WeWork: The $47 Billion Company That Rented Desks

The story

In 2019, WeWork was valued at $47 billion, the most valuable startup in America. It also owed about $47 billion in future rent. Six weeks after it filed to go public, its founder was gone and the IPO was dead.

This is the story of how a company that rented office desks convinced the world it was a tech giant, what investors found when they finally read the fine print, and why only one of those two 47s survived.

Three lessons

1. 1

   A story can raise money, but it can't change your economics. A landlord with beer on tap is still a landlord.

2. 2

   Never borrow long and sell short. WeWork promised to pay rent for years, while its customers could leave in weeks.

3. 3

   When a founder can't be questioned, nobody catches the mistakes. Good governance isn't bureaucracy. It's protection.

Chapters

1. 0:00Intro
2. 0:50Knee Pads and Office Space
3. 1:35Selling a Feeling
4. 2:14Twelve Minutes
5. 2:59The Fine Print
6. 3:51Six Weeks
7. 4:29The Long Fall
8. 5:05The Encore
9. 5:42Three Lessons
10. 6:16Outro

Sources

Every fact in this file is checked against published sources before release. See our standards.

• WeWork S-1 filing (SEC, August 2019)
• CNBC, The strangest and most alarming things in WeWork's IPO filing
• Crunchbase News, WeWork loses $1.9B on $1.8B in revenue during 2018
• Forbes (2017), WeWork's $20 billion office party (the 12-minute tour)
• CNBC, WeWork CEO returns $5.9 million paid for 'We' trademark
• NPR, WeWork CEO steps down as IPO stalls (Sept 24, 2019)
• TechCrunch, SoftBank taking control of WeWork at ~$8B valuation
• NBC News, WeWork files for bankruptcy protection (Nov 2023)
• Reuters via Investing.com, Why WeWork failed