by Eliot Brown & Maureen Farrell
WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • “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, Wall Street Journal tech columnist
The definitive inside story of WeWork, its audacious founder, and what its epic unraveling says about a financial system drunk on the elixir of Silicon Valley innovation—from the Wall Street Journal correspondents (recently featured in the WeWork Hulu documentary) whose scoop-filled reporting hastened the company’s downfall.
LONGLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES AND MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD
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.
This was the vision of Neumann and his primary cheerleader, SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son. 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?
In little more than a decade, Neumann transformed himself from a struggling baby clothes salesman into the charismatic, hard-partying CEO of a company worth $47 billion—on paper. With his long hair and feel-good mantras, the six-foot-five Israeli transplant looked the part of a messianic truth teller. Investors swooned, and billions poured in.
Neumann dined with the CEOs of JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, entertaining a parade of power brokers desperate to get a slice of what he was selling: the country’s most valuable startup, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and a generation-defining moment.
Soon, however, WeWork was burning through cash faster than Neumann could bring it in. From his private jet, sometimes clouded with marijuana smoke, he scoured the globe for more capital. Then, as WeWork readied a Hail Mary IPO, it all fell apart. Nearly $40 billion of value vaporized in one of corporate America’s most spectacular meltdowns.
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.
Interview with the Authors
Commonwealth Club of California
The Cult of We: The WeWork Story
8/19/21 66 min


The Realignment
143 | Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell: How Wall Street and Venture Capital Fueled the Great Startup Delusion
7/20/21 54 min

Yang Speaks
The Fall of WeWork
8/2/21 61 min

Interview with Eliot Brown
Techtonic with Mark Hurst | WFMU
The WeWork fiasco – with Eliot Brown, author, “The Cult of We”
8/16/21 67 min

Slate Money
The Cult of We
8/28/21 53 min

Interview with Maureen Farrell
Keen On
Maureen Farrell on the Spectacular Meltdown of WeWork
7/20/21 40 min

Hidden Forces
WeWork, Adam Neumann, & the Great Startup Debacle | Maureen Farrell
7/26/21 56 min

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