourselves with the right people, with the right family, both real family, spiritual family, whatever you consider your best and closest, and go and chase your dream, your journey, your truth.
And I know as a fact that if you go through the process, if you remember that life is not about how we fall and how many people saw us fall, it’s genuinely about how we get up. And if you have the courage to really be the full version of yourself, and you’re truthful about not just your strengths, strength, but also the weaknesses.
And if you remember that it truly is a journey, that when you get to that last few minutes of your life, you’re going to look around, you’re going to be surrounded by loved ones, and by a lot, a lot of love that you’ve created and cultivated for your entire life, and that you’re going to leave this world and this planet much better than it was before you came. I wish you and all of us good luck at this journey of life. Amen. Amen.
STEVEN BARTLETT: (02:14:44 – 02:15:02) Thank you. We’re done. Thank you.
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