(p. 11) . . . the unbelievability of the rise and fall of a company that marketed itself to investors as a tech enterprise when it actually rented work space to gig-economy freelancers and starry-eyed entrepreneurs is part of the considerable lure of “The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion,” a juicy guided tour through the highly leveraged, not-quite-rags-to-billion-dollar-parachute saga of WeWork and its co-founder Adam Neumann, a startup demagogue who aspired to be a demigod, but got hamstrung by his ego and greed.
. . .
. . ., the book saves its firepower for the cataclysmic combination of Neumann’s gift for salesmanship, addiction to fund-raising and focus on his personal wealth. We meet weak venture capitalists who kowtow to charismatic entrepreneurs as well as mutual fund directors, investment bankers and deep-pocketed benefactors like SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son who enabled Neumann.
For the full review, see:
Katherine Rosman. “Office Space.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, August 15, 2021): 11.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date July [sic] 18, 2021, and has the title “‘How to Explain the Rise and Fall of WeWork?”)
The book under review is:
Brown, Eliot, and Maureen Farrell. The Cult of We: Wework, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion. New York: Crown, 2021.