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Bubbles

Collective belief, priced, and then repriced.

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11:54

WeWork

Adam Neumann · 2010

WeWork was a shared-workspace provider founded in 2010 by Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey, operating physical and virtual coworking spaces in ~600 buildings across 125 cities. It made money by leasing commercial real estate long-term, then subleasing it short-term to members — a classic mismatch of lease duration and revenue risk. The brand resonated and the format met demand for flexible office space — but only at small scale, with tight lease control and disciplined expansion. The business model failed under scale: fixed long-term lease liabilities could not be offset by volatile, short-term membership revenue — especially when growth relied on subsidising occupancy with investor capital. Neumann’s practice of buying buildings and leasing them back to WeWork exposed a governance vacuum — incompatible with public markets. Bankruptcy in 2023 and restructuring in 2024 confirmed the model collapsed under its own lease obligations — not market timing. A company can raise $12.8 billion and peak at a $47 billion valuation without ever proving unit economics — because investors funded narrative, not margins. Yes — as a case study in how governance failures, misaligned incentives, and financial engineering can override operational reality.