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

Masa was interested in reviving a proposed merger between T-Mobile and Sprint, which SoftBank owned; the deal had run afoul of Obama administration regulators concerned about

“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.

Berrent accused those who joined the Women’s March of being selfish, implying that any community building needed to take place within WeWork’s walls. “That,” Berrent said, “was a ‘Me Over We’ decision.”

TO NEUMANN’S POTENTIAL PARTNERS, this seemed less like an invitation than a warning.

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

“I became passionate about him achieving his maximum potential,”

The company’s existing plans were ripped up and doubled, or more; WeWork’s marketing team tripled its spending. Masa told Adam he should have ten thousand salespeople—

Keeping expenses low was key to WeWork’s model,

‘No schmucks and no assholes,’” Roth said. But “the definition of a schmuck is someone who rents a property at .5x and then that guy turns around and rents it at 1.5x.”

Adam work on his spiritual life.