Free Republic

When the Wing first opened its doors in Flatiron in 2016 as a pioneering, women-only coworking space, it became a phenomenon. Founders Audrey Gelman and Lauren Kassan raised more than $100 million from investors like WeWork and Airbnb. At its peak, it had 11 locations... But things took a sudden turn the following year. In June 2020, Gelman stepped down after employees protested her leadership and alleged mistreatment of black and brown staffers. It was the beginning of the end. Earlier this week, Wing members received an email announcing that the club’s six remaining locations would be closing due to...

WeWork founder Adam Neumann won't be getting nearly $1billion to walk away from his company after Japanese tech giant SoftBank Group pulled its $3billion bailout offer for the troubled office-sharing startup that is now in legal and financial turmoil. SoftBank said it has terminated its tender offer for additional WeWork shares agreed last year with shareholders, drawing threats of legal action and plunging the floundering office space company further into crisis. The tech investment giant said in statement that given its duty to its shareholders it could no longer proceed with the deal, citing criminal and civil probes into the...

Are presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren and WeWork founder Adam Neumann the same person? I mean, they have different hairstyles and all, but their philosophies are more alike than not. They both claim, falsely, to be capitalists. Ms. Warren told the New England Council last year, “I am a capitalist to my bones.” She then told CNBC, “I am a capitalist. Come on. I believe in markets.” It was almost as if she didn’t believe it herself. Then came the caveat: “But only fair markets, markets with rules. Markets without rules is about the rich take it all, it’s about the...

I haven’t been closely following the saga of startup WeWork, which has more or less crashed and burned after being touted as the hot new unicorn of venture capital prestidigitation. The Wall Street Journal today has a long feature article on its decline and fall, and some of the details read like they came from a Tom Wolfe satire of the new rich of our time. Savor a few of these details: Just months before the spectacular fall of WeWork, one of the country’s most gilded startups, chief executive Adam Neumann summoned the heads of the New York Stock Exchange...

WeWork's new Executive Chairman Marcelo Claure on Wednesday defended the $1.7billion payout to the office-sharing company's founder Adam Neumann and said there is now 'zero risk of the company going bankrupt'. According to an audio recording of a meeting he held with employees that was reviewed by Reuters, Claure, who is also the chief operating officer at SoftBank, said: 'There's a level of gratefulness that we're going to have for Adam, because he's the one who built this business.' The meeting took place a day after WeWork's largest shareholder, SoftBank Group Corp, provided a $9.5billion lifeline and took over the...

Coworking startup WeWork plans to lay off up to a quarter of its workforce following the ouster of CEO Adam Neumann, according to a new report. WeWork plans layoffs 'in the thousands', though less than the 3,000 to 5,000 number that had been previously reported, a person familiar with the matter told Business Insider. The company has 12,500 employees, so a cut of 1,000 to 3,000 people would be about 10% to 25% of its staff. Following backlash from investors over a dubious business model, Neumann stepped down last month, and new CEOs Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham put plans...

It was a glorious spring morning in New York, and sunlight streamed through the windows of 115 West 18th Street. This is the global headquarters of The We Company, and I was there to meet with its CEO and cofounder Adam Neumann. He greets me warmly as I am ushered to his office, and he gestures for me to follow him to a small room in the back of his workspace. He said he wanted to show me something. He looked happy, smiling confidently, the way a guy sitting on top of company valued at $47 billion might. The room...

We Co. had $2.5 billion of cash as of June 30. At its current rate of cash burn—about $700 million a quarter—it would run out of money some time after the first quarter of 2020, according to Chris Lane, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. He and his colleagues projected in a recent note to clients that We would burn through nearly $10 billion in cash between 2019 and 2022, assuming it keeps growing.

Office space sharing company WeWork says it is no longer serving red or white meat at company events. In an email to employees Thursday, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Miguel McKelvey said the company won’t serve pork, poultry or red meat, and it won’t allow employees to expense meals that include those meats to the company. Fish will stay on the menu. I would love to be present when a WeWork marketer takes a prospective client to lunch and explains that he can’t order a hamburger or a chicken salad sandwich. WeWork’s “Chief Creative Officer”–that’s a bad sign, right there–explains...

WeWork is going meat-free and taking every one of its employees with it. The startup cited environmental concerns in announcing its immediate company-wide ban on meat. In an email sent Thursday, WeWork cofounder Miguel McKelvey told his 6,000 or so employees the company will no longer serve meat at employee events or reimburse them for meals that include red meat, poultry and pork. It's a bold move for the real estate behemoth believed to be worth $20 billion -- and the most assertive in a series of recent steps large companies have taken to promote sustainability.