Billion Dollar Loser

Extremely well written, fast-paced narrative. Adam Neumann is far from the first person to demonstrate hubris, nor will he be the last. What strikes me is the hypocrisy between what he professed for WeWork, and how he really lived his life and values. Wiedeman brilliantly captures the essence of the man, and his narrative arc from rags to riches, and subsequent fall from grace.

Wiedeman is a gifted writer, and this book is so easy and enjoyable to read. The details that Wiedeman reports are as absorbing as they are maddening, and the cumulative affect was to make me want to keep reading and reading.

I read (and loved) Bad Blood, and Billion Dollar Loser could be its sibling. Highly recommend!

The book starts out slow but it really picks up the pace about a quarter of the way in. I can’t believe what this guy and his wife were allowed to get away with. I can’t believe anyone ever took them seriously. I can’t believe how much money (other people’s money) they were allowed to flush down the toilet. I do totally and fully believe they got immensely rich and suckered other immensely rich people into giving them even more and more money. It’s just more evidence that capitalism is a long con. As if any were needed. If the other founder had ever stood up and injected some common sense into the operation they might have had a pretty good company. But he may not have been capable of even that much. He was turned into a nonentity pretty quickly.

Billion Dollar Loser follows many of the same beats as Super Pumped. A visionary founder creates a technology company that disrupts a traditional industry. WeWork and Uber pursued reckless growth at all costs chasing the opportunity, pushing employees to the limits, eschewing company culture, crossing ethical lines and eventually personally falling from grace. Both founders were ousted as the companies, which had grown using seemingly endless private capital, wilted under the scrutiny of disciplined public investors. The book suffers a bit from how familiar I was with the story, but the wild anecdotes are still entertaining. Im a sucker for a good corporate fall from grace story.

In startups, founders create a company from nothing by convincing employees and investors to follow a dream. The most convincing founders are likely to produce the biggest outcomes, as they will their vision into reality. This charisma, however, is the same skill that makes for a good con man. Its hard to tell if a convincing founder is faking it until they make it or just faking it. It makes sense for venture investors to bet on charismatic founders, if the founders big dreams pan out, they get rich and their downside is only 1x their investment. Given the incentives, it feels inevitable that there will be more WeWork-style cult of personality companies funded, and more spectacular flameouts. For this reason, the book is a good cautionary tale.

This may very well go down as the definitive look at Adam Neumann. It certainly provides a great deal of insight into the man and what drove him, his wife, and his company to the brink of near failure and possible insanity. The book is well-written and never skips a beat. The research provides great detail and insight.
I do worry that the book does not consider the realities of founding a startup that may, within a longer historical context, make Adam’s rise and fall a little more forgivable. Had Adam succeeded, I don’t know that his vision and reality distortion field would have been seen the same way, and that is a take and context I felt was missing from the book.
Overall, an insightful take on an incredible–almost Shakespearian– drama.

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