Also Kabbalah: ex-billionaire used religious principles at WeWork • The Bell • RIMA

Also Kabbalah: ex-billionaire used religious principles at WeWork

In the history of the failure of the IPO of the world's largest network of co-working spaces WeWork, a new aspect was revealed: it turns out that the founder of the company, ex-Israeli-born billionaire Adam Neumann, mixed business with pop religion and made key decisions on Kabbalistic principles, writes The Wall Street Journal .

Details

Neumann chose the $702 million WeWork IPO sum in the tub on his birthday by multiplying his age (39) by the Kabbalah-relevant number 18. Also for esoteric reasons, Neumann wanted the IPO to take place on September 18th.
The mission of the company in the IPO application almost coincides with the motto of the Center for the Study of Kabbalah - "to raise the spiritual level of the whole world." However, a representative of Neumann's wife Rebecca says that she wrote this fragment, inspired by the work of guru Deepak Chopra.
Early in the company's history, the Center for Kabbalah Studies played a prominent role, with weekly Kabbalah classes for senior executives in Neumann's office. They were optional, but desirable, say their participants. The founder himself admitted that he was inspired by his "community" ideology, creating his "community-centric" company.
The Center's connections really helped WeWork: through its co-CEO Michael Berg, the company was able to attract major real estate investors - Rhone Group co-founder Stephen Langman and Mark Schimmel, writes WSJ. Thanks to the Center, other wealthy people also learned about WeWork, the publication believes: for example, in 2015, Neumann acquired a large office center in New York together with Israeli-born fashion designer Eli Tahari.
But about four years ago, Neumann and the Kabbalah Research Center parted ways. The reason was scandals with sexual harassment by the Center's management and non-payment of salaries to employees.

Context. The failed IPO of WeWork was the biggest failure of the year. In preparation for it, investors learned a lot about the company that, right during the road show, brought down the startup’s valuation from $47 billion to $15-20 billion. Now the company, according to Forbes, is worth less than $3 billion, and the fortune of Neumann himself, once a multibillionaire , collapsed seven times, to $600 million.

The main reason for the collapse was precisely the style of Neumann's leadership, which combined drinking strong drinks in the office with voluntarism, excessive spending and nepotism. We wrote about this in detail here .