The Catastrophic Story Of WeWork | Reeves Wiedeman | Modern Wisdom Podcast 238

Some of this just comes down to temperament, and we start the book with a quote from Adam Neumann's high school driving instructor. Adam's either going to be a millionaire or he's going to jail. Those are the two options. There's no, like, nice steady Adam Neumann work his way up the ranks at, at some job. He was ... He was a go big kind of person, and the question was going to be whether he, he, (laughs) he ended up, uh, being successful with that risk or, or falling on his face.

Or both.

Or both.

(wind blows) What have you spent the last couple of years researching?

Well, I've spent about the last year and a half researching WeWork, the company, and, and the last few years researching sort of the world of, I guess, high-growth unicorn startups, um, is, is one way of, of, uh, putting it, some of which, um, have flamed out in one way or another, or ... and some of which are, are still with us, so.

Is WeWork classed as one of those unicorns? And what, what is a unicorn? For people that don't live in Silicon Valley, what's a unicorn?

Sure, sure. Well, there's, there's, there's unicorns, there's zebras, there's all kinds of different species now, but it ... But a unicorn very, um, simply is a, is a company that, according to private valuations set by private investors, is worth more than a billion dollars. Um, and, you know, there, there are now, um, certainly more than 100 of, of these, um, uh, k- kinds of companies, and, and WeWork, uh, despite all its troubles, remains one of those.

Those companies that are unicorns, are they still private or have some of those transitioned to now be traded?

Yeah. The, the, the typical way it's sort of looked at is, is these are, um ... You know, they are magical creatures. They exist outside of the way the, the markets traditionally treat these companies. So, so unicorns are, are generally companies that are, that are private before, um, before they hit the stock market, which-

And then you ... Are you no longer a unicorn once you do?

I ... You a- ... You're not. I don't know, like, what you transform into exactly in, like, the Silicon Valley nomenclature.

Oh.

But, but you, you, you ... Yeah. It's, it's sort of like caterpillar/butterfly thing, but I don't know what the next, like, transformation is.

Got you. If anyone understands the Pokemon game that is Silicon Valley sufficiently well-

(laughs)

... what does the unicorn evolve ... It's Charizard, isn't it? Charizard-

Charizard, exactly.

And then you get the shiny one, and then that's ... Everyone at school wants you cards.

Well, you're, you're joking, I, I think, but, but tru-

(laughs)

Truthfully, there, there is, there is another group called a decacorn. And a decacorn is a ... is an even rarer breed of company, um, that has a private valuation above $10 billion. And WeWork was, was, um, uh, was one of those. I guess that is actually a qualification that the company has, has now lost, um, in, in-