WeWork’s Neumann Loses Billionaire Status. It’s Unlikely He’ll Be Getting It Back.
That may be some of the worst career advice ever. But probably not the worst:Earlier this year, Adam Neumann appeared on Forbes’ list of the world’s richest people, with a net worth of $4.1 billion. Today, Forbes is lowering our estimate of his wealth to at most $600 million. WeWork declined to comment for this article. Neumann also had no comment.The WeWork cofounder’s swift fall from the billionaire ranks is the result of the co-working company’s failure to complete an initial public offering, pulling its plan 47 days after publicly releasing an offering statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Neumann was forced to resign as CEO amid the backlash but still owns an estimated 18% stake in the nine-year-old company.
Neumann first appeared on Forbes’ World’s Billionaires List in 2016 with an estimated net worth of $1.5 billion. He was 36 years old, and private investors had just valued WeWork at over $10 billion. In the three years that followed, Japanese telecom giant SoftBank plowed billions more into the New York company in multiple funding rounds, ultimately valuing it at $47 billion in January.
“I told Adam not to be proud that WeWork was growing organically without a large sales force or spending big marketing dollars,” Softbank boss Masayoshi Son told Forbes after Softbank’s first investment in 2017. “Make it ten times bigger than your original plan. If you think in that manner, the valuation is cheap.” He added, “It can be worth a few hundred billion dollars.”...MUCH MORE
an internship at the white house will be amazing on your resume. 😳— Monica Lewinsky (@MonicaLewinsky) July 14, 2019
