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

WeWork began offering commercial real estate brokers a shocking commission: 100 percent of the first year’s rent paid by new tenants.

The goal was “lightning” growth. Network effects were key.

No one at Benchmark was prepared to make a move on Adam,

intentionally doing things that don’t make sense according to traditional business thinking,”

“You get to a question of, is that what capitalism is supposed to do?” Schwartz asked. “There’s so many little ways that a company like this tells the next generation of entrepreneurs what success looks like.

Benchmark led a coup against Kalanick, forcing him out of his own company.

500 million in profit by 2017. Instead, the company was on pace to lose nearly $1 billion as the costs of its rapid expansion grew.

A dirty secret of the start-up boom was the fact that private market valuations were all but meaningless, bearing little connection to how much money a company made or what economic value it created.

Schultz said that he wished he had taken six months to stop growing so that Starbucks could have ironed out various problems that would plague the business for years.

“You need to ruin people’s lives for the next two months.”