Vendor
	Fletcher Agency Yona Levin
Original language
English

THE CULT OF WE

Eliot Brown Maureen Farrell

WeWork, Adam Neumann and the Great Startup Delusion

The definitive inside story of WeWork, its audacious founder, and what the company's epic unraveling exposes about Silicon Valley's delusions and the financial system's desperate hunger to cash in--from the Wall Street Journal reporters whose scoops hastened the company's downfall.

WeWork would be worth $10 trillion, more than any other company in the world. It wasn’t just an office space provider. It was a tech company—an AI startup, even. Its WeGrow schools and WeLive residences would revolutionize education and housing. One day, mused founder Adam Neumann, a Middle East peace accord would be signed in a WeWork. The company might help colonize Mars. And Neumann would become the world’s first trillionaire. In hindsight, their ambition for the company, whose primary business was subletting desks in slickly designed offices, seems like madness. Why did so many intelligent people—from venture capitalists to Wall Street elite—fall for the hype? And how did WeWork go so wrong? Peppered with eye-popping, never-before-reported details, The Cult of We is the gripping story of careless and often absurd people—and the financial system they have made.

Eliot Brown covers startups and venture capital for The Wall Street Journal. He joined the Journal in 2010 to cover real estate, and previously worked at The New York Observer. He lives in San Francisco. Maureen Farrell has been a reporter at The Wall Street Journal since 2013. She previously worked at Forbes, Debtwire, and Mergermarket. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters.

Available products
Book Published 2021-07-20 by Crown

Comments

“A juicy guided tour through the highly leveraged, not-quite-rags-to-billion-dollar-parachute saga of WeWork. . . . I guzzled The Cult of We the way Neumann might gulp bottled water after smoking so much pot on a private jet. . . . The book saves its firepower for the cataclysmic combination of Neumann’s gift for salesmanship, addiction to fund-raising and focus on his personal wealth. We meet weak venture capitalists who kowtow to charismatic entrepreneurs as well as mutual fund directors, investment bankers and deep-pocketed benefactors like SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son who enabled Neumann. Brown and Farrell show an agility for explaining key business dynamics that are crucial both to understanding specific moments in WeWork’s trajectory, and also to grasping the role of public and private investors in the company’s successes and failures. They do so without slowing down the narrative. . . . The Cult of We is a book that calls for keeping a pen handy so you can write in the margins, giving the Greek chorus in your head a place to pop off. . . . It’s also very funny.”
—Katherine Rosman, New York Times

“It’s not an exaggeration to say this book changed, in ways few have, the way I view power, wealth, manias, and of course cults of personality. It’s a touchstone in my own thinking and reporting and I think destined to be a classic. What Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell do so well, aside from assembling endless astonishing details from private meetings between Adam Neumann and some of the richest and most powerful people on earth, is show why the Cult of We was able to arise. . . . If I had to make a list of top five business books of all time, this would be on it. It’s just so damn engrossing.”
—Christopher Mims, author of Arriving Today; tech columnist, Wall Street Journal

“The Cult Of We expertly charts the disastrous arc of Adam Neumann’s WeWork. . . . Brown and Farrell explain, better than anyone else, how the real estate company ballooned to a $47 billion behemoth. . . . What Brown and Farrell crystallize are how the distorted incentives and reckless decision-making by numerous well-monied people set WeWork on its doomed path. . . . [The] book provides essential insight into the opaque mechanics of how a private company builds astronomical valuation, and the twisted feedback loop that motivates people not to solve obvious problems.”
—The A.V. Club

“The Emperor’s New Clothes of the Silicon Valley age.”
—The Real Deal

“The ultimate portrayal of the inscrutable Adam Neumann and an empire built on sand. . . . The authors combine sharp eyes and never-before-heard details for a gripping account.”
—Newsweek

“[A] deeply reported inside look at gig economy opportunism run amok.”
—Lit Hub

“A lesson in how far a person can get by convincingly playing the part. Deeply reported and compellingly written.”
—Harvard Business Review

“A must-read for those interested in tech.”
—The Information

“This exposé on the coworking company’s downfall—and the absurd players involved—is
as engrossing as Silicon Valley tales get. Bonus: it’s perfect fodder for summer barbecue chatter.”
—Los Angeles Magazine

“Between missed opportunities and the erratic behavior of Adam, its CEO, WeWork became a shambles by 2019. The book is packed with stories of his shocking managerial style.”
—New York Post