Adam Neumann

Summary

Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin: Adam Neumann

Release Date: March 18, 2026
Podcast Host: Rick Rubin
Guest: Adam Neumann, co-founder of WeWork

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Episode Overview

This episode brings an in-depth, no-holds-barred conversation between Rick Rubin and Adam Neumann. Adam candidly chronicles his journey from a restless Israeli childhood to the explosive rise—and dramatic fall—of WeWork. The discussion weaves through his formative years, the creation and philosophy of WeWork, his relationship with investors like SoftBank’s Masa Son, public controversies, and his newest venture Flow. Throughout, Adam explores themes of community, purpose, spirituality, failure, and redemption, offering insights not just into business but the nature of leadership and personal growth.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Adam’s Early Life and Search for Community

• Moving and Adaptation:

  • Adam was born in Israel and moved 13 times during his childhood ([00:24]).
  • Lived longest on a kibbutz—a communal Israeli settlement—where he first felt safe and formed his concept of community.
  • His mother’s dedication as a doctor and ongoing personal struggles shaped Adam’s outlook on support networks and the necessity of communal safety.

• Learning English and Early Challenges:

  • A move to Indiana at age eight, with no English and severe dyslexia, forced Adam to adapt quickly:
    • “All I can say is peanut butter and jelly. And one day, after two months, I was like, I can't eat one more peanut butter and jelly. And I had the courage, and I said the word hot dog. And from there, I started learning.” ([01:33])

• Kibbutz Influence:

  • Describes kibbutz life as egalitarian, deeply communal, and foundational to his ideas of connection and shared mission ([16:32]).
  • Notable practices included communal meals, shared jobs, childhood autonomy, and frequent barefootedness.

Formative Experiences in the US and Early Entrepreneurship

• Arrival in New York & Building Connections:

  • Moved to NYC post-army, lived with his sister, and noticed Americans’ lack of openness:
    • “...so I would see the same neighbors every day. No one says hello until after a month.... Let's introduce ourselves to everybody, and in a month, we're going to throw a party on the roof.... Half the building came. And the energy in that building changed.” ([03:56])

• Failed Early Ventures:

  • Ran three failed businesses, including a baby clothing company.
  • Met Rebecca, whose candor and challenge to his business approach was transformative:
    • “‘I don't know what kind of entrepreneur you are, but if your money's in the business that you can't invite someone for a meal, you might not be a great one.’” ([05:18])

• Rebecca’s Impact:

  • She insisted Adam pursue something meaningful he was passionate about, which eventually led to his pursuit of real estate and communal workspaces.

Seed of an Idea: From Greendesk to WeWork

• Birth of Greendesk:

  • A quick, almost accidental pitch to a Brooklyn landlord became the genesis of Greendesk—green, shared office spaces in Brooklyn ([06:30-10:14]).
  • Early adoption via Craigslist ads; 92% occupancy in five days ([11:42]).

• Community as the Core:

  • Realization that what people craved, post-2008 crash, was the sense of togetherness from his kibbutz years, driving the coworking concept’s early success.

• Idea Evolution:

  • Early skepticism from academia:
    • “[The] dean of the business school told me that you can't disrupt real estate. It's too big. So the idea doesn't make sense.” ([10:14])
  • Turned out to be timing perfection—“countercyclical” growth during downturn.

Spiritual Journey & Partnership with Rebecca

• Initial Apathy to Spirituality:

  • “I was extremely not spiritual. I did none of that.” ([13:14])
  • But always held an innate optimism, even under duress.

• Rebecca as Catalyst:

  • She gave him an ultimatum: unless he pursued a spiritual practice, their relationship couldn’t continue ([24:28]).
  • Adam attended Kabbalah classes to prove himself, which serendipitously led to a lifetime spiritual journey:
    • “When a challenge happens in your life, instead of reacting, take a deep breath, stop. And then we say, pause, what a wonder. Pause, what a wonder. Then interact again.” ([31:59])

• Integration of Purpose & Spirituality into Business:

  • Spiritual grounding became crucial as WeWork grew—originating from this “pause” mindset.
  • “Once I hit that flow state, things started moving fast. That led to Greendesk, led to WeWork, led to our first child, led to everything.” ([35:32])

WeWork’s Meteoric Rise

• From Greendesk Buyout to WeWork Launch:

  • Adam and co-founder Miguel left Greendesk after a buyout to pursue their national version: WeWork.
  • Six-month process to land on the name ("WeWork"), conceived during a late-night creative session ([41:06]).
    • “Steve Jobs had it wrong. It's not ibook iPhone. Me, me, me. It's we. We work, we give, we fly, we teach, we…” ([41:09])

• Explosive Growth:

  • Rapid expansion from NYC to San Francisco, London, and globally—scaling from one building to two per day at peak ([55:12]).
  • “Year nine: two buildings a day, 130 cities, 50 countries, five continents, 72 languages.” ([54:51])

• Community Over Real Estate:

  • The brand, driven by Rebecca’s input, became about intention and meaning:
    • “Do what you love. Create your life's work.” ([126:10])
  • Central belief: bringing people together, catalyzing “factory of dreams.”

Inflection Point: SoftBank, Ego, and the Shift

• Meeting Masa Son (SoftBank):

  • “It smells like a factory of dreams. Wow, you're not manufacturing business here. Wow, you're making dreams.” —Masa Son ([59:23])
  • Instead of raising $300M, Masa offers up to $4B on the spot ([65:03-68:59]).
  • Adam in hindsight: should have paused and considered the consequences, but didn’t.

• The Downside of Speed & Scale:

  • The company shifted focus from mission to growth and valuation, breaking from its DNA ([71:46]).
  • “...the purpose and the mission suddenly became not the goal. Those promises...on growth and revenue became the goal. But that wasn’t the DNA of what we built.” ([71:47])

The Fall: IPO Collapse & Loss of Narrative

• IPO Catastrophe & Board Pressure:

  • WeWork runs toward an IPO, but the market shifts from prioritizing revenue to demanding profitability.
  • Adam is pressured to step down. He recounts how a bank engineered his ousting—within nine minutes of resigning, he receives an email calling his $435M debt ([99:39]).

• Post-IPO Fallout & Redemption:

  • Adam reflects on the “darkest moment of the night”—losing control, media vilification, friends disappearing, and the loss of his own narrative ([100:43-114:56]).
  • His spiritual teacher reminds him: “Belief is measured when everything goes wrong and you can look up to the heavens and say, I don't know how, I don't know why, but this will end up working for the best.” ([100:43])
  • Rebecca’s steadfastness and unconditional support proved life-saving:
    • “No matter what, you got me and the kids. What are you crying about?” ([105:24])
  • Eventually, SoftBank pays off Adam’s debt, and litigation leads to a hard-fought settlement ([105:23-141:05]).

Media Portrayal and Ownership of Story

• Loss of Voice:

  • Adam discusses how stepping down meant losing control over his narrative.
  • “I handed over the control over my narrative.” ([114:56])
  • TV dramatizations, like Apple’s ‘WeCrashed’, are “at best 30% correct” but ironically portray Adam and Rebecca heroically ([118:18]).
  • “The truth, even in something that was supposed to be a smear piece, floated to the top.” ([118:31])

• Rebecca’s Role:

  • Media attacked her unfairly, often gendered in nature.
  • “...the woman gets portrayed even worse. By the way, let's be clear. I was CEO and chairman.” ([125:57])

Moving Forward: FLOW and Renewed Vision

• Creating Flow:

  • After WeWork, Adam starts anew, focusing on community-based residential living.
  • With support from Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Flow is built on a strong partnership model and rethinks housing through tech and design ([144:23-163:54]).
  • “...if we can actually challenge loneliness and ownership in a real way, we're going to have a world-changing business.” —Marc Andreessen ([155:49])

• Spiritual Practice’s Role:

  • Shabbat observance is described as transformative; 24 hours disconnected weekly for spiritual, family, and personal connection ([170:43]).
  • “I would say without a doubt that the biggest move that I've made spiritually is keeping Shabbat.” ([173:56])

On Redemption and Life Lessons

• On Mistakes and Growth:
  • Adam repeatedly notes the importance of learning from failures and “getting up a thousand and one times” ([175:09]).
  • “As long as I can learn, if I can learn from it, it's meant to be and it's part of my journey. If I'm going to go and make that decision again, that makes it a mistake.” ([72:54])
• Optimism and the Next Chapter:
  • The episode is suffused with hope, optimism, and the impact of authentic partnerships.
  • “May we not be afraid when the whole world is saying this or that about us. Who cares? It's about what you think, what your wife thinks, what your kids think, and what the universe thinks.” ([178:15])

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Adam on community’s power:
  • “The first time that I felt safe was in that community… That feeling of safety is something that not only stayed with me wherever I went in the world, I sort of find myself bringing people together.” ([01:28])
• On Rebecca’s challenge:
  • “‘You love real estate. When you and I walk down the street… your eyes look up, you're always looking at buildings.’” ([06:30])
• On letting go of control:
  • “When you always think you're in control, you never let go. And when you don't let go, when is the universe going to get a chance to come in?” ([27:24])
• On Adam’s growth:
  • “Life is not about if you fell down. Life is only about how you get up.” ([46:11])
• On the truth rising:
  • “...even in something that was supposed to be a smear piece, somehow the truth... floated to the top.” ([118:31])
• Rebecca’s encouragement in crisis:
  • “No matter what, you got me and the kids. What are you crying about?” ([105:24])
• On spiritual practice and entrepreneurship:
  • “When you disconnect from your phone, you're giving a gift to your kids. You're disconnected, they're disconnected. But you're all much connected to each other...” ([173:13])

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Timeline of Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | Key Theme | |------------|---------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:24 | Childhood, moving, kibbutz life | Community, adaptation, safety | | 06:30-10:14| Greendesk creation | Accidental innovation, coworking, community | | 13:14-24:28| Spiritual awakening via Rebecca | Purpose, Kabbalah, transformation | | 31:59 | Spiritual lessons: “pause, what a wonder” | Spirituality in action, self-growth | | 41:06 | Birth of “WeWork” name | Branding, letting go, letting ideas come | | 55:12 | WeWork’s rapid global expansion | Scale, momentum, challenges of physical business | | 59:23 | Meeting Masa Son, SoftBank | Investment, vision, factory of dreams | | 68:59 | Accepting $4B investment | The inflection point: mission vs. ego/growth | | 100:43 | Losing WeWork, personal crisis | Spiritual test, loss, love, belief | | 114:56 | Loss of narrative, media depiction | Reputation, public perception, losing the mic | | 144:23 | The birth of Flow | Redemption, partnership with a16z, new community vision | | 170:43 | Shabbat and spirituality | Practical spirituality, disconnection to reconnect | | 175:09 | The hero’s journey, moving through setbacks | Lessons, resilience, hope |

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Takeaways

• Adam Neumann’s journey is one of seeking and building community—a thread from his kibbutz childhood through WeWork to Flow.
• Failures and the loss of WeWork were crucibles that distilled core lessons about ego, responsibility, spiritual grounding, and learning from setbacks.
• Partnerships—especially with Rebecca and, later, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz—were crucial in both Adam’s failures and future vision.
• Adam advocates for integrating spiritual practices, like Shabbat, not just for religious reasons but as tools for well-being, balance, and creativity.
• The darker moments—public vilification, narrative loss, and business collapse—are presented less as endings and more as resets or redirections for deeper and better growth.
• Authenticity, intention, and communal ethos remain the core values underpinning Adam’s present and future ventures.

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Final Thoughts

This episode is candid, philosophical, and densely packed with lessons on business, leadership, failure, and personal growth. Adam’s openness about his shortcomings, his evolution as a leader, and the constant centrality of community and purpose offer not only a “WeWork story,” but a meditation on resilience, humility, and the pursuit of meaning.

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Recommended Listen:
For entrepreneurs, spiritual seekers, and anyone intrigued by the interplay between ambition, failure, reinvention, and the quest to build something that brings people together.

Transcript

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Tetragrammaton.

[Adam Neumann]

I was born in Israel. I moved 13 times. By moving from place to place, I always found myself in a new community. Being the new kid in every community means you have no friends on the first day. I would always be attracted to the other kids who had no friends. And my goal in life used to be to make the uncool kids cool. Would take about a few months, then we would all become friends and we would move to the next destination. And I did that literally 13 times in my childhood. The place I lived the most was in a kibbutz. For people who don't know what the kibbutz is, there used to be hundreds of them in Israel. It was a version of a community where every person had a different job, but everybody earned the same amount of money and had access to the same amount of resources. Everybody had the same house. I happened to have just gotten a chance to go to the house. I lived in the kibbutz. I didn't remember how small it was. The entire house, bedroom, kitchen and children's room. My sister and I shared a room was 450 square feet and I don't fit in the door, so I was shorter there. But when I went to kibbutz, I was like, oh wow, the door doesn't

[Interviewer]

fit Your sister older or younger?

[Adam Neumann]

Younger sister. Three years younger.

[Interviewer]

And what was your relationship like?

[Adam Neumann]

So growing up separate from moving from place to place, which means we always had to be very close. When I was about 8, my parents got a divorce and after my parents got a divorce, we moved to the U.S. my parents are both doctors and we moved to the US for two years because my mother had to fellow. She's an oncologist. She fellowed in Indiana. Indianapolis. So I was a Hoosier for two years. I went to Pacers games in Indy 500 and that's where I learned how to speak English because I'm very dyslexic. And for very dyslexic people, one of the toughest thing is a new language. And I remember all those people said, how dyslexic are you? And I would say, when we moved to Indiana, I asked my mom when I went to school the first day, I said, what am I going to do? How am I going to order food? There's a cafeteria. I don't know any words in English. She said, say peanut butter and jelly. So I learned peanut butter and jelly. And for the next two months, every day I wait in line and everybody gets there and they order the hamburgers. And their fries and their chicken nuggets. And all I can say is peanut butter and jelly. And one day, after two months, I was like, I can't eat one more peanut butter and jelly. And I had the courage, and I said the word hot dog. And from there, I started learning. And that was the two years. So at this stage, my parents are divorced. It's my mom, my sister and I, we're living alone in the US and as we go back to Israel, my mother wanted us to have a special experience. And that's how we got to the kibbutz and in the kibbutz, because everybody has a job. She was the doctor at night, and in return for her being the doctor at night, we got a place to live. So she worked the whole day in the hospital, and then at night, she was a doctor. The reason the kibbutz for me is so relevant caused my life with a lot of ups and downs and a lot of different challenges. The first time that I felt safe was in that community. My mother, who many years after was diagnosed as bipolar. And growing up, the patients were always the most important. And I think it taught me a lot because she always took care of all of her patients so beautifully. When she would come home, there was less patience for us. And there would be a lot of fighting and screaming and hitting and things flying and a lot of things would occur. And I remember that no matter how bad the night was, there was always three neighbors checking on me. There were always friends that I could go to. No one ever judged me. Everything was always open. I always felt like I was part of it. And that feeling of safety is something that not only stayed with me wherever I went in the world, I sort of find myself bringing people together. And when I moved to the US which was actually following my sister. So my sister left Israel when she was 16. She was Miss Teenage Israel. She moved to the U.S. she became a very successful model. And when I finished the army, I moved to the US four days later, and I lived with my sister. And from the first day that we're sharing an apartment together, this was right after September 11th, a month later. And we lived very close to where it happened, because that's where you got the money from the government, that that was the most affordable thing we could do. I remember going up and down that elevator and was so surprised that in America, people don't introduce themselves. So I would see the same neighbors every day. No one says hello until after a month. My sister's name's Adi. She was like what do we do? Experiment. Let's introduce ourselves to everybody, and in a month, we're going to throw a party on the roof. There was a shared roof and that party. We'll see who comes. And we did it and we threw the party. And half the building came. And the energy in that building changed. It was very obvious for me that this thing that I cherish, this kibbutz energy, is something that we could bring to the United States in a form of a business. So this is now 2007. I've had three failed businesses by this point. Two fashion businesses and a baby closing business called Crawlers. Baby brands with knee pads on them to protect the baby's knees. Good idea. At the time, I thought today, being the father of six kids, no one ever complained about the knees. I actually think they have extra skin and they're built for it. But. But the universe thought of that one. But by this stage, I'm already after my third business and I meet Rebecca. And when I meet Rebecca, the first date, first time we met, I don't even remember what we ate. But I was waiting for her to put out her credit card so I can put out my credit card so we could split the bill. And we do that twice. And the third time she goes, adam, you know, in America it is okay. You could offer to pay for the meal. I don't have to say yes, but you could offer. And I said, no, I'm a. I'm an entrepreneur and my money's in the business. She goes, I don't know what kind of entrepreneur you are, but if your money's in the business that you can't invite someone for a meal, you might not be a great one. And it's interesting because I think it was the first time someone talked to me that way. And I found it not only intriguing, I was like, wow. And I said, no, you don't understand how business works. And she was like, maybe you don't understand how business works. And that kind of discussion very quickly became a very passionate relationship. Three months from the moment we met that I proposed.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Adam Neumann]

And after we were together, she. One day, it was 2 o' clock at night, I was talking to the Chinese manufacturers of the baby clothing. I was screaming at Mr. Mao, Mr. Mao, Mr. Mao. And she woke up there and she said, if you wake me up one more time, screaming at your Chinese manufacturer for a company that makes no sense and it's probably never going to make any money, it's really going to be an issue. I was like, what? Do you mean, this is my business? And she goes, what do you know about babies? What do you know about fashion? Why is this your business? And again, this was what's so interesting about a relationship. And said, well, because I like being challenged. I said, well, what do you think my business should be? And she said, it should be something you're very passionate about. It should be something that you think can actually make a positive difference, and you should be so excited to jump out of bed that everybody wants to join you. So I said to her, well, do you have an idea of what that business might be? And she said, no. But I can tell you one observation I have about you. You love real estate. Said, I don't know anything about real estate. Said, well, when you and I walk down the street, some men, they look at many things that cross by their way. Their eyes wander, your eyes look up, you're always looking at buildings. And again, I listened. And the next morning, I walk and I notice that I'm looking at buildings. And from that moment, I just started getting preoccupied and dispenser of community and buildings. And very soon after, this landlord in Brooklyn, out of nowhere, says to me, starts talking about my baby clothing business and tells me how horrible it is. And I said his name was Mr. Gutman. I said, Mr. Gutman, why would you say my business is so bad? Said Adam, I have nine children. My wife loves buying baby clothes. She's not once bought from your store. I don't think you're even going to pay me rent next month. I said, Mr. Gutman, how much real estate do you own? He says, everything as far as the eye can see. And I said, well, it looks empty to me. You don't know a lot about real estate. And we would go back and forth for six months, till one day he goes, takes me upstairs to one of his buildings. Said, adam, what would you do? I gave you this floor. I read this in your book. I think sometimes people think ideas come after thinking deeply for many years and coming up with that perfect idea. It came on the spot instantaneously, which made me know that it's not mine. I think when you take your time, maybe you think you own it. When it comes out of nowhere, you could give it, it's bigger than you came from something bigger than me. I said, well, Mr. Gutman, I'm a small business owner and I pay you a lot of rent, but I only have five people. I would love a small space that fits the five people with some shared services, a receptionist and everything in between your floor makes you charge $5000 in rent. We'll charge $1000 a space. I think we can fit 15 spaces. We'll get 15,000. We'll pay the receptionist $2500. You'll get 7500. I'll keep the difference. He said, interesting. And I went home, not thinking anything about it. I come the next day, he calls me so excited. He said, adam, why do one floor if we have a whole building? We'll put the receptionist downstairs, we'll save the cost, we'll fill up the whole building. I'll get this much, you'll get the difference. I said, great idea. The next day I went to Miguel Michelvi, who's then my co founder at the time, is an architect, a do it all architect. And in one night, the business, the business cards, everything gets created. Was called Greendesk. It's early mover on the environmental movement. And it was a green shared office space. But back then, coworking was not the concept that a lot of people knew. And the launch was May of 2008.

[Interviewer]

And you weren't aware of coworking before the idea?

[Adam Neumann]

Interesting question at the time. I go to Baruch College. I actually had a person sitting next to me, a woman who was older and her son had some version of coworking, but was very different than this and did not have a brand behind, had no purpose. It was just, let's split space. And we actually had an entrepreneur through competition and she joined me to the competition. So I'd always hear stories of our son. And our concept was called concept living and was a building, not an office space with shared services. It was flow. But a long, long, long, long time ago, we never made it even to the second stage of the competition because the dean of the business school told me that you can't disrupt real estate. It's too big. So the idea doesn't make sense. So I heard about the idea, but I wasn't aware of it as something that brings two people together. I never thought about it as the place where that same community, that same kibbutz that as a child made me safe, would make others. And I think the timing, which is another thing in life, was perfect because it was after the crash of 08, because people were getting fired because people were changing their life and changing what they were doing. It was a perfect time to start that business. And I remember our partner told me, adam, the business is not going to succeed. And I said, why? He said, because real estate always goes down when the Economy goes down. I said, well, this is not real estate. It's going to be countercyclical. More people are going to want to be here. More people are going. Because when people have the courage to start something new. And we started in May 2008 and it just took off. It was positive cash flow.

[Interviewer]

How did it start?

[Adam Neumann]

We put five ads in Craigslist. No money for marketing. Five ads. The first floor was 92% full within five business days.

[Interviewer]

What did the ads say?

[Adam Neumann]

Wow. Probably. We're going to have to check. Yeah, but probably something to the tone of green, communal, shared workspace, something like that. Something simple.

[Interviewer]

And it happened right away.

[Adam Neumann]

It filled up immediately. It was instant success. It went from three businesses that didn't succeed to immediately hitting. It was so successful that again, the landlord, who's not used to investing any money, came the next week and said, you see, my idea is so good. I said, yes, Mr. Gadwin, your idea is the best. And he said to me, let's open the other floor. And as fast as we would build in 30 days, we would finish a floor. As fast as we finished it, it would fill up. Then another floo floor and another floor and another floor. And at the same time, I'm starting my spiritual journey because Rebecca, immediately, the moment success is starting is noticing that this thing that drove me, this community, suddenly something is competing with it. That's success. Money was starting to sip in. It was tiny little money, but it was. She felt that this is a great time to start a spiritual practice.

[Interviewer]

So you were not spiritual growing up.

[Adam Neumann]

So I don't know. And you would be a better person. What do you consider spiritual?

[Interviewer]

A meditation practice, praying, going to temple or church? Regular basis? I would say that would be spiritual.

[Adam Neumann]

So based on your definition, I was extremely not spiritual. I did none of that.

[Interviewer]

You didn't practice anything?

[Adam Neumann]

Didn't practice anything.

[Interviewer]

Were you a believer?

[Adam Neumann]

So you spoke about my sister. I think if she was here, she would say, but at night, when we were having those difficult nights after all the craziness that would occur at home, I would tell her stories about how we're going to be very successful one day in the future and how we're not going to have these issues and how it's all going to work out great. So I always had this very optimistic view. No matter how tough it was, I had a feeling that things will work out in a very positive way.

[Interviewer]

So you were optimistic, but maybe you wouldn't use the word spiritual?

[Adam Neumann]

No, I 100% would not use the word spiritual. I was not spiritual. I was very optimistic. I would say the only thing that was spiritual about me would have been my optimism.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

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[Interviewer]

Tell me more about the kibbutz. Would you feel like the other people in the kibbutz were like an extended family or no?

[Adam Neumann]

So as we said, I entered 13 communities in childhood. The toughest community to enter was the kibbutz. The kids that are growing up sleep in the same house and only go sleep with their parents on the weekend. This is an old fashioned thing that doesn't exist anymore. But that's how they grew up. Back in the day, the most successful leaders in Israel grew up in these kibbutzes. It was a very successful social movement, but it worked for the first generation and the second generation. Their kids not so much. And by the third generation the whole thing collapsed. Funny enough, lately there's a little bit of a movement back to it today in the world that we live, when people are so digitally connected, I actually think there's a much deeper craving for it. So when I was in the kibbutz, I think everybody felt this way. And I think even though I was an outsider, because I wasn't the kid that grew up there, they took care of me really well. And again, my mother was an unbelievable doctor, so she was taking care of everybody. But the challenge, because she was a single mom and she was dealing with her own challenges that were personal, which again, back then, as a child, I could have complained a lot about it, but today, it's what made me who I am. I'm so grateful for every single moment we spent together. So I think everybody in the kibbutz felt that way. I left the kibbutz at the 11th grade. I lived there for five years. It was the place that shaped me and the place that I lived the longest. You know, when we lived in the kibbutz, I'll share a few things that were different. I think we can learn so much today from the past. In our kibbutz, one day a week, there was no school. Everybody volunteered and worked at the job. Interesting thought. In our kibbutz, every morning, we all went to the dining hall to have breakfast. It was so communal. I loved breakfast. There was nothing there, by the way. Bread, a little bit of Nutella, but it wasn't called Nutella. And a little bit of cream cheese and maybe some eggs. But it was such a great way to start the day. And all the kids would come. No parents. All the kids are together. This is now 5th grade, 6th grade. All the kids are together, and we're talking and we're excited. We're doing this. Then everybody goes to the bus and from the bus straight to school. And most of us were not wearing shoes. Not on the bus, not in breakfast, and not in the school, which then I kept going, which over time, some people thought it was interesting. I wasn't wearing shoes.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. How did you meet Rebecca?

[Adam Neumann]

I have a best friend, and his name is Andrew Finkelstein. That same party that I told you about that my sister and I threw on the roof, where we wanted to invite everybody from the building.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Adam Neumann]

Andrew's girlfriend Rachel came and met me, and we spoke for a little bit. And then she said maybe she'll come hang out afterwards in our apartment. She goes downstairs to her boyfriend who lives with her and said, I just met this Israeli, has a very heavy accent, invited me to hang out in his apartment. He goes, oh, the Israeli invited you to hang out in his apartment? I am coming. And 20 minutes later, I knock on the door. I opened the door. Back then, I didn't used to wear shirts a lot. And I opened the Door. Andrew tells this story. I'm like, without my shirt all being very. He calls me very. You're trash is the way he would refer to it, whatever that means. And he starts making fun of me. Oh, you told my girlfriend this and this. And for every word he tells me, I give him back two words. We go back and forth. Before we know it, we're hanging out until 2am playing video games. We forgot about his girl, forgot about anything. And we become best friends instantaneously. For the next two years we just hang out together. He is in between finishing college. He's very famous to have done six years of college because he really liked it. And he's not getting a job yet. He was selling tickets and he would just hang out. I would come back from school and we would hang out. I love my work, all the stuff I needed to do, their English, the this, the that. He would help me write my papers and stuff again. It's a new language for me. And he would hang out and for him it was very important that I understand the American culture. And he's my age, 46, he's 48. And for him American culture was 80s movies. He loved movies and he just. Have you ever seen Breakfast Club? No. Boom. Have you ever seen. And he would take me through every single 80s movies that he grew up on and teach me about the American culture. And I found it fascinating. And we would hang out and learn and go out and at the same time Adi is in New York City, she's a model. So every night going to different places, we're having the time of our lives. And keeps always telling me that he had this friend Rebecca who was his best friend or one of his close friends from Cornell University. But she lives in Los Angeles and one day he tells me I'm going to move to la. And the whole time he wanted to be a movie agent. I'm going to go, I'm going to become to be an agent. Rebecca got me my first job. I'm going to sleep on the couch. And he moves to la. And I've never met Rebecca at this point. And he starts his career. He's a very successful Hollywood agent today and always tells me about Rebecca and from her side, always tells her about the crazy Israeli, never introduces us. Then two years later, I'm now by this stage, I'm 28. Rebecca is moving back from LA to New York and he's introducing us on phone today. If you want to meet someone cool, you're two cool friends of mine. I'm Introducing you. And I remember that first phone call because I was telling Rebecca, you know, anything you need in New York, I can help you get. She was born there. Like, it was this idiot. She was going out to clubs when she was 14, and that was that. And a week later, she just out of nowhere calls and says, hey, if you want to hang out, me and my friend are hanging out. You can come and say hello. And I do that. And I go. At the time, I have no money. I ride my bicycle. I go to that first meeting. I walk into her apartment. She's with a friend. We talk for a few minutes, and then she tells the friend she can go. And it was just an instant connection.

[Interviewer]

And you already knew of her for years, but you'd never met her, never

[Adam Neumann]

knew how she looked, never saw a picture.

[Interviewer]

I never spoke to her before.

[Adam Neumann]

Never spoke. Just that one time knew of her. But again, the thing that got me that first time we met, and I think there's a lot to learn from this. It was like she put a mirror in front of my face and said the truth, not caring. I think one of her superpowers is how authentic she is. She just looked at me, and within a few minutes, she was like, wow, you talk big and you don't have anything. I was like, what do you mean? And she goes, the way you're talking, it's like, you're so successful, and I can literally tell that you're broke. So it's a little ridiculous. Like, how do you know my bank account? And she goes, you just came to meet me for the first time. You couldn't even shower than taking a taxi. You drove your bicycle. You probably couldn't afford a taxi. And it was true. It was so true. And it was just instantaneous.

[Interviewer]

And you hit it off right away.

[Adam Neumann]

We hit it off immediately. It was right after I broke up from a girlfriend. And after the second day, I came back and I said to her, look, you're amazing, but I just broke up from a girlfriend. I had this plan to sort of be men around town for a second. And so I'm just letting you know that I'm not. And this is again, this is her strength. She goes, really? I said, really? She goes, no problem. Come back when you're ready. But I don't want to hang out until then. I was like, okay.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Adam Neumann]

And I go for two, three days and everything. I was like, that was weird. Why would you want to. Why would you want to hang out with me? And five days later, I call her and I was like, hey, what are you doing on Sunday? She goes, I'm going to my Father's Day, something, something. Not intending for me to say anything because it's Father's Day again, a very American thing. And we talk a little bit more. She's just being polite. She said, do you want to come? Sure. I'm not going to say yes. I said, of course. She tells me many years later that she never thought I would want to come to her Father's Day activity. And I just, we hang out and we go to her Father's Day, I meet her entire family. I sort of move in the next day and I never leave.

[Interviewer]

So tell me about her invitation for you to find your spirituality.

[Adam Neumann]

So we're hanging out, I never leave. We're a month into it and she comes home one day. I'm working at my baby clothing company at the time doing 2 million in sales and 3 million in expenses. So we're just losing money, rolling it, making ends meet, making things come together. She comes to me and she goes, how things gonna work out between us? This is now a month in and I am head over heels as I think you stay here. I said, what do you mean it's not gonna work out between us? She goes, I think the man that I'm gonna be with is gonna have a spiritual practice. It's very important for me in my life. And you really don't have one. And I don't think you're interested in one and therefore I don't think it's gonna work out. But it's okay. You're gonna do great and very good looking. A lot of girls are going to be interested. Don't worry about it, you're going to do fine. Like, wait, wait, wait. How would someone go around having a spiritual practice? She goes, well, some people do yoga, some people meditate, some people pray. There are many different ways for many different people. I said, well, what do you think a good one for me would be? Because, well, you are Jewish. There's this thing called Kabbalah. Why don't you explore that? It's the mysticism of Judaism. You'll like it. Because she knows very anti religious, anything religious. Being Israeli. A lot of people don't know this. You don't like religious. If it's forced on you and it's religious, you walk the other way. You want to choose.

[Interviewer]

I didn't know that at all.

[Adam Neumann]

People don't know that. That's a lot, a lot of the split. There's the stories from the Outside that we hear and there's what actually happens. There's a big divide in Israel between religious and non religious.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about that.

[Adam Neumann]

It's a big topic, but on a very high level. Growing up the way I grew up, when we're 18, we serve in the army. We go and get whatever jobs we get, we pay our taxes, we do what we think is our civil responsibility. I remember serving from age 18 to age 21. In my case still almost 23. I almost did five years because I was a Navy officer. Serving at such a young age, I think is such an important thing because it's exactly the age where you really just want to take care of yourself and have fun and party and do whatever it is that 18 year olds really want to do. And by being forced to serve, it already gives you a different take about life. There's an extreme.

[Interviewer]

You have responsibilities.

[Adam Neumann]

Extremely depends what your position in the army is. I was specifically a Navy officer. I did it age 21. Within the US they do it age 28. What takes your age because they have less money and they need to get things. You have tremendous responsibilities. But even if you're a soldier working, you have huge responsibilities. And there's many, many lessons I learned there. But one of my biggest lessons was before you become a great leader, you must know how to follow orders. If you don't know how to be a soldier, if you don't know how to do the basics, you can't be

[Interviewer]

a general if you haven't been a

[Adam Neumann]

good soldier, you can't. You can be an okay general or okay leader because you need to understand

[Interviewer]

what it's like to get information given to you.

[Adam Neumann]

1 But I also think, because you need to learn that you're not in control. And when you always think you're in control, you never let go. And when you don't let go, when is the universe going to get a chance to come in? I actually think, you know, I have an acupuncturist who tells this great story. He goes to Mexico. There's this hot water river and there's a pool that fills up every day in the morning. And then everybody bathe in it and then they empty it. At night he wakes up early for his meditation and he sees the guy cleaning the pool with a mop, moving around like Tai Chi. He literally, it looks like it's movements from a mastered mart martial arts. And he brings an interpreter and he goes to that guy and says, excuse me. He looks to me like doing martial arts, but you're cleaning the pool, what are you doing? He said, I'm doing what my father taught me. And he said, what did your father used to do? He said, he used to clean this pool. And who taught? Your father said, his father, my grandfather. And he used to clean this pool. This pool is healing for people. We take every move that we make in this pool as an art and we've practiced it for our entire lives. You could take something as simple as cleaning a pool and view it as your spiritual practice and something that's in the service of others, or view it as a horrible chore and be very busy complaining.

[Interviewer]

Beautiful story.

[Adam Neumann]

That's what you learn in the army if you want to or not. And someone with my characteristic, it's a must. Because if you look at me before and after, I was still not in a great place after. But the me before and the me after are two different things.

[Interviewer]

How would you describe me? You before and you after.

[Adam Neumann]

You know, me before. I grew up in the ski boots. We did whatever we wanted. We were part of this community. We didn't wear shoes. We just enjoyed every second of life. And we were just looking for more ways to have fun. It's not that we didn't have responsibilities. We did. But it was all about the community of children and coming together. It was like a storybook of what kids can do to have fun. And that was one piece of it. And the other piece of it was the challenges at home and all the different things and sort of in between. School was not a big deal. I would most classrooms. Most days, teachers would literally walk into the classroom. Adam, leave. Okay, now we can start the class. And I would start wondering. The education there was not a perfect fit for me. Me after. I knew that when I am part of a team, if I can get the team to follow or to partner with me, there is not many things I couldn't achieve with that energy. I arrived into the U.S. this is after September 11th. So there was just a horrible terrorist attack. New York, if you remember. The time is changing. There's the New York before and the New York after. I actually think New York had a golden era afterwards. For 10 years at least, from what I've understood and my experience, People from all over the world are coming to New York. And it's always at the back of my mind this thought that I could basically do anything I put my mind to as long as I can get a team to believe in it and join. The problem at that point is I have all that knowledge, but I have no spirituality. I have no purpose. So when you take a person that's capable of doing that, but you don't give them a purpose, I think that's where trouble comes. Now, Rebecca, who's literally just starting with me, is seeing the potential and articulates the potential, but says, without a purpose, you're not the man for me. And I really wanted to be the man for her. So she takes me to this first Kabbalah class. And without getting into the.

[Interviewer]

Had she already been doing Kabbalah or.

[Adam Neumann]

No, she was doing Kabbalah once a week, but not as a practicing, not with any regiliosity. I would really separate. Sometimes people say, adam, are you religious or are you spiritual? And I say, spiritual. And I say, how do you define? I say, so I keep Shabbat.

[Interviewer]

When did that start?

[Adam Neumann]

Ten years ago, which is four years into it. But I'll go back to that first Kabbalah class. I go to that first Kabbalah class to prove to this woman I just met that I can do anything. And no one's gonna say. She's not gonna say. I'm not the man for her. Maybe she's not the woman for me. Yeah, you don't break up with me. I break up with you. Do you know who I am? My sister is a model. I was an idiot. I was an actual idiot. And I go to this class, and this woman is teaching. And to teach the lesson was a very basic one. When a challenge happens in your life, instead of reacting, take a deep breath, stop. And then we say, pause, what a wonder. Pause, what a wonder. Then interact again.

[Interviewer]

So no knee jerk reaction.

[Adam Neumann]

No knee jerk reaction. Take a breath. Let the universe come in our new language. Hone that antenna and let it recede for a second. There's a certain speed that this travels in. And then. And that was it. That was the class. Class ends. I'm like, whatever. But I still want to prove that. So I go and talk to the. I'm going to ask this teacher, someone, something, and show her.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Adam Neumann]

And I asked the teacher something, and this one was a very wise teacher. She takes her book, she gives it to me, she says, adam, I write notes on the side of my books. Take a look. Your answer is there. Bring it to me next week. I think, oh, I'm going to show Rebecca. I took her teacher's book. Meanwhile, I go outside, I look at the book, the class stands. I'm like, oh, my God, this teacher tricked me. Now I gotta come back next week and give that this book. I'M not gonna not return the book. And the next day, I go back into my baby clothing business that was genuinely not succeeding. And I had this saleswoman who was very powerful, but we argued every day, and she gets at it again. And this is something that I think people don't know about me. Even when I look like I'm not listening, I always hear. And when I think what I learned could be beneficial, I'll try it at least once. No matter what, I'll try it once. So I pause, I take a deep breath, and a different reaction comes to my head. And I try it. And the saleswoman was so quick to anger. Suddenly she's pausing. We have this beautiful dialogue, and we come up with a new idea of how to do something.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Adam Neumann]

We execute the check. First time. You know the book, the Alchemist?

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Adam Neumann]

He talks about beginner's luck. I think when we start practicing spirituality, first time, it's beautiful. I encourage everybody to give it a shot and see if it works. And if it works, then we can go. Then we can go to the next level, and it works. And I love things that work. And I come there the next day, next week. Now I'm hungry. Now I'm spiritually hungry. Now I want more.

[Interviewer]

Because it already changed your life.

[Adam Neumann]

It already worked. I wouldn't say yet that I don't recognize at this point already some of the biggest moments of our life that change our life. Most of us don't know that that's what's happening. And this is why, no matter what moment you're going through right now, even if you think you're going right this second through your worst moment, you might not know that the darkest moment of the night is a second before dawn.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Adam Neumann]

And if you just pause and have a little more patience and keep pursuing, don't quit, the light will be revealed.

[Interviewer]

Let's see what the next scene in the movie is.

[Adam Neumann]

The movie is great. I just don't know how.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Adam Neumann]

It's a divine movie. By the way, it was written by the best director, writer, and producer. And you know who the star is. We are. Are we gonna be a tragedy? Are we gonna be a success? Are we gonna be an up and down? Are we gonna learn from our lessons? Are we actually going to curl below our blanket and, oh, no, this happened, and I'm not going to go back out. That's how Rebecca introduced me to it. And I just drank it like it was from the fire hose. I was just intrigued. And the moment that started, things started. We call it being in a flow state. Once I hit that flow state, things started moving fast. That led to Green desk, led to WeWork, led to our first child, led to everything. Brought us all the way here today. And it only started with one class and one teacher and one sentence.

[Interviewer]

And then you started going every week.

[Adam Neumann]

Then I started going everywhere again. This is me. When I see something that works, I actually do more than once a week. It started once a week. It became two times a week, then it became three times a week. And then at the same time that this is happening, my life is changing so fast. I'm at this stage. I meet Rebecca at 28. I'm now 31, 32. I'm having my first daughter. That's a miracle. We're starting to have that experience. And then we're launching WeWork. So we said that we had that business, Green Desk, and this landlord kept growing and growing. And after a few months, I saw that this business could be a national business. And I go to him, Mr. Gutman, I said, Mr. Gottman, he invests in us. The number is $20 million. We will give you 50% of the business, and we will build this thing national. And Mr. Gardner said, I'm sorry, it's not for me. I like Brooklyn, but if that's what you guys want. And there's. There's actually a deeper story there, but maybe for another time, if that's what you guys want, then I encourage you to. I encourage you to go for it. I will buy you guys out, and you guys run with it. And we agree on a number, but he won't pay the entire number up front. He's only willing. The number is 3 million. We own 50% with another partner. So a million and a half, Miguel and I. A million that he's only willing to give us 300,000 over a million. The rest is installments for the next four years to ensure that we don't enter Brooklyn with our new business. We don't compete. He just wants Brooklyn, by the way, back then. Oh, Brooklyn. No big deal. Well, Brooklyn became quite a big deal. He wanted Brooklyn.

[Interviewer]

Did he grow the company in Brooklyn as well?

[Adam Neumann]

First of all, it still exists, and it's successful. So, yes, he grew it, but not with the concept of community and the soul behind it. But it still exists today, and it's still successful today. And coworking is a successful business today. And this was the beginning. This was the seed. And what's interesting is when we come to start WeWork. So then Miguel and I want to start wework. We did take six months to come up with the name. So we knew we had an amazing business. I knew this business was a home run. I felt it. I knew it was right.

[Interviewer]

And you really experienced a lesser version of it. Early one had a higher intention than the first business.

[Adam Neumann]

100% true. This one had time to put thought. And this one had Miguel and I sitting with the whiteboard for six months planning it. We used to draw a picture of what we would do nine years into it. It was very similar to that initial picture that we drew.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Adam Neumann]

I will send it to you so you see it. It's a beautiful picture, but the name's not there. And I'm not willing to start the business because by this stage in my spiritual practice, I know the power of words. And I need a name that describes this vision, and I can't come up with it. And one thing we didn't say about my friend Andrew Finkelstein, who introduces me to Rebecca. When we fall in love and I call and tell him we're going to marry each other, he stops talking to us for three months. He had a relationship. Nothing to do between him and Rebecca. He was so upset because he knew the Adam he knew was. Was the Adam that used to party a lot and go all over and be. I used to hang out a lot. And Rebecca was his close friend that he was so worried about, and he thought she was some innocent lamb and I was the wolf. And he didn't want the wolf to get close to his close friends. So he called Rebecca and said all the. Whatever worst things he could say about me.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Adam Neumann]

And there's a lesson there also, because if you call someone and tell them why you shouldn't be with someone, then they get really interested. But we loved it. It was true. I told him it was true. He just didn't believe it was true. And I'm a very loyal person. When I commit, I am not at 99% committed. I am 100 to a fault. So Andrew ends up not talking to us for three months, but then again becoming very close. And we never forgot that he introduced us. But when.

[Interviewer]

And instead of you somehow hurting her, she made you better.

[Adam Neumann]

That's what happened. And I think for her, at the point she meets me, she was celibate for six years. She, at age 23, she was 29, decided she's not gonna go on this dating scene and this thing that everybody else doing. She told the universe she used to. So she's a yogi. She was meditating she was Jiva Mongti. She was certified. And she would meditate and she would tell the universe, send me my soulmate or no one at all. She was zero interested. So by this point, she's six years in. So then she meets me, and she knew it, I knew it, and that's that. And then when it's time to launch the business and I don't know the name, I call my old friend Andrew Finkelstein. But this point is in Hollywood, his career is starting to take off. And he has and has always been an unbelievable agent, but he's also an amazing copywriter and speaker and, you know, like Marty supreme that just came out, he put together. He represents the director. He represents. He did a lot. He didn't write and direct it. He's the agent. But he helped it become a reality. I was there for the whole process. And I called him, I said, I need your help to come up with a name. And I go to his house and we hang out the way we used to hang out. And we are really. This is now 2am and we're about to. We're about to faint. And he looks at me and he literally goes, I wish we had a video of this. He looks like this. His eyes are like, almost rolled back because Steve Jobs had it wrong. It's not ibook iPhone. Me, me, me. It's we. We work, we give, we fly, we teach, we and faints.

[Interviewer]

It's interesting also that you say it's at 2 in the morning, you're both exhausted.

[Adam Neumann]

So I'm exhausted.

[Interviewer]

The point is, is that you weren't like, in a strong place.

[Adam Neumann]

The opposite.

[Interviewer]

It was almost as if you were ready to give up. You were at the end, you let go.

[Adam Neumann]

This is so accurate, Rick. We were so at the end, we were done and it wasn't going to happen. Yeah. And he says it. And I look up at the universe. By this point, I'm already practicing more. I said, please let me remember it. In the morning, I wake up and I call Miguel™ wework. Let's go. Boom.

[Interviewer]

Amazing.

[Adam Neumann]

But it reminds me. He just said something I think very important. It reminds me of a story. Joseph, in the Bible, he's born. He has all these dreams. He dreams his father and his mother and his brothers will bow to him. And his brothers hate him for it. And they put him in the cave. They want to kill him. Then they decide to sell him. And. And no matter what happens, he looks up to the heavens and he says, it's God's Will, the brother sold me. Maybe it's my fault. I didn't speak. They sell him. If you don't remember the story, they sell him.

[Interviewer]

He moves slaves into slavery.

[Adam Neumann]

He becomes slave to one of Pharaoh's right hand people. He then rises, always whatever what he always is blessed. He says, God's will. And he rises there as a slave. He starts running the house. Then the woman of the house, her name was Eshet Potiphora. She really. She wants to sleep with him because he was defined as beautiful from the in and from the out. She's very handsome and very smart. And she chases him. He doesn't want it. He runs away. The clothes gets ripped. Then she feels ashamed. She says he tries to rape her. He gets thrown into prison. And no matter what God's will, God's will. Throw this. Then in prison, he climbs to the top. He's helping run the prisoners. God's will. Until after 10 years, those two people come, the two ministers that have dreams and interprets their dreams. One he says, pharaoh will save you. And the other one he says, you will die in three days. And the one he says, Pharaoh will save you. He says to him on the way out, please don't forget me. He suddenly gives up this belief that he had until then, that it's God's will, God's will, God's will. He forgets for a second. It says that he gets punished to stay two more years. Now he's 12 years in prison. And he gets to this night where he is done. He's ready to give up. He says, God, maybe I don't deserve it. Maybe I need to be in prison. I will never leave. He gives up and lets go and goes to his lowest point and in his lowest point. And this, I think is very important for all of us. When we're there and we all have a moment, we're in that lowest point, we get to choose. Do you choose belief or don't you? And if you choose belief and are able to pick yourself up from that lowest point, boom, that's when it happens. And the next second, Pharaoh has his dreams, can't interpret them. The guy remembers he met this guy, Joseph, this Hebrew slave. He says, I met a slave in prison that interpreted my dream, brings him to Pharaoh, interprets Pharaoh's dream and goes from a slave to basically the CEO of Egypt, the number two, to the king in one day, all the way from here to that. And to finish that story, when his brothers, there's the famine, the seven bad years, they come and he saves his family. And when his brothers see him and they cry and they're so murdered, they're so sorry for what we did to you. He said to them, it was never you. I was here so we all could be saved. It's God's will. So I think what you're saying is not only true, that in that moment that we let go, I also think it's the moment when we're at our lowest moment and we let go, where we can choose to believe.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I think there's also something in that lowest moment where you're not doing the work. There's space. Like you said earlier in your life, you were talking a lot and you weren't listening. When you're working, a lot of times you're talking, talking, talking, talking, and there's not the space, but when you run out of steam talking, eventually you're done. And then there's space and it's quiet, and then it can come through.

[Adam Neumann]

And sometimes when we talk, I'll talk about myself when I used to do it. And I know I still do it, but I try to do it less. When I used to do it, I thought I was in control. When we think we're in control, that's when we really start losing the game. We're in control of our reaction to what happens, not of actually what happens. No.

[Interviewer]

And we never know what's going to happen next. Really.

[Adam Neumann]

We really don't. The only thing we know is that it's part of that movie that you described before with the greatest director, writer, producer on the planet.

[Interviewer]

Yes. And I'm always anxious to see what's the next scene, what's the next chapter.

[Adam Neumann]

The nice thing about what you said is if you're patient. You said anxious, but I bet you're also patient. Because if you're patient enough, the next chapter is. Could be phenomenal.

[Interviewer]

And I think there's no way to get to greatness without patience.

[Adam Neumann]

I think there is no way to get to lasting greatness without patience. You could taste it. You could taste it. We all know so many stories. I've been part of one of those stories. You could taste it, but it's not going to last. I think if you want lasting blessings or lasting greatness, you need patience. You need to be aware that you're not in control. I need to accept the fact that sometimes, even though you don't know and it's really, really scary, life is not about if you fell down. Life is only about how you get up.

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[Adam Neumann]

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[Interviewer]

So you have the name and what happens next.

[Adam Neumann]

It's miraculous. It's on fire.

[Interviewer]

What's the first thing you do?

[Adam Neumann]

I go and find a building on Lafayette and Grand that wasn't that cool yet. Former landlord that didn't like to give any money and was very. Was like one of those very tight landlords. And I convinced him to pay us enough to build. It had five floors. The idea was we'll rent the top floor and we'll do so well. Then we'll rent the floor below. The floor below. The floor below. And the reason you start in floor five, when you do construction afterwards, you're always doing below people and not above their head. Make less noise was the thought. And I convinced him to do the deal. But he has one thing. We must put $300,000 in a letter of credit, otherwise we can't do it. The exact same $300,000 that we got from the sale that the partner was willing to give us before the installments, dollar for dollar, same amount. That same amount moves. And I think that's how energy moves. When you're in flow, that energy moves from that idea that was, like you said, the early to a slightly more intention oriented idea. Now it's there and we're under construction. We do the first floor. We get a very small budget from him, which is amazing because never for the next nine years in the history of wework can we build for that price that we built the first time. Why? Because we were constrained. Because constraints is the mother of all innovations. It's what Takes us to the next level, and we design it, we build it. I still remember the night before. Miguel was about to have his first son. He gets overwhelmed the night before. And we had a few employees. We all go and finish it, and the place just. It fills up before. Within a month, 99% full. Next month, next floor, next floor, next floor, next floor. And that's the case for. And the first building is done, and we go to do building two. We have no money. We raised our first round, and that's where it starts.

[Interviewer]

Where's Building 2?

[Adam Neumann]

Building 2 is on 35th and 5th, right in front of the Empire State Building. Literally right in front, which at the time was not considered a good location. But for me, being an outsider in New York, I was like, what are you talking about? I can see the Empire State Building from the roof. It's beautiful. Sometimes I've learned this a lot in life. The ones who know everything because they've been living in that market forever, actually might be limited. And for me, coming from the outside, a fresh set of eyes on any situation or. I like to think of it more as a childlike look. Rebecca thinks she has seven children, not six. Me being the toughest one, number seven. I look at life as a child for good or for bad, which allows me to see situations from the beginning. So that's building number two. And we raise our money from the first person and we just start running. My third building is in meatpacking the same time also, as I said, New York is happening. Meatpacking is starting to happen. There was a club called Lotus. We used to go there every Tuesday night. Danier was at the door. And we just loved the meatpacking. It was so. I don't know if you remember meatpacking back then. So cool. The original restaurant, before rent became expensive, was such a great place to be. And I just wanted the building and the meatpacking. Find the landlord. That is impossible. We become friends. I understand him. He understands me.

[Interviewer]

Also seems like as you have success, it's easier because you have examples.

[Adam Neumann]

We're not there yet because this is same year, right? This is yearly success. So it is success. But remember, real estate people are very good at saying no. They know everything. Their business is cyclical. So they've been there, done that. But at the same time, if you remember, you're now 2010. Office is only starting to be at the rise. So there's a lot of empty space, which gives us an opportunity. So we do meetpacking, which is amazing. And I want to do San Francisco. And the reason I wanted to do San Francisco, I wanted to be a national brand. And my head was like okay, we'll be national by being on two coasts. So three is the answer and number four is San Francisco.

[Interviewer]

How was the reaction in San Francisco?

[Adam Neumann]

The concept of people wanting to be part of something greater than themselves and wanting to be part of a community. And when you start business and you have one or two employees are by yourself to go to the coffee machine and talk to someone to need an accountant today. We'll talk about it later. With AI the world's different. But to need all this help and meet five different people around the coffee machine that can just, you can just talk to, to share the struggles and the successes with people in a like minded place was relevant all over the planet. It made tremendous amount of sense back then. The only time I would say it makes more sense is today because the more people are getting connected digitally, the less they are connected physically, the more they crave it. But back then it was unbelievable. In San Francisco is the answer.

[Interviewer]

And then did you do more in San Francisco or do you spread out from.

[Adam Neumann]

This is where I'm a little. This is where Adam back then is very busy doing push everything out. By the time I did San Francisco I might have done one or two more buildings. I was ready to go global. I went in London and people were like Adam, you can't go to London. So why? It's the same language, similar accounting system, similar law. What's the big deal? Same website, what's the big deal? Like Adam, it's London. It's a different time zone. So from after doing a few buildings I go to London. And what's interesting about London London is the inventor of the original co working right Regis, the original company that did this from the 80s I believe is there. So everybody was like no, it's not going to work as well in London because it exists there in my opinion. And I feel it's stronger even today. When you go to a place where people know of a new concept but you bring something innovative, you do even better than when you have to convince everybody about a new concept. So we then go to London and it goes really well. It basically for the following five years goes unbelievably well wherever you go. And just to give it weight, from year one doing one building in the first year and year two adding I believe three, you go to in year nine doing two buildings a day, two buildings a day a day, nine years, two buildings a day in 130 cities, 50 countries, five continents, 72 languages. And when I count today, I only count business days. So that's five days a week, not including holidays. So you do over 400, maybe five. You did a crazy amount in that last year.

[Interviewer]

It's unbelievable.

[Adam Neumann]

It was an amazing journey. And you know something about the journey that sometimes doesn't get spoken enough to do what I just said. You need an unbelievable team that believes for sure, because this is not technology everywhere. Not only can you not breathe everywhere, this is physical labor. This is architecture in all these languages. This is construction. This is man. And it's operations and hospitality and accounting. And the thing about weworked, that team was phenomenal.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Adam Neumann]

Because they believed. And if you ask them, I met. I just met one of them a few weeks ago. He works in an awesome news start. Not even new. They're publicly traded. He works in Archer, which is the vertical takeoff drones. They're doing really well. And he's top five. And he used to be one of our heads of construction. And he sees me, he's very nice, and he says, adam, I just want you to know the reason I'm doing so well is because of everything you taught me at We Were. And I said, I didn't teach you how to work in a vertical takeoff drone company. Like, what does construction have to do with that? He said, no, you taught me that if I put my mind into it and I get a team to work with me and I put purpose and mission first, I can do anything I want. And that has worked phenomenally for me. So that's the first five years.

[Interviewer]

Do you think the success had to

[Adam Neumann]

do

[Interviewer]

with the concept or with your personal will?

[Adam Neumann]

In hindsight, I think the success was accumulation of every single thing that I did leading to that. It's the childhood, it's the challenges. It's the parents that were always giving as doctors. It's the kibbutz. It's the learning how to serve at the age of 18. It's living with Adi, my sister, in New York City and experiencing this unbelievable city that inspired me. It's my friend Andrew Finkelstein, who teaches me about America and about culture and about movies and about all these beautiful things that inspire me and get me excited. And it's this belief in something that I play a part in. Something bigger than me, but I can make a difference. Maybe sometimes it feels big and sometimes it feels small, but there's a mission for me on this planet. There's a message for me. It's more community. And that message needs to be told and needs to be heard. And as long as I stick to it and don't forget it and put that first, nothing can stop me.

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[Interviewer]

Tell me about your relationship with Softbank and Masa.

[Adam Neumann]

First, I'll start with the most important thing to say about Masa. Because for me, it's Masa. Softbank is the company that he created and SoftBank is great, but it's Masa. When Masa walks the first time into WeWork, he goes like this. It smells like a factory of dreams. Wow, you're not manufacturing business here. Wow, you're making dreams.

[Interviewer]

What a beautiful statement.

[Adam Neumann]

And I am. I get shivers all over my body. And I was like, adam, he just met someone who thinks bigger than you.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Adam Neumann]

I didn't even know where it came from. And then he just kept talking. I didn't even know where it came from. And he was supposed to come for an hour and a half and he only had 12 minutes. This all this in the 12 minutes. He says that. And my headquarters, where I said when I used to bring investors, had this whole tour through our HQ I would do was on the fifth floor. I was never getting there. So I took him into our innovation center and introduced him to two residents. Because our buildings, I always wanted to work in buildings where customers were there so I could always hear from them in the elevator. They love telling me what's wrong and I love hearing.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Adam Neumann]

So I introduced him to two residents, two members. And he says what? He says, he looks at me, he goes, this is great. I need to go uptown. Would you like to join me in the car? We could talk some more. I say, of course we Go into the car, have this whole presentation, close the door. Like, forget your presentation, let's do it. Diploma. The night before, we have a board meeting. This is 2016. Towards the end, and we decide as a board. The story was, we can turn our business profitable whenever we want because we're growing. That business you spoke about, Green Dust, never stop being profitable.

[Interviewer]

You would just slow down building and you'd be profitable.

[Adam Neumann]

Or even better, you stop. You let the machine catch up with you because you've done so much. You actually take account inventory of where you're at, which there is no way to grow as fast. We were one of the fastest, maybe fastest physically growing business on the planet. No matter how good at what you do, you are, you will never be able to do that perfectly right. You stop. You let the deals catch up with you and you reconsider everything you're doing. You look at everybody. Is everybody in the right roles? Do we have enough employees? Do we have too many employees? Is our technology working? What do we need to do? You take a moment because up until

[Interviewer]

this point, you're sprinting.

[Adam Neumann]

I think sprinting would be an understatement. I think if you came, because I know you a little bit, I think you would have told me after our meeting that you need to take 10 minutes and meditate before you go downstairs. Because you would have felt that. Because that energy, I think you'd have loved it. But that energy was electric. We were flying. It used to say, outside of my door, we do the impossible every day, miracles, once a week. And we meant it. We meant it.

[Interviewer]

And it happened.

[Adam Neumann]

It happened. We meant it. It was happening. So we have this board meeting.

[Interviewer]

Tell me now how big is we work in 2016?

[Adam Neumann]

I would need to. I would need to go back. It's been some time, approximately, I'm going to guess I remember it by buildings and revenue, WeWork is at $450 million revenue going to 900 million. So WeWork's doubling not just in size every year, but in revenue, which then doubles your expenses and the growth and everything that comes. So 450 million growing into a billion in revenue. It's a $16 billion company of its last valuation. It's probably in for sure in Europe, in the United States and in Latin America.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Adam Neumann]

At this point, and we're flying and we're working, we are working many, many, many hours. Everyone, the employees, myself, everyone's working nonstop. We have the board meeting the night before and we agree, we say we're going to go out to raise Money one more time. One of my abilities is that I am able to raise money because I'm able to bring people with me towards the direction I want to go. And I'm also, for people who know me, I keep my word. If I say we're going to double by this number, I do. If I say we're going to hit this goal, I do. So the best people for me to raise money for a second time, people who passed the first time but heard what I said, and then I come to them the next time, say, let me show you what I did. Since we met then, they're like, oh, wow, you told us 10 things. We thought you were going to do one, you did nine. And then they would want to join the journey. And so this, we had a board meeting and we decide that I am going to raise 300 million. We're going to take a pause. We're going to clean everything up. We're going to turn the company profitable, stop signing leases. We're going to take the company public. And not only are we going to take the company public, this is 2016 going to 2017. We're not going to worry about our last valuation of 16 billion. We're going to take it for 10 because we want to leave money on the table again. But at this point, we weren't using valuations, at least on my side and my executive team. We believed that our solution is so correct and it worked everywhere. There was not a place on the planet. You opened this thing and it didn't work. You had proof, we had proof. We had belief. We had everything we needed to know and the plan was solid. You slowed down for a second. And the next morning I met Masa and we sit in his car. The story I told you happens. What happens? Invites me into his car. What's the deal and how much are you looking for? Yeah, so again, it happened the night before and I'm already by this stage. I am studying spirituality and I believe there's no, it's not cause and effect. I believe in cause and effect, but I believe, wow. We said it yesterday and it's happening today. So I'm going to tell him the number we said raising 300 million at a $20 billion valuation because the last one was 16. He looks at me and goes,

[Narrator/Advertiser]

I

[Adam Neumann]

have the vision Fund. It's going to be a hundred billion dollar vision fund. Could take a long time to spend a hundred billion dollar, three hundred million checks. Don't you have a bigger vision, a bigger picture? I said, I do but you know that that would be a very big amount for us to raise. Said, well, Tom, if you could do anything, how big can this company be? I said, this company can be as big as as much money as you inject into it. You put money on one side, you get growth on that. I haven't missed my numbers once. Remember, by this point, 2010-11, I grew 3x 3x 3x, and then 2x 2x 2x. But I don't miss my growth. I said, look, we're 450. I'll hit 900 million next year, then a billion eight, then 3.6 that it's going to keep. Depends how much money you want to put in the machine. And he says to me, well, what do you think about Southeast Asia? Said, I've never been there. He said, well, do you think the concept will work there? He said, I'm sure it will, but I would need to learn about it, so, well, we should do a company there. And then he said, what do you think about China? Oh, sorry. When I said we're in all those places, I forgot to mention we're already in China also by that point.

[Interviewer]

Really?

[Adam Neumann]

So when Mask comes, we're in China, Latin America, Europe and the US And China already is a freestanding company that we raised locally at a $2 billion valuation. And the reason I raised a local company, if the locals don't believe in it, I don't want to enter a market that. That's hard. So that was my LIPNAS test, Leptus test, and worked out very well. And he says to me, what about Southeast Asia? I say, yes. He said, well, we can write this size check there. And he says, what about Japan? I said, I really don't know anything about Japan. He said, well, Adam, I know Japan. And tells me the whole story about Yahoo. Japan and how at some point Yahoo. Japan was bigger than all of Yahoo. And said, okay, we could do that together. And then he said, china, you could go much bigger in China. And the 300 million requests becomes 3 billion.

[Interviewer]

Big change.

[Adam Neumann]

Big change. And it's all written down. And it's all in 28 minutes. And in 28 minutes, from the moment we started writing till the moment we arrived, 28 minutes. But we're not there. We're only at minute 22. And he's writing all of it down on an iPad. Then he looks at it and he goes. And I said, I can't take this much dilution. Don't. Maybe I could take, you know, maybe a billion. Said, no, but we will fund Southeast Asia as a separate company. China already was separate, Japan will be separate. So this way, so you don't just have, we work as one valuation. You have all these separate companies with their own valuations. And again that money in them because we have a team that can execute will become successful businesses. He was not wrong. The recipe was in place. He was very right. And then he says, let's make it 4 billion. I said, I don't have it in me. This is me and this is this. I said, I don't have it in me. I don't know where I would put. Were you scared at all?

[Interviewer]

It sounds scary.

[Adam Neumann]

You know, I'm in my mid-30s. My lesson in hindsight, after a lot of time of reflection, when you tell the universe you're looking for 300 million and the next day a guy offers you 4 billion, instead of signing the dotted line, you take a breath and say, why? What does it come with? What am I committing to? Is there something here I don't see? But to be fair, including myself, most 30 something year olds sitting in that seat, those numbers that. This is the Israeli from the kibbutz who came to New York City and lived with his sister who was paying his rent for the first six years, and then Rebecca paying for the following three years. And I go, what am I going to do with another building? He said he'll do secondary for you and for all your investors and for all your employees. And everybody will have an exit. So they feel this. Okay. And I should have been scared. I wasn't. I should have been scared. I've never thought about this before. I should have been terrified because that was way more. I should have done that. First lesson that I learned in Kabbalah. Pause. What a wonder. But I didn't. I took that pen and I signed that document right there on the spot. On the spot. He offered it on the spot.

[Interviewer]

Amazing.

[Adam Neumann]

I signed in the art of the deal, which deals sometimes have momentum, they have moments, they're second in time, just like channeling. But the deal can come from both sides. And just I want to make this clear. Not only do I not blame Master for anything. No, I am so grateful, so appreciated. He trusted. He saw the vision. He trusted. He trusted completely.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. How could you be mad at that guy?

[Adam Neumann]

I woke up because other people, many times after, oh, he pushed you to grow so fast. We're going to say what happened? We're going to get there. But I couldn't be. I couldn't be. I wouldn't Be. And there's nothing. If he called me today, said Adam, I need this or that. I am on that plane and with him as fast as engines can take me. Of course, straight away, I walk out of that car again. In hindsight, I couldn't know at that moment. That's when a mission driven company that was based on belief, that came from kibbutz, that came from all the right things, with all the right energies switched to become about growth, money and valuation.

[Interviewer]

And because you had now a commitment to live up to before that, you were building at the fastest pace you could with what you had. And now you're put in this situation of multiplying it by a hundred times.

[Adam Neumann]

Yes, but I want to take more accountability than that. Before all that happened, I had a choice. I could walk out of that car, take a deep breath, really pause, maybe go talk to Rebecca, go talk to some of my spiritual teachers, go to people I know who have more experience than me. I signed already. Let's say this. I. I've thought about this many times. I could have not, not signed. That wasn't in the cards. Not that, Adam, then no, maybe Buddha could. I could have not signed. I could have taken a deep breath and said to myself, this is more money than I've ever touched. This is a tremendous responsibility. Yes, he wants me to grow very fast, but that's not what he really wants. What he really wants is the result in five years from now, what would be the best way? And I could have thought for a second about my spiritual studies by this point, about five years, that when things come really easy, we tend to not appreciate them and we don't appreciate them, we tend to short circuit. But I didn't. Instead of that, and I remember it, I walked. It was like 58 Street, I think, and our HQ was an 18. I walked down New York City. Every step I took, that ego went up. It was under control. It was there. But I had Rebecca and I had my kids and I this. I have a beautiful relationship where I get given feedback all the time with the executives. We had a teacher that we worked with. There are a lot of controls around us to keep it, but it went above my threshold, above my spiritual level at the time.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Adam Neumann]

And it came up and I walked into that HQ a different version of myself. The purpose and the mission suddenly became not the goal. Those promises that were made on growth and revenue became the goal. But that wasn't the DNA of what we built. I am not saying that there aren't companies that could be Built that way.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Adam Neumann]

I, Adam, don't operate that way. I cannot build a company that way. And then we really started growing fast. If fast was fast before then, then we started flying.

[Interviewer]

I feel like you're being very hard on yourself considering you've been in business for six years. You've been sprinting or flying the whole time, only having success. And here's someone who believes in you even more than you believe in yourself saying, you can do this. I don't know anyone in that position who would not move forward with that.

[Adam Neumann]

So I appreciate you saying that. I don't view my words that I just said as hard. I cherish that moment because in hindsight, that is what made me who I am today.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Adam Neumann]

In general, I think for me, I think it's relevant for other people if we can start taking those moments that at the moment we can view as a mistake and actually say, it's not a mistake. It's exactly what needed to happen. As long as I can learn, if I can learn from it, it's meant to be and it's part of my journey. If I'm going to go and make that decision again, that makes it a mistake. But, yes, that's where we were.

[Interviewer]

You wouldn't make that same decision today because now you have more experience.

[Adam Neumann]

I didn't similar in the magnitude, but I had a version. I didn't. I took almost six months to make the decision to start the next business.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Now, is there a world in what Masa believed could have happened?

[Adam Neumann]

100% almost did. We were very close. If I played 2019 differently, there's a very high likelihood that it would. But it's very important to say, you know, this concept of, on the one hand we have free choice, on the other hand, it's meant to be.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Adam Neumann]

When I say that to people, I say, how would you explain that? The way I would put it is

[Interviewer]

how would you say it?

[Adam Neumann]

We get to a fork in life. We all do. Many times you have free will. You choose one choice and it actually ends up working out, or what you would perceive as working out, you're like, oh, meant to be. Choose another choice and suddenly things don't work out. If you take those things that didn't work out and you learn and grow from them, you're right back to meant to be. So it's our free choice again. That thing of us not controlling us, controlling our reaction, it's that. So to answer your question, I'm going to caveat what I'm about to say. Without everything happening exactly the way you did, I wouldn't be where I am today. And I love where I am today.

[Interviewer]

Of course, no regret.

[Adam Neumann]

Not only no regret. I think I am, as a person, happier. I think have the capacity to build things that are tremendously larger. As you said, if Kibbutz was here, then Grindesk was there, then wework was this. I think flow is the next level and would have never been able to be born without those steps. So I'm so happy. But here's a different, an easy scenario for you. If instead of my investors, I would have Marc Andreessen and Ben Horwitz as my partners. My partners today. And I'm saying this from knowledge, because I've gotten to know them, I sit with them. We have a board meeting in two days, which I'm very excited about. I'm going to get to sit with both of them in the room. Best part of my business, without a doubt, is the nine hours of sitting with Mark and Ben, knowing that they're going to tell you what they actually think, not what you want to hear. And learning from people who are not just, in my opinion, the best investors in the world. They've built their own businesses. If they were sitting around that table when the whole thing was happening, the one thing they wouldn't have done is said, adam, you should step down. That they knew was not going to work because it's been tried many times and literally, if you look at the history, almost has never worked. They would have said something like, adam, we need to have a serious talk. Maybe taken me somewhere, locked the door, thrown the key and said, okay, Adam, you've proven that you're the fastest growing company in the world. You've proven. You've proven that it's time to prove profitability. Because if we're going to mature to our next stage as a business and if we're going to want to go to Wall street, they're not going to understand this unstoppable growth. And we know that the four wall units are profitable. Let's prove it. That's the first thing they would have done. Second thing they would have done again, now that they know, then they would have said, adam, our tech is not working. Because if our tech was working, we would be able to show things in a way that would be very clear to everybody. The fact that we can also means that we can't control, which means we need to go and fix that also. That's the thing that In September of 2019, if happened differently, we would have had a chance for Masa's idea not only to have worked, but to work phenomenally. Because remember what happens then Corona comes. And in Corona, wework would have had an opportunity to press the reset button. All those leases, we haven't talked. We don't need to get into the details of the business. But we were taking these long term leases. Yes, selling against short term commitments. We then started going into enterprise that was taking longer. If you remember, in Corona, everybody left office. No one paid their rent except for one company. We work because the people running it, it wasn't their money anymore. They didn't treat it like theirs. So they paid. No one was paying their rent. If we were there, me and our original team, and we sat there and we actually had the opportunity to reflect, have partners that were honest with. By the way, the honesty could have included saying if we said, adam, you did great, taking the company from 1 to 3.6 billion in revenue. We talked about the size of it, but the revenue grew from zero to huge. We should bring in a professional CEO that should do it daily and you should become chairman. The discussion could have been a very real discussion. We had no discussion. And then when Corona happened, the reset button would have been set. And I actually think what's interesting about Corona, now that there's been time to think about it, work has never been the same since. It needed leadership, it needed a vision. So yes, I think Massa could have been right.

[Interviewer]

What happened in 2019 where it changed?

[Adam Neumann]

I think as I said, what happened started actually in that December of 2016,

[Interviewer]

getting out of the car.

[Adam Neumann]

It all moved to chase these things and it became bigger than us and we just grew for the sake of growth. And Masa saw us go from 450 to 900 million. A lot of companies promised him that we're the only ones who hit. Then he saw us go from 900 million to 1.8 billion. So then he came in again and then it became even bigger. And by this point we were rushing and SoftBank was going through their own set of challenges and their own public stock challenges. In the Japanese stock market, it and this is not 2019, it's 2018. In March of 2018, Masa comes to me and says, why don't we buy wework from all your investors at a $20 billion valuation?

[Interviewer]

How many investors did you have at that time?

[Adam Neumann]

Not that many. Institutional investors. The biggest ones, best ones. The biggest ones, you know, seven to eight institutions plus 10 individuals, maybe not that many.

[Interviewer]

And why did he want to do

[Adam Neumann]

that he wanted to build a trillion dollar company.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Adam Neumann]

He wanted to go huge. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And he could see it working.

[Adam Neumann]

He saw it working. He knew it was going to cost money. He had no problem with it losing money. He knew that if it needed to go public, Wall street won't understand it. But he understood it. He wanted to grow to a way bigger revenue and then do deposit the cleanup.

[Interviewer]

I see.

[Adam Neumann]

He wanted to keep.

[Interviewer]

He just wanted to wait longer before the cleanup.

[Adam Neumann]

He wanted to truly own the category.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Adam Neumann]

At this moment, people are copying from all over the world. There are 40,000 companies that got funded, registered and opened. Copying. WeWork. 40,000. So he saw and he just wanted us to own it. And to do that, he offered a $20 billion valuation, $10 billion for all of our investors and employees, and $10 billion on the bank account. Just so you have this, and this is at the time the company is losing about a billion 8 to 2 billion a year. Again, this is where a different board would have done things differently. I can't be part of that decision because I'm staying in. I wasn't selling, wasn't even selling secondary in that I was keeping everything because I'm aligned with him and we had goals. It was a deal 70, 30 his way, approximately. And every time the management team hits a goal, we go up in ownership. Or at the end, when we hit the final goal, which was a very big goal, but we believed we could hit it. We would own 51% and he would own 49. Everybody would get more equity. It was a big plan. It was a big thinker. I know they had hiding in it. Not just we work, it had we live. So it had residential hiding in it. It had construction as a new category hiding in it. It saw the future. And because I was staying in the deal, I was a conflicted party. And therefore I couldn't take any part in accepting the deal. So the board did what's called a special committee. And that special committee's job was to negotiate with Vassa and do whatever they need to do. And I think they made, again, mistakes. Everything. The way you and I talk about mistakes, I think they were greedy because instead of saying, we'll take the win, we'll take a $20 billion company, the $10 billion, by the way, these investors, these investors that put $20 million that were walking out with $2.4 billion clean cash, they thought the company was worth $100 billion. They believed also. So they go into this lengthy negotiation. From March until September towards October, deals have Momentum again. If I'm sitting on a board and there's a founder like me, and the founder brings a $20 billion acquisition to our company that has a great vision but currently is losing money every month I go to the founder And I say, Mr. Founder, is this what you want? And if the founder said yes, yes, maybe it's hurtful that he wants me to sell and doesn't agree with me, but if he says yes, and it has happened to me and I've done it multiple times, if the founder said I just did it on a company three months ago, the founder says, yes, this is what I want, I say, thank you so much for working so hard for the past nine years and good luck, and I walk out with my, in this case, 100x return on my 20 million more 150 because they pulled out money. But no, they negotiated. And Masa told them very clearly, this is my number. I didn't negotiate. I gave you a huge number in cash for a company that we all know needs a lot still work to do. And they negotiate from March till September. Then the Japanese market starts changing. Then when they see there's a problem, they stop negotiating. And they're still fighting till they let they go down. And then until in Christmas, they finally decide, okay, we're not negotiating a little before not negotiating anymore, they agree to everything and they pass it to Masa. Now here's the problem, because this is all happening. Masa and I are declining that the company is going to grow very big. I'm already signing a lot of deals, I'm already planning for this to happen, but I'm not in charge of it happening. And there was a guarantee, there was a protection that if it doesn't happen, Masa still needs to invest a certain amount. And I trust Masa because we've done this before and invested. So we're. We're signing deals, we're running really, really quickly. This is not happening. And then suddenly our special committee decides, okay, now it's time to agree.

[Interviewer]

I just want to say one thing. You're running quickly, and this is what Masa wants.

[Adam Neumann]

Exactly what he wants. 100% to the T, the speed he wanted.

[Interviewer]

You didn't go rogue in trying to build a company fast. This is what you signed up for with Masa, and you were doing it.

[Adam Neumann]

I did the opposite of going rogue. People who know me will know that I make a partner that keeps his work. If you and I are partners and I'm going to change something or I want to change something, I will call you and I will ask for permission. And I always offer something. And if you say no, I will say, I understand. And then I would say, don't get offended that I tried. I wanted to go a different direction. But I respect our partnership. It's what I signed up for. It's what we took the money for. Also, our partners were all there with us. And I remember the employees are killing it. They're running for it. They're running through walls.

[Interviewer]

Had the Japanese market not changed, would the picture have been different?

[Adam Neumann]

Had. And again, we're doing a lot of ifs and maybes. Had the board, special committee, got on a plane the next day, said, master, you already have two boards. It's in the company. You know everything. We don't need to. We don't need to disclose anything. 20 billion. Here's a term sheet. Here's our bank account. Please sign. It would have happened the next day. They would have all been out. The cash would have been there. And when Corona hits, we wouldn't have had the whole 10 billion, because we would have been burning, but we would have had enough. And again, we wouldn't be where we are today, which I'm very happy about. But I think the interesting thing, to connect it to where you and I are sitting right now, it's December 2018. I am sleeping in a house three minutes away from here. I get a phone call from asa Adam, I am so sorry. The Japanese market has changed. Our stock is down 30%. My CFO told me that if I go through with this $20 billion acquisition, our stock will crash. My first responsibility is to my shareholders. I know I promised. I know you've been growing. I can't go through. I remember Rebecca is in the kitchen playing with the kids. The house that we were living here and has, like, a kitchen with couches in it. So the kids are next to the kitchen. Everyone's hanging out, they're eating, they're drinking, everyone's smiling. They're really having fun. I decided, I'm not going to say anything today. I just went and hung out and took many, many deep breaths. That night, when everybody was sleeping, I told Rebecca what happened. She had a nice relationship with Masa. Also said, let's go see him. Where's Masa? At the same time, can you guess where he would be? Because the universe. Remember who's writing the story. If you're directing the story, where would Masa be?

[Interviewer]

Not far.

[Adam Neumann]

Exactly. Has to be not far, because the movie set can go too much.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Adam Neumann]

He's 15 minutes away.

[Interviewer]

Unbelievable.

[Adam Neumann]

Going set.

[Interviewer]

And you didn't know that before?

[Adam Neumann]

Didn't have a clue. Didn't have a clue. That's how. That's when you're in flow. Bad things or perceived bad things can happen when you're in flow also.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Adam Neumann]

If they're still in flow, it's just another clue to tell you they're not bad. They might be seen bad. We go 15 minutes away, we walk in, we discuss again, in hindsight, legal. You promised. I grew because of it. There's all these things I could have done, but now this is my partner. I understand what he just said.

[Interviewer]

He wasn't happy to make the call.

[Adam Neumann]

No, not at all. You could see through. No, no. It was not easy for him. He didn't want to make the call. Of course, it was his team. It was esteemed this bad.

[Interviewer]

And it was just the reality of the situation changed and he was at the mercy of the reality of the situation.

[Adam Neumann]

He did the right thing.

[Interviewer]

He didn't really have a choice.

[Adam Neumann]

This was not Master Son money, this was softbank money. Yes, and Vision Fund money, but softbank. So this, the other thing we didn't say, this is not even Vision Fund, this is a softbank acquisition. Small Vision Fund, big softbank. So it's softbank money. He did the right thing. So then we talked, we said, well, what are we going to do? We've been spending. We agreed on an amount that will still go. So it was still very supportive at this very large valuation. That's where that $40 billion valuation comes from. And I walk out and now It's January of 2019. We have this big off site in LA, rented Universal Studios. Again, a moment of reflection. I could have gone on that stage, told everybody what happened, told the stories, what I really, really would not like to be in any similar situations ever again. But if I were, I would go up on that stage, tell everybody exactly what happened, say, this is what we have in the bank, because this is all we get and we're turning this company profitable now.

[Interviewer]

Yes. Which was doable.

[Adam Neumann]

One hundred percent doable. One hundred percent doable. But I get on that stage, I say a light version of it. Not exactly, but I say, we're going to get serious. I had one close person on that board that was really close to me. His name is Steven Langman. He's amazing. He's still a close friend. He lost a lot from being a part of this and never did he say a word except call me and laugh about it. And be a great friend. He's the definition of a. How do we define a great friend? When things are actually challenging are the day for you. He comes and sees me. I was in somewhere around here. He comes, sits with me. We talk about the fact that we're going to make the company profitable. We make the commitments. We're clear. We're going to do what needs to be done. We know exactly what needs to be done. Again, because we're the leaders. We know where everything is buried. We know exactly what to do to do it. And then my CFO goes to the Lyft ipo. This is like a month later, we're warming up to use it, and it's on fire. And it's all about revenue. It has nothing to do with profitability. He goes, adam, based on their value, we're worth. Based on their revenue, we have more. And they're getting multiple of revenue. And again, the fire starts. Now the IPO story. And the fire starts. And basically he says, and not only him, bankers. And those bankers are not any bankers. These are the biggest bankers on the planet. Come to me and show me books, which obviously we still kept that show the valuations that we're going to go public in. And they all make sure to go above 40 billion because that's the last valuation because they're making a sell again. All stuff that today I understand, but back then I had no clue. And basically, if you keep obtaining growth of this magnitude, the markets will understand that you can always pull, deliver and turn profitable, grow faster, grow more. We'll take the company public for this gigantic number and home run.

[Interviewer]

And what happened?

[Adam Neumann]

Life happens. Never plan on everything being perfect. Just like if this works and this works a second ago. And again, just look how many times the universe tried to come in and tell me how many messages turn it profitable. The first time, the second time, the third time, what actually happens is we start running for this ipo. We keep growing, we don't slow down at all. So we keep burning because we're told it's going to be a multiple of revenue. There's Lyft and there's Uber. And as we're preparing for this ipo, Uber goes public and immediately crashes. Value goes down because the public markets don't want just revenue. They actually want profitability. And there's this split that happens in the public markets a lot where it goes in one second from we all want revenue multiples of revenue to we want profitability. You're living in a world today where you're going to see, you're going to see some very valuable AI companies go with huge revenue and a lot of losses and they're going to get some mega valuations. And I hope for all of them that they can turn the switch whenever they need and do whatever it is they need. I'm sure they know what they're doing. But the market flips in a second. It's not about revenue, it's about profitability. For us, we needed nine months to turn the ship. It sailed really far faster. Suddenly move is this. And now suddenly we have to take the company public. If we don't take the company public, they won't have enough money, or so we're told. And at this point, the bank that. Then again, without getting into it, because it's so many details, but the two banks that are fighting on us end up choosing one of the banks and that bank is leading us into the ipo. And we're doing the meetings and they're not going well. And the articles start coming out because people are in the meetings and that the valuation is not there and it's not going to be 40, it's going to be 30. There's this thing in growth companies. You can't catch a falling knife. Once it starts dropping, you don't know where the bottom is. And Masa calls me and says, adam, I don't want you to take the company public. It's not good, it's not looking good. Things are not working well. Let's rethink, let's regroup. But the leaders around me, and this is a big, big choice. And again, I'm saying this again, so it's hurt again. I take full accountability. But the leaders that I put around me and when did I start putting those leaders? Really after that? 2016, the leaders. Because I was at the beginning attracting people that were mission and purpose oriented, like me. But when you stop being mission and purpose oriented, then the people you attract will stop being mission and purpose oriented. They all wanted that ipo. Everybody was doing math and they're pushing ipo, IPO and the bank and everything. You can't talk to Masa, you can't talk to Master. If you talk to Masa, it will all be ruined. Even as I tell you the story, I think about again, this is why life and experience is so important. Today I was advising me, I said, close everybody out. Who gave you the most money? Masa. Has he trusted you? Yes. Has he believed in you? Yes. Go talk to Masa. Don't worry about what they tell you, go to Masa, of course, and say, masa, san, you trusted me so much. I am grateful and appreciated. I'm sorry we got into this. The truth is we were going to buy the company, and then you changed in the last second. So you put me in a little bit of an uncomfortable situation. They then told me it can go public, so I take accountability. But we did it as partners. I never had that conversation. We did it as partners. Mahsa, what should we do as partners now to solve it? That one conversation didn't happen, and it didn't happen. And today I know a lot more about it for two reasons. One, because I needed to be where I am today, and I wouldn't get there. But a more technical reason, because there are a lot of people who had different agendas. And when the numbers are of that magnum, we were not dealing with billions. We were dealing with tens of billions and going to potentially hundreds. When the numbers are of that magnitude, if you didn't surround yourself with people that are actually there for the right reasons, your chances of getting the right advice are very small. Remember also that at that time, I'm very good at this. Yes, I have a spiritual practice, and yes, I'm. But I'm very good at this. Going into a retreat for a week and stopping everything and breathing and meditating and really asking myself, who do I have that I can trust? And going and talking to them would have been the wise thought, and then maybe similar things would have happened, but we never even gave it a shot.

[Interviewer]

Even though Masa made the call to you that you didn't like, the first call of, like, things are changing. I'm guessing you still trusted Masa.

[Adam Neumann]

So, again, this is. I was not able to quiet down the noise that came around me because the people were telling me, don't do that. Were the most powerful people in the business world. We're talking about the heads of the banks. We're talking about the biggest venture capitalists on the planet. We're talking about. We're talking about a lot of the board members. We're talking about people that have built this repertoire for a very long time.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And they have more experience than you. They've been through this before. This is your first time, anybody's first time at this scale.

[Adam Neumann]

There were a few voices out there. I missed two. Two voices called me that I missed. Mark Benioff calls me. He wasn't such. We were close friends, but not the closest. Said Adam, I don't need to know a lot to know what's happening? I can read the press. You don't know the salesforce was going to go public. I pulled back, I reshuffled. I did it again. You must pull back and fire your CFO and general counsel. And I don't need to know who they are. I just know they're not advising you. Right. Right now. Miss that one. There was another super powerful person comfortable saying, Ruth Porat superstar. Same story sends me someone from a different bank to advise me. He said, ruth sent me but I missed the signs. There was many. So, so much noise and I'm not talking to Masa and the noise is all around me and he's not talking to me. And now the bank that was supposed to go as public is telling me we're having real issues and this is moving really fast and the articles are coming and the this. And again, everyone keeps telling me how SoftBank is doing this to me and SoftBank is doing that to me. They actually painted SoftBank as the enemy. But they weren't, he wasn't and they weren't. And then I have this very monumental meeting on a Sunday with the head of the bank that's taking us public where he sits me down and basically says, adam, you're going to have to step down. And if you do and when you do, we'll take care of the business, we'll fund the business and we'll do the different things. And I remember talking to her and saying, but I don't think someone else is going to understand how do I understand what needs to be done? He says, yes, a lot of founders think that. And then things survive without them. They don't really. I don't know a lot of examples for venture backed businesses that then become huge success without.

[Interviewer]

But that's the arrogance of the people with the money. They think because they have the money they know what the right thing to do is. And it's often not the case.

[Adam Neumann]

I think so. I also think he truly believed in what he was saying. I actually think his team told him that it's possible and maybe they didn't understand what the magic of WeWork really was.

[Interviewer]

That's what I'm saying. I don't think he did.

[Adam Neumann]

So I'm not. So again, I don't know how much he knew himself.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Adam Neumann]

Because he has a big team and he's doing a lot of things. This is one other meeting. Again, no blaming at all.

[Interviewer]

No.

[Adam Neumann]

And I did, I did mistakes before that. There's many, many things that I did. But that's the idea that was given, and I come back with my partner, and now I have the beginning of a family office that was with me, three individuals, and I'm like, okay, we're going to need to. It looks like we're going to need to step down. And the guy is running my family office. He says to him, his name is Elon. He says to me, I don't like it. There's a clause and one missing piece of the story that you don't have is at the same time, I have debt of over 400 million that I borrowed against equity from that same bank that was telling me to step down. And he says to me, I don't like. You have a clause that says that if you step down, then you're in breach of your contract, because you're not. It's a control clause. And then they can call back the money. I said, no, he wouldn't. He's the one who told me he'll protect me. So I don't like it. So we go and we bring it up. We have a board member that says, of course I'm going to talk to them. And I talk to them and there's no problem and it won't happen. And everything is good. I get comfortable, even though my team is not as comfortable, because again, I'm speaking to the people running the place. And I trust. I do actually have I trust. And I stepped down on the board meeting the board call, and nine minutes later, I receive an email from the same bank. There were two other banks part of it, but that bank was the biggest part, that I'm in breach of contract and that they're calling all my shares.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Adam Neumann]

And I have 15 days to pay back $435 million, which, of course, I didn't have, and there's no chance I could have done.

[Interviewer]

That's unbelievable.

[Adam Neumann]

And just so we're clear about the nine minutes. A bank cannot create a document in nine minutes or in a day. It has to go through a lot of legal process, at least a weekend, if not a week, on a very, very fast example. So it was perfectly executed.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Wow.

[Adam Neumann]

I walked right into it.

[Interviewer]

Terrible story.

[Adam Neumann]

And then. No, it's not a terrible story.

[Interviewer]

It is at this point in the story. It's a terrible story.

[Adam Neumann]

That's interesting. I've never told it, by the way.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, it's a shocking story.

[Adam Neumann]

I think these stories occurred, but we never hear these stories. I think they're versions of this story.

[Interviewer]

I think they happen more often than we know.

[Adam Neumann]

They happen more Often than we know.

[Interviewer]

And every time it's a tragedy.

[Adam Neumann]

Well, let me tell you, it's interesting and maybe this is me. So now I'm really getting down. Now I feel down.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Adam Neumann]

Now my 10 years of spiritual practice are in the garbage. I am properly depressed. Everybody told me I am. And at the same time, articles are coming out at a speed of one every three to five minutes. This is now 2019. This is Trump first term. There's a lot of noise in the media. I have a friend who called it the first time social media was used. It was like social media before social media was fully there and the speed that the articles were coming out, another story. And I said, but no one knows the story. And another story and another story and another story. And I'm feeling really low. And my spiritual teacher calls me and this is like two days into this, and he goes, adam, just call to see how you're doing. And I said to him, this is not a good time. I'm not doing great. Things are really tough right now and I'm not sure what's going to happen. And he says to me, I thought you might say that. I just called to remind you the one thing we learned. I said to him, we've been studying for eight years. His name is Eitan. Said Eitan, we studied for eight years. We did not study one thing. I studied three times a week. I think we studied more than one thing. I was wrong. We actually only studied two things. But they're similar. But we only studied two things. One, treat other people the way you want to be treated. The rest is commentary. Two, and this is the real one, the darkest moment of the night is a second before dawn. I want you to know something. He says, I've seen you for the past eight years with belief and connecting people and speaking about spirituality and the business. Of course you believe in the universe when you are flying like this. No one's ever seen something like that happen before. That's not belief. You'd be an idiot if you don't believe in that happen. Belief is measured when everything goes wrong and you can look up to the heavens and say, I don't know how, I don't know why, but this will end up working for the best. And he says, if you can, I know it's hard and most people can't. If you can actually change your perception right now because belief is a choice and choose to believe that this will work out, I don't know how the new version of yourself that will come out of this will be so much more powerful, so much stronger, so much smarter that you will actually be able to reveal the thing that you were put on this planet to do. Just like that first lesson. I hear it, I breathe it. I almost feel it. Almost there. I'm not there yet. And I hang up the phone, go to sleep. I wake up at 5am sweating, crying. I don't cry. I cried as a child. I don't cry as an adult. Everything's fine. Nothing is as bad as what I had as a kid. So nothing is bad. Rebecca wakes up, 5:00am, looks at me. She's never seen me cry together at this point, 12 years, 13 years. Because you cry. Said, yes. She goes, why? Said, because it's all gone. Said what? I said, everything. It's all gone. They're going to take it all away. It's gone. I made this mistake. I mean, that's all gone. Because everything. I go, everything. Because, well, remember we spoke about you once putting 100 million on my name so in case one thing happens, we'll have something like bankruptcy remote. Said, yeah, I never did that. She goes, well, remember we spoke about the fact that we never signed a personal guarantee. So it's not all gone. We didn't sign a personal guarantee. So now we're signed on a personal guarantee. This piece for you. You really want to understand because we're going to go public. That debt, I had that after an ipo, you're supposed to be in a lockup period, so they can't use that as collateral. So I wrote in the documents that for the six month after the ipo, it's personal guarantee, but my lawyers forgot to write. But if there's not an IPO on thought there wouldn't be, then that guarantee goes away. So I say to her, no, we're personally guaranteed. Now, in relationship, I think we all get to a moment where the two sides get actually tested. Something real happens. Yeah. Many ways Rebecca could have answered this, many ways other partners could have reacted. She took a deep breath, she looked at me and goes, you know my mom's house in upstate New York, she owned it for 30 years. She doesn't have a mortgage. We could move there. We had five kids at the time. We'll take our five kids. We're going to homeschool for a little. We don't need to send them for school. You're going to take a second to find yourself again. If you want to go back into business, amazing. If you don't, we'll move to Costa Rica. We'll do a little real estate. Kids will be homeschooled. We'll serve every day. We'll work out either way.

[Interviewer]

Amazing.

[Adam Neumann]

No matter what, you got me and the kids. What are you crying about? At this moment, I understood something. When we're children and we have a hard moment, when we really have a hard moment with our parents, like a difficult that you're like, suppose you trust them and they're not there for you. That's why it's so sad. When children go through horrible things, there's no one there. But as adults, if we do have a partner, if we have a few close friends, they say, you have one close friend. You have a whole world if you have a few close friends. For my family, suddenly I felt like I'm not a child anymore and there's something I can lean on. It's not the end of the world. But she looks at my face and she sees that I'm not. I'm almost there. She knows me, but she didn't get me over the hump. I'm still a little depressed and it's not like me, because I don't get depressed. And she goes, and by the way, something I've meant to tell you. When we met, you were broke. I find you much sexier broke than I do with money. Then I smiled. Now I was happy. I walked downstairs, remember I had 15 days to pay back 430 million that doesn't exist. I walk downstairs, I have three employees. A week ago I had 13,000. I went down from 13,000 to three because now it's all gone. The three family office who came just joined me a few months ago to manage all this money that now we don't have. And I'm smiling at 6am we started at 6am because we had to deal with this horrible situation. Now I'm smiling, they're like, why are you smiling? I said, first of all, I'm smiling because it's all going to work out. They thought I lost my. They're very rational investors. They're world class. They're. All three of them are with me still. Elon, DJ and Max, they're unbelievable. They think I lost my mind because they're real investors and they think the situation is done. They think we're going bankrupt, it's finished. So I said, we're going to work out. It's all going to work out. Because I believe and I don't know how and I don't know why. This was the darkest moment. Dawn is coming. She's Going to take a deep breath. It's going to show itself. And my wife thinks I'm sexy. Amazing. Do you know who saves the day? If you wrote the movie, who saves the day? But how? Who is his messenger? Do you know that by talking to you now, I'm actually understanding myself what happened? Do you know how many times you told me that I should talk about this and I haven't? And you're like, adam, we should talk about it. And I was not expecting us to talk about this today. I was expecting to talk about a lot of other things. But by saying it, I myself and understanding something, there's some actions I'm going to need to do after I've done this. Masa. Masa saves the day. How he pays back the debt. Wow. He calls through Marcelo with his team. They call. Marcelo calls me for a meeting. So here's. Okay, so now we're going to connect. And this is all going to connect. This is back to belief. I celebrate the holidays. I'm celebrating Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement. It's a day of reflection. We don't eat, we don't drink. We pray and we pray to go to the next version of ourselves. We pray to be forgiven for all of our sins. We pray to learn from our past mistakes. And it's Rosh Hashanah and then Yom Kippur. And in Rosh Hashanah, a close friend of mine comes with me, and everybody around me is down, by the way. And people are really affected by what happened. And I'm very affected because I feel extremely bad for the employees and for everybody that was at the journey with me. The investors, all the investors, except for must have all made money already multiple times. I have this sense of belief. I don't know how it's going to work out. And we do this Rosh Hashanah and this and that, and then between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and then Yom Kippur happens, and we're praying. And there are many different. Without getting into. In Judaism, there's different sectors, and they don't all get along. And I practice with many different sectors. I practice with this sector and that sector. So three different sectors who do not get along with each other, which is a shame, but it's the truth. All three of them send representatives to pray with me. That Yom Kippur, one of the biggest rabbi, sends his sons. They've never not prayed with him in Yom Kippur. The other one the head of the organization and his number one guy comes Eitan, the guy that spoke, and his Michael Berg. All these people come together around me and we are praying like there is no tomorrow. We're praying for a miracle. And suddenly, before it ends, Max, one of those three cups I see on his face, he has something really important to tell me. I said, max, if it's all business, don't talk to me. 24 hours, no talking to his own business. And he's sitting there, he can't help himself. And he keeps trying to want to tell me something. I said, max, please, unless it's life and death, I need you to let the sun go down. Just participate, enjoy, join us. We're not talking business. And it ends. And he says to me, you won't believe this. Marcelo is inviting you for a meeting. He wants to work the situation out. I go and meet Marcelo. He basically says, adam, we trusted you. We've invested a tremendous amount. We want to save the company the way we see fit. We would like you to give us the kiss. In return for that, we will pay your debt in full. So no one has a gun to your head. Because we don't like how they're treating the situation. Again, at this point, they were from the outside, because everybody else was able to keep them locked out, is what was really happening. If I would have gone before, if we were together, they would have been able to keep them locked out, but they kept them locked out. We'll buy your controlling shares for approximately $100 million, supposed to be even more. We will pay back your debt 100% and in full and on time. And we're going to invest an amount in the company so the company can go to its next level. And we will buy from you and from all the other shareholders at the discounted valuation, approximate valuation of 10 billion, because last valuation was 40, 30%, which will be a billion to you and 2 billion because I own 30% of the float of everything, minus third piece. Then there was the Miguel part and 2 billion to everybody else, all your investors, all the employees, everybody. And we said yes. And I stepped down. And they put Marcelo at the beginning, was running it himself. My interactions, Marcelo were always. Whatever he promised always happened. And then he chose the CEO, but he chose. He asked me to not be as close again. This is back to the old playbook. This is the playbook of keep the founder away and like this. And they come in and the thing on the first day they do is they fire all the people closest to me. The problem is they were the ones who knew everything.

[Interviewer]

The only ones who knew.

[Adam Neumann]

Not only ones who knew. They lived it and breathed it. But it's an old playbook. You take out the king, then you kill all of his loyalists. They called me. The two biggest loyalists called me, said, adam, should we stay because the business will go down? I said, of course you should stay. They got fired first. They put a new CEO, and we negotiated it. And remember, when I go, the reason I stepped down also, and the reason I accepted is we negotiated 3 billion for the whole company. Not just 3 billion for everybody to take out money. 3 billion for the whole company. So the company is funded, they have a new CEO, and the payment is scheduled. The 3 billion to the company. Money in the company goes in the 3 billion for. Because it's their company now and they own most of it. The 3 billion that's for everybody else is scheduled to come in April 1, 2020. Corona hits March, and the last day of March, we get a letter from SoftBank saying, Force majeure. Even though it wasn't in the contract, we're not paying. All the money that I thought was coming was gonna go, by the way, by this point, I'm a practiced samurai. Deep breath. And Rebecca a month before said, it's never coming. She was not even. She was like, it's never coming. And she's like, too good to be true. We're gonna have a little more. We're not out yet. I took a deep breath, didn't come in, and I got the last gift that Masa gave me, the gift of litigation litigated. We learned a lot about that.

[Interviewer]

What is it like having strangers write things about you that you know are not true? And people reading it or watching a TV series about it? What's that like,

[Adam Neumann]

you know, connecting to what you and I just spoke about? There are a lot of things I knew I was giving away when I stepped down. The one thing I completely missed was that I was giving away my narrative. I had a platform and I had a microphone. And then in one day, I stepped down. Which, to the eye, that's not experience, probably means he must have been wrong. Everything he did was wrong, otherwise he wouldn't have given them back the keys. The story that you just heard, the builder, they didn't. No one knew any of it. That's something I now understand. So I handed over the control over my narrative.

[Interviewer]

You were never accused of doing anything illegal. You were never brought up on any charges. It was all just innuendo, storytelling.

[Adam Neumann]

It was me being a novice to the game of life when it comes to communication and media. I remember the first time I met you. You did not need to hear the story to know the story. And another person. When we met both of you at the same time when we were in Malibu. Mark Andreessen. Marc Andreessen calls me a few weeks after I stepped down, knowing that because he heard so much noise from the media, that he knew what the story wasn't. He didn't know what the story was. And in hindsight, now that I know him and Ben so much better, we've spoken about it a little. For them, getting such media coverage and hearing so many stories means pick up the phone and call. There's something very interesting. There's an opportunity here.

[Interviewer]

Yes. Something's going on that's not being said. Okay. Because this story that's being shouted, it's too much.

[Adam Neumann]

Not only is it too much in their eyes, we know what wework built. He calls first phone call. Adam, you might not know who I am. I'm Marc Andrewson. I'm an investor. I said, mark, I know exactly who you are. A 16Z is already very big at this point. This is 2019. Right after. A little after. This is 2020. And he goes, and what do you think? And I start telling a little bit what I think, and I'm speaking a little bit like the story that's being told about me. And he goes, oh, you're still at that stage. He said, what stage is that, Mark? The one where you believe what other people are saying about and you forgot what actually happened. This is like the first time I meet Rebecca. I'm like, I love this guy. This is amazing. I said, well, Mark, Yes. You might be right, because would you like me to tell you what we think about you here at a 16Z? I said, please. He said, you're the only company in our entire portfolio at the time, about 400 today, over a thousand. You're the only company in our portfolio who every single startup that we have either is using today or used in the past. We have no other company that we could say that about. What you've built was not built in one room with a bunch of engineers. Actually, your tech was your weakest link. We could talk about that one day. What you built is you had to be in 50 countries. You were in 70 languages. You were doing construction. You built a brand. You created a movement. The word wework is said is a variable almost. It means, I mean, the wework said, do you know how many pitches we get on the wework of this and the wework of that. You created a category. That's what we think. I said, thank you so much, and I hung up the phone. Missing the fact that he actually wanted to do some business or get to know me better, because I was at that stage. But back to your question. I handed over the mic.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Adam Neumann]

And I didn't understand that by doing so, the story is going to run away from me. But because we never actually did anything of the things that you just said, all it was was a story makes a good book. I hear it makes a good television show. But. So I haven't watched the television show. I watched the first episode because my friend Steven Langman really wanted me to. But I know from my friends who've watched it and people who watch it and the stories in this, if they have 30% of the story. Right. That would be a big number.

[Interviewer]

What's interesting about the TV series, about you, I'll call it a smear piece, is everyone I know who's seen it thought that both you and Rebecca were the heroes of the story.

[Adam Neumann]

I think this is connected to what we said before. I think truth and authenticity are the biggest tools that we can have. So even though I gave away the mic and let everyone else run with it, somehow the truth, even in something that was supposed to be a swear priest, floated to the top. And I'll tell you a little bit how I think so. Jared Leto. So we talked about. Andrew Finkelstein is a character in our Star. I see. Which is excellent. He made sure, by the way, to write himself out of every show because he's in Hollywood. He's very powerful. But not this time. He doesn't get to write himself out of this one. Andrew Finkelstein keeps getting email from Jared Lezo's agent saying, Jared's gonna play Adam. He's a method actor. He must meet Adam. And I'm ignoring, ignoring, ignoring, ignoring. And eventually Andrew calls me and he says, look, Adam, they're driving crazy. Can't we take one meeting with the guy? He'll come in, he'll come out. He's a movie star. He's an Oscar winner. Be fun. So I have a defamation lawyer at the time. And when the show's gonna come out, we're like, how is it legal? How can Apple tell a story about us using our name that we haven't approved, that we haven't read, that we didn't write? There's this whole thing. If you're a public Figure you could do this, you could do that. I think 15 years ago, it wouldn't be today. Obviously, it is social media today. We're in a different place. But I remember talking to the lawyer. He said, look, Adam, if it's so horrible because Jared Leto is also a producer and there's a credit, at least we'll tell him some of the true story, and maybe it will play favorable for us. I also remember the whole time reaching out to Apple and sort of being. I sent an email directly to Tim Cook actually saying, if Apple is all about personal privacy and safety and security, how can. On the one hand, you be that when it represents your iPhone, but when it comes to you making content, you can use a person's name and a person's family and a person in a story that I know you're not going to have the right story because you guys never spoke to me so factually wouldn't be correct. We never got a response from Tim. We did get response from his lawyers that read the following. You're going to like this one. We reviewed the series again. Your claims will go to court. You will litigate for three years, and you will lose. We're moving forward. Your public figure and you will lose. Not you're wrong or you're this or you're that. That was that. So then we say okay to Jared Leto. We say, fine. And we meet him in Miami. He walks into the house. I'm sure you've met him before. He's a little shorter than me, looks up, puts his hand on my face like this. And in his version of my accent, I think, very good accent in a very good, but very good demeanor. I think he had it in a demeanor in his version of Adam Newman starts talking to me and saying how he's been looking at me for three months and this and this and that. I'm not familiar with Hollywood. I've never met method actors. The whole thing for me is a little bit outrageous. And we just do this thing for the next hour and a half, and then Rebecca is there stooping. Then at one point, he looks at Rebecca. He goes, you know, there's the sin when you and I are stooping. He goes, jared, you and I are not stooping. It is a television show. It is not the truth. She's laughing, but it's. It's a surreal moment. You asked, how does that feel? I'm looking. And he said, I'm gonna have these prosthetics. And the guy said, holy God. Then he sits at the table the kids start walking in and they said, who is this? And I said, this guy's gonna play me in a television show all the kids like, but he's shorter, but he doesn't look like you. But this. And every kid has his own very smart thing to say. This is in the midst of Corona. All of this is happening. And we finish our two hours together. And I walked Jared outside. He asked me if we can have a picture together. I am the interesting thing for him, which is I'm sure usually he's the one that people take pictures with. He looks at me and goes, listen, you're calling it a smear priest. This was supposed to be a takedown. I know because I read the script. It's a shame we didn't meet before, because I would have gone and fought for the script. But don't worry, I now know who you are, and I'm going to play you the right way. I said, who is that, Jared? He said that, in my truth, I'm a method actor. But there's the real Jared. The real Jared loves music. I love being on stage. I love being a rock star. You're a rock star. I'm gonna play you like a rock star. I saw your family, I saw your kids. You're a good guy. What I was told was not accurate. I wish I knew it before, said it twice. But don't worry about it. You're gonna come out like a rock star. Just do me a favor. Don't watch the show. You kept your word. I said, you got it beautiful. I said, you got it beautiful. But let's really go into this for a second. How many times in life do we think the IPO supposed to be my big moment?

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[Adam Neumann]

The moment I was gonna was gonna be amazing. Ends up being a total, utter catastrophe. Never even get to the ipo. The television show coming out was supposed to be this horrible moment. Even my team, by the way, got very stressed about that. Television show was supposed to be that horrible moment where it all goes down. And yet it comes out. And a day after it comes out, the inbound starts. Entrepreneurs wanting investments, partners wanting to partner, employees, everything. It was floodgates.

[Interviewer]

I've never seen that happen before.

[Adam Neumann]

There's a very famous story in the Bible about it. The Jews led by Moses are coming out of Egypt. All the local nations are very afraid they're going to come. And there's this Balakan Bilaam, a king and a sorcerer. He wants to curse the Jews. And the sorcerer says to the king, look, the Jews, they have God. It's hard to curse. I don't want this. And the story is longer, but he says, I'll dream, I'll meditate about it. And in the dream, God tells him, don't curse the Jews. He wakes up in the morning and he says to the king, God spoke to me, don't curse the Jews. And even though he was working for the negative side, even people who work for the negative side have their own connection to the universe. It takes power to win both sides. And three times. And eventually the king forces him, pays him a fortune, forces him to this. They go in a mountain and he's starting to curse the Jews and the blessings come out. And he's cursing the Jews and the blessings come out. Eventually, at his last curse, he foresees Messiah and the entire coming and the salvation of the world. Crazy story in the Bible is where we hear stories like this. I think the truth is the truth is the truth. I think if I were to have done something that was actually one of those things that you said before, it would have ended differently. I think I was saved by actually my relationship with Rebecca. She kept me straight, honest, loyal. We didn't keep our word every time, but we tried so hard to do the best we could. We kept our commitments. We did our version of what we thought was right to do.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Adam Neumann]

And even though a lot of our close friends used to say to walk into. I had a thousand friends. Then in one day I went down to 10. Five of them were my family. And even that was a gift.

[Interviewer]

The other thing that's interesting about the smears, Rebecca was always smeared.

[Adam Neumann]

Oh. She got divorced of it. She couldn't even worse.

[Interviewer]

As if they were saying she was incompetent because she was a woman. That's what it was all about. Which is like. Is that the story in 2020 that because she's a woman, she's incompetent? That's what the smears are.

[Adam Neumann]

You know how many times I think when things like this happen, the woman gets portrayed even worse. By the way, let's be clear. I was CEO and chairman.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Adam Neumann]

100%. It wasn't Rebecca.

[Interviewer]

But they negated the fact of what she brought to you, which you recognized,

[Adam Neumann]

and what she brought to the brand. You know, if you just says the word the brand, that everybody knows wework. That everybody knows wework. Adam and Migue was a hard working. Let's go build office space. We had this logo with a man with a hammer. We started breaking the Macintosh computer. You would have loved it as Miguel did it. That was our original hammer breaking. The original Macintosh computer. A little bit of a. I think of an old Steve Jobs, that old commercial with the woman throwing. When Rebecca walked into WeWork, in the first 90 days, she created, do what you love. Create your life's work. Build a world where people make a life and not just a living. She gave it so much intention and so much meaning that then I ran with it like it was nobody's business. But she brought, which is what she always does, intention, meaning, and the other word, authenticity. For people who know Rebecca, she does not lie. If she does something wrong, she will tell you. All you need to do is ask her.

[Interviewer]

Tell me what happens with the IPO.

[Adam Neumann]

So let's do it. Let's go for it. So April 1, money doesn't come in. The whole world is under Corona. My kids, even my kids, realized the money wasn't coming. They go, daddy, it's April's fool's day. Of course the money was never gonna come in. Like, yeah, you guys are geniuses. We're in Israel at the time because we always wanted to try to live there. And this was our opportunity. And suddenly, a second ago, in the end of 2019, when we stepped down in the media and all the craziness felt like we were secluded and the whole world was open and we were like, locked up. Suddenly everybody was sort of where we were. But we had six month heads up. We were already in the bunker when that hit. Remember from the story, we did have the original amount of money that was given to us. We never got the billion, but we got that original amount that they bought from us to pay. We had a team and we just got to work and everybody else was busy understanding what's happening. We started learning how to trade stock and how to invest in different ways and small businesses and big businesses and early stage and late stage. And even though we weren't using a big pool of capital, we were hungry and we were ready and willing and with a very open mind that the world just changed. But part of how I approach life like a child. Okay, today's a new day. Now there's Corona. What does that mean? What's going to go up now? What's going to go now? So as all of that is occurring, this is the beginning, the seeds we're starting to say, well, what's going to set residential? Residential is going to be interesting because even if people stop going to the office, the home is where the hardest. So park. That aside, the litigation starts because we want to get paid. The 3 billion that was promised not just to us for a third of it, but the other 2 billion is all the investors, all the employees, everybody. And it was promised, it was signed, it's contractual. So we start getting into litigation. And as we get into litigation, we move now from Israel back to the Hamptons. We live in East Hampton. Andrew Finkelstein, he's living right next to us. Another interesting thing about him, so many close friends that I had disappeared when this happened. I do think that's probably the saddest thing of the whole thing. And some of them don't think they disappeared. And I forgive. So I'm like, I'm over it. But you really get measured when your friends are in their toughest moment and you don't get measured by the way. It's nice to send a text and to pick up a phone call. But Andrew calls me and goes, hey, Adam, you know, I'm a Hollywood agent. It's Corona. I can do my work from anywhere. Do you want me to come and live next to you? I'll rent a house next to me. If you're going through a tough time, we'll do our own co working space. We'll make a wework out of one of the houses.

[Interviewer]

Beautiful.

[Adam Neumann]

We'll do a beach house. Co working our own wework. We'll have fun. We'll work from the Jacuzzi. Like, sounds amazing, Andrew. And he moves in, so he's there with us and he's in the house next door. And we're there and we are starting this litigation and it's not working. It's not working because the contract wasn't perfect and we didn't did it and we weren't there. And SoftBank is very powerful and they don't want to pay. And they did put the money in the business and they control the business now, so we can't get any information. And I am a person until this point that has always negotiated with power and left leverage. I'm very good at momentum when I have the leverage and I have the power. I'm very good at negotiating. But now I have no leverage, no power. I'm completely on the outside. Nothing I can do. We're litigating. The litigation doesn't look like it's headed in the right direction because of a variety of reasons, but also because WeWork's not really partnering with us because we're the founder that was from the outside with the store. And at this point, if you're in, wework you believe 100%, not 90 to all the press that you read. Because that's. And I do think the world's different today. I hope people today don't believe everything they read. But this is still 2020. People are just wising up. And I remember going. And I was doing these meditation sessions of an hour each and I'm doing one of those. And as I'm like very deep while listening to music, I suddenly have this again, moment of vision. Is basically what I see is that if a different person. If I found someone who could get excited about WeWork and would want to take WeWork public. SPACs were at the time. So it was spac Then must sign SoftBank. And all people fighting paying the 3 billion would want the company public because they own the majority of it. Would settle the litigation because no worth fighting it and would let the company go public. And if all those things went out perfectly, then everything would be resolved. I come out of the meditation, I call my dad, who I'm very close to. He's actually right outside here hanging out right now, waiting for me. He was surfing with me this morning. And I say, dad, I have an idea. I'll find the guy. He'll say he wants to invest. We'll take the company public, so we'll settle. Everybody will get paid, so we'll make back their money. Everybody will be happy. It's all going to work out because I don't know, it's too many things that are going to work out. My dad and I argue he does not believe in God. And I believe in God. I said, dad, if this happens, will you believe in God? Looking for an opportunity. He goes, no, I believe that I have a very talented son. I say, okay. He's the last cusp. I said, okay. And I called UBS and said, give me two names of people that might find WeWork exciting. They gave me two names. Meeting number one. Meeting number two. Second meeting. The guy goes, gaga. He loves it. His name is Vivek. Ends up taking it public. He knew Steve Jobs or Steve Jobs was this. He was part of the Coming back. He knew this story, knew that story. Had all these stories in his head that fit this perfectly. But I was very clear. I said, here's what I would do. I gave a clear plan of how to make Ryor profitable again. I still know the levers to Paul. I told him exactly what to do. So now you understand. Now you understand all the pieces on the board. We have no power. We brought the guy to basically do this back, but we're litigating at the same time. They're in control, and they don't want to settle because they don't want to pay anything. They don't want to pay a billion. They don't want to pay. We're going back and forth, back and forth, and we try to give them this ipo, but they don't know that. They want to go public, and they don't know they will do well public because they're not sure that anybody. The spark in WeWork is gone, so they're not sure that's going to solve their problems. And the last thing they need is another headache. So they're going public was good, but not enough to push it over the edge. And part of what happens when you do litigation is everybody does discovery. Everybody's. All the different things. And you say, oh, we're going to say all these things about you. You're going to say all these things about this, and this happened. That happened to your fault, our fault. And we're getting very close to. And the contract's going to say this contract's going to say that. And we're getting very close to a litigation date, to a court date. They're going to court, and then you're going to fly to. His contract is right. And very close to it. After we all, basically everybody threatens everybody with everything. We agree on a settlement. And the settlement is this complicated thing where the money will get paid in six months. First the company will go public, then this and all these different things, and then money will get paid after. And this is four days before Rebecca gives birth. And I had a lawyer at the time who ran his own firm. His name was Eric Seiler. Now he's a partner with me, and he and I reached a settlement. It's all happening on Zoom, because this is Corona. So this whole thing is happening. Zoom, their lawyers, our lawyers, they spend 10 times as much as we're spending. They have the biggest lawyer in the world, and Andrew Finkelstein, our Hollywood friend, is sitting right behind the screen, and for three weeks, as this negotiating is going, he does not work. He's just doing that. The end of the day, say, andrew, you need to work so that I'm in Hollywood. The biggest show in the world is happening right now in front of my face, and I'm not missing a beat. Let me be.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Adam Neumann]

Quran. Remember, no acting. Nothing's happening. He's there. And once in a while, when he feels there's something important to say, he writes it On a piece of paper. He shows it to me above the screen. I read, I listen again. Who do you trust puts it down? We're negotiating, negotiating. At some point, they're like, we're going to pay. We're going to do this, we're going to do that, but we're going to pay you in six months. I said, it's not going to work. And he said this. I said, look, even Marcelo, even if I wanted, you know, I can't go back to Rebecca and we make decisions like this together. I can't tell her in six months, she's. It's not going to work. Goes call Rebecca and I want to talk to her. She's four days before giving birth. We call that stage with six kids. We've seen it a few times. Couch commando. That's when she's on the couch and orders are given. Couch commando. And so I get up to call her in, because that's what he said. And then we all know each other. And Andrew picks up the paper. If you call her in, we will all be in court next week. You fix it. I read it. I sit back down. I said, you know what, Marcella? II thought, let's figure this out. Let's just agree. How are we going to be protected? And we basically work out the deal. That's going to be done. But we get paid in six months, after the ipo, after this, after that, with all these maybes and ifs. Not just us, all the employees, but it's the best we could get. We couldn't get a better settlement. And if I don't settle, there's no ipo. And again, I tried to do what I think is best for everybody, and I felt taking it public if I get the chance. We agree. I go to Rebecca to tell her the great success that we did. She goes, no. So what do you mean, no? She said, For 10 years, you're running this business. Never have I told you once what to do. This is how much the narrative is wrong. Once she's very respectful. She can give advice. She would not tell me what to do. She respects this as my business. She supports it. It's our business in equity holding. But she's very respectful, and I'm very respectful of her businesses. But they didn't pay us. We had a contract. We didn't get paid. One time you do it to us, we learn a mistake. Second time. Why are we agreeing As a settlement for all of us, not just for us, for the employees to get paid in a year and A half, please go back and said, no deal. I'll see you in court. Said, no, you don't understand. The IP will blow up, the whole thing. Said, no, they'll fold. They're bluffing. They're acting like a bully. And my father was a bully. And there's only one way to deal with a bully. Gun to your head. They're bluffing. And this is after. I'm like, this is an emotional roller coaster. I go, andrew and I to get. Andrew's with me. He's like, oh, I thought we had it. I'm like, oh, I thought we had it. We're done. Then Eric Seiler calls me. Very famous phone call in our lore. He goes, adam, I just learned something. I said, what is it, Mr. Seiler? Then he owns his own firm. I don't work for you, I work for Rebecca. I said, how did you learn that? He goes, well, she called me and completely disagrees with my legal strategy and told me that we're going to court, not settling. It's different from what you and I agreed. Therefore, I work for her, not for you. I said, well, I feel like I work for her because I know that all my blessings come from my wife. And if she feels strongly about something, I support her. There's no question. She has better intuition than me. So I support her. You support me? Then, yes, we're going to go with her way. He goes, okay, then. Just wanted to clarify that. I said, what do you think is going to happen? He goes, I don't know. This is uncharted territory. I would accept. I said, but what if they do? What if she's right and they do? Because you don't understand. They gave all these promises. I said, eric, we just litigated for a year about all these promises, about a contract. What's a promise? Either the money's in the bank or it's not. So he goes, okay, let's get on the call. This is going to be a very bad zoom. We get on the zoom with the litigators, with the this, with the. They have their general counsel, some scary individuals and basically say, look, guys, it's not me anymore. It's me and Rebecca. We make choices together. We have a scheduled C section, Friday, 9am which is also the first day of Purim holiday. The money is not in the bank. At 8:30, all of it. We'll see you in court. And even though court is in eight days, the court date, which is the breath of my new son, that's going to be Born I will miss the bris or I will do it in the courtroom. But I will see you in court. Boom. Explosions, screaming Andrew, behind the scenes, it's like this tragedy. Done. Done. If we were watching the movie, you and I would be like, that's it. It's gone. We're staying in court. Next scene, court with the bris happening outside of the court with the rabbi with the mohel. Four hours later, Marcella calls me Sunday Walker with the video, you see him going, saddam, please call Rebecca in. Said, okay, Marcelo. I called her Rebecca. It's just Marcelo. No litigators nor anyone else actually says something beautiful. Said Rebecca and Adam want to apologize to both of you. You guys were 10 years ahead of your time. It could be that if you had the keys to this car when you needed the keys to the current, we would have been in a different place. It is what it is. We are where we are now. The money will be in your account 30 minutes before you plan C section. You have my word. But separate from it, you will see it. You do not need to go forward with the litigation to be partners. I'm going to bring in a CEO. I'm going to choose to do things my way. I know to call you if I need to. I respect you. Respect me. Let's move like that. I say, thank you, Marcel. I look at Rebecca, she goes all good. I said, you're not worried? I'm not worried. We're all good. Say thank you at 4:30am don't ask me how. I didn't know money could transfer. 4:30am it hits the account at 9am we're in the birthing room. Our sixth son, Moses, is born. Four months later is the television show. Wow. That is the true story. That's what actually happened.

[Interviewer]

That's amazing.

[Adam Neumann]

The fact that they chose to make her the villain because it's easy.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Adam Neumann]

By the way, it shows you a lot about society. But not only is it not true, whenever people hear something I've learned, when you hear two stories, there's a small group saying one story and a large group agreeing. Listen to that small group and really take your time listening.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Adam Neumann]

This will be the last piece. And then I think we can part ways with rework once and for all. A year into this, with this CEO, I see that they're not managing right. Stock starts dropping. We're like, oh, my God. They're doing not one thing that we would have suggested. I call a few people, we have money at this stage again, and say, hey, if I Put a big check. Will you guys come in with me immediately? One day commitments to a billion. Now, it's not that we didn't send the documents, we didn't dip, but it was so quick that it would have come. We would have raised more if we needed it, because I told people exactly what I was going to do. And again, Corona was happening. Buildings were empty. It was very clear, at least to us, what the right thing would be to create the movement back, to deal with the situation. Because these moments of change for creatives who are in their field, those are the biggest moments. This was my market. This was office. This was a change. It wasn't the end of office. It was time for a new office. And I called the CEO. I was like, look, we have soft commitments for a billion, but we're ready to go. I want to share with you the strategy. I want to see this. We will invest into the company, we will buy in. We want to support. We just want to make sure we have the same this. We want to share it with you and we want to help you. Let's make this company successful. Corona should be the win, not the loss. Schedules it all with us, our investors, top guys on the plane. We're all on our way to go. Sends me a text, I'm sorry, Adam, whatever reason, it's a pass.

[Interviewer]

I will cancel the meeting.

[Adam Neumann]

Cancel the meeting. Never takes it.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Adam Neumann]

Drives the company all the way to bankruptcy. We were ready to put our money, we brought new money and we brought a new plan. Now, I'm not telling you that it would have worked.

[Interviewer]

No, you can't.

[Adam Neumann]

No, can't know.

[Interviewer]

All I'm telling you, it would have been different.

[Adam Neumann]

I'm just telling you what happened. And that was that.

[Interviewer]

That's wild.

[Adam Neumann]

So you asked how it's all connected as all of this is happening, Marc Andreessen is calling us. Called the first time, we missed the fact. Called the second time. Then an article in the Wall Street Journal comes up saying that Adam Neumann's family office has purchased over a billion dollars worth of real estate in South Florida. We've moved to Miami at this stage. And he calls Mark and he says, hey, Adam, I thought, because every time, at the end of every call, said, if you're going to do something, let's talk. Said, I thought we said that we're going to talk if you're doing something. I said, yeah, of course we are. Said, you're obviously doing something. You bought a lot of real estate. Said, no, Mark, that's just real estate. Because no, it's not. It's your idea for the future of living. It's a new brand. It's we live, but better. I say, well, honestly speaking, yes, I've been having thoughts, but it's not that. Said, do you have an idea? Said, I do. Said, are you clear about how you're going to do it? Said, I'm clear about how it would start. Said, do you have a name? I don't. Said, do you want to talk about it? I said, whenever you want. And we're going to really connect it. And he said, let's talk about it. Said, okay. And we sort of live it in the air. I still don't follow up.

[Interviewer]

Tell me when that call was.

[Adam Neumann]

Back to the timeline. The first call is happening 2020, end of winter. Second call about half a year later. This third one is happening. Before the television show, our sixth child was born on Rebecca's birthday, which is February 26th. So that's 2021. So this needs to be 2022. So the team is now very worried because we have worked one foot after the other to build ourselves from the beginning, business wise and reputation wise. A lot of people believe this false story suddenly and again I'm walking into room every time needing to explain what really happened and they're worried and stories gonna come out and that's a horrible thing. But we have Mark Andreessen that's been calling us and then one of the team members has an idea. Great idea. What if you call Marc Andreessen and he will interview you? Because we know what he thinks about you. He's the biggest investor in the world. He'll interview you about what really happened. And not only that, what if we do it in south by Southwest? Because the show, Apple was very smart about it because it was a tech oriented. It premiered at Southwest, it premiered at south by Southwest. The first time anything was done like that.

[Interviewer]

So you were going to do a live.

[Adam Neumann]

My idea was not my. The person who gave me the idea, a live interview with the biggest investor in the world, but the truth, the same time it premieres.

[Interviewer]

Great idea, great idea.

[Adam Neumann]

So I schedule, I text to Mark, which in this time I've never taken. I've never jumped into any discussion. And I ask his assistant, and this is for a Friday and the show is scheduled, whatever, a month after I need to talk to Mark, wanting to ask him, I don't have a close relationship, would he be willing to do that?

[Interviewer]

You've only talked to him three times.

[Adam Neumann]

Only three times. This is the third Time. I'm talking to him twice at this

[Interviewer]

point, so only twice before. And the calls. How long were each of those calls?

[Adam Neumann]

They're good calls. The first one is 20. Mark is, as you know, and amazing guy to talk to. They're great calls. I let them go. As long as he's. As long as he's interested, I'm on the call. So great calls about many topics, but always coming back to that same topic of the calls, basically, Adam, when are you getting back in the ring? That's like the theme of the call. Very motivating, by the way. Very, very powerful. Better than most of the friends I had, and we didn't even know each other. I really appreciate it. And so I'm scheduling this other call, and I'm going to basically try to convince him to come. I know it's hard to travel to South By. Or if you can travel, I say I was going to. My idea was, I'll come to you and they'll zoom it in. But no matter what, we're in front of a live audience in South By. Or maybe he's on Zoom and I'm live. But whatever. If I can get him to come there, maybe. We scheduled a call for a Friday and a few days before, because again, I'm just starting to understand what the word woke means. And this whole media and social media, and I'm starting to learn what I went through. Suddenly I have this thought in my head, what if south by Southwest wouldn't want? What if I'm offering Mark something that they wouldn't put on stage? And I asked, two people said, what are you talking about, Adam? This is the biggest thing that's happening is this show getting premiered. How would you and Mark talking on stage not be good for the conference? If you're running south by, are you letting this interview go?

[Interviewer]

I would say yes, of course I would do that.

[Adam Neumann]

And I suddenly, Because I'm starting to understand how the world works, or at least how it works, not how it should work, regretfully, how it does. Sometimes I realized I should ask someone before I ask Mark and I call someone that's very close to the people running it, and I say, can you check if I get Mark to say yes, would they be interested in this interview, in this fireside chat live? And they call me an hour before my call with Mark that I'm planning to say, adam, you won't believe this. Answer is no. Said no. Now I'm really, you know, like, the show is coming out more. Did the takedown already Happened before. Said, please tell me why. No. I said, interesting, Because I asked because I knew you were going to ask me. Starts with Mark sitting on the board of Facebook and they hate Facebook since 2022. So that's reason number one. I said, but he's a board member. He's. This is that. That's what they said. You, on the other hand, they're willing to have next year depending how the show comes out. If the show comes out and you're an evil villain. No, if the show comes out and people like you, they'll have you next year. I was like, fuck then. So now I'm an hour before the call with Mark. I really have nothing to say. And this is back to that same story. I called my partner, Elon, like Elan, I'm canceling the call. He goes, no, you're not. It's like I'm canceling the call. He goes, why? Mark was excited about the call. He finally, you're talking and like Mark's excited, don't cancel. I said, well, I don't have anything to say. He said, yes, you do. You have a vision in your head. It doesn't have a name. It's a new business. You have the vision of the future, of how people are going to live. Tell him that. I said, I'm not clear about it yet. He said, sid, Adam, I'm your partner. It's hiding inside of you. It's your perfect founder market fit for this thing. It's always been there. It's your original idea. Your original idea was not wework. Your original idea was called concept living. When you're in college, it's your original idea. It's from the kibbutz. It's how people live. It's the future of living. Tell him that. I say, elon, I'm not ready to say it is the biggest investor in the world. I don't want a half thought idea. Articulate it clearly. There's no problem. Tell him you'd love to do it face to face. I'm just going to invite you. It's going to take a second. We're going to get a second to get our act together. We'll do it then. Call is about to come. I'm sweating. I can't believe. Why am I sweating? This is after the all this stuff. Why am I again acting like I'm a 32 year old? What am I stressed about? We own all the stuff we are doing, we're building or my family. I've learned a lot. I'm In a much better place. I feel happier. How am I stressed again? Like I'm pitching to an investor at age 28. At the exact same time that I have that thought, my second feeling is like, wow, I like this. I miss this. This is how it feels to be in the ring. Yeah, I feel alive. I get on the call and very honestly, I say what I say. I say I want to do it face to face. Talk for half an hour about other stuff. So it would be my pleasure. A week later, he invites me. We go to Malibu. Four weeks later, we sit down, and the whole way, it's the first time

[Interviewer]

you're meeting him in.

[Adam Neumann]

First time meeting face to face. Never met before. Didn't know he was that tall.

[Interviewer]

Very tall.

[Adam Neumann]

Taller than me. Him, his head of his crypto fund. Chris Dixon, another tall guy. All of them. First time we're in Malibu, we walk in and start talking. It's high level. Ta, ta, ta, ta, ta. Everybody sits down and Mark starts saying, so, Adam, we're all here. We like to hear. I say, mark, I would like to talk about wework first and my lessons learned, because you don't need to. I said, I understand. I would really like to. He goes, adam, let's be clear. We called you here. It's because we know what we think has happened. Assume that we've spoken to most people that have ever worked with you, definitely to an engineer that has ever worked with you and all of your board members. Let's talk about the future of living. I say, mark, I really appreciate it, but I've never spoken to you about this, especially if you know so much about it. Maybe I can learn one more thing. I know I learned a lot, but maybe there's one more lesson hiding there. I want to talk about it. And this for those people who know Mark, he'll say twice, but if you let him loose, he's going to go and there's no filter. And it's going to be some of the smartest things you've ever heard in your life. He almost does a version of this. Said, okay, Adam, let's go. And we go for it. And for the next hour and a half, not only do I share what I share, I learn at least five new things about it. The craziest one being, he goes, hey, when you took the money from Benchmark, did you ever check how many founders they ever ousted? I said, no, it was interesting. Jack Dorsey, Travis Kalanick. And then he names five other ones because they're known for it. So it's not that they said they're great investors, but it has happened there many times. Did you even know that? Said, no, I didn't. It was okay. So we learned one thing about you. You did not do your homework. Said, no, I did not. I trusted and it was okay. We then talked for the next three hours. Then we talk about the future of living. Said Adam. What would you want to solve if you solved what do you think the two biggest problems? Said, loneliness and ownership. Great. How are we going to solve that? And then we talked about how I think we're going to solve that. And at the end he goes, so what do you think about considering new partners? Because by this point, I'm finding the business 100% on my own. I don't want partners, I don't need partners. I'm traumatized. I said, I genuinely didn't think about it. He goes, well, how about you do your homework and call a lot of people who we've been investors of, because we've already called a lot of people that know you, see what you think. And basically for the next six months, we get to know each other. But as we're getting to know each other, we shape. The business already existed. There were buildings, already bought, a small tech company that we were using. There were things that were occurring already. But we shape it even bigger. And Mark is playing a very active role. And every time I think big, he thinks bigger. But not the way Masa thought. Bigger grow faster the way, think longer, build a better product, take your time. Don't worry about profitability, not because you're chasing revenue. Don't worry about profitability, because if we can actually challenge loneliness and ownership in a real way, we're going to have a world changing business. And Mark says to me, and I am here to build the big one, not the middle one. So it's again, that energy of, wow, here's someone thinking as big or bigger than me. But he's not telling me, go crazy, he's teaching me history. Said, great tech teams are small, they're not big starts naming every single great tech product that was built and how it was built. And as we do this partnership and Ben Horowitz is starting to jump in. But the first board meeting was only marked. And starting the second, Ben joins. The one thing we agreed in advance is when it comes to technology, they will help choose the leaders.

[Interviewer]

Great.

[Adam Neumann]

Amazing. They will help choose the leaders. And on our board meetings, we're going to spend time talking about the whole business, but we're really going to Spend time talking about tech because when it comes to building a brand, a global movement or real estate, they truly trust me. Comes to building technology, they wanted me to truly trust them. Now, even though my investors before were tech investors, not once did they give any advice. I love this. I'm like, great. And then they have the. And then Mark has the haha moment that even takes it to the next level. Said, how much money? Looked at all of my real estate portfolio. He said, choose the best, tell me how much equity it is and that's how we're going to invest. So I put 350 million in the form of equity of real estate, not debt, not value of real estate, just the equity. And they put 350 million cash. We both had skin in the game. The one rule between the two of us, they said, adam, we're aligned with you. Even though you weren't actually misaligned with your investors because you didn't do anything wrong. Not only was there the perception of misalignment, you found yourself misaligned. Let's make a rule. When you buy, we buy. When you sell, we're together. I said, great rule, great rule. Can't wait to be with you. Aligned. And just to lend this point home. And then we'll take it to what it is that we've been building. It's time to find a cto. Something people don't know about. Flow. Flow spends more money on technology than anything else, not on real estate.

[Interviewer]

Really.

[Adam Neumann]

We'll explain in a second. Why? So it's time to find a cto and we go on the six month journey of interviewing the best on the planet. Because we're not going to make that mistake again. We get to four final candidates and I choose my final one. And then I introduce all four to Ben. And Ben Horowitz, an amazing CEO himself, but also a coach of CEOs. He's a great recruiter and hirer. Seen it all done at home. And Ben interviews. I interview. Ben, calls me, goes, hey, Adam, I finished my four interviews. I know my pick. Said, great. He goes first. I'm going to tell you who you picked. Said, let's go, Ben. Because you picked the Amazon guy. I said, yes, I did. Great pick. He has the experience. He's a great guy. He worked in a great company. He checks all the boxes. He's not your guy. So why Ben? Because your guy's the WhatsApp guy. So why is my guy the WhatsApp guy? I'm going to tell you something. His name is Scott I'm going to tell you something about Scott that Scott doesn't know about himself. Scott is extremely smart. Scott had to architect a very complicated situation in WhatsApp and dealt with billions and billions of users and huge numbers that you've never imagined the numbers that he dealt. And we know about his engineering team and how he cleaned it up and how he did the architecture. And there's a lot of really good things that we did our diligence on. But Scott has one quality that builds excellent tech teams that you need. So what is that? So when someone says something stupid next to Scott, Scott does this with his face. He can't help it. He doesn't even know he does it. And Ben, that's important for our tech team because it's the most important. I said, why? Because I'm going to tell you secret about tech teams and why small tech teams are great. One bad apple ruins the whole thing. We always manage to the lowest basis, not to the highest. He can't help it. Even if he won't be able to tell them you're fired, they will see on his face that he thinks they are not great and they will go find another job. This for Flow. Flow's tech team needs to be world class because Flow is trying to solve very large problems and it's going to take time to build what you want to build. And we have to make sure the core is correct because if our foundation is not there, we won't be able to deliver on this big mission. He's your guy again. Old Adam might have argued knew. Adam chose his partners because of what they know and what he has to bring and what they bring.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Adam Neumann]

I don't know if Ben thought this was going to be an argument or not. I said, great, yes. He was like, that's it. I said, of course that's it. That's why we're partners. I know you know more than me and obviously I didn't do a good job last time on this topic. Bring it up.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Adam Neumann]

And we recruit Scott.

[Interviewer]

How many CTOs did you hire in the past?

[Adam Neumann]

Six.

[Interviewer]

And how many has he hired in the past?

[Adam Neumann]

He's hired so many entrepreneurs, by the way, who act as CTOs at the beginning, ranked in pure tech companies. We're more than just a tech company. In pure tech companies, many times the founder is the CTO at the beginning and then they all have to hire CTOs. So he has over a thousand companies. So he's done this over a thousand times this way or that way, sometimes directly Sometimes indirectly, no questions asked.

[Interviewer]

Some level of experience that feels good, trusting.

[Adam Neumann]

It also disconnects to our past that we work because we were trying, especially now that we know the story at some point, to start chasing revenue. We were trying to build systems that can count and manage at flow. From the first day, our mission was oneness. Oneness for a person in themselves, person in their community, and a person in the natural world. To achieve that, you need to build technology. Now, we talk a lot about AI to think instead of humans. At flow, we talk about AI to empower humans to be the best version of themselves, beautiful, to create spaces that empower humans to be the best version of themselves. Our technology does not need to think for us. It needs to make everything so smooth and make things work so organically that we can be part of something greater than ourselves. And that's why our CTO is such an important pick. So now it starts, and it's three weeks into the job, and counselor says, hey, Adam, I have good news and bad news. The good news is I have an idea of the architecture that would build what we need to build to deliver on your vision of solving ownership and solving loneliness and on creating this energy of oneness or togetherness. The bad news is current real estate technology is built on databases and does not put the resident or the member first. Puts a lot of other things first, but not that we're going to have to build it from scratch. All of it. Back to the WeWork days, I was told by many CTOs I need to build from scratch. I built all the time from scratch, and I had nothing or very little to show for it. Yeah, said Scott, I'm not sure I'm ready for this adventure, but you're in luck. I have a board meeting next week. I truly trust my partners. If you're ready to walk in and present how you're going to build real estate from scratch architecture, be my guest. I'm just telling you this might be a short partnership for the two of us. And I really started to like you. It's only been three weeks, but I like the energy because I'll take my chances. Because, by the way, I'm here to fulfill your vision. He said, I want to explain to you something that I'm going to tell them. Your vision is going to change so many times that if I don't give you an extremely flexible system that's truly rethinking everything, I won't be able to keep up with you. I might at the beginning, but one day you're going to ask for something I can't do. I'm going to preempt it. But it's going to be tough for you because then I'm going to tell you I need a year for you not to bother me. And all the little things that our CTOs might have built for you, nice apps and front facing and all the gimmicks. You're not going to have any gimmicks. But when I'm done with what I'm doing, you're going to have a powerful system that can basically tackle on the future of how we live. It goes into the board meeting and you should have been there. They go at it for three hours. I don't have a lot to say because it's not my field. Mark is very strong in architecture. Ben is very strong in use cases and how it's used. And they just go. And after three hours they say, we agree. Then go out to dinner and they argue between themselves for another two hours about it. Wow, big decision. It's a very big turn. And the guy just started. It's a lot of trust. And at the end of it, Ben is like, Adam, I'm good. I said, why? Because Mark is good. We've been working together for 30 years and I love this, by the way. For me, this is no problem. We've been working together for 30 years and I know when to trust my partner. He's good, I'm good. It's like, you guys are good. I'm good. And we start this journey of rethinking how the architecture for nicely architecture, I mean the digital architecture in a way that will allow us to put the resident, the member.

[Interviewer]

Why is digital architecture so important in housing? I don't understand.

[Adam Neumann]

So without giving away all of our secrets, I'll explain to you how it's built today. Think of it as a database that's built data on data on data on data. And now you want to put AI on top of it. You're really getting the top layer. You're not actually understanding everything. And if you want to leverage technology in a way that truly understands everything, you have to re architect how the data is stored from the beginning. From the beginning, you have to actually rethink it. And this is where we got luckier than smart. This is two and a half years ago. Blockchain is in place. AI is in place. Not the way it is today, but it's all starting. So everything is built. Taking in mind the newest way of doing things. It's the edge of the edge of how to build things. And I told you that we're going to have a board meeting in two days. We're going to present for the first time how not only it all comes together theoretically, but how it's working and how it's starting to deliver. And it's going to only work better from here. But we see the results. And how do we see the results in much more profitable buildings? But we also seen much happier residents, much more connected.

[Interviewer]

How many buildings are there now?

[Adam Neumann]

So Flow now has nine buildings, four in the US and five in Saudi Arabia. And FLOW is how these communities come together. And we're doing it by tackling the technology, the brand of what it represents, and the experience. And we're really doing it one thought at a time. And again, the big difference from the past, we're not rushing. We're going after the right product. And we're doing it in a way that's truly going to make you, the user, feel like you're having this experience that's truly unique. And when we talked about this two years ago, we said mind, body, and soul and how it all comes together. People maybe had a little tough time. Everybody wants to feel like they're in flow. Everybody understand what flow state is for them. Everybody is connecting to it. And the buildings are really starting to show.

[Interviewer]

Wow. Each time that you have a new building, do you learn new things about what works and what doesn't work?

[Adam Neumann]

What a great question. We just launched a new building in Brickell in Miami. 632 apartments, very large, brand new, completely empty. And Flo is not just able to run buildings. Flo is now developing the beginning of small neighborhoods. So it's a single building, but there are three more plots. It's 6.2 acres, which for Miami is a very large block to build over 2,200 apartments with office space, with retail, with a school that we're considering a whole community. A whole community. And as you start thinking about it as a community, you start saying, well, what does a community need? You don't limit it to just a single building. You're saying, what are obvious things about community? Oh, it needs a barber shop, it needs a nail salon, but then it needs this. It needs a coffee shop. And you start adding all these things that make a tremendous sense. And what else does community? Community loves music. Community loves food. Community loves art. And you start thinking of all those things bringing together. And before you know it, we get to not just experience all these things, but experiment them. So I'll give You an example. Do you know how many times you've driven by empty construction sites that are fenced up?

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Adam Neumann]

So we had three of those because we have one finished building and three construction sites. We take one of them. And this was Rebecca's idea, actually. And we plant. We put sand to make it like a beach. We put palm trees. We put a little, you know, the indigenous structures that they love to create in Miami. Like a tiki hut, but a large one that's gonna have a floor. We're like, we're gonna do music here three times a week. And here's two food trucks, and we're gonna open it up for the public.

[Interviewer]

Beautiful. Like a park.

[Adam Neumann]

Like a park. Costs very little to do. But for the next two years, instead of living an empty construction site, you gave to the community. This one is on the river. We say, hey, what about a farmer's market? We launched a farmer's market.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Great.

[Adam Neumann]

We have this amazing woman. Her name is Shelly. Do you remember Jelena's? She used to be the CEO of Jelena's. If you remember Jelena's, you know what she does?

[Interviewer]

The best food.

[Adam Neumann]

The best food. And from what I hear from a lot of people, the best experience. She brings it all together. So we say to Shelley, all we have to say is, we want the farmer's market with intention. It's like an AI. You just give the prompt. You come to the farmer's market. Every booth has a story. This mother, this daughter, this local, this. And they're also inspired. Now people start walking it, and they're so inspired. And now you're giving to your local community. But what you're really doing is you're also attracting a lot of people. And you're starting to tell the flow story. And it actually starts and at the beginning. But we can't get a lot of people there because no one's ever heard of this farmer's market. So we throw a yoga class, and we launch a runs club. And we're at your walking club because some people prefer walking than running. And before you know it, there are over a thousand people coming. There was one. I didn't see the last one because I was here a few. There was one yesterday. And it's every week. And the more exciting the environment is downstairs, the more it affects the upstairs. And people start coming in. And now all these tours are coming, and because we're leveraging. And then we write a sign on the building. What if it all goes right? And two weeks ago, someone goes on their boat on the river and takes a video. What if it all goes right? This is a woman with 13,000 followers. She gets 22 and a half million views. She went viral and she writes, sometimes it only takes one sentence to lift you up. She must have not been the only person. It was shared over 1.8 million times. Huge numbers. All it said is, what if it all goes right? But it was on a building. Landlords don't usually say things.

[Interviewer]

No.

[Adam Neumann]

And who do you think, by the way, came up with that sentence? The person who people like to make a villain, of course.

[Interviewer]

Classic Rebecca.

[Adam Neumann]

Classic. Because it's so. I said, where do you. When she comes up, it's so simple. I said, where do you come up with that sentence? She said, it's you. You think it's always going to come. No matter what happened to you in your life, you found a way to think, what if it all goes right? Yeah, you stand for it. So I put it on the build. She has a way of building brands that is so authentic. I am now understanding there's so much depth there. By the way, she does three hours a week. The rest is all us. Because we don't need more than that. And she doesn't need to. If she gave us more than that, we couldn't keep up.

[Interviewer]

And she's full time mom and just

[Adam Neumann]

launched a school and is doing all these different things that she's doing. Yes, full time mom just launched a school. She's doing a lot. She's tackling the world the way she sees in a way to make a difference. But you suddenly have this flow building. It has a farmer's market, it has a park. Everybody's coming in, tours are flying in. We don't know what to do with them. And because of our same architecture, that digital architecture we spoke about, it works very well. Connecting to social media. We can count and measure every lead that comes in. We can start pulling a lever. We can do a million things that other landlords can't do. We start pulling that lever in that new building and it's filling up so fast. First of all, I'm slowing down for a second because when something is working that well, you gotta take a second, take a breath and say, wait, maybe it's priced wrong. Maybe. But it's filling up at least at five times the speed of the market. It traditionally would take 18 months to fill up a building with 400 apartments. That's the market number. This building has 632 apartments. It will fill up in six months.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Adam Neumann]

And that's just the beginning. We're going to use AI to keep it maintained. We have a team to do that because it's very creative, leveraging a lot of tools. But afterwards, to maintain it, you'll do it with a lot less people. And the other thing that we've done in this community, another lesson from the past, we have ambassadors that live there. Each one of them chooses a topic that they love, they host events, they make it all happen. We just empower them through the app, through the tech, to be able to do once a month, each one of them, five of them. So once a month. So that's five events a month, then. The trainers are from the building, the yoga instructors are from the building, the meditation is from the building, and people are really reacting well to it.

[Interviewer]

Beautiful. Tell me, since you and Rebecca started your spiritual journey together, how it has grown.

[Adam Neumann]

So, spoke about Shabbat a little bit. When my boys were born, we had an experience with a rabbi that wasn't willing to get paid. He did the breath, and he wouldn't take the money. His name is Rabbi Heller, and he's a very special person. And no matter how much we chased him, he wouldn't take the money. Until I. I sort of didn't believe. I was like, rebecca, this guy is just playing a show. I'll. I'll force him to take the money. And I go to his house, thinking there's some trick up his sleeve or something. And I see a very humble house and a very humble man, an amazing wife and amazing kids. I'm so inspired and impressed that I said to Rick, we gotta find a different. He's not gonna take the money. It's a no. He's a no. But let's do something else. And he encourages us to practice more. Our own practice, starting by the Friday night and this. And then he encourages us to try Shabbat one time.

[Interviewer]

What are the rules of Shabbat?

[Adam Neumann]

So the rules of Shabbat, Forget the religious rules. Let's do the spiritual rules. The rule is that you take one day a week and you disconnect from 24 hours from the external world, and you connect to the internal world yourself, your wife, your kids, your close friends. No technology. No technology. No cooking, no working. You don't talk about business, no matter what. No talking about business on Shabbat. Best ideas, by the way, for business. Come on. Shabbat, don't talk about it. But it's the time. And it's a rule that existed 3,000 years ago is when it comes from as relevant as it was then, I think it's never been more relevant than today. And I tell this to people all the time. Forget the religious part. Take your phone and put it in the cookie jar up there, close it and take 24 hours. And I say, here's what you're going to experience. Notice how many times for the first three hours you're going to put your hand in your pocket to grab that phone, which means you're addicted. Just notice it. But then make it through the night and going to the next day. And I say, I don't care if you do it on Saturday or Sunday, choose your day. You know the Pope that passed away, he used to call it technology Shabbat. You would preach it, say technology Shabbat, technology Shabbat. And the next day be disconnected from the phone, drive. Do everything else you want to do. Just don't use your phone. Make your plans in advance so it works. Tell me afterwards if you had a better week, if you had a better week, do it again.

[Interviewer]

You are allowed to read a book.

[Adam Neumann]

You are encouraged to read a book.

[Interviewer]

Encouraged to read a book.

[Adam Neumann]

So again, in my practice you would also pray and you'd pray Friday night, you pray on Saturday. But I'm putting myself on the side for a second and I'm saying, anybody who tries this, when you disconnect from your phone, you're giving a gift to your kids. You're disconnected, they're disconnected. But you're all much connected to each other, especially for people who work very hard. Imagine the gift of 24 hours. Before you know it, they're going to be 18, they're going to be out of the house and you mess this beautiful thing. When we do it, we don't touch anything.

[Interviewer]

When did you start doing it?

[Adam Neumann]

10 years ago. 10 years ago. My boys are 10, so right after their birth. So 10 years ago, would you say

[Interviewer]

of the different things you've done that was one of the life changing decisions?

[Adam Neumann]

I would say without a doubt that the biggest move that I've made spiritually is keeping Shabbat. On those days. The biggest channeling of ideas for Rebecca and I happened at 8am Saturday morning. Now remember, we don't write also because we don't this, so we just remember them. But the action happens Saturday morning. And then we also host sometimes the Shabbat where everybody comes together and reads the Torah. We host the Shabbat. So then we're hosting other people and we're bringing them together. And then everybody shares this experience and we Sit in a circle and we talk before the Torah reading about this week's portion we share. How is it relevant to our everyday life? But sometimes we just take the Saturday off and we don't participate in that, and we're just with our kids and our friends.

[Interviewer]

Beautiful. There's something happening now, I don't know if you know about it, called the Quiet Revolution.

[Adam Neumann]

Tell me about it.

[Interviewer]

Young people are interested in going to church. For years and years and years, the people who went to church were getting older and older and the amount of people was declining, declining, declining, declining. And something happened in the last few years where young people are interested in going to church. More Bibles are being sold.

[Adam Neumann]

Something's happening 100%. It's everywhere you go. People are more open. People are ready for it. It's natural. As technology is going to make us more and more digitally connected, we are going to feel more and more disconnected. The more disconnected that we feel, the more we're going to crave a real connection. A real connection will never come by buying another car or buying another house or owning another material good. A real connection comes from the inside. A person who is unity from the inside has unity to the outside. Here's what I think. We'll connect it to this week's portion. We all have something that we're slaves to. We all have an addiction to anger, to ego, to power. Whatever it is, idol worship that we have, we all have an Egypt. We all need to leave that Egypt, come out of it. When we come out of that Egypt, we all face the Red Sea. When we see that Red Sea, we all need to have the courage to walk into it so far that we drown. Only when we're willing to drown will the Red Sea be split and we'll go to our next level. We then go to our next level. We see the Red Sea split. Suddenly we're like, oh, everything is okay. Then we forget. The moment we forget, we step into the desert. We all have to walk to our version of desert. That desert is for us and God, no one else. The only decision we get to have is how long we're going to journey through that desert. Are we going to journey for 14 days like the children of Israel supposed to, or we're going to journey for 40 years because we're not learning our lesson. Our choice is not are we going to get into the desert or not? It's how long will we be in it. And once we go out of that desert, we all have our version of the Promised Land. And if we have the courage to look inside, see our own correction, our own limitation. Look at it clearly now and say, I see you. And I'm going to get over it. I'm going to learn, I'm going to grow. I'm going to understand that life is not about falling down. It's about how I'm going to get up. I'm going to fall a thousand times so I can get up a thousand and one times. And in that last time, when I get up and I'm actually ready to go to my next level, I'm going to wish for you. For me, please, may we have the courage to go to our next level. Because we know that the promised land is waiting right after it. And may we not be afraid when the whole world is saying this or that about us. Who cares? It's about what you think, what your wife thinks, what your kids think, and what the universe thinks.

[Interviewer]

Tetragrammaton is a podcast. Tetragrammaton is a website. Tetragrammaton is a whole world of knowledge.

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