WeWork: The $47 Billion Startup That Dressed Real Estate as Tech

WeWork was founded in 2010 by Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey and grew into the fastest-growing lessee of office space in New York, ultimately raising $12.8 billion led by SoftBank's Vision Fund. The company convinced sophisticated investors to value a real estate subletting business like an infinitely scalable tech unicorn, masking a fundamental duration mismatch: long-term lease liabilities funded by short-term, unpredictable membership revenue.This episode follows the spectacular unraveling, from the bizarre acquisitions and toxic culture allegations to the disastrous 2019 S-1 filing that revealed $47 billion in lease obligations against just $4 billion in committed revenue, plus Neumann's $5.9 million charge to license the word "We." We trace the failed IPO, Neumann's $1.7 billion exit, mass layoffs, the SPAC debut, the 2023 bankruptcy, and a surprising return to profitability once the company finally embraced what it always was.The Airbnb-style arbitrage model and the duration mismatch at its coreWhy tech investors applied infinite-scale math to physical office buildingsThe S-1 revelations that shattered the $47 billion valuation in weeksNeumann's golden parachute, including a $185 million consulting feeHow Chapter 11 let WeWork shed $4 billion in debt and reach break-even EBITDA