Don’t take out Adam Neumann.
The disgraced former WeWork CEO may have lost his empire, but an insider told The Post that Neumann, 41, is already planning his mysterious next business move.
“It’s about what happened in the world as a result of the pandemic,” said the insider. “He has big plans and is waiting for the right time to announce them.”
Neumann has reportedly not seen the buzzing new Hulu documentary “WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $ 47 Billion Unicorn” that chronicles his spectacular rise and fall as CEO of the once-hot office space start-up.
The entrepreneur is portrayed in the documentary as a charismatic yet misguided charlatan who convinced financial movers and shakers – from Jamie Dimon of Chase Bank to SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son – to guide him and give him billions for WeWork before going all wrong in August 2019. went.
Close friends and relatives have “described” the film for him, but the punch line turned by a child prodigy doesn’t look or read things about himself, an insider told The Post.
Instead, he’s hid in his Greenwich Village home with his wife, Rebekah, and five children, working on the ‘brand new’ venture.
Neumann has not spoken in public since he left the company in September 2019, six weeks after his joint office space company filed documents for an IPO, with a dazzling valuation of $ 47 billion. But that valuation fell by half the following month and the IPO failed amid revelations that the company was losing money and that its growth forecasts were hugely optimistic. In addition, reports of Neumann’s rock and roll excesses, including wild spending and marijuana use on board a private jet, and financial irregularities.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Neumann was paid $ 1.7 billion in exchange for cutting most of his ties to WeWork.
He is also widely mocked for making statements that he wants to live forever, referring to WeWork – essentially an office space subletting company – as something that would “ raise awareness of the world. ”
After losing the business, the family and their nannies left for Israel to stay low for several months. In a move meant to “ simplify life, ” the source said, the Neumanns have sold at least three of the six reported properties in their estimated $ 90 million portfolio, including one of their homes in the Hamptons, one in Westchester and a luxurious Gramercy Park. link.
But three people who know Neumann, who grew up in a kibbutz in Israel for a while, told The Post that he doesn’t lick his wounds or hide his head ashamed – despite falling off the Forbes billionaire list in 2020 after his net worth fell. from a maximum of $ 14 billion to $ 750 million.
“He feels he has made mistakes, but he also feels that the media has been sensationalized by certain elements of the story,” a source familiar with the situation told The Post.
The $ 47 billion valuation was probably a mistake. But WeWork is still a good company and he built it … It has hundreds of locations. I don’t know that many people who can build such a company in 10 years. “
He has also received support from some unlikely people.
“I feel strange defending a (sometimes quite sharp) competitor, but I am concerned about these WeWork documents and films,” Jamie Hodari, the CEO and co-founder of Industrious, a WeWork rival, wrote recently. LinkedIn.
Hodari told The Post he thinks Neumann’s troubled reputation has dishonestly tarnished WeWork as a whole.
“Regardless of how Adam behaved professionally, you can’t ignore the fact that the man built a $ 9 billion company,” said Hodari. “Very few people have done that and in such a short time.”
Mick McConnell, a former senior vice president at WeWork who is out of touch with Neumann, told The Post he thought Neumann was overly demonized.
“Adam has put together a team of people who have never been seen before,” said McConnell, who is writing a book about WeWork. “We have produced space – something that had never been done before – and changed the way architecture and development will be done from this point on. Co-working becomes even more relevant as people work even more outside the office. “
Neumann launched WeWork in 2010 with co-founder Miguel McKelvey, who is barely mentioned in the documentary, and his wife Rebekah, a cousin of Gwyneth Paltrow.
Rebekah, 42, a former aspiring actress and yoga instructor, is portrayed as a poisonous, New Age Lady Macbeth in both the documentary and her husband’s recent biography, “Billion Dollar Loser,” by Reeves Wiedeman.
According to Wiedeman, Rebekah’s fingerprints everywhere were the key element of the company’s near-implosion in August 2019 when WeWork filed its S-1 form ahead of a planned IPO.
The Neumanns didn’t seem concerned that the document code-named “ Wingspan ” revealed We Work’s $ 1.6 billion losses – which horrified investors. Instead, Rebekah Neumann, whose title was Chief Brand and Impact Officer, commissioned a Vanity Fair photographer to take photos of celebrities and influencers like Anna Faris, Aimee Song, Ron Howard, and Arianna Huffington at WeWork spaces, and took them in the application.
An insider who knows the couple said some people expected Neumann to dump Rebekah after his embarrassing removal from the company.
“No way,” said the source. “Adam and Rebekah are devoted to each other and devoted to those children. There could be no greater contrast to how Adam is portrayed in public and what a family man he is. “
Rebekah, who started a ‘mindful entrepreneurial school’ for children within WeWork called ‘WeGrow’, reportedly hopes to rename and relaunch it as a new venture called ‘Students for Life’ or SOLFL (pronounced ‘soulful’) now that WeWork has sold. the WeGrow rights back to her.
Meanwhile, Neumann – who has not undergone therapy or any form of rehabilitation, an employee said – has invested in a number of startups, including a technology-backed mortgage service, a residential concierge service called Alfred, and some Israeli companies.
He also came out of hiding in November to facilitate a deal between the head of a special purpose acquisition company and SoftBank, the now majority shareholder of WeWork, paving the way for the upcoming $ 9 billion IPO of his former company.
SoftBank originally saved WeWork after its first disastrous attempt to go public.
[Adam’s] still a positive, happy guy, ”one employee told The Post. “He feels humble, yes, but he’s here to stay.”