As WeWork goes out of business, its founder Adam Neumann is basking within the sunny climes of Miami, where the golden beaches are paved with billionaires.
Neumann, 44, was the flamboyant leader of the office-sharing company whose meteoric rise was imagined to reshape how we worked in offices.
However the American-Israeli entrepreneur was pushed out of WeWork amid a botched IPO in September 2019, leaving the corporate on a downward trajectory that ended with its bankruptcy announcement this week.
And now, with morale at WeWork “horrific”, in accordance with staffers, Neumann is doing just fantastic, The Post can disclose.
He’s skateboarding, socializing and in search of investors for an additional startup which he claims will reshape the world — this time how we live at home — telling them, “I’m a creator, not a destroyer.”
He still has an estimated fortune of $1.7bn, and sources, tell The Post he’s living in South Florida together with his wife, Rebekah, and their six children.
The Neumanns are close friends with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump and their children.
Jared, Ivanka and their three children live just 10 minutes away on the ultra-swanky Indian Creek island after buying a $30 million ‘fixer upper‘.
The Neumanns spent summer at their home in Amagansett — which neighbors Rebekah’s cousin, Gwyneth Paltrow’s property — and have now settled down within the exclusive Bal Harbour Marina neighborhood.
We’re told they may be found hosting Shabbat dinners at their local synagogue. One Bal Harbour pal added: “Adam and Rebekah are a giant a part of the Jewish community.”
One other Bal Harbour source added: “Adam skateboards on a regular basis, throughout town, taking business calls. Everybody runs into him — he’s very friendly. He stops and kibitzes with people.”
Rebekah, 45, meanwhile has been “off the grid” after the WeWork debacle and staying out of the highlight. One one who knows her called her “a force of nature…that’s needless to say.”
Back in 2021, Neumann bought two properties for $44 million in an off-market deal from local investor Joseph Imbesi.
The deal included two parcels of land spanning 50,000 square feet — where Neumann planned to construct a 14,500 sq ft mansion for his family — in addition to 360 feet of waterfront and multiple slips within the marina.
“From where a whole lot of people sit, you never bet against Adam, he’s at all times the guy who wins, since the world sucks,” a former WeWork staffer told The Post.
“Adam’s cleaned up his image, he’s been collaborating in panel discussions and giving speeches. He comes across as very modest, very humble, having learned from his mistakes. But I don’t think he’s learned his lesson in any respect.
“I do know him personally, he’s a really, superb salesperson and he knows methods to play things up.”
For the past few years, Neumann has been focused on his latest startup, Flow, which received a $350 million investment from enterprise capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, with mega-investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, giving it a $1 billion valuation in August of 2022 — and that’s even before starting operations.
The business says it would construct rental communities that may foster a sense of ownership and community.
Neumann has put what at the least six apartment buildings which he already owned in Florida and Nashville, Tn., into the corporate’s ownership.
Talking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box” last month from Saudi Arabia — where he courted possible investors at a conference dubbed “Davos within the desert” — he boasted: “We’ve been talking to among the largest Fortune 500 countries on the planet and their needs have modified, but the necessity of individuals working together, the necessity for community has never been greater.”
But, a former WeWork staffer pointed, after two years, there continues to be nothing way more than a landing page for Flow.
“No one really knows what they’re doing, apart from attempting to reinvent the residential market. So, he’s bought some real estate and managed it – but a whole lot of people do this,” the one-time confidante said.
“Adam has a billion dollars and $300 million in real estate, he desires to be the subsequent big disrupter and to prove that he can do what he didn’t do with WeWork. But he hasn’t done that yet, so he’s probably frustrated, and he’s sitting on a bunch of real estate.”
Neumann’s story was was the Apple TV+ show, “We Crashed”, starring Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway.
But as at all times, nothing is ever as weird as the reality.
At the peak of the WeWork boom, the Neumanns spent nearly $90 million purchasing six properties, in accordance with The Wall Street Journal.
They included a Greenwich Village townhous, a $35 million Gramercy compound (the Neumanns purchased 4 of the constructing’s seven units), a 60-acre Westchester, New York, farm (featuring a waterfall, tennis court, and a horse-riding ring), two estates within the Hamptons, and an 11-acre property just north of San Francisco—complete with a guitar-shaped lounge, a pool, a three-storywaterslide, a spa, a racquetball court, an orchard, and “a series of narrow windows spell[ing] out the opening chords” to a Grateful Dead song.
They’ve since sold the San Francisco property, the NYC townhouse and the Westchester farm. The Gramercy home continues to be in the marketplace.
There was a $60 million company Gulfstream G650ER- despite the indisputable fact that, in accordance with the 2021 book, the “The Cult of We”, one charter company, Gama Aviation, alleged that Neumann’s passengers had spit tequila on one another and never tipped the crew.
And, the WSJ reported, in 2018, when a personal jet carrying Neumann and his entourage landed in Israel, the crew discovered a cereal box containing marijuana.
The jet’s owner was allegedly so alarmed by the invention—the drug had been brought across foreign borders—that it pulled the plane, leaving Neumann and pals and not using a ride back to New York.
There have been rowdy and lavish corporate retreats, while Rebekah – who was given the title of ‘chief brand and impact officer’ at WeWork allegedly became known for firing people if she didn’t like their energy.
Then there was Neumann’s fortieth birthday extravaganza – a three-week trip that ended by inviting two dozen friends to a beachside resort within the Maldives – while Rebekah invited pals including Jared and Ivanka to Italy for her fortieth.
In a 2019 Vanity Fair story, one staffer reported that “Rebekah fired a mechanic for WeWork’s Gulfstream, … because she didn’t like his energy.”
WeWork sought US bankruptcy protection on Monday, after its bets on corporations using more of its office-sharing space soured.
The move represents an admission by SoftBank, the Japanese technology group that owns about 60% of WeWork and has invested billions of dollars in its turnaround, that the corporate cannot survive unless it renegotiates its pricey leases in bankruptcy.
The previous staffer said: “Everyone has seen this coming for a very good 6 to 12 months, they’re all getting paid money, but morale is horrific. There isn’t a company culture and everybody is just watching the stock go down, down, down.
“People have been collecting paychecks and waiting for the corporate to blow up – the unique version of WW completely gone.”
Alongside this, the bankruptcy leaves the WeWork landlords fearing they will likely be left with empty spaces they can’t fill in a dire market.
Talking to CNBC, Neumann claimed he had learned his lessons from WeWork. He said he had taken inspiration for his new business from his childhood on a kibbutz in Israel – and the indisputable fact that so many 30-year-olds and under can only afford to rent.
In language eerily much like his hype for WeWork, he said, “Bringing people together and constructing community has at all times been what we were about and what I used to be about.
“Crucial word in our partnership is alignment, and we’re very aligned towards our views around the globe, we’re very aligned on our moral standards and we’re very aligned on what we would like to construct.
“Flow is one other iteration of the identical story which is when people live in community, when people live together, when people obviously have differences, but they really find what to share passions, they find approach to share business, there’s at all times a typical ground.”
In an announcement about WeWork’s bankruptcy he called it “disappointing” to see the corporate collapse and that he had been watching from “the sidelines” since 2019, accusing current management of failing “to reap the benefits of a product that’s more relevant today than ever before.”
“I think that, with the best strategy and team, a reorganization will enable WeWork to emerge successfully,” he said.
He didn’t mention that he could actually win more cash out of the bankruptcy — unlike the corporate’s bondholders.
His agreed departure from the corporate included a $430 million loan from SoftBank with an intriguing feature: Neumann’s collateral was WeWork shares. He can simply hand them back to extinguish the loan, and now that they’re practically worthless he can get $430m in free money.
“The indisputable fact that Adam managed to get a billion-dollar valuation says the whole lot – he won’t ever change,” said the WeWork staffer.