Odd Lots - Introducing Foundering

Episode Date: June 25, 2020

Adam Neumann had a vision: to make his startup WeWork a wildly successful company that would change the world. He convinced thousands of other people -- customers, employees, investors -- that he could make that dream a reality. And for a while, he did. He was one of the most successful startup founders in the world. But then, in the span of just a few months, everything changed.Foundering is a new serialized podcast from the journalists at Bloomberg Technology. This season, we’ll tell you the story of WeWork, a company that captured the startup boom of the 2010s and also may be remembered as a spectacular bust that marked the end of an era.Foundering premieres June 25, 2020. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Saturdays and Sundays starting at 7 a.m. Eastern. Make us part of your weekend routine on Bloomberg Television, radio, and wherever you get your podcasts. Everyone was too bright-eyed and too eager. And we chanted, we work. We chanted, we work, we work, and then we hit a gong. Not that long ago, Adam Newman was one of the most successful startup founders in the world. He was a visionary leader who said he was going to overturn a trillion-dollar industry. If we work, we really strive to help you as much as we can.

Focus on doing what you love. Create your life's work and let us take care of the rest. Venture capitalists were falling all over themselves to invest in his company. We work has revolutionized the leasing of office space. Ten billion dollars invest in this company. It's the second largest venture capital investment of all time. He ran the most valuable startup in America, and he pitched that he was going to revolutionize

your work life. It sells fun. I mean, it sells excitement. You don't even have to go out to a bar or a club. We will bring that all to your office space where you sit and do work. The bar is now at your desk. So when you first walked in, you're like, dude, this place is awesome. Like, what is going on?

But as Adam raised more and more money, things started to get strange. You know, if Adam was coming down the hall, it's like every executive's butthole. tightens. Like, everybody just got really like, oh my God. He started saying things like, he wanted to live forever, be the president of the world. WeWork was nothing without Adam Newman, right? No one wasn't investing in WeWork. They're investing in Adam Newman. But I think we fall in love with these personalities and the emperor wears no clothes. And in the span of just a few weeks, everything changed. Office-based startup WeWork has officially postponed a plan to go public. WeWork is having trouble.

finding investor demand at one-third of the $47 billion price tag. Their real concern is Adam Newman, the CEO. Everything is on him. His performance will determine this. What went wrong? We'll take you inside the company, with interviews from people who helped build WeWork and exclusive tapes of internal meetings

where Adam talks to his employees in ways he'd never speak in public. None of us want to look back and say, I could have done more. This could have been. bigger, this couldn't be better. That's not acceptable. You do not get a chance like this again. None of us do. This is a new podcast from Bloomberg Technology called Foundering. This season will tell you the story of WeWork, a company that captured the startup boom of the 2010s and also may be remembered as a

spectacular bust that marked the end of an era. We'll take you into headquarters and inside the mind of the man at the center of it all, Adam Newman. Why he built WeWork the way he did, what happened to the company, and what might happen next? Think about the long-term consequences of what this coronavirus has done. Curious what this means for WeWork now. WeWork is known for crowding people together in one shared workspace. Check us out. Foundering, a new show from Bloomberg Technology. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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