Billion Dollar Loser
Ratings23
Average rating4.2
One of the best reads of the year. this is the antithesis of 2010's start up culture. Entertaining as can be
A detailed look into WeWork and the life of Adam Neumann. The beginnings. the rise, and the epic collapse. Come for the schadenfreude and stay because it's even worse than you think it's going to be.
The book highlights how far a magnificent showman can go with (almost) unlimited VC money support and backing. Adam managed to convince everyone, from poorly paid workers to bankers, that his idea was about really changing the world. In reality, it was not even coworking but plain and boring office sharing.
I generally dislike VC-backed companies overpromising and underdelivering, but Adam and WeWork took it to another level. If you like this sort of reading, you'll enjoy this book. But you won't learn much, other than maybe trusting your gut and never working for people like Adam.
The book reads like a fictional out-of-this-world thriller you can't put down. From an investor who gets showered with fire-retardant foam after committing a check, to CEO Adam Neumann instructing the building designers to implement a duct in his office to surreptitiously suck out the smell of weed.
Then again, I feel the book shows a predominantly negative sentiment towards all the effort Neumann put into building WeWork. The line between a convincing and visionary founder and an entrepreneurial conman is inherently vague, but author Wiedeman does not always view Neumann's actions as more nuanced.
I found this didn't grip me as much as Bad Blood did (the book about Theranos, another dodgy startup with a charismatic founder). Probably because the stakes were lower and they actually did have a real product (albeit one that's not really profitable).
At the end, Neumann walks away with hundreds of millions of dollars and WeWork still exists as a company so it doesn't quite have that satisfying feeling of justice either!
Nonetheless it was still an entertaining read.