INTERVIEW: WeWork with Teddy Kramer

Summary

Podcast Summary: "INTERVIEW: WeWork with Teddy Kramer"

Title: Scams, Money, & Murder
Episode: INTERVIEW: WeWork with Teddy Kramer
Host: Nicole Lapin
Guest: Teddy Kramer
Release Date: July 24, 2025
Platform: Crime House Studios

---

1. Introduction to WeWork and Teddy Kramer's Role

Nicole Lapin sets the stage by introducing WeWork's ambitious vision to revolutionize the workspace industry. She presents Teddy Kramer, a former WeWork employee who joined the company in its early days and witnessed its meteoric rise and subsequent downfall.

Key Points:

• WeWork aimed to create innovative workspaces with communal areas and a mission to elevate global consciousness.
• Teddy Kramer joined WeWork in 2013 when it was expanding rapidly from a scrappy startup to a globally recognized brand.
• His role evolved from Director of WeWork Labs to Director of New Market Development, overseeing the launch of over 50 buildings in the US and initial international markets in Europe.

Notable Quote:

"WeWork was supposed to change the way we work forever...I launched every major US market for WeWork, from five to over 50 buildings." — Teddy Kramer [03:11]

---

2. WeWork’s Rapid Expansion and Internal Culture

Teddy discusses his initial skepticism about WeWork’s business model but grew to become a pivotal figure in its expansion. He highlights the company's high-paced growth culture, emphasizing relentless scaling and repetitive mistakes that foreshadowed its eventual collapse.

Key Points:

• WeWork's hiring process was swift, reflecting the fast-paced startup environment.
• Early success stories included partnerships with prominent startups like Reddit and Jackpocket.
• Despite rapid growth, operational challenges persisted, such as unfinished buildings and missing amenities.

Notable Quote:

"We were making the same mistakes over and over and over...it was the foreshadowing for everything that led to WeWork falling apart." — Teddy Kramer [00:37]

---

3. Financial Practices and Equity Concerns

By 2014, red flags began to surface regarding WeWork’s financial transparency. Teddy explains his discovery of inequitable equity distribution and the company's opaque financial practices, which favored insiders over rank-and-file employees.

Key Points:

• Employees were often unaware of the total outstanding shares, limiting their understanding of their equity stakes.
• Lack of transparency led to employees learning critical financial news from external sources.
• Adam Neumann’s leadership style contributed to a culture of secrecy and favoritism.

Notable Quote:

"When I asked how many outstanding shares there are, the response was, 'Don't worry about it.'" — Teddy Kramer [10:08]

---

4. Adam Neumann’s Leadership and Downfall

The interview delves into Adam Neumann’s erratic leadership style, nepotism, and grandiose ambitions that ultimately destabilized the company. Teddy recounts instances that showcased Neumann’s unpredictable decisions, such as appointing his wife as co-founder and diversifying the company's focus into unrelated sectors.

Key Points:

• Neumann’s impulsive actions, like declaring WeWork a vegetarian company, contradicted the company's actual practices.
• Personal and corporate finances became intertwined, leading to self-dealing transactions, such as selling trademarks back to WeWork at inflated prices.
• Neumann’s self-aggrandizing behavior alienated employees and undermined trust within the company.

Notable Quote:

"It was like the emperor was walking down the street butt naked, and everyone was like, 'What a beautiful robe you're wearing.'" — Teddy Kramer [12:05]

---

5. Secondary Market Transactions and Employee Impact

Teddy explains the complexities of equity options at WeWork and how secondary market sales allowed insiders to cash out while many employees found themselves with worthless options post-IPO collapse.

Key Points:

• WeWork’s secondary market allowed executives like Adam Neumann to sell substantial shares, disproportionately benefiting them over regular employees.
• Teddy was able to capitalize on these secondary transactions by exercising his options early, resulting in significant personal gains.
• Many employees lost out when WeWork’s IPO failed, leaving their equity options worthless.

Notable Quote:

"Nobody made any money off the IPO, right? I feel like people lost money on the IPO... I lost." — Teddy Kramer [35:21]

---

6. Lessons Learned and Personal Reflections

Reflecting on his WeWork experience, Teddy shares insights on startup culture, loyalty, and the importance of transparency. He emphasizes the need for employees to understand their equity and not to overly tie their identities to their employers.

Key Points:

• Entrepreneurs should prioritize clarity about their financial standing and equity distribution.
• Blind loyalty in startups can lead to exploitation and burnout.
• Teddy was inspired to start his own business despite the negative experiences at WeWork, advocating for personal growth and resilience.

Notable Quote:

"There's more to us than our identities, than just the startup that we're at... There's more to our lives than work." — Teddy Kramer [51:14]

---

7. Conclusion: Blame and Accountability

Teddy places full accountability on Adam Neumann for WeWork’s downfall, citing his decisions and leadership flaws as the primary reasons for the company's failure and the subsequent fallout for employees.

Key Points:

• Adam Neumann is solely responsible for the structural and cultural issues that led to WeWork’s collapse.
• Neumann’s lucrative exit package starkly contrasts with the significant layoffs and hardships faced by thousands of employees.
• The episode underscores the dangers of charismatic yet unscrupulous leadership in startups.

Notable Quote:

"Unquestionably, it's all Adam's fault. Hands down." — Teddy Kramer [54:46]

---

Final Thoughts:
This episode provides an in-depth look into WeWork’s rise and fall through the lens of a key insider. Teddy Kramer’s candid recounting sheds light on the toxic blend of rapid growth, lack of transparency, and charismatic yet flawed leadership that ultimately led to one of the most notorious collapses in the startup world. For entrepreneurs and employees alike, the episode serves as a cautionary tale on the importance of transparency, equitable practices, and discerning leadership.

---

Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Teddy Kramer [03:11]: "WeWork was supposed to change the way we work forever...I launched every major US market for WeWork, from five to over 50 buildings."

• Teddy Kramer [10:08]: "When I asked how many outstanding shares there are, the response was, 'Don't worry about it.'"

• Teddy Kramer [12:05]: "It was like the emperor was walking down the street butt naked, and everyone was like, 'What a beautiful robe you're wearing.'"

• Teddy Kramer [35:21]: "Nobody made any money off the IPO, right? I feel like people lost money on the IPO... I lost."

• Teddy Kramer [51:14]: "There's more to us than our identities, than just the startup that we're at... There's more to our lives than work."

• Teddy Kramer [54:46]: "Unquestionably, it's all Adam's fault. Hands down."

---

Takeaway:
Teddy Kramer's experience at WeWork highlights the critical need for transparency and fairness in startup culture. It serves as a reminder for both employees and founders to prioritize ethical practices and clear communication to foster sustainable and equitable growth.

Transcript

[Kaylin Moore]

Hi, it's Kaylin Moore. Crime House is home to the most gripping true crime shows and you don't want to miss what's coming up on my show, Clues that I co host with Morgan Abshur. We are digging into the chilling details of Amy Archer Gilligan, a nursing home proprietor whose trail of natural deaths turned out to be anything but. Join us as we examine the evidence one clue at a time. Listen to clues every Wednesday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

[Teddy Kramer]

This is Crime House. Why wouldn't you tell us from the get go what happened? This is a monumental moment in this company. It's important for all of us. We're employees here. And these things kept on happening. We were making the same mistakes over and over and over. It was the foreshadowing for everything that led to wework falling apart.

[Nicole Lapin]

As they say, money makes the world go round. What many don't talk about is the time it made people's worlds come to a screeching halt. Whether it's greed, desperation, or a thirst for power, money can make even the most unassuming people do unthinkable things. And sometimes those acts can be deadly. This is Scams, Money and Murder. A Crime House original. I'm your host, Nicole Lapin. Every Thursday we alternate between covering infamous money motivated crimes and gripping interviews with the experts or those who are directly involved themselves. Crime House exists because of you. Please rate, review and follow Scams, Money and Murder wherever you get your podcasts. And for early ad, free access and bonus content, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Kristen Bell]

Just got a new puppy or kitten. Congrats. But also yikes. Between crates, beds, toys, treats, and those first few vet visits, you've probably already dropped a small fortune. Which is where Lemonade Pet Insurance comes in. It helps cover vet costs so you can focus on what's best for your new pet. The coverage is customizable, sign up is quick and easy, and your claims are handled in as little as three seconds. Lemonade offers a package specifically for puppies and kittens. Get a'llemonaid.com pet your future self will thank you. Your pet won't. They don't know what insurance is.

[Dax Shepard]

Hi, I'm Kristen Bell, and if you know my husband, Dax, then you also know he loves shopping for a car. Selling a car, not so much.

[Teddy Kramer]

We're really doing this, huh?

[Dax Shepard]

Thankfully, Carvana makes it easy. Answer a few questions, put in your VIN or license and done. We sold ours in minutes this morning and they'll come pick it up and pay us this afternoon.

[Teddy Kramer]

Goodbye, Truckee.

[Dax Shepard]

Of course, we kept the favorite.

[Teddy Kramer]

Hello, other truckee.

[Dax Shepard]

Sell your car with Carvana today. Terms and conditions apply.

[Nicole Lapin]

WeWork was supposed to change the way we work forever. Textile offices, sleek communal spaces, and a mission to elevate the world's consciousness. Teddy Kramer joined WeWork back in 2013, when it was still a scrappy startup. He helped the company expand into new cities and like many, was rewarded with company shares, shares that were supposed to pay off big. Instead, he watched from the sidelines as the company spiraled into chaos. The IPO collapsed and the promise of big equity payouts became a mirage for most, while the company's founder walked away with an extremely generous exit package. And countless others who helped build the company got little to nothing. Teddy's early gamble and sharp eye allowed him to secure a payout before the final crash. Today, Teddy is here to share his story with us. The inside view of WeWork's rise, fall, and the scams hidden beneath the hype.

[Morgan Abshur]

Teddy, welcome to Scams, Money and Murder.

[Teddy Kramer]

Thanks so much for having me. Really excited to be here.

[Morgan Abshur]

I really appreciate your time to talk about the We Work Journey debacle. I'd love to start at the very beginning. Can you take us back to 2013?

[Teddy Kramer]

I can go even further back. Oh, I was on a date one night in New York City, where I'm originally from, and this young lady I was with said, oh, I need to stop by my office really quickly. And this is probably circa, I wouldn't say 2011, very early days for we work less than three locations at the time, all in New York. And she takes me into this space and I'm surrounded by these glass cubicles. They're tiny, right? You know, a one person office that we work with, maybe 50 square feet, really, really tight. I'm like, what is this? And she's like, oh, this is my office. Like, I rent this glass box every month and I would get free coffee and these other people like me. And I was like, this is the dumbest idea I've ever heard in my life. Who would ever want to work in this thing? And then two years later, I was working for them. And how I got to that point of starting to work at WeWork in the beginning of 2013 is I had a startup of my own with a friend of mine. We had sold the company in 2012 and after selling it, I was looking for my next thing and I got an email from a person I knew in New York who, you know, has all networking patterns, you know, somebody knows somebody who knows somebody. And they sent me this one line email and said, you should go work for these guys. And I said, okay. It was WeWork. And I went in literally about two days before Christmas of 2012 and I went into what they called New York 04. That's how they labeled all the locations. It was the my dash and the number it was in the order. So New York 04 was on Varick Street, 175 Varick, essentially West SoHo, right by the Holland Tunnel. And you know, it was this hive of activity, people sitting in open bullpen areas, private offices, coffee, beer, the whole thing. And you know, the famous line in with any startup was like, do you want to get on the rocket ship? Do you want to join this explosive, fast paced company? And my experience in startups at that time was I was, you know, a jack of all trades. I had taken, you know, we had taken a 20 person startup and sold it. And I was Mr. Everything. So I did real estate, facilities, operations, finance, human resources, pr. I was the also the chief of staff to the CEO. So I had a lot of experience as someone in a startup, but was even more excited about working with startups. And I just sitting there in that first week, I was like, yeah, let's do this. And the hiring process was maybe 48 hours, two days. Like a lot of startups, it just goes really quick. If they like you, they like you. If they don't, they don't. Obviously did something right. And they made me an offer and it was a terrible offer. I mean I really was getting paid nothing, like what's Nothing less than $50,000 for what job? So I was going to be the director of what was called WeWork Labs. And what we Work Labs was, was kind of like a WeWork within a WeWork. It was specifically for early stage startups. They had probably around 50 desks in a bullpen and about only seven or eight private offices. You had to apply to get in. Like traditionally in WeWork, if you just, if there was a vacancy, you had the money, you could get an office. But in order to get into, we were glad Jagged Active. And you had to interview with myself or one of the founders of WeWork Labs, two gentlemen, one named Jesse Middleton, one named Matt Champine. We had to determine if you were going to fit into the ecosystem. And it was, you know, huge waiting list, sold out. Everyone wanted to be part of this. Ironically, I was listening to one of the earlier episodes. One of my earliest customers if we were collapsed, was Billy McFarland the company before Magnesius, I can't remember the name of it. And the funny thing about Billy is Billy, his credit card bounced every single month. He always was delayed on payment. He always ended up paying. But the funny part was that once I saw everything that happened with Billy, I was like, oh my God, I remember Billy.

[Morgan Abshur]

That's crazy.

[Teddy Kramer]

But we had amazing companies. Like the early sales team at Reddit, had an office with us. There was a gentleman who ran a company called Jackpocket, which like digitized the lottery, which just sold the FanDuel for a lot of money. So there was some like really great companies in there and it was a really genuine organic ecosystem of early stage startups. And my job, as, you know, kind of the director of WeWork Labs, was to obviously facilitate conversations, run tons of events, ensuring that it was a place for people to connect and engage within the building. And I did such a good job. You know, I generated like hundreds of thousands of dollars in sponsorship revenue from huge brands like American Express and Delta Airlines and all this stuff that within five months I got promoted and I was made the Director of New Market Development to start launching all of the new markets for WeWork. And essentially my journey at WeWork, from that moment on the middle of 2013 all the way till my time, my tenure ended in the middle of 2015. I launched every major US market for WeWork. I took them from five to over 50 buildings, and then I eventually launched all their first international markets in Europe, in London and Amsterdam. And then eventually I cut the cord and jumped out of the rocket ship.

[Nicole Lapin]

While Teddy eventually jumped from that rocket ship. What led to his departure began much earlier. Fortunately, his prior startup experience meant he knew exactly what to look for when it came to his equity. But those conversations led to more questions than answers.

[Teddy Kramer]

I had had some experience with startups. I knew the terminology and things to ask. 2014 was when Red flags started to pop up. And once I was given that option grant, I met with the General Counsel of WeWork and I started to ask really straightforward questions. Things like, how many outstanding shares are there? Right.

[Morgan Abshur]

Such an important question, by the way, that not a lot of startup people think to ask. Can you explain that a little bit?

[Teddy Kramer]

Yeah. So when you ask how many outstanding shares are, it lets you know what your stake in the business is, Right? So if there's like 10 billion outstanding shares and they give you 100 options, you really have nothing. Right. But if there's like a million share outstanding shares and they're giving you 100,000, like, whoa. Like, that's a 10% stake. That's a big deal. They really value me.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah.

[Teddy Kramer]

And when I went to the general counsel, I said, how many outstanding shares are there? And what do you think? The response was? Don't worry about it.

[Nicole Lapin]

This kind of casual dismissal became a recurring theme at WeWork, revealing a deeper lack of transparency about the company's true financial structure. This wasn't just poor communication. It was a deliberate strategy to control the narrative, often leaving employees to learn critical company news from the outside world.

[Teddy Kramer]

In 2014, what started to happen is we were getting a lot of corporate news from the press, meaning there's all these famous stories about, like, Adam would be partying on a Tuesday or something. He'd be walking around the office and pouring people tequila shots and all that stuff. And when you'd go around and say, hey, why is Adam so excited? And people would go, that's just Adam. And in reality, it wasn't that. That was just Adam. Something big had just happened. But they wouldn't tell us. Eventually what would happen is the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or, you know, TechCrunch or whatever would come out and say, hey, we were just raised $250 million from ex investors. And. And then you get an email the next day. It's like, oh, we all think you must have just heard. Almost like they were caught red handed. But again, it was like, why wouldn't you tell us from the get go what happened? This is a monumental moment in this company. It's important for all of us. We're employees here. And these things kept on happening. Lack of transparency, getting your news from the press. And then at the same time, like things being spun, the press would report on one thing. Oh, that's not true. You never could figure out what was real and what wasn't. Then for me, I think the straw that broke the camel's back was probably when Adam brought in his wife and said, hey, this is our new co founder. And it was like, what? Like, what's going on here? I was one of the first hundred employees. I've never seen this person a day in my life. And now all of a sudden, they show up.

[Nicole Lapin]

This shocking, seemingly spontaneous decision to appoint his wife as co founder was just one example of Adam Neumann's unpredictable leadership. His whims directly impacted employees and exposed a chaotic management style. Beneath the shiny facade of innovation, the.

[Teddy Kramer]

Company was evolving into a very nepotistic. You either believed or you didn't believe. And if you didn't believe, they didn't have a place for you. And if you didn't believe, then, you know, the hive mind would kind of come around and be like, why don't you believe you're not a part of this? And the analogy I love to use for the wework story, it's that the emperor wore no clothes, right? And just he was walking down the street butt naked. And everyone was like, what a beautiful robe you're wearing. Just for me, it was like, he's naked. This whole business is naked. And nobody wanted to admit that until it all fell down. Then everyone came out of the shadows and said, oh, I always knew it was.

[Morgan Abshur]

It's so funny because the first time I saw Adam was at the Four seasons in San Francisco in the lobby wearing a robe. True story. And I was like, what is this guy doing talking to big investor wearing a robe? And they were like, oh, yeah, that's Adam Newman. That's just Adam. So this idea that you needed to drink the kool aid, that they were.

[Nicole Lapin]

Changing the world and you needed to.

[Morgan Abshur]

Get on board this rocket ship or as you say, cut the cord.

[Nicole Lapin]

So at what point did some of.

[Morgan Abshur]

These red flags turn into wanting to get out?

[Teddy Kramer]

I would say by the beginning of 2015, I had just launched my third building in London. We've just launched Chicago. One of the funniest jokes I used to make is, like, if you want to learn about what's going on in wework, just hang out by the corporate printer. People would leave tons of documentation. Like, they would just print something, and they'd walk away, and it would just be right there for all eyes to see. And it was how I first learned about early secondaries at the business. And for those who don't know what secondaries are, essentially, it's like when the company raises, call it $250 million, someone like Adam or Miguel, in their position, would sell their stock to other investors. Nothing illegal about it. It happens all the time, but they have a right to do that. And what you find out is like, oh, wow. When the company raised $200 million, Adam sold $50 million worth of shares. It's a disclosure, right? They never told us that you just.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use. Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. Indeed, sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast. With sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster and it makes a huge difference. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. Plus with Indeed sponsored jobs, there are no monthly subscriptions, no long term contracts, and you only pay for results. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs More visibility@ Indeed.com Listen just go to Indeed.com ListenRightNow and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com listen terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.

[Teddy Kramer]

Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now. I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment of $45 for a 3 month plan.

[Nicole Lapin]

Equivalent to $15 per month Required new customer offer for first 3 months only Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of networks.

[Teddy Kramer]

Busy taxes and fees extra See mintmobile.com.

[Nicole Lapin]

While employees were expected to sacrifice for the rocket ship, executives like Adam Neumann were quietly securing their own wealth. These private secondary transactions allowed insiders to cash out, revealing a clear, clear disparity in who truly benefited from WeWork's booming valuation.

[Teddy Kramer]

But you found out, I worked at other startups where they tell you that, right? It's like, hey, like we're raising money and like we have our founders and we're going to offer them some liquidity on their shares and that's just how it is. That's the benefit founders have. But again, like you want to find out those things, all you have to do is hang out the printer. I became very friendly with someone in the finance department who came to me one day and said, hey, you want to learn some fun stuff about the company? I said, of course. And he started to share with me information about the cap table and other employees and what their equity stakes were, how much people were making. And what I found out was that essentially if you were in Adam's circle, you were getting paid almost two times more than someone like me. If you were in the circle, you had, I mean, an obnoxious amount of equity in the company. I mean like life changing IPO'd or.

[Morgan Abshur]

Exited or had some liquidity event.

[Teddy Kramer]

Nobody made any money off the ipo, right? I feel like people lost money on the ipo. Because that's actually how I eventually made money off of WeWork was the secondary from SoftBank. Right? And that was once I exercised my options, once I left, once SoftBank came in putting in again not hundreds of millions but billions of dollars into WeWork. Part of the deal was that they were going to provide a huge amount of secondaries and I think they were buying up to 1.5 to $2 billion worth of common stock. So that was an opportunity for folks like me to make some money because I had already left the company. It was an opportunity for early investors like Benchmark Capital to make a lot of money. And there were also an opportunity for people with different shares, you know, early employees, people who had exercised early, whatever, but there were folks in that circle who made a ton, a ton of money, while there were also a lot of people who spent money on their options, converted it to equity and lost money. So it was, it was pretty wild.

[Morgan Abshur]

I think it's important to untangle that a little because I don't think it's commonly known what the difference between options and equity would be because oftentimes we hear it as something that's synonymous. But if you're given options in a company, you literally have to buy the equity if you want part of the company. So can you just try to briefly explain what that is? And then the secondary idea essentially is when the executive team was raising extra money, they would take money off the table so some of their equity would get cashed out, which is what you ended up doing a few years later.

[Teddy Kramer]

Obviously part of the exciting and enticing part of working at a startup is that you're going to own a piece of the pie. You know, you go work at some random company, they're like, hey, here's your salary, here are your benefits, that's it. And part of the double edged sword of working in the startup is like, hey, we don't have all the capital in the world to pay. You may be the kind of person who's worth $200,000, but I can't pay pay you that. So I'll pay you less than that, but I'll give you a piece of the pie. And that's in the form of options. And just like you said, an option is a right to buy these options and they would then convert them into actual equity or stock or whatever you want to call it. And they have what's called a cliff generally. And what that cliff is, it's like a waiting period. Usually it's a one year cliff. So let's say I get offered options on January 1st and it's got a one year cliff. Those options don't vest, meaning they don't actually become mine until 12 months later that one year, then they become mine and then they have what's called a traditionally a four year vest. So the one year cliff happens and then for the preceding three years, every month I get a little bit more of the pie. And it's a kind of way of saying, hey, be loyal.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah, don't leave.

[Teddy Kramer]

Exactly. Also, please don't leave because if you don't leave, you'll keep getting a little bit more of the pie every single month. But that one year cliff is like, hey, you've got to kind of earn it. If you sign your option agreement on January 1st of 2026 and you have a one year cliff and then you leave in November of 2026, you get nothing.

[Morgan Abshur]

Right?

[Teddy Kramer]

Right. So you have to stick around. The funny thing I also forgot to mention with the WeWork options is it was a five year vest. And I remember going to the general counsel saying this is really atypical for startups. Why are we doing a five year vest? Every startup I've ever been at a four year vest with what, Cliff? A one year cliff. One year cliff, Five year vest. And of course, what was the answer I got?

[Morgan Abshur]

Don't worry about it.

[Teddy Kramer]

Don't worry about it. So they were doing a lot of, you know, very different things. And a very funny story. And I felt so bad for these people. There were people who were earlier than I was, was like, I'd say first 40, first 50, who were given stock options. Now this is getting really granular. But there are two kinds of stop. There are ISOs and NSOs. And the thing about ISOs is ISOs can only be given to employees. NSOs can be given to pretty much anybody. And the reason why you want ISOs vs NSOs is ISOs have much, much better tax benefits. Because you're being employed by the company, there's a cap on how much you can give an ISOs. I think it's something between like 150 to 200 grand, something like that. I don't know the exact number. And all these early employees were given NSOs. So they got crushed in their taxes, but. And it wasn't even done right.

[Morgan Abshur]

Well, that's why a lot of companies do options. Usually it's not a sketchy thing. It's so that you don't have to pay tax on what you own of the company. And if there's some liquidity event. It kind of happens automatically where you buy the options and you get the equity and that's it. It's not inherently sketchy. You know, an extra year of a vest is odd, but not like super, super crazy. So when you got told, don't worry about it, you obviously did worry about it. Was there any anything that really, really struck you as like, okay, this is more than just weird, this is fraudulent or this is illegal?

[Teddy Kramer]

No. In terms of the actual, like, mechanisms of the company, the business model, how he raised money, all those things, I view it as just a reflection of the age, right? A reflection of the 2010s, which is growth at all costs. Growth, growth, growth, growth. We were fed so much bullshit. Oh, we could be profitable any day. We just have to turn off the growth toes. We are going to be this company that changes the entire planet. We're elevating the world's consciousness. I mean, just stuff that you just couldn't digest because for someone like me, I was in the trenches. I was opening buildings every single month. And we were making the same mistakes over and over, over and over. Opening buildings that weren't completely finished, opening buildings that were missing core amenities like functioning bathrooms or having coffee machines or things like that. Now, again, this wasn't a mom and pop startup that was like in its early days where you roll up your sleeves and make things happen. This was a really heavily capitalized, highly staffed, global brand at that point. And again, when you would bring these challenges to either managers or even up to Adam, what was the response? Don't worry about it either. Deal with it, don't worry about it. We're all going to be rich one day. Aren't you committed to this? So on and so forth. Again, a reflection of this age of like the founder, this amazing founder who can do no wrong and is. And you must be loyal at all times.

[Nicole Lapin]

But despite this culture of blind loyalty, even WeWork's board eventually recognized the need for legitimate business acumen. They began bringing in seasoned executives, hoping to stabilize this chaotic operation.

[Teddy Kramer]

The one amazing thing that happened in 2014 and early in 2015 is they started to bring in some really competent executives. Members of the board were like, we have to surround Adam with really, really smart people who will make this business as valuable as we think it is. And they would last 90 days either through self selection and being like, I don't want to be around this. I gotta go. I mean, there was literally an HR executive who came in from GOOG who literally lasted 90 days and said, I don't want my name anywhere near this company and left.

[Morgan Abshur]

Do you know why though?

[Teddy Kramer]

I think just the kind of, you know, coming from a place like Google, where there's a lot of structure, where they take a lot of pride in their culture, especially in the 2010s where they were really kind of like North Star in terms of what you wanted your company culture to be, right? Google had a slide in their office right around the clock. Meals, all those things. And a lot of startups and well capitalized startups wanted to copy that kind of culture. Culture. Simply stated, if you were working for. Adam's not a great manager. He's not the kind of person who is organized. Adam thought he was Steve Jobs. He was the kind of person, you know, he's held his management meetings at like midnight at Mu on Mondays. Imagine if you had a family. Imagine if you just like a normal human. It's like, I don't want to be in, in your office downtown at midnight. Adam was known, notoriously known for never being punctual. I knew real estate brokers who would wait hours for him to show up for a tour. Imagine like sitting in, in a downtown office at midnight waiting for a king to show up. Then the come in and start yelling and screaming at you. I mean, that was the other thing about it is Adam was always, always so impulsive. He'd see one thing and then you have to act on it. That's the famous story about we were going completely vegetarian. Like he got off a plane in Israel and just announced to the world that we work was now a vegetarian or vegan operation and they would never serve meat ever again. I mean, I remember the headline. And then when you started to talk to employees like, well, of course we don't practice that. And that was the other problem. It was a lie. It just wasn't true. It was just this like weird posturing to the world that this was this like elevated brand. He thought he was like really pushing culture in one way, when in reality it was kind of like a joke.

[Morgan Abshur]

So obviously a super eccentric guy. A lot of suspicious things. But what actually made you decide to leave? We work in 2015.

[Teddy Kramer]

Just greater opportunity and just being tired. I think one of those big moments for me also was when I found out where I stood. I was a chosen person to do the dirty work. I was, hey, we're doing London. You're moving to London for three months. Dropped out of a plane, go make it happen. And I knocked it out the park. It was the kind of place like if you didn't perform, you'd eventually get fired for the most part by the end, I mean, there were so many people, it was kind of almost impossible to. But in the early days, if you weren't good, you were gone. And I was just constantly given more and more responsibility. So I was being told that just from the work I was being given that I was very valuable again. I had people who were just in the inner circle making exponentially more money than me, adding an exponentially larger stake in the company than me. And once I had a recruiter reach out to me and said, do you want to move to California? Do you want to go to San Francisco and join a really well funded company in a different industry that's looking for someone with your skill set? How can you say no when someone's offering you double your salary, equity, you know, options right off the bat, like not having to wait a while. Like the things that every startup employee deserves. And transparency, great investors, a great product, exciting opportunity. You don't flinch because you know where you stand. Right. That was the thing for me is I know where I stood at WeWork because all you have to do is look at what you're getting paid and where they view you on the cap table. And if you're doing great work and you're not being rewarded for it, eventually you're going to leave. And that's how I think a lot of startups fail. It's just like if you don't have great people, it never is going to work out.

[Morgan Abshur]

I mean, to be fair, WeWork was very well capitalized and they had great investors and a great cap table too. Melissa's not a dumb guy. But after you left, you know, we were continued to explode.

[Teddy Kramer]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

In size and valuation. So watching from the outside, what were your thoughts as they reached, I think $47 billion as a valuation at its peak?

[Teddy Kramer]

Yeah, I mean, the first thing I did when I moved out to California is I moved my company into a WeWork. I believed in the product, I believed in the marketplace, I believe in the industry. I appreciate we work because it's, it's a huge part of my journey and my career. So as I mentioned, I moved out here, I moved my company into a WeWork. We were the first enterprise customer on the west coast in San Francisco. We took a 75 person office in a building that I helped launch. The funny thing was like we were paying top dollar for this space and the day we moved in, it was good old WeWork. We had missing light fixtures and things that we had paid for hadn't been installed. It was still the same kind of operation, right? Very startup. Didn't matter how much money was there, there was a lack of execution going on. And that ultimately was why I was always going to be bearish on the company, because there was no dedication to the core elements of the business, which is being the best workspace possible on Earth. One of the big things that happened in the summer of 2015, once I had left, is Adam had done an interview on, I think it was Bloomberg Business. And it was when Adam had announced that they were going into multifamily residential. They were launching this product called WeLive. And if no one remembers, WeLive was almost like an adult dormitory. They had one down on Wall street and they had one down Northern Virginia. There would be a WeWork in it. So you would never have to leave. You could live there, you could work there. It was your ecosystem. And he's doing this interview and he's sitting there with more Zuckerman, who is the chairman of Boston Properties, he was on the board of WeWork, I believe, big investor in WeWork, big partner of WeWork and a believer in what was going on. And in the 30 minute interview, 27 minutes of it is, Adam is amazing. Adam is wonderful. WeWork is fantastic. So on and so forth. But in this tiny little sliver of the interview, right at the end, Mort goes, I have a little bit of advice for Adam and I hope he'll take it. He says, I wish he would stay focused. When he's old and got gray hair like me, he can go into residential. But today I wish he would just stay focused and be the best in his business and be best in class and workspace. And Adam smiles and nods and, you know, in his mind, he's like, you don't know anything. I'm going to be a million times bigger than you. And so on and so forth. It was the foreshadowing for everything that led to we work falling apart and everything. I watched from the day I left in 2015 to the day we'll call it the IPO got pulled and Adam was removed and was given the golden parachute of golden parachutes, which was like, what is this company doing? Why are they going into co living? Why are they going into education? Why are they acquiring alternative milk companies? Why are they acquiring wave pool companies? Why are they building gyms? And I knew so many employees working there, and it didn't get more sane, it got more crazy. They were renting out Universal Studios for employee parties. They rented out Madison Square Garden for employee parties. Adam was like traveling the world to go surfing on a private jet all at the same time. They weren't making the profit. They weren't. They had to come up with fake financial metrics in order to explain their business. They had to come up with a financial metric called Community Adjusted ebitda.

[Investigator Slater]

It's summer time to enjoy long days, lazy nights and great food. Because Uber Eats has deals all summer long. So when hunger strikes, don't sweat it. Delicious deals are just a tap away on Uber Eats. Enjoy all your favorite grocery items delivered straight to you. Get ice cream, soda and snacks from your favorite stores like Wegmans and cvs and make the most of every moment. Now that sounds like a good summer. Order now on UberEats Terms apply. Product availability varies by region. Seattle for details.

[Teddy Kramer]

Abercrombie Kids is bringing the ultimate first day energy back to school. It all starts with on trend outfits for that front door photo shoot. Plus the coolest tees, shorts and jeans to take them through the rest of the year. Get them ready for their close up and keep them comfy too. Make this grade their best one yet. Shop all things back to school in store, online and in the app.

[Dax Shepard]

What's up little psychos? I'm Investigator Slater, host of the Psychopedia Podcast. Psychopedia is a true crime podcast delivering raw, real and absolutely gripping episodes every single week. I dig deep to uncover fascinating details of heinous true crime cases while exploring criminology and psychology theories. I take you into the absolute darkest corners of the human psyche. My favorite territory and present cases like you've never heard them before. Follow and listen to Psychopedia everywhere you get your podcasts.

[Nicole Lapin]

This seemingly legitimate term, community adjusted EBITDA, became a symbol for WeWork's deception. By excluding massive marketing costs, it presented a false picture of profitability.

[Teddy Kramer]

That was the only way they could show that they were making money and the world believed it. That was what was so crazy. And then. But some of my assets like. But you still exercise your options. Yeah, I was early enough. I got them for like a dollar. Essentially they were a dollar a share. So it didn't cost me a lot of money to exercise them. And then when someone like Masa San comes in and says I'm going to pay all common shareholders $55 a share, how could you say no? So I rode the wave. But if I have any regrets is that when WeWork did go public through the SPAC is that I didn't short it.

[Morgan Abshur]

So explain that you cashed out when SoftBank, MASA is SoftBank essentially invested. So you bought the options for $1 a share and then you were given.

[Teddy Kramer]

$55 when you leave a company. When I left in the beginning of the middle of 2015, the standard is you have a 90 day window to exercise your options. Some companies are more generous, but the default is 90 days. So I said, hey, let's see what happens here. I put in a lot of blood, sweat and tears. I'm not going to walk away from the opportunity. So I paid for it. I became a common shareholder like a gazillion other people. And when Masa came in and said, I want to invest in WeWork, part of the deal terms was that he had to offer a secondary. And there was a pool of money and I think it was again between 1 to 2 billion dollars of preferred shares, which is what the VCs get and the investors get, and common shares, which peons like me got. It was prorated. So if there was $3 billion worth of demand, only whatever that number was, 1 to 1.5 billion or whatever it was, would get paid out. So I tried to sell everything, right. I was getting 50x my investment and of course I got prorated. And the amazing thing was this secondary didn't happen one time. It happened multiple times. And the big one that never happened, unfortunately, was that SoftBank was going to take a majority stake in the business and put in like, I think $15 billion or something into the business. And that's when the shit hit the fan. That was when that deal died. Adam then decided to go to IPO. We put out the S1, which was, as some folks have said, the worst S1 in history. It all fell through. And then essentially we waited to see what would happen once Adam got fired and everything went from there and SoftBank backed out of the deal where they said they were going to buy all the shares out. And then there was the whole management change, the company, SPAC, and then we were filed for chapter 11, they filed for bankruptcy and all of the leftover common shares that I had went to zero. So I lost.

[Morgan Abshur]

So how much did you cash out, though?

[Teddy Kramer]

We'll call it between between 300 and $500,000.

[Morgan Abshur]

I think, you know, a lot of people that are joining startups think that they're going to be, you know, tech millionaires with their equity and, you know, oftentimes they don't have opportunities to exercise their options or they don't Even realize that options are not equity and they have to pay actual money. You can negotiate, you know, how long they last after you leave, potentially. But I think a lot of people get screwed.

[Teddy Kramer]

Yeah.

[Morgan Abshur]

Even worse than in this situation because there's not an option to cash out. So you kind of came out unscathed in this. You came out ahead.

[Teddy Kramer]

Yeah. And that's luck. I don't want to say it was skill. It was luck. I was lucky. I was early. I was lucky that the strike price was so low. I was lucky that Masasan wanted Adam to be crazier and was willing to put an insane valuation on the business. And there's kind of two sides of the coin. Right. I worked for. We worked for three years living in New York City making less than $100,000. So like, I was grossly underpaid for the value I was driving for the business. By the time we work was heavily capitalized, there were people making big time salaries. The challenge for them was they were getting options valued at 35, $40 a share. So when the company actually IPO'd all of their common stock or their options were underwater. Right. So they had nothing. They were going to lose money. Um, and there were a lot of people who still believed in the business who exercised options in the 30s and 40s who ended up losing a lot of money. So they were not as fortunate and I feel terrible for them.

[Morgan Abshur]

You mentioned the S1 being that worst S1 in history. An S1 is an IPO prospectus, basically. So that was published in 2019. And I think that's when it really revealed some eye opening details. Yes. There was a lot of eccentric things that happened. They rented, you know, Universal and had big parties and all this sort of these shenanigans. If you were making money, it would be one thing, but we saw massive losses. Self dealing. What else specifically did you see in the S1 or media coverage that shocked or angered you the most when all of those details finally came out?

[Teddy Kramer]

I think the thing for me was, you know, the term you use was kind of self dealing. Right. Owning the trademark to the term we. And then selling it back to the company for $3 million. That kind of transaction that you had to talk about, just the assumption that that was normal. I think that's normal behavior to do that or to own real estate and then lease it back to your company at a premium, things like that.

[Nicole Lapin]

These blatant acts of self dealing extended beyond trademarks and real estate. Adam Newman intertwined his personal life and family with Corporate funds, even using company money to build a private elementary school for their children.

[Teddy Kramer]

You couldn't figure out, like, where the business ended and where Adam's personal life ended. They were so commingled. I mean, to tell you, the amount of childhood friends and family members, I mean, the fact that they started in elementary school because they felt that there wasn't a good enough school for their own children. So they were using corporate funds to essentially build their own school for their family and their friends. It just reeked of just nastiness again. I just always. It was like, the emperor wears no clothes. It's like I would. For me, I was just like, screaming to the hilltops like, he's naked. He's naked, right? Like, how does nobody see this? I think what also got me so frustrated was that why did it take the S1 to show how ridiculous this business was? Because to me, I had been following it since the day I left. Elliot Brown from the Wall Street Journal had been covering this company since 2014 and being like, something doesn't smell right here. Sure, there's always going to be the press that just takes what they're given and follows whatever the comms person that the company says that's always going to exist. But there were actual really intelligent journalists covering this business for a long time who were screaming to the world, there's something rotten in the state of Denmark. And for some reason, the world finally came around to it once they started, saw this ridiculous document that showcased that they were spending, you know, $2 for every dollar that they earned, that their succession plan really didn't exist, and that they were investing in businesses that had no path to profitability.

[Morgan Abshur]

So the IPO collapsed. Adam Newman stepped down. You said that he had this golden parachute of sorts. Can you talk about that deal and how it made you and other former WeWork employees feel.

[Teddy Kramer]

Yeah, again, another testament of, and just reality of the 2000 and tens with these ideas of, you know, super majority voting shares. Right. These companies got structured by founders so that if anything was going to happen to the founder, that they would have to be not compensated, grossly heavily compensated. And Adam had all the voting power, so in order to get rid of him, they had to pay up. And I mean, I can't even go through the lonely list of things that he got, but, you know, I think part of it was like at least $500 million in cash, immense loans made to him. In the end, his package was at least a billion dollars all in. And even like potentially the option to come back at some point, you know, with the board's approval. It was crazy what they had to give to him. It's Wednesday. Adams, I see you're trying to distract yourself from your own banal thoughts. Let me help. Here's a recording thing made of my latest root Canal. Wednesday. Season two begins August 6th, only on Netflix.

[Max Cutler]

This episode is brought to you by J.C. penney. And if you've been to JCPenney recently. Yes, JCPenney, you'll know it's becoming the way to buying good clothes for prices that still make sense. They've got hidden gems for everyone and every budget with deals and rewards that actually make a dent. If you already shop JCPenney, you feel like you know a secret. But if not, it's time to ask. Wait, am I sleeping on JCPenney? Shopjcpenney.com Yes, JCPenney.

[Nicole Lapin]

The dramatic end of Adam Neumann's reign over WeWork came with an outrageous price tag. This personal windfall for the disgraced CEO stood in stark contrast to the massive layoffs that followed a devastating reality for thousands of employees.

[Teddy Kramer]

What happened next was what always happens. 10,000 people lost their jobs. All of the egregious and ridiculous business lines were shut down. I know a company out here in San Francisco. It was like a small 10 person startup that got acquired so that it could become part of the elementary school that Adam and Rebecca were starting. We Grow was what it was called. Everyone moved their entire lives from California to New York, and in six months, it was gone. It was vaporized. And I felt really bad for them. I met a lot of people out here, out west who had heard about me. This is like circa 2017, 2018. I'm going to go work for WeWork. What do you think? I'd say, stay away. You're not going to get the professional development you're looking for. You might get compensated pretty well, but it's not going to work out. We get caught up in these fairy tales of these founders and their businesses, and we just don't want to look at the basics. And to me, when it comes to business, there's one really core tenant, and that's do you make more money than you spend? Can you generate a profit? And I don't need made up financial metrics. I don't need hyperbole of like, oh, well, we could be profitable at any point. We just have to turn off the growth switch. Are you making more money than you spend? And we work would never answer that question directly. You know, they would say, oh, well, within the four walls of the business, we do well, okay, but do you make more money than you spend? How are you going to get to profitability? How are you going to do this? If there was anything I was satisfied with was that the lies were finally over for me. It was like a solid six or seven years of just lying, just not telling the truth. And the truth always comes out. And it did.

[Morgan Abshur]

And when you talked about this Community adjusted ebitda, just to decode that, EBITDA essentially is profit. So when companies report these profits, if their community adjusted, you're basically trying to show that you have profits minus some other sort of spend that's normally not included. So it's like fuzzy accounting, fuzzy math.

[Teddy Kramer]

Essentially what they were doing. They had to come up with their own financial metric to demonstrate profitability. And what community adjusted EBITDA did is it essentially subtracted all of it, just excluded all of their marketing costs. Right. I just, like that's. That's your customer acquisition strategy. And what were they doing? They were spending hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing. There were a few intelligent people out there who were like, this is insane. This is crazy. Just tell us the real numbers. There were just all these little stories that kept on popping up. I mean, they were buying the Lord and Taylor building for like $850 million on Fifth Avenue. They were doing this huge project at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, you know, and they were going to start going into woodworking and machinery and all this, like, crazy stuff. They were starting magazines and, like, print. And after a while, you were just kind of pulling your hair out, just wondering, when was the shoe gonna drop, finally drop? And it did. It was a miraculous implosion. Right? I mean, think about what happened. Multiple books, documentaries, I mean, a TV show starring Jared Leno and Anne Hathaway.

[Morgan Abshur]

Why do you think there was such crazy erratic behavior? Was he on drugs? What was going on?

[Teddy Kramer]

Yeah, that's a funny storyline that has gotten pushed that, you know, Autumn is some kind of drug field maniac. I don't buy that. Adam is a normal person. He likes to have a good time. He, you know, he likes tequila. He smokes a joint once in a while. It is what it is. I think it's a bigger show. I think Adam's a fucking narcissist. Right? I think Adam genuinely believes that he is some kind of God, that he is just greater than the rest of us. It was just how far he would take it, how far he would go to tell his story, to make people believe that this thing was bigger. I mean, we talked earlier about Billy McFarlane. There isn't much of a difference between Billy McFarlane and Adam Newman, except Adam is a thousand times better than it, than Billy. But it's the same mentality at the same time. Billy's a criminal. I will never go as far as saying Adam is a criminal. They believe in themselves way too much, that they'll take it so far. They have no problem just lying to your face.

[Morgan Abshur]

It's a super, super fine line. And what I care most about is people that are joining startups discerning some of these very specific terms when they're looking at their overall comp package, cash versus equity or options, or asking questions about shares outstanding or liquidation preferences, or all these like very technical things that got a lot of later employees screwed. And also you want a founder who has charisma and has this vision and can get investors on board. So where is that fine line? Like, it's really, really fraught with nuance.

[Teddy Kramer]

Because there's the opposite end of the spectrum. Like, I've met people who work at startups, it's like, oh yeah, we've got this founder and CEO, but like they can't sell the product. They're either too technical or they're not motivational. They don't get people inspired. Totally understand. And that was like kind of Adam's secret sauce, right? He'd come into a room and he'd get everybody riled up because we were changing the world. I think obviously it's, it's different on a case by case basis. And the company you're working for, I think for me, I just don't want to be lied to. Right. I just want the truth. When things are good, we can celebrate it, but when things are tough, let's go for it. I mean, could you imagine working at a company whose part of their slogan was like, thank God it's Monday. Making you stay at the office till 9pm on a Monday to drink Kool Aid and hang out. It was crazy. And if you didn't buy into it, you were like a non believer. Like that's how far it kind of went. I think the challenge that I also have is this concept of like get on the rocket ship, we're all going to be rich. But the problem with that person who joins the company doesn't really put it into perspective and realize like, you don't have the same share that the person who started this house and nor should you. That's the thing is like, I'm not saying like Oh, I should have had what Adam had, right? Adam started the thing, right? Of course he did. But when you go into that meeting, you're like, hey, so where did I stand? Where do I stand? Like, what do I really have here? What's the value of this? What does everyone else have? And they go, stop, stop, stop asking these questions. It's a red flag. So for that person who is at a startup or like ask basic questions that everyone should tell you, and if they don't tell you the answer or they obfuscate or they work around it, then you know there's a problem. The company I came to in California, I asked all those same questions. I got really honest answers, so I knew there wasn't a problem. They told me the outstanding share count, they told me everything about their current fundraising and where they were going. I mean, WeWork, you never knew when we were raising money. I mean, you knew we were raising money. We're bringing investors through all the time. But you never knew when we closed a round of financing until the press reported about it. It was just like one of those things. I mean, I can't imagine what it was like working at that company when everything was going down with the ipo. I know for a fact they weren't being told what was really happening. They all found out that Adam was being removed by the board from the press. And then of course, they had a big town hall and everything's going to be fine. And here's Marcelo from Softbank and we're, we're still moving forward and so on. I mean, it's, it's, it's a never ending cycle and that's a cultural thing. And I talk about this all the time with folks in startups. There's a really thin line between culture and cult. In the early days, we work was a culture and eventually the money was the problem. Right? All the capital and all the pressure flipped it to a cult pretty quickly.

[Morgan Abshur]

Because when you're raising that kind of money, you need a huge, huge return to make it worth it for investors. Looking back, what do you think is the biggest takeaway or lesson that you got with every everything that went down with WeWork?

[Teddy Kramer]

For me personally, stick with my gut instinct. Everything I saw was real, everything I believed was true. And that's both on the positive and negative. I wasn't going to be fooled by someone like Adam. I had solid emotional intelligence and I could figure out when I was being lied to. But the other thing, again, I'm very grateful to WeWork for is it inspired me to start my own business. I run my own workspace and events based business here in San Francisco. And to be grateful in that even though I had a probably a net negative experience at the company, it still inspired me to build something else and to take something else on and to start my own entrepreneurial journey. And therefore that even from a negative experience, something positive can come from it. I made some solid relationships. I also too was able to travel the world. I also was able to make a little bit of money that I put into my business so I could start it up.

[Morgan Abshur]

I mean, going through such a roller.

[Nicole Lapin]

Coaster, this early thrill, the crushing disappointment.

[Morgan Abshur]

How do you think it affected your view on loyalty and fairness and startup culture? Or how did it shape you as an entrepreneur yourself?

[Teddy Kramer]

It's funny because the company I came out to in San Francisco, I was a huge believer. I gave a lot of time and energy to it. And I think that experience, along with the WeWork experience really has changed my feelings about startups. I'm pretty cynical about the culture around startups these days. I think people should view them as what they really are. It's just a job. You should give a hundred percent effort, you should dedicate whatever you want from it and to it. But at the same time, in 24 hours they could call you up, they could fire you and you could lose your job. But that's okay because it's just a job, right? It's not your life. If you want it to become your life, start one yourself and then you can have all the equity and you can have a big payout down the road potentially and it can become yours. And that was the thing for me. I was tired of being another cog in the wheel. I wanted to be the wheel. So I started my own right thing. I was, it was put up or shut up. But I think that is something that I will never forget and I'll never do again. If I ever get in the situation of working for start up another company is kind of going in too deep even. What happened to me at WeWork, there were times I was like trying to scream to the world that I was screaming to avoid like folks like we're being lied to all the time. And as weird as it sounds like carrying too much, if that makes sense. I use this line in a recent talk I did. One of the greatest basketball players of all time, his name was Bill Russell, played for the Boston Celtics, he won 10 championships. One of the greatest athletes of all time. He has a famous quote, he says basketball is What I do, but it's not who I am. And what's happened in the 21st century because of the Googles and Facebooks and even the WeWorks is that our identity is tied to the companies that we work at. It's who we are. And I think there's more to us than that, than where we work, who our employer is. Right. And especially in cities like San Francisco and New York, it's the first thing comes out like, where do you work? Where do you work? Where do you work? What do you do? What do you do? There should be more to us than to our identities, than just the startup that we're at. And again, that doesn't mean you shouldn't take your job seriously. That doesn't mean you shouldn't care about the work that you put out. But if you're giving up your family life because someone needs you to email them at 11:30 at night, hey, here's my message for you. That email can wait till the morning. If you're giving up time with your friends because your boss is bothering you about something that can on a Saturday, that can wait till Monday, let it go till Monday. And if you lose your job over it, it's worth it. Because anybody who's going to tell you that your personal life or what matters to you isn't as important as this job, it's not. I remember there were times that we work or even times at my, the other startup I worked at here in San Francisco, where I was like frantically worried about losing my job in my own head. I guess it's a form of imposter syndrome or whatever it may be. And then I worry about the things that I might have neglected. Time with my family, time with my friends, time for myself over like we were. I really, like, say the thing, it can wait till Monday. There's more to your life than work. There's more to your life than the quote, unquote culture of the startup that you're working at. What's come to me after over a decade in this ecosystem is to kind of be able to step away and separate myself from these companies while still demanding excellence from my performance.

[Morgan Abshur]

So between WeWork's leadership and the investors, where do you ultimately place blame, if at all, for how things turned out for rank and file employees who gave it their all?

[Teddy Kramer]

Unquestionably, it's all Adam's fault. Hands down. He structured the company, that the buck stopped with him. Every decision made was his. I think everything that happened to the brand, everything that happened to the business, everything that happened to the lives of those employees, the buck stopped with one person, and that's the person who made out. That's the sad part, is that for all the sadness that happened, he got away pretty unscathed, despite his quote unquote reputation.

[Morgan Abshur]

And why do you think people keep giving him money?

[Teddy Kramer]

To use his own terminology? What's your superpower? Right. That was Adam's and Rebecca's thing to remember. What's your superpower? His superpower is he can sell. There's, I think also in that ecosystem, there's the belief that if you've done it, quote, unquote, once, you can do it again. And we see it all the time, right? We see there's a big thing in the VC world of, you know, the repeat founder, oh, you've done it. That means you can do anything ever again. You're only going to be success, in my opinion, because there's luck tied to it. Right. And that's, that's the other thing that people also don't realize about WeWork is that WeWork was a wave that got ridden pretty well. But Adam was a failed entrepreneur before this, right? The collapsible heel, the baby clothing company. These were just ideas that went nowhere. We work was able to become what it became because of the financial crisis in 2008. That collapse was enormous for WeWork's ability to get off the ground. Massive vacancy in commercial real estate, huge opportunities to take on spaces across New York City that were vacant for a really long time. Now, at the same time, he executed right, he built a really exciting brand, he built energy. But also there was this other cultural change that was going on in 2008, 2009, 2010, and that was the revolution against Wall street in corporate America. Occupy Wall street. People didn't want to go work for traditional corporation and startups were hot. And when there's unlimited coffee, a keg on every floor and a fun party like atmosphere, you're probably going to join up.

[Morgan Abshur]

Yeah. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for being with us today and being so open about your experience. Thank you so much for listening.

[Nicole Lapin]

I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Scams, Money and murder is a Crime House original. Join me every Thursday, Thursday for a brand new episode here at Crime House. We want to thank each and every one of you for your continued support. If you like what you heard here today, reach out on all social media. Crime House. And don't forget to rate, review and follow Scams, Money and murder wherever you get your podcasts, your feedback truly makes a difference and for ad free listening plus early access and bonus content. Subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts Scams, Money and Murder is hosted by me, Nicole Lapin and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Our guest today was Teddy Kramer. This episode was brought to life by the Scams, Money and Murder team, Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Stacey Warrenker, Sarah Camp and Paul Libeskin.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Warning the following ZipRecruiter radio spot you.

[Teddy Kramer]

Are about to hear is going to.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Be filled with F words when you're hiring.

[J]

We at ZipRecruiter know you can feel frustrated, forlorn, even, like your efforts are futile. And you can spend a fortune trying to find fabulous people, only to get flooded with candidates who are just fine. Fortunately, ZipRecruiter figured out how to fix all that and right now you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com Zip with ZipRecruiter you can forget your frustrations because we find the right people for your roles fast, which is our absolute favorite F word. In fact, four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.

[Teddy Kramer]

Fantastic.

[J]

So whether you need to hire four, 40 or 400 people, get ready to meet first rate talent. Just go to ZipRecruiter.com Zip to try ZipRecruiter for free. Don't forget that's ZipRecruiter.com Zip finally, that's ZipRecruiter.Com Zip hi, it's Kaylin Moore.

[Kaylin Moore]

Crime House is home to the most gripping true crime shows and you don't want to miss what's coming up on my show, Clues that I co host with Morgan Abshur. We are digging into the chilling details of Amy Archer Gilligan, a nursing home proprietor whose trail of natural deaths turned out to be anything but. Join us as we examine the evidence one clue at a time. Listen to Clues every Wednesday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.