Adam Neumann Once Said WeWork Had a ‘Spending Culture.’ Then He Spent More

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(Bloomberg) --  

WeWork’s Adam Neumann had wild ambitions. By 2017, he had found an even wilder business partner who wanted to fund those ambitions: SoftBank Group Corp. founder Masayoshi Son. Neumann spent the billions WeWork raised from SoftBank on competitive tactics, seemingly random investments and even an elementary school.

In the fifth episode of our podcast series Foundering, we explore why this free-wheeling spending was so odd: Neumann apparently knew it was a bad idea. In an exclusive recording from an internal meeting in 2016, he warned his employees that they had to revise WeWork’s “spending culture” and turn a profit—or the company would face trouble. But once the funding poured in, Neumann ignored his own advice.

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