The Cult of We
WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion
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Narrated by:
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Thérèse Plummer
About this listen
Wall Street Journal best seller
A Financial Times, Fortune, and NPR Best Book of the Year
“The riveting, definitive account of WeWork, one of the wildest business stories of our time.” (Matt Levine, Money Stuff columnist, Bloomberg Opinion)
The definitive story of the rise and fall of WeWork (also depicted in the upcoming Apple TV+ series WeCrashed, starring Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway), by the real-life journalists whose Wall Street Journal reporting rocked the company and exposed a financial system drunk on the elixir of Silicon Valley innovation.
Longlisted for the Financial Times and Mckinsey Business Book of the Year Award
WeWork would be worth $10 trillion, more than any other company in the world. It wasn’t just an office space provider. It was a tech company - an AI startup, even. Its WeGrow schools and WeLive residences would revolutionize education and housing. One day, mused founder Adam Neumann, a Middle East peace accord would be signed in a WeWork. The company might help colonize Mars. And Neumann would become the world’s first trillionaire.
This was the vision of Neumann and his primary cheerleader, SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son. In hindsight, their ambition for the company, whose primary business was subletting desks in slickly designed offices, seems like madness. Why did so many intelligent people - from venture capitalists to Wall Street elite - fall for the hype? And how did WeWork go so wrong?
In little more than a decade, Neumann transformed himself from a struggling baby clothes salesman into the charismatic, hard-partying CEO of a company worth $47 billion - on paper. With his long hair and feel-good mantras, the six-foot-five Israeli transplant looked the part of a messianic truth teller. Investors swooned, and billions poured in.
Neumann dined with the CEOs of JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, entertaining a parade of power brokers desperate to get a slice of what he was selling: the country’s most valuable startup, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and a generation-defining moment.
Soon, however, WeWork was burning through cash faster than Neumann could bring it in. From his private jet, sometimes clouded with marijuana smoke, he scoured the globe for more capital. Then, as WeWork readied a Hail Mary IPO, it all fell apart. Nearly $40 billion of value vaporized in one of corporate America’s most spectacular meltdowns.
Peppered with eye-popping, never-before-reported details, The Cult of We is the gripping story of careless and often absurd people - and the financial system they have made.
©2021 Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell (P)2021 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"[The] ultimate portrayal of...an empire built on sand.” (Newsweek)
“Like Bad Blood...The Cult of We is novelistic in detail and often thrilling.... It’s like watching a car careening toward a wall at 90 miles an hour.” (The Washington Post)
“If I had to make a list of top five business books of all time, this would be on it. It’s just so damn engrossing.” (Christopher Mims, Wall Street Journal tech columnist)
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Based on unparalleled access to those involved, and told with compelling pace and drama, The Bank That Lived a Little is the story of one of the most familiar names on the British high street since Big Bang in 1986. Philip Augar describes in detail three decades of boardroom intrigue driven by ruthless ambition, grandiose dreams and a desire for wealth. It is a tale of a struggle for long-term supremacy between rival strategies and their adherents.
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Global superstar bankers under light-touch gov
- By Philo on 12-21-18
By: Philip Augar
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Red Roulette
- An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China
- By: Desmond Shum
- Narrated by: Tim Chiou
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
As Desmond Shum was growing up impoverished in China, he vowed his life would be different. Through hard work and sheer tenacity he earned an American college degree and returned to his native country to establish himself in business. There, he met his future wife, the highly intelligent and equally ambitious Whitney Duan who was determined to make her mark within China’s male-dominated society. Whitney and Desmond formed an effective team and, aided by relationships they formed with top members of China’s Communist Party, the so-called red aristocracy.
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Desmond Shum is not a rube! He knows about wine, ok?
- By Peter L Hansen on 10-06-21
By: Desmond Shum
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The Greatest Trade Ever
- The Behind-the-Scenes Story of How John Paulson Defied Wall Street and Made Financial History
- By: Gregory Zuckerman
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 2006, hedge fund manager John Paulson realized something few others suspected - that the housing market and the value of subprime mortgages were grossly inflated and headed for a major fall. Paulson's background was in mergers and acquisitions, however, and he knew little about real estate or how to wager against housing. He had spent a career as an also-ran on Wall Street. But Paulson was convinced this was his chance to make his mark. He just wasn't sure how to do it. Colleagues at investment banks scoffed at him and investors dismissed him.
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Better Books Now Available
- By David on 05-02-11
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The House of Dimon
- How JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon Rose to the Top of the Financial World
- By: Patricia Crisafulli
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Jamie Dimon is Wall Street's biggest player. Following the 11h-hour rescue of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan, his profile has reached stratospheric levels. And while the deals and decisions he's made have usually turned out to be the right ones, his journey to the top of the financial world has been anything but easy. Now, in The House of Dimon, business writer Patricia Crisafulli goes behind the scenes to recount the amazing events that have shaped Dimon's career.
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Intriguing
- By Jean on 08-28-16
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The Code
- Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America
- By: Margaret O'Mara
- Narrated by: Nan McNamara
- Length: 19 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Long before Margaret O'Mara became one of our most consequential historians of the American-led digital revolution, she worked in the White House of Bill Clinton and Al Gore in the earliest days of the commercial Internet. There, she saw firsthand how deeply intertwined Silicon Valley was with the federal government - and always had been - and how shallow the common understanding of the secrets of the Valley's success actually was.
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Mostly good, but also irrating
- By Rodney on 12-20-20
By: Margaret O'Mara
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Iceland's Secret
- The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Con
- By: Jared Bibler
- Narrated by: Jared Bibler
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Born in Massachusetts, Jared Bibler relocated to Iceland in 2004 only to find himself in the middle of an unprecedented financial crisis a handful of years later. Personally wiped out and seeking to uncover the truth about a collapse that brought the pastoral country to its knees, he became the lead investigator into some of the largest financial crimes in the world. This work helped Iceland to famously become the only country to jail its bank CEOs in the wake of the 2008 crisis.
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Thorough work behind the scenes and then presented with responsible work
- By Karen Ondrejcka on 12-29-24
By: Jared Bibler
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Homewreckers
- How a Gang of Wall Street Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks, and Vulture Capitalists Suckered Millions out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream
- By: Aaron Glantz
- Narrated by: Paul Bellantoni
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the spirit of Evicted, Bait and Switch, and The Big Short, a shocking, heart-wrenching investigation into America’s housing crisis and the modern-day robber barons who are making a fortune off the backs of the disenfranchised working and middle class - among them, Donald Trump and his inner circle.
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Amazing book - I hope it changes things and mobilizes people to take action!
- By WeaverDreams on 10-20-19
By: Aaron Glantz
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Small Giants
- Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big, 10th Anniversary Edition
- By: Bo Burlingham
- Narrated by: Bo Burlingham, Sean Pratt
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It's an axiom of business that great companies grow their revenues and profits year after year. Yet quietly, under the radar, a small number of companies have rejected the pressure of endless growth to focus on more satisfying business goals. Goals like being great at what they do, creating a great place to work, providing great customer service, making great contributions to their communities, and finding great ways to lead their lives. In Small Giants, veteran journalist Bo Burlingham takes us deep inside 14 such remarkable companies.
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fantastic book for small company builders
- By Amazon Customer on 08-01-17
By: Bo Burlingham
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The Intelligent Entrepreneur
- By: Bill Murphy Jr.
- Narrated by: Fred Berman, L. J. Ganser
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 1998, three Harvard Business School graduates - two men and one woman - turned down six-figure salaries at big corporations, bet on themselves, and launched their own new companies. By their 10-year reunion, their audacity had paid huge dividends. They'd made many millions of dollars, created hundreds of jobs and left their mark on the world. The Intelligent Entrepreneur tells the compelling and instructive story of how these three young founders did it.
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Terrible waste $ and a lot of time
- By David on 01-23-11
By: Bill Murphy Jr.
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Hedgehogging
- By: Barton Biggs
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 3 hrs and 31 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Rare is the opportunity to chat with a legendary figure and hear the unvarnished truth about what really goes on behind the scenes. Step inside the world of Wall Street with Barton Biggs as he discusses investing in general, hedge funds in particular, and how he has learned to find and profit from the best moneymaking opportunities in an eat-what-you-kill, cutthroat investment world.
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HedgeHotDogging
- By Bob on 10-01-06
By: Barton Biggs
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How Chuck Feeney Made and Gave Away a Fortune
- The Billionaire Who Wasn't
- By: Conor O'Clery
- Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 1988 Forbes magazine hailed Chuck Feeney as the 23rd richest American alive. No one knew until then that he was extremely wealthy. Or was he? Born during the Depression in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Feeney had made a fortune as co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers, the world's largest duty-free retail chain. How he did it is one of the great untold retail stories of modern times. The greater untold story is that Feeney had in fact given away his fortune, in its totality, to endow Atlantic Philanthropies - one of the most generous and secretive philanthropic funds in the world.
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Horizons I never knew were there!
- By DTU_Garza on 08-13-17
By: Conor O'Clery
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Fulfillment
- Winning and Losing in One-Click America
- By: Alec MacGillis
- Narrated by: Danny Gavigan
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Alec MacGillis’ Fulfillment is not another inside account or exposé of our most conspicuously dominant company. Rather, it is a literary investigation of the America that falls within that company’s growing shadow. As MacGillis shows, Amazon’s sprawling network of delivery hubs, data centers, and corporate campuses epitomizes a land where winner and loser cities and regions are drifting steadily apart, the civic fabric is unraveling, and work has become increasingly rudimentary and isolated.
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Missing some important angles
- By D. Zimmerle on 08-19-21
By: Alec MacGillis
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The King of Content
- Sumner Redstone’s Battle for Viacom, CBS, and Everlasting Control of His Media Empire
- By: Keach Hagey
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Sumner Murray Redstone, once feared as the “mad genius” of media who would dump his CEOs for mere wobbles in his companies’ stock price, had built one of the world’s greatest media empires through a series of audacious takeovers constructed to ensure that he always maintained control. Today he controls 80 percent of the voting shares of both Viacom and CBS, meaning that on a whim he could replace the entire boards of two public companies with a combined value of $40 billion.
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Feels biased. Well researched, but not engaging.
- By Anonymous User on 04-03-19
By: Keach Hagey
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When Genius Failed
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When investigative journalist Dan McCrum first came across Wirecard, the hot new tech company that looked poised to challenge Silicon Valley, it all looked a little too good to be true: offices were sprouting up all over the world, and they were reporting runaway growth. In the space of a few short years, the company had come from nowhere to overtake industry giants like Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank on the stock market. As McCrum began to dig deeper, he encountered a story stranger and more compelling than he could have imagined.
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Interesting book but…
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- Anne
- 09-24-21
Fantastic
Genius reporting and a genuinely fun read. Six out of five stars. Very good book.
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- Anonymous User
- 01-01-22
fascinating story
this is a terrific description of the We Work story and the obnoxious, self-absorbed and arrogant Adam Neumann and his spoiled flakey wife. well hindsight might be 20/20, a blind person could have seen that something wasn't right with the We Work propaganda. The perfect storm of greed that brought down this company is the same greed and stupidity that caused the entire housing market to crash in 2005 to 2012.
The reading was a bit off putting with way too many inflections and upswings in her voice.
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- JB
- 08-16-21
An astounding story
Definitely worth reading. A look into the madness behind WeWork. A sobering story and a cautionary tale. Great narration.
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- Bill Dunn
- 04-19-22
Great listen!
Had to stop listening to this one!
A great ride from beginning to end - much more detail but just as much drama as We Crashed. Loved it!
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- znorthface
- 06-14-22
Entertaining and wild
Didn’t realize how wild the scene was, but did a great job of narrating the founding till it became a traded company.
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- Ihereou
- 12-11-22
Yeah. It's pretty good; however...
The narratior's performance is really good; however some parts feel out of place. I would recommend listen to this one before sleep. Her voice can calm even though it's about a man almost building a cult.
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- Unhappy Sirius Camper
- 08-14-21
Great companion to "Billion Dollar Loser"
I really enjoyed "Billion Dollar Loser", so I had some trepidation about "The Cult of We". On the one hand, I wanted more of the story. On the other, I was worried that it would be duplicative.
The two books are actually complimentary: "Billion Dollar Loser" focuses more on the cult of Adam Neumann and examples of his ego and rage-inducing narcissism, while "The Cult of We" focuses more on the financial side of the debacle. "The Cult of We" also goes into great detail on startup financing and all of the related craziness of the last 20 years. I could see "The Cult of We" as a standard textbook in MBA programs.
Fast pace, great narration. Really enjoyed it.
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- Anonymous User
- 08-15-21
Less spicy than other "Business True Crime"
Adam had good intentions, believed in his company and simply got drifted too far into his fantasies, convincing investors along the way.
Compared with Elizabeth Holmes in Bad Blood, he is just an over-dreamy entrepreneur, no harm intended.
It was nice and interesting to hear the full story behind this epic rise and fall.
Therese Plummer did an excellent job narrating!
I wish more books were read by voices like hers.
I do 100% recommend Bad Blood.
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- BENNIE RHEEDER
- 10-05-23
Greed and gluttony
Great factual account of the WeWork disaster. Recommended for people who enjoy modern stories of greed, hubris and cult like organisations.
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- Privatebuyer
- 08-05-21
How to give a horrible story five stars
The epilogue begins by quoting F Scott Fitzgerald: “They were careless people.. “ That is an understatement. I make my living reading, writing and planning land-based investments. This is the second book I have read this summer on the Wework scandal. Well written and clearly told this book is about more than the waste of billions of US dollars at Wework. This book has made me more frequently nauseous and enraged than anything else I have ever read. Its worse than the stories about ponzi schemers. This story is about our penchant for messianic figures leading us to a Midas nirvana. It is about the myth of what is technology. It is about financing slight of hand promises rather than tangible goods, services and products. If you wish to become angry or ill, read this very good and clear book --. Avarice, narcissism and greed, or should that be gluttony. No they were not careless; they were intentional.
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