Adam Neumann

Adam Neumann is an entrepreneur, investor, and the co-founder of WeWork. Launching the shared office-space company in 2010, he grew WeWork into a global coworking brand that, at its peak, was valued at roughly $47 billion. Under his leadership, the company rapidly expanded its network of shared workspaces across major cities worldwide. In 2022, he founded Flow, a residential real estate company focused on branded, tech-enabled apartment communities that offer a service-oriented, community-driven approach to long-term housing. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: AG1 https://DrinkAG1.com/tetra ------ Athletic Nicotine https://www. AthleticNicotine.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://DrinkLMNT.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Tetragrammaton.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  I was born in Israel. I moved 13 times. By moving from place to place, I always found myself in a new community. Being the new kid in every community means you have no friends on the first day. I would always be attracted to the other kids who had no friends. And my goal in life used to be to make the uncool kids cool. It would take about a few months. Then we would all become friends and we would move to the next destination. And I did that literally 13 times in my childhood. The place I lived the most was in a kibbutz. For people who don't know what a kibbutz is, there used to be hundreds of them in Israel. It was a version of a community where every person had a different job, but everybody earned the same amount of money and had access to the same amount of resources.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  Everybody had the same house. I happened to have just gotten a chance to go to the house I lived in the kibbutz. I didn't remember how small it was. The entire house, bedroom, kitchen, and children's room, my sister and I shared a room, was 450 square feet. And I don't fit in the door. So I was shorter there, but when I went to kibbutz, I was like, oh wow. The door doesn't fit. Your sister older or younger? Younger sister, three years younger. And what was your relationship like? So, growing up separate from moving from place to place, which means we always had to be very close. When I was about eight, my parents got a divorce. And after my parents got a divorce, we moved to the US. My parents are both doctors. And we moved to the US for two years because my mother had to follow. She's an oncologist. She followed in Indiana, Indianapolis. So I was a Hoosier for two years.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  I went to Pacers games in Indy 500. And that's where I learned how to speak English because I'm very dyslexic. And for very dyslexic people, one of the toughest things is a new language. And I remember all those people said, "How dyslexic are you?" And I would say, when we moved to Indiana, I'd ask my mom when I went to school the first day. I said, "What am I gonna do? How am I gonna order food? There's a cafeteria. I don't know any words in English." She said, "Say peanut butter and gel." So I learned peanut butter and gelling. And for the next two months, every day I wait in line, and everybody gets there and they order their hamburgers and their fries and their chicken nuggets. And all I can say is peanut butter and jelly. And one day after two months, I was like, I can't eat one more peanut butter and jelly. And I had the carriage and I said the word "hot dog."

• 2:39Speaker 01

  And from there, I started learning, and that was the two years. So at this stage, my parents are divorced. It's my mom, my sister and I. We're living alone in the US. And as we go back to Israel, my mother wanted us to have a special experience. And that's how we got to the kibbutz. And in the kibbutz, because everybody has a job, she was the doctor at night. And in return for her being the doctor at night, we got the place to live. So she worked the whole day in the hospital, and then at night she was a doctor. The reason the kibbutz for me is so relevant, because my life had a lot of ups and downs and a lot of different challenges. The first time that I felt safe was in that community. My mother, many years after, was diagnosed as bipolar, and bringing up the patients were always the most important.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  And I think it taught me a lot, because she always took care of all of her patients so beautifully. When she would come home, there was less patience for us. And there would be a lot of fighting and screaming and hitting and things flying and a lot of things would occur. And I remember that no matter how bad the night was, there was always three neighbors checking on me. There were always friends that I could go to. No one ever judged me. Everything was always open. I always felt like I was part of it. And that feeling of safety is something that not only stayed with me. Wherever I went to in the world, I sort of find myself bringing people together. And when I moved to the US, which was actually following my sister. So my sister left Israel when she was 16. She was Miss Teen Age Israel. She moved to the US. She became a very successful model.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  And when I finished the army, I moved to the US four days later, and I lived with my sister. And from the first day that we're sharing an apartment together, this was right after September 11, a month later. And we lived very close to where it happened, because that's where you got the money from the government, that that was the most affordable thing we could do. I remember going up and down that elevator and was so surprised that in America, people don't introduce themselves. So I would see the same neighbors every day. No one says hello. Until after a month. My sister's name's Adi. She was like, what do we do? Experiment. Let's introduce ourselves to everybody. And in a month, we're gonna throw a party on the roof. There was a shared roof. And that party, well, we'll see who comes. And we did it. And we threw the party.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  And half the building came. And the energy in that building changed. It was very obvious for me that this thing that I cherish, this kibbutz energy, is something that we could bring to the United States in a form of a business. So this is now 2007. I've had three failed businesses by this point. Two fashion businesses and a baby clothing business called Crawler's Baby Tens with kneepads on them to protect the baby's knees. A good idea. At the time, I thought, today, being the father of six kids, no one ever complained about the knees. I actually think they have extra skin and they're built for it. But the universe thought of that one. But by this stage, I'm already after my third business. And I meet Rebecca.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  And when I met Rebecca, the first date, first time we met, I don't even remember what we ate, but I was waiting for her to put out her credit card so I can put out my credit card so we can split the bill. And we do that twice. And the third time, she goes, Adam, you know, in America, it is okay. You could offer to pay for the meal. I don't have to say yes. But you could offer. And I said, no, I'm an entrepreneur. And my money's in the business. She goes, I don't know what kind of entrepreneur you are, but if your money's in the business that you can't invite someone for a meal, you might not be a great one. And it's interesting because I think it was the first time someone talked to me that way. And I found it not only intriguing, I was like, wow. And I said, no, you don't understand how business works. And she was like, maybe you don't understand how business works. And that kind of discussion

• 6:24Speaker 01

  very quickly became a very passionate relationship. Three months from the moment we met, I proposed. Wow. And after we were together, she, one day, it was 2 o'clock at night. I was talking to the Chinese manufacturers of the baby clothing. I was screaming at Mr. Mao, Mr. Mao, Mr. Mao. And she woke up there and she said, if you wake me up one more time, screaming at your Chinese manufacturer for a company that makes no sense and is probably never gonna make any money, it's really gonna be an issue. I was like, what do you mean? This is my business. And she goes, what do you know about babies? What do you know about fashion? Why is this your business? And again, and this was what's so interesting about a relationship. And said, well, because I like being challenged. I said, well, what do you think my business should be?

• 7:07Speaker 01

  And she said, it should be something you're very passionate about. It should be something that you think can actually make a positive difference. And you should be so excited to jump out of bed that everybody wants to join you. So I said to her, well, do you have an idea of what that business might be? And she said, no, but I can tell you one observation I have about you. You love real estate. I said, I don't know anything about real estate. Said, well, when you and I walk down the street, some men, they look at many things that cross by their way. Their eyes wander. Your eyes look up. You're always looking at buildings. And again, I listened. And the next morning I walk and I noticed that I'm looking at buildings.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  And from that moment, I just started getting preoccupied in the sense of community and buildings. And very soon after, this landlord in Brooklyn, out of nowhere, says to me, starts talking about my baby clothing business and tells me how horrible it is. And I said, and it was Mr. Gutman. I said, Mr. Gutman, why would you say my business is so bad? Said, Adam, I have nine children. My wife loves buying baby clothes. She's not once bought from your store. I don't think you're even going to pay me rent next month. I said, Mr. Gutman, how much real estate do you own? Says, everything as far as the eye can see. And I said, well, it looks empty to me. You don't know a lot about real estate. And we would go back and forth for six months.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Till one day, he goes, takes me upstairs to one of his buildings. Said, Adam, what would you do? I gave you this floor. I read this in your book. I think sometimes people think ideas come after thinking deeply for many years and coming up with that perfect idea. It came on the spot, instantaneously, which made me know that it's not mine. Yeah. I think when you take your time, maybe you think you own it. When it comes out of nowhere, you could give it, it's bigger than you. Came from something bigger than me. I said, well, Mr. Gutman, I'm a small business owner and I pay you a lot of rent, but I only have five people. I would love a small space that fits the five people with some shared services, a receptionist and everything in between.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Your floor makes, you, you charge $5,000 in rent. We'll charge a thousand dollars a space. I think we can fit 15 spaces. We'll get 15,000. We'll pay the receptionist $2,500. You'll get 7,500. I'll keep the difference. He said, interesting, and I went home, not thinking anything about it. Yeah. I come the next day, he calls me so excited. Said, Adam, why do one floor? If we have a whole building, we'll put the receptionist downstairs. We'll save the cost. We'll fill up the whole building. I'll get this much. You'll get the difference. I said, great idea. The next day I went to Miguel McElvee, who was then my co-founder at the time, is an architect, a do-it-all architect. And in one night, the business, the business cards, everything gets created.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  It was called Green Desk. It's early mover on the environmental movement. And it was a green shared office space. But back then coworking was not the concept that a lot of people knew. And the launch was May of 2008. And you weren't aware of coworking before the idea? Interesting question. At the time I go to Baruch College, I actually had a person sitting next to me, a woman who was older. And her son had some version of coworking, but was very different than this. I did not have a brand behind, I had no purpose. It was just, let's split space. And we actually had an entrepreneur's through competition. And she joined me to the competition. So I always hear stories of our son and our concept was called Concept Living. And was a building, not an office space, with shared services. It was flow.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  But a long, long, long, long time ago. Yeah. We never made it even to the second stage of the competition because the dean of the business school told me that you can't disrupt real estate, it's too big, so the idea doesn't make sense. So I heard about the idea. I was never, I wasn't aware of it as something that brings people together. I never thought about it as the place where that same community, that same kibbutz that as a child made me safe would make others. And I think the timing, which is another thing in life, was perfect. Because it was after the crash of 08, because people were getting fired, because people were changing their life and changing what they were doing. It was a perfect time to start that business. And I remember our partner told me, Adam, the business is not going to succeed. And I said, why? He said, because real estate always goes down when the economy goes down.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  I said, well, this is not real estate, it's going to be counter cyclical. More people are going to want to be here. More people are going, because when people have the courage to start something new. And we started in May 2008 and it just took off. It was positive cash flow. How did it start? We put five ads in Craigslist. No money for marketing. Five ads. The first floor was 92% full within five business days. What did the ads say? Wow. Probably, I'm gonna have to check. Yeah. But probably something to the tone of green, communal, shared workspace. Something like that, something simple. And it happened right away? It filled up immediately. It was instant success.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  It went from three businesses that didn't succeed to immediately hitting. It was so successful that, again, the landlord, who's not used to investing any money, came the next week and said, you see, my idea is so good. I said, yes. Mr. Godwin, your idea is the best. Yeah. And he said to me, let's open another floor. And as fast as we would build, in 30 days, we would finish a floor. As fast as we finished it, it would fill up. Then another floor, and another floor, and another floor. And at the same time, I'm starting my spiritual journey because Rebecca, immediately the moment success is starting, is noticing that this thing that drove me, this community, suddenly something is competing with it, that success. Money was starting to zip in, it was tiny, little money. Yeah. But it was, she felt

• 12:56Speaker 01

  that this is a great time to start a spiritual practice. So you were not spiritual growing up? So I don't know, and you would be a better person. What do you consider spiritual?

• 13:05Rick Rubin?

  A meditation practice, praying, going to temple or church on a regular basis. I would say that would be spiritual.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  So based on your definition, I was extremely not spiritual. I did none of that.

• 13:20Rick Rubin?

  You didn't practice anything?

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Didn't practice anything.

• 13:23Rick Rubin?

  Were you a believer?

• 13:24Speaker 01

  So you spoke about my sister. I think if she was here, she would say that at night, when we were having those difficult nights after all the craziness that would occur at home, I would tell her stories about how we're going to be very successful one day in the future and how we're not going to have these issues and how it's all gonna work out great. So I always had this very optimistic view, no matter how tough it was, I had a feeling that things will work out in a very positive way.

• 13:53Rick Rubin?

  So you were optimistic, but maybe you wouldn't use the word spiritual?

• 13:56Speaker 01

  No, I a hundred percent would not use the word spiritual. I was not spiritual. I was very optimistic. I would say the only thing that was spiritual about me would have been my optimism.

• 14:13Speaker 03

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• 16:26Rick Rubin?

  Tell me more about the kibbutz. Would you feel like the other people in the kibbutz were like an extended family, or no?

• 16:32Speaker 01

  So, as we said, I entered 13 communities in childhood. The toughest community to enter was the kibbutz. The kids there growing up sleep in the same house and only go to sleep with their parents on the weekend. This is an old-fashioned thing that doesn't exist anymore. But that's how they grew up. Back in the day, the most successful leaders in Israel grew up in these kibbutzes. It was a very successful social movement. But it worked for the first generation. Then the second generation, their kids, not so much. And by the third generation, the whole thing collapsed. Funny enough, lately, there's a little bit of a movement back to it today in the world that we live. When people are so digitally connected, I actually think there's a much deeper craving for it. So when I was in the kibbutz, I think everybody felt this way. And I think even though I was an outsider,

• 17:17Speaker 01

  because I wasn't the kid that grew up there, they took care of me really well. And again, my mother... Was an unbelievable doctor, so she was taking care of everybody. We had a challenge because she was a single mom and she was dealing with her own challenges that were personal. Yeah. Which again, back then as a child, I could have complained a lot about it. But today, it's what made me who I am. I'm so grateful for every single moment we spent together. So I think everybody in the kibbutz felt that way. I left the kibbutz at the 11th grade. I lived there for five years. It was the place that shaped me and the place that I lived the longest.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  You know, when we lived in the kibbutz, I'll share a few things that were different. I think we can learn so much today from the past. In our kibbutz, one day a week, there was no school. Everybody volunteered and worked at the job. Interesting thought. In our kibbutz, every morning, we all went to the dining hall to have breakfast. It was so communal. I loved breakfast. There was nothing there, by the way. Bread, a little bit of Nutella, but it wasn't called Nutella, and a little bit of cream cheese and maybe some eggs. It was such a great way to start the day and all the kids would come. No parents. All the kids are together. This is now 5th grade, 6th grade. All the kids are together and we're talking and we're excited and we're going this, then everybody goes to the bus. And from the bus, straight to school. And then most of us were not wearing shoes.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Not on the bus, not in breakfast, and not in the school. Which then I kept going, which over time, some people thought it was interesting. I wasn't wearing shoes. Yeah. How did you meet Rebecca? I have a best friend and his name is Andrew Finkelstein. That same party that I told you about, that my sister and I threw on the roof or wanted to invite everybody from the building. Yes. Andrew's girlfriend Rachel came and met me. And we spoke for a little bit. And then she said, maybe she'll come hang out afterwards in our apartment. She goes downstairs to her boyfriend who lives with her. And said, I just met this Israeli, has a very heavy accent, invited me to hang out in his apartment.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  He goes, oh, the Israeli invited you to hang out in his apartment. I am coming. And twenty minutes later, I knock on the door. I opened the door. Back then, I didn't used to wear shirts a lot. And I opened the door. Andrew tells this story. I'm like, without my shirt, all being very, he calls me very Euro trash. Is the way he would refer to it, whatever that means. And he starts making fun of me. Oh, you told my girlfriend this and this. And for every word he tells me, I give him back two words. We go back and forth. Before we know it, we're hanging out until two A M. Playing video games. We forgot about his girl, forgot about anything.

• 19:56Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  And we become best friends instantaneously. For the next two years, we just hang out together. He is in between finishing college. He's very famous to have done six years of college because he really liked it. And he's not getting a job yet. He was selling tickets. And he would just hang out. I would come back from school and we would hang out. A lot of my work, all the stuff I needed to do, their English, the this, the that, he would help me write my papers and stuff. Again, it's a new language for me. And he would hang out. And for him, it was very important that I understand the American culture. And he's my age, forty six, he's forty eight. And for him, American culture was A D's movies. He loved movies.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  And he just, have you ever seen Breakfast Club? No. Boom. Have you ever seen? And he would take me through every single A D's movies that he grew up on. And teach me about the American culture. And I found it fascinating. And we would hang out and learn, go out. And at the same time, these in New York City, she's a model, so every night going to different places. We're having the time of our lives. And keeps always telling me that he had this friend Rebecca. Who was his best friend, or one of his close friends from Cornell University, but she lives in Los Angeles. And one day he tells me, I'm gonna move to L A. And the whole time he wanted to be a movie agent. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna become to be an agent. Rebecca got me my first job. I'm gonna sleep on the couch.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  And he moves to LA and I've never met Rebecca at this point and he starts his career. He's a very successful Hollywood agent today. And always tells me about Rebecca and from her side, always tells her about the crazy Israeli. Never introduces us. Then, two years later, I'm now by this stage, I'm twenty-eight. Rebecca is moving back from LA to New York and he's introducing us on phone. Said, hey, if you wanna meet someone cool, you have two cool friends of mine, I'm introducing you. And I remember that first phone call, cause I was telling Rebecca, you know, anything you need in New York, I can help you get. She was born there. Like it's this idiot. She was going out to clubs when she was fourteen. And that was that. And a week later, she just, out of nowhere, calls.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  And says, hey, if you wanna hang out, me and my friend are hanging out, you can come and say hello. And I do that. And I go, at the time, I have no money. I ride my bicycle, I go to that first meeting. I walk into her apartment, she's with a friend. We talk for a few minutes and then she tells the friend she can go. And it was just an instant connection.

• 22:23Rick Rubin?

  And you already knew of her for years, but you'd never met her?

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Never knew how she looked, never saw a picture.

• 22:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, I never spoke to her before.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Never spoke just that one time, knew of her. But again, the thing that got me that first time we met, and I think there's a lot to learn from this. It was like she put a mirror in front of my face and said the truth. Not caring, I think one of her superpowers is how authentic she is. She just looked at me and within a few minutes, she was like, wow, you talk big and you don't have anything. And I was like, well, what do you mean? And she goes, the way you're talking, it's like you're so successful and I can literally tell that you're broke, so it's a little ridiculous.

• 23:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Like, how do you know my bank account? And she goes, you just came to meet me for the first time, you couldn't even shower than taking a taxi. You drove your bicycle, you probably couldn't afford a taxi. And it was true. It was so true. And it was just instantaneous.

• 23:17Rick Rubin?

  And you hit it off right away?

• 23:19Speaker 01

  We hit it off immediately. It was right after I broke up from a girlfriend. And after the second day, I came back and I said to her, look, you're amazing, but I just broke up from a girlfriend. I had this plan to sort of be men around town for a second. And so I'm just letting you know that I'm not. And this is again, this is her strength. She goes, really? I said, really? She goes, no problem. Come back when you're ready, but I don't want to hang out until then. I was like, okay.

• 23:45Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  And I go for two, three days. And I was like, that was weird. Why wouldn't you want to? Why wouldn't you want to hang out with me? And five days later, I call her and I was like, hey, what are you doing on Sunday? She goes, I'm going to my Father's Day, something, something. Not intending for me to say anything because it's Father's Day, again, a very American thing. And we talked a little bit more. She's just being polite. She said, do you want to come? Sure, I'm not going to say yes. I said, of course. She tells me many years later that she never thought I would want to come to her Father's Day activity. And I just, we hang out and we go to her Father's Day. I meet her entire family. And I sort of move in the next day and I never leave.

• 24:22Rick Rubin?

  So tell me about her invitation for you to find your spirituality.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  So we're hanging out. I never leave. We're a month into it. And she comes home one day. I'm working at my baby clothing company at the time, doing two million in sales and three million in expenses. So we're just losing money, rolling it, making ends meet, making things come together. She comes to me and she goes, how things gonna work out between us? This is now a month in and I'm, I am head over heels, as I think you say here. And I said, what do you mean it's not going to work out between us? She goes,

• 24:59Speaker 01

  I think the man that I'm going to be with is going to have a spiritual practice. It's very important for me in my life. And you really don't have one. And I don't think you're interested in one. And therefore, I don't think it's gonna work out, but it's okay. You're gonna do great and very good looking. A lot of girls are gonna be interested. Don't worry about it, you're gonna do fine. Like, wait, wait, wait. How would someone go around having a spiritual practice? She goes, "Well, some people do yoga, some people meditate, some people pray. There are many different ways for many different people." I said, "Well, what do you think a good one for me would be?" She goes, "Well, you are Jewish. There's this thing called Kabbalah. Why don't you explore that? It's the mysticism of Judaism. You'll like it, because she knows it's very anti-religious.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  Anything religious, being Israeli, a lot of people don't know this. You don't like religious. If it's forced on you and it's religious, you walk the other way. You wanna choose."

• 25:53Rick Rubin?

  I didn't know that at all.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  People don't know that.

• 25:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  That's a lot, a lot of the split. There's the stories from the outside that we hear and there's what actually happens. There's a big divide in Israel between religious and non-religious.

• 26:03Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about that.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  It's a big topic, but on a very high level, growing up the way I grew up, when we're 18, we serve in the army. We go and get whatever jobs we get. We pay our taxes. We do what we think is our civil responsibility. I remember serving from age 18 to age 21, in my case, till almost 23. I almost did five years, because I was a Navy officer. Serving at such a young age, I think is such an important thing. Because it's exactly the age where you really just wanna take care of yourself and have fun and party and do whatever it is that 18-year-olds really wanna do. And by being forced to serve, already gives you a different take about life.

• 26:41Rick Rubin?

  You have responsibilities?

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Extremely. Depends what your position in the army is. I was specifically a Navy officer. I did at age 21 what in the US they do at age 28. It takes your age, because they have less money.

• 26:53Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  And they need to get things. You have tremendous responsibilities. But even if you're a soldier, working, you have huge responsibilities and there's many, many lessons I learned there. And one of my biggest lessons was, before you become a great leader, you must know how to follow orders. If you don't know how to be a soldier, if you don't know how to do the basic...

• 27:13Rick Rubin?

  You can't be a general if you haven't been a good soldier.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  You can't. You can be an okay general or okay leader.

• 27:19Rick Rubin?

  Because you need to understand what it's like to get information given to you.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  One, but I also think because you need to learn that you're not in control. And when you always think you're in control, you never let go. And when you don't let go, when is the universe gonna get a chance to come in? I actually think, you know, I have an acupuncturist who tells this great story. He goes to Mexico, there's this hot water river. And there's a pool that fills up every day in the morning, and then everybody bathed in it, and then they emptied at night. He wakes up early for his meditation, and he sees the guy cleaning the pool with a mop, moving around like Tai Chi. He literally, it looks like it's movements from a master in martial arts. And he brings an interpreter and he goes to that guy and says, "Excuse me, it looks to me like doing martial arts, but you're cleaning the pool.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  What are you doing?" He said, "I'm doing what my father taught me." And he said, "What did your father used to do?" He said, "He used to clean this pool." "And who taught your father?" He said, "His father, my grandfather, and he used to clean this pool." "This pool is healing for people." "We take every move that we make in this pool as an art, and we've practiced it for our entire lives." You could take something as simple as cleaning a pool and view it as your spiritual practice and something that's in the service of others, or view it as a horrible chore and be very busy complaining. Beautiful story. That's what you learn in the army, if you want to or not. And someone with my characteristic, it's a must.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Because if you look at me before and after, I was still not in a great place after. But the me before and the me after are two different things. How would you describe you before and you after? You know, me before is, I grew up in the ski boots, we did whatever we wanted, we were part of this community, we didn't wear shoes, we we just enjoyed every second of life, and we were just looking for more ways to have fun. It's not that we didn't have responsibilities, we did, but it was all about the community of children and coming together. It was like a storybook of what kids can do to have fun. And that was one piece of it, and the other piece of it was the challenges at home and all the different things. And sort of in between, school was not a big deal. I would, most classrooms, most days, teachers would literally walk into the classroom,

• 29:34Speaker 01

  "Adam, leave, okay, now we can start the class." And I would start wondering, the education there was not a perfect fit for me. Me after, I knew that when I am part of a team, if I can get the team to follow or to partner with me, there is not many things I couldn't achieve. With that energy, I arrived into the US. This is after September 11th, so there was just a horrible terrorist attack. New York, if you remember, the times changing. There's the New York before and the New York after. I actually think New York had a golden era afterwards for 10 years at least, from what I've understood and my experience. People from all over the world are coming to New York.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  And it's always at the back of my mind, this thought that I could basically do anything I put my mind to. As long as I can get a team to believe in it and join. The problem at that point is I have all that knowledge, but I have no spirituality. I have no purpose. So when you take a person that's capable of doing that, but you don't give them a purpose, I think that's where trouble comes. Now Rebecca, who is literally just starting with me, is seeing the potential and articulates the potential, but says without a purpose, you're not the man for me. And I really wanted to be the man for her. Yeah. So she takes me to this first Kabbalah class and without getting into the... Had she already been doing Kabbalah or no? She was doing Kabbalah once a week, but not as a practicing, not with any rigiliosity. I would really separate.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Sometimes people say, Adam, are you religious or are you spiritual? And I say spiritual and they say, how do you define? I say, so I keep Shabbat and... When did that start? 10 years ago, which is four years into it. But I'll go back to the, that first Kabbalah class. I go to that first Kabbalah class to prove to this woman I just met that I can do anything. Yeah, you're serious. And no one's gonna say, she's not gonna say I'm not the man for her. Maybe she's not the woman for me. Yeah. You don't break up with me, I break up with you. You know who I am, my sister is a model. I was an idiot. I was an actual idiot. And, and I go to this class and this woman is teaching. And to teach the lesson was a very basic one.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  When a challenge happens in your life, instead of reacting, take a deep breath.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Stop, and then you say, "Pause, what a wonder." Pause, what a wonder. Then, interact again. So, no knee-jerk reaction? No knee-jerk reaction. Take a breath. Let the universe come in, our new language. Hon that antenna, and let it receive for a second. There's a certain speed that this travels in. And then, and that was the class. Class ends, I'm like, "Whatever." But I still want to prove that, so I go and talk to the... I'm gonna ask this teacher someone, something, and show her. Yeah. And I ask the teacher something, and this one was a very wise teacher. She takes her book, she gives it to me, she says, "Adam, I write notes on the side of my books. Take a look, your answer is there. Bring it to rela... next week."

• 32:34Speaker 01

  I think, "Oh, I'm gonna show Rebecca, I took her teacher's book." Meanwhile, I go outside, I look at the book, the class ends, I'm like, "Oh my God, this teacher tricked me. Now I gotta come back next week and give that this book." I'm not gonna not return the book. And the next day, I go back into my baby clothing business that was genuinely not succeeding. And I had this saleswoman who was very powerful, but we argued every day. And she gets at it again. And this is something that I think people don't know about me. Even when I look like I'm not listening, I always hear. And when I think what I learned could be beneficial, I'll try it at least once. No matter what, I'll try it once. So I pause. I take a deep breath. And a different reaction comes to my head.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  And I try it. And this saleswoman who's so quick to anger, suddenly she's pausing. We have this beautiful dialogue. And we come up with a new idea of how to do something. Wow. We executed that. First time. First time. You know the book, The Alchemist? Yes. He talks about beginner's luck. I think when we start practicing spirituality, first time, it's beautiful. I encourage everybody to give it a shot and see if it works. And if it works, then we can go, then we can go to the next level. And it works, and I love things that work. And I come there the next day, next week, and now I'm hungry. Now I'm spiritually hungry. Now I want more. Because it already changed your life. It's already worked. I wouldn't say yet, I don't recognize at this point that it already changed.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Some of the biggest moments of our life that change our life, most of us don't know that that's what's happening. And this is why, no matter what moment you're going through right now, even if you think you're going right this second through your worst moment, you might not know that the darkest moment of the night is the second before dawn. Yes. And if you just pause and have a little more patience and keep pursuing, don't quit, the light will be revealed. Let's see what the next scene in the movie is. The movie is great. I just don't know how. Yeah. It's a divine movie, by the way. It was written by the best director, writer, and producer. And you know who the star is?

• 34:48Speaker 01

  We are. Are we gonna be a tragedy? Are we gonna be a success? Are we gonna be an up and down? Are we gonna learn from our lessons? Or are we actually gonna curl below our blanket and, oh no, this happened, and now I'm not gonna go back out? That's how Rebecca introduced me to it. And I just drank it like it was from the fire hose. I was just intrigued. And the moment that started, things started, we call it being in flow state. Once I hit that flow state, things started moving fast. That led to Green Desk, led to WeWork, led to our first child, led to everything, brought us all the way here today. And it only started with one class. Yeah. And one teacher, and one sentence.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  And then you started going every week? Then I started going, why, again, this is me. When I see something that works, I actually do more than once a week. It started once a week, it became two times a week, and it became three times a week. And then at the same time that this is happening, my life is changing so fast. I'm at this stage, I meet Rebecca at 28. I'm now 31, 32. I'm having my first daughter. That's a miracle. We're starting to have that experience. And then we're launching WeWork. So we said that we had that business green desk and this landlord kept growing and growing. And after a few months, I saw that this business could be a national business. And I go to him, Mr. Goodman. I say, Mr. Goodman, if you invest in us, the number is $20 million.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  We will give you 50% of the business and we will build this thing national. And Mr. Goodman said, I'm sorry. It's not for me. I like Brooklyn. But if that's what you guys want, and there's actually a deeper story there, but maybe for another time. If that's what you guys want, then I encourage you to, I encourage you to go for it. I will buy you guys out. And you guys run with it. And we agree on a number. But he won't pay the entire number upfront. He's only willing, if the number is 3 million, we own 50% with another partner. So a million and a half. Miguel and I a million. But he's only willing to give us 300,000 over a million. The rest is installments for the next four years to ensure that we don't enter Brooklyn with our new business. We don't compete. He just wants Brooklyn. Yeah.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  By the way, back then, oh, Brooklyn, no big deal. Well, Brooklyn became quite a big deal. He wanted Brooklyn. And... Did he grow the company in Brooklyn as well? First of all, it still exists and is successful. So yes, he grew it. But not with the concept of community and the soul behind it. Yeah. But it still exists today and it's still successful today. And co-working is a successful business today. And this was the beginning. This was the seed. And what's interesting is when we come to start WeWork, so then Miguel and I want to start WeWork, it did take six months to come up with the name. So we knew we had an amazing business. I knew this business was a home run. I felt it. I knew it was right. And you already experienced a lesser version of it.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  This one had a higher intention than the first business. 100% true. This one had time to put thought. And this one had Miguel and I sitting with the whiteboard for six months, planning it. We used to draw a picture of what we would do nine years into it. It was very similar to that initial picture that we drew. Wow. I will send it to you so you see it. It is a beautiful picture. But the name's not there. And I'm not willing to start the business because by this stage in my spiritual practice, I know the power of words. And I need a name that describes this vision. And I can't come up with it. And one thing we didn't say about my friend Andrew Finkelstein, who introduces me to Rebecca. When we fall in love and I call and tell him we're gonna marry each other,

• 38:27Speaker 01

  he stops talking to us for three months. He had a relationship, nothing to do between him and Rebecca. He was so upset because he knew the Adam he knew was was the Adam that used to party a lot and go over and be. I used to hang out a lot.

• 38:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  And Rebecca was his close friend that he was so worried about. And he thought she was some innocent lamb and I was the wolf. And he didn't want the wolf to get close to his close friends. So he called Rebecca and said all the, whatever worst things he could say about me.

• 38:53Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  And there's a lesson there also, because if you call someone and tell them why you shouldn't be with someone, then they get really interested. But we loved it. It was true. I told him it was true. He just didn't believe it was true. And I'm, I'm a very loyal person.

• 39:05Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  When I commit, I am not at ninety-nine percent committed. I am a hundred to a fault. So Andrew ends up not talking to us for three months, but then again, becoming very close. And we never forgot that he introduced us, but when.

• 39:18Rick Rubin?

  And instead of you somehow hurting her, she made you better. That's what happened.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  And, and I think for her, at the point she meets me, she was celibate for six years. She at age twenty-three, she was twenty-nine, decided she's not gonna go on this dating scene and this thing that everybody else doing. She told the universe, she used to, so she's a yogi, she was meditating, she was Jiva Mokti, she was certified. And she would meditate and she would tell the universe, send me my soulmate or no one at all. She was zero interested. So at this point, she's six years in. So then she meets me. And she knew it, I knew it. And that's that. And then when it's time to launch the business and I don't know the name, I call my old friend Andrew Finkelstein. But this point is in Hollywood, his career is starting to take off. And he has and has always been an unbelievable agent, but he's also an amazing.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  Copywriter and speaker and you know, Marty Supreme that just came out. He put together, he represents the director, he represents, he did a lot. He didn't write and direct it, he's the agent, but he helped it become a reality. I was there for the whole process. And I called him, I said, I need your help to come up with a name. And I go to his house and we hang out the way we used to hang out. And we are really, this is now 2:00 AM and we're about to, we're about to faint. And he looks at me and he literally goes, I wish we had a video of this. He looks like this. His eyes are like almost rolled back. He goes, Steve Jobs had it wrong.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  It's not iBook, iPhone, me, me, me. It's we, we work, we give, we fly, we teach, we, and faints.

• 41:06Rick Rubin?

  It's interesting also that you say it's at 2:00 in the morning, you're both exhausted.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  So I'm exhausted.

• 41:10Rick Rubin?

  The point is, is that you weren't like in a strong place.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  The opposite.

• 41:17Rick Rubin?

  It was almost as if you were ready to give up. You were at the end. You let go.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  This is so accurate, Rick. We were so at the end, we were done and it wasn't going to happen.

• 41:31Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  And he says it. And I look up at the universe, by this point I'm already practicing more. I said, please, let me remember it in the morning. I wake up and I call Miguel, trademark, we work, let's go, boom.

• 41:48Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  But it reminds me, he just said something I think very important. It reminds me of a story. Joseph in the Bible. He's born, he has all these dreams. He dreams his father and his mother and his brothers will bow to him. And his brothers hate him for it. And they put him in the cave, they want to kill him, then they decide to sell him. And no matter what happens, he looks up to the heavens and he says, it's God's will. The brother sold me, maybe it's my fault I didn't speak. They sell him, if you don't remember the story, they sell him. Into slavery. He becomes slave to one of Pharaoh's right-hand people. He then rises, always, whatever what, he always is blessed. He says, "God's will." And he rises, there is a slave, he starts running the house. Then the woman of the house, her name was Esched Potifora.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  She really, she wants to sleep with him, because he was defined as beautiful from the in and from the out. He's very handsome, very smart. And she chases him, he doesn't want it, he runs away, the clothes gets ripped, then she feels ashamed. She says he tries to rape her. He gets thrown into prison, and no matter what, God's will, God's will, then in prison he climbs to the top, he's helping run the prisoners, God's will. Until after ten years, those two people come, the two ministers, they have dreams. And interprets their dreams, one he says, "Pharaoh will save you," and the other one he says, "You will die in three days." And the one he says, "Pharaoh will save you." He says to him on the way out, "Please don't forget me." He suddenly gives up this belief that he had until then, that it's God's will, God's will, God's... He forgets for a second.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  It says that he gets punished to stay two more years. Now he's twelve years in prison, and he gets to this night where he is done. He is ready to give up. He says, "God, maybe I don't deserve it, maybe I need to be in prison, I will never leave." He gives up and lets go, and goes to his lowest point. And in his lowest point, and this I think is very important for us, when we're there, and we all have a moment where in that lowest point, we get to choose. Do you choose belief, or don't you? And if you choose belief, and are able to pick yourself up from that lowest point, boom! That's when it happens. And the next second, Pharaoh has his dreams, can't interpret them. The guy remembers he met this guy Joseph, this Hebrew slave.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Says, "I met a slave in prison that interpreted my dream." Brings him to Pharaoh, interprets Pharaoh's dream, and goes from a slave to basically the CEO of Egypt, the number two to the king, in one day. All the way from here to that, and to finish that story, when his brothers, there's the famine, the seven bad years, they come, and he saves his family. And when his brothers see him and they cry, and they're so, they're so sorry for what we did to you. He said to them, "It was never you. I was here so we all could be saved. It's God's will." So I think what you're saying is not only true that in that moment that we let go. I also think it's the moment when we're at our lowest moment, and we let go, where we can choose. To believe.

• 44:43Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, I think there's also something in that lowest moment where you're not doing the work. There's space, like you said earlier. In your life, you were talking a lot and you weren't listening.

• 45:00Rick Rubin?

  When you're working, a lot of times you're talking, talking, talking, talking, and there's not the space. But when you run out of steam talking, eventually you're done. And then there's space and it's quiet. And then it can come through.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  And sometimes when we talk, I'll talk about myself. When I used to do it, and I know I still do it, but I tried to do it less. When I used to do it, I thought I was in control. When we think we're in control, that's when we really start losing the game. We're in control of our reaction to what happens, not of actually what happens.

• 45:38Rick Rubin?

  No, and we never know what's gonna happen next, really.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  We really don't know. The only thing we know is that it's part of that movie that you described before with the greatest director, writer, producer on the planet.

• 45:51Rick Rubin?

  Yes. And I'm always anxious to see what's the next scene, what's the next chapter?

• 46:00Speaker 01

  You know, the nice thing about what you said is if you're patient, you said anxious, but I bet you're also patient. Because if you're patient enough, the next chapter is could be phenomenal.

• 46:11Rick Rubin?

  And I think there's no way to get to greatness without patience.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  I think there is no way to get to lasting greatness without patience. You could taste it. You could taste it. We all know so many stories. I've been part of one of those stories. You could taste it, but it's not gonna last. I think if you want lasting blessings or lasting greatness, you need patience. You need to be aware that you're not in control. And you need to accept the fact that sometimes even though you don't know, and it's really, really scary, life is not about if you fell down. Life is only about how you get up.

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• 48:22Speaker 05

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• 48:29Rick Rubin?

  So you have the name, and what happens next?

• 48:33Speaker 01

  It's miraculous. It's on fire.

• 48:36Rick Rubin?

  What's the first thing you do?

• 48:38Speaker 01

  I go and find a building on Lafayette and Grant that wasn't that cool yet. From a landlord that didn't like to give any money. And was very, was like one of those very tight landlords. And I convinced him to pay us enough to build it. It had five floors. The idea was we'll rent the top floor and we'll do so well, then we'll rent the floor below, the floor below, the floor below. And the reason you start in floor five, when you do construction afterwards, you're always doing below people and not above their head. Make less noise was the thought. And I convince him to do the deal, but he has one thing. We must put three hundred thousand dollars in a letter of credit. Otherwise, we can't do it. The exact same three hundred thousand dollars that we got from the sale

• 49:23Speaker 01

  that the partner was willing to give us before the installments. Dollar for dollar, same amount. That same amount moves, and I think that's how energy moves when you're in flow. That energy moves from that idea that was, like you said, the early

• 49:37Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  to a slightly more intention-oriented idea. Now it's there. And we were under construction. We do the first floor, we get a very small budget from him. Which is amazing, because never for the next nine years in the history of WeWork, can we build for that price that we built the first time. Why? Because we were constrained. Because constraints is the mother of all innovations.

• 49:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  It's what takes us to the next level. And we design it, we build it. I still remember the night before Miguel was about to have his first son. He gets overwhelmed the night before, and we had a few employees. We all go and finish it. And the place just, it fills up before, within a month. Ninety-nine percent full. Next month, next floor, next floor, next floor, next floor. And that's the case for, and the first building is done. And we go to do building two. We have no money. We raise our first round, and that's where it starts.

• 50:35Rick Rubin?

  Where is building two?

• 50:37Speaker 01

  Building two is on Thirty-Fifth and Fifth, right in front of the Empire State Building. Literally right in front, which at the time was not considered a good location. But for me, being an outsider in New York, I was like, what are you talking about? I can see the Empire State Building from the roof. It's beautiful.

• 50:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  Sometimes, I've learned this a lot in life. The ones who know everything, because they've been living in that market forever, actually might be limited. And for me, coming from the outside, a fresh set of eyes on any situation, or I like to think of it more as a childlike

• 51:10Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  look. Rebecca thinks she has seven children, not six, me being the toughest one, number seven. I look at life as a child, for good or for bad, which allows me to see situations from the beginning. So that's building number two. And we raise our money from the first person. And we just start running. My third building is in Meatpacking. The same time also, as I said, New York is happening. Meatpacking is starting to happen. There was a club called Lotus. We used to go there every Tuesday night. Danny A. was at the door. And we we just love the meatpacking. It was so good. I don't know if you remember meatpacking back then. So cool. The original restaurant before rent became expensive. It was such a great place to be. And I just wanted a building in the meatpacking. Find the landlord, that is impossible. We become friends.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  I understand him, he understands me.

• 51:58Rick Rubin?

  Also seems like as you have success, it's easier because you have examples.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  We're not there yet because this is same year, right? This is early success. So it is success. But remember, real estate people are very good at saying no. They know everything. Their business is cyclical, so they've been there, done that. But at the same time, if you remember, you're now 2010. Office is only starting to be at the rise. So there's all of empty space, which gives us an opportunity. So we do meatpacking, which is amazing. And I want to do San Francisco. And the reason I want to do San Francisco, I wanted to be a national brand. And my head was like, okay, we'll be national by being on two coasts. So three is the answer. And number four is San Francisco.

• 52:41Rick Rubin?

  How was the reaction in San Francisco?

• 52:43Speaker 01

  The concept of people wanting to be part of something greater than themselves and wanting to be part of a community. And when you start business and you have one or two employees or by yourself, to go to the coffee machine and talk to someone, to need an accountant. Today, we'll talk about it later with AI. The world's different. But to need all this help and meet five different people around the coffee machine that can just, they can just talk to, to share the struggles and the successes with people in a like-minded place was relevant all over the planet. It made tremendous amount of sense back then. The only time I would say it makes more sense is today. Because the more people are getting connected digitally, the less they are connected physically, the more they crave it.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  But back then, it was unbelievable in San Francisco's answer. And then did you do more in San Francisco or did you spread out? This is where I'm a little, this is where Adam back then is very busy doing, push everything out. By the time I did San Francisco, I might have done one or two more buildings. I was ready to go global. I went to London and people were like, Adam, you can't go to London. I said, why? It's the same language, similar accounting system, similar law. What's the big deal? Same website. What's the big deal? Like Adam, it's London. It's a different time zone. So from after doing a few buildings, I go to London. And what's interesting about London, London is the inventor of the original coworking, right? Regis, the original company that this is from the eighties, I believe, is there.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  So everybody was like, no, it's not going to work as well in London because it exists there. In my opinion, and I feel it's stronger even today. When you go to a place where people know of a new concept, but you bring something innovative, you do even better than when you have to convince everybody about a new concept. So we then go to London and it goes really well. It basically for the following five years goes unbelievably where wherever you go. And just to to give it weight, from year one, doing one building in the first year and year two adding, I believe, three. You go to a year nine, doing two buildings a day. Two buildings a day? A day. Nine years. Two buildings a day in a hundred and thirty cities,

• 54:56Speaker 01

  fifty countries, five continents, seventy-two languages. And when I count today, I only count business days. So that's five days a week, not including holidays. So you do over four hundred, maybe five, did a crazy amount in that last year. It's unbelievable. It was an amazing journey. And you know something about the journey that sometimes doesn't get spoken enough? To do what I just said, you need an unbelievable team that believes. For sure. Because this is not technology that's building. Not only can you not breathe everywhere, this is physical labor. This is architecture in all these languages. This is construction. This is management. It's operations and hospitality and accounting. And the thing about we were, that team was phenomenal. Yeah. Because they believed.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  And if you ask them, I met, I just met one of them a few weeks ago. He works in an awesome new startup, not even near, they're publicly traded. He works in Archer, which is the vertical take of drones. They're doing really well. And he's top five, and he used to be one of our heads of construction. And he sees me, he's very nice. And he says, Adam, I just want you to know the reason I'm doing so well is because of everything you taught me at WeWork. And I said, I didn't teach you how to work in a vertical takeoff drone company. Like, what does construction have to do with that?

• 56:08Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 56:08Speaker 01

  He said, no, you taught me that if I put my mind into it, and I get a team to work with me, and I put purpose and mission first, I can do anything I want, and that has worked phenomenally for me. So that's the first five years.

• 56:22Rick Rubin?

  Do you think the success had to do

• 56:26Rick Rubin?

  with the concept? Or with your personal will?

• 56:33Speaker 01

  In hindsight, I think the success was accumulation of every single thing that I did leading to that. It's the childhood, it's the challenges, it's the parents that were always giving as doctors, it's the kibbutz, it's the learning how to serve at the age of eighteen, it's living with my sister in New York City and experiencing this unbelievable city that inspired me. It's my friend Andrew Finkelstein who teaches me about America and about culture and about movies and about all these beautiful things that inspire me and get me excited. And it's this belief in something that I play a part,

• 57:18Speaker 01

  in something bigger than me, that I can make a difference. Maybe sometimes it feels big and sometimes it feels small, but there's a mission for me on this planet, there's a message. For me, it's more community, and that message needs to be told, it needs to be heard, and as long as I stick to it and don't forget it and put that first, nothing can stop me.

• 57:50Speaker 00

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• 59:18Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about your relationship with SoftBank and Masay.

• 59:21Speaker 01

  First, I'll start with the most important thing to say about Masay. Because for me, it's Masay. SoftBank is the company that he created, and SoftBank is great, but it's Masay. When Masay walks the first time into WeWork, he goes like this.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  It smells like a factory of dreams. Wow. You're not manufacturing business here. Wow. You're making dreams. What a beautiful statement. And I am, I get shivers all over my body and I was like, Adam, you just met someone who thinks bigger than you. Yeah. I didn't even know where it came from. And then he just kept talking. I didn't even know where it came from. And he was supposed to come for an hour and a half and he only had twelve minutes. This all, this in the twelve minutes, he says that and my headquarters, my where I sit, when I used to bring investors, had this whole tour through our HQ I would do, was on the fifth floor, I was never getting there.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  So I took him into our innovation center and introduced him to two residents, because our buildings, I always wanted to work in buildings where customers were their members, so I could always hear from them in the elevator. They love telling me what's wrong and I love hearing. Yeah. So I introduced him to two residents, two members. And he says what he says, he looks at me, he goes, this is great, I need to go uptown, do you like to join me in the car, we could talk some more? I say, of course. We go into the car, have this whole presentation, closed it, I was like, forget your presentation. So do a deal. The night before, we have a board meeting, this is twenty sixteen, towards the end. And

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  we decide as a board, the story was, we can turn our business profitable whenever we want. Because we're growing, that business is about growing this, never stop being profitable. You would just slow down building and you'd be profitable. Or even better, you stop. You let the machine catch up with you, because you've done so much. You actually take account inventory of where you're at, which there is no way to grow as fast, we were one of the fastest, maybe fastest, physically growing business on the planet. Yes. No matter how good at what you do you are, you will never be able to do that perfectly right. You stop, you let the deals catch up with you and you reconsider everything you're doing, you look at everybody, are everybody in the right roles, do we have enough employees, do we have too many employees? Is our technology working, what do we need to do? You take a moment.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  Because up until this point, you're sprinting. I think sprinting would be an understatement. I think if you came, because I know you a little bit, I think you would have told me after our meeting that you need to take ten minutes and meditate before you go downstairs. Yeah. Because you would have felt that, because that energy, I think you'd have loved it. But that energy was electric, we were. Flag. He used to say outside of my door, we do the impossible every day, miracles once a week. And we meant it.

• 1:02:11Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  We meant it.

• 1:02:12Rick Rubin?

  And it happened.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  It happened. We meant it. It was happening. So we have this board meeting.

• 1:02:18Rick Rubin?

  Tell me now, how big is WeWork in 2016?

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  I would need to, I would need to go back. It's been some time. Approximately. I'm going to guess, I, I, I remember it by buildings and revenue. WeWork is at

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  four hundred and fifty million dollars revenue, going to nine hundred million. So WeWork is doubling, not just in size every year, but in revenue, which then doubles your expenses and the growth and everything that comes. So four hundred and fifty million, growing into a billion in revenue. It's a sixteen billion dollar company with last valuation. It's probably in, it's for sure in Europe, in the United States, and in Latin America.

• 1:02:59Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  At this point, I will fly. And we're working. We are working many, many, many hours. Everyone, the employees, myself, everyone's working nonstop. We have the board meeting the night before and we agree. We say, we're gonna go out to raise money one more time. One of my abilities is that I am able to raise money because I'm able to bring people with me towards the direction I want to go. And I'm also, for people to know me, I keep my word. If I say we're gonna double by this number, I do. If I say we're gonna hit this goal, I do. So the best people for me to raise money for a second time. People who passed the first time but heard what I said. And then I come to them the next time and say, let me show you what I did since we met.

• 1:03:38Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  Then they're like, oh, wow, you told us ten things. We thought you were gonna do one, you did nine. And then they would want to join the journey. And so this, we have the board meeting and we decide that I am going to raise three hundred million. We're gonna take a pause, we're gonna clean everything up, we're gonna turn the company profitable, stop signing leases, we're gonna take the company public. And not only are we gonna take the company public, this is 2016 going to 2017, we're not gonna worry about our last valuation of sixteen billion. We're gonna take it for ten, because we wanna leave money on the table. Again, but at this point, we weren't using valuations. At least on my side and my executive team. We believed that our solution is so correct and it worked everywhere. There was not a place on the planet you opened this thing and it didn't work. Yeah, you had proof. We had proof. Yeah. We had belief.

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  We had everything we needed to know and the plan was solid. You slowed down for a second. And then next morning I met Masa. And we sit in his car at the store. I told you, happens what happens. He invites me into his car. What's the deal and how much you're looking for? Yeah. So again, it happened the night before and I'm already, by this stage, I am studying spirituality. And I believe there's no, it's not cause and effect. I believe in cause and effect, but I believe, wow, we said it yesterday and it's happening today. So I'm gonna tell him the number we said. Raising three hundred million at a twenty billion dollar valuation. Because the last one was sixteen. He looks at me and goes, but Adam, I'm Masa. I have the vision fund. It's gonna be a hundred billion dollar vision fund.

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  It could take a long time to spend a hundred billion dollar, three hundred million dollar checks. Don't you have a bigger vision, a bigger picture? I said, I do, but you know that that would be a very big amount for us to raise. He said, well, tell me, if you could do anything, how big can this company be? I said, this company can be as big as as much money as you inject into it. You put money on one side, you get growth on the other. I haven't missed my numbers once. Remember by this point, two thousand and ten to eleven, I grow three X, three X, three X, and then two X, two X, two X. But I don't miss my growth. I said, look, we're four fifty, I'll hit nine hundred million next year, then a billion eight, then three six. It's gonna keep, depends how much money you wanna put in the machine. And he says to me, well, what do you think about Southeast Asia? I said, I've never been there. He said, well, do you think the concept will work there?

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  I said, I'm sure it will, but I would need to learn about it. He said, well, we should do a company there. And then he said, what do you think about China? Oh, sorry, when I said we're in all those places, I forgot to mention. We're already in China also by that point. Really? So when Masa comes, we're in China, Latin America, Europe and the US. And China already is a freestanding company that we raised locally at a two billion dollar valuation. And the reason I raised the local company, if the locals don't believe in it, I don't wanna enter a market that that's hard. So that was my Lipton test, Lipton test, and it worked out very well. And he says to me, what about Southeast Asia? I say, yes. He said, well, we can write this size check there. And then he says, what about Japan? I said, I really don't know anything about Japan. He said, well, Adam, I know Japan. And tells me the whole story about Yahoo Japan. And how at some point Yahoo Japan was bigger than all of Yahoo.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  And said, OK, we could do that together. And then he said, China, you could go much bigger in China. And the 300 million request becomes 3 billion. Big change. Big change. And it's all written down and it's all in 28 minutes. And In 28 minutes? Then from the moment we started writing till the moment we arrived, 28 minutes. But we're not there, we're only minute 22. And he's writing all of it down on an iPad. Then he looks at it and he goes, and I said, I can't take this much dilution. Don't maybe I could take, you know, maybe a billion, but I can't. He said, no, but we will fund Southeast Asia as a separate company. China already was separate, Japan will be separate. So this way, so you don't just have, we work as one valuation. You have all these separate companies with their own valuations.

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  And again, that money in them, because we have a team that can execute, will become successful businesses. He was not wrong. The recipe was in place, he was very right. And then he says, let's make it 4 billion. I said, I don't have, I don't have it in me. This is me and this is this. I said, I don't have it in me. I don't, I don't, I don't know where I would put Were you scared at all? It sounds scary. You know, I'm in my mid 30s. My lesson in hindsight, after a lot of time of reflection, when you tell the universe you're looking for 300 million and the next day a guy offers you 4 billion, instead of signing the dotted line, you take a breath and say, why? What does it come with? What am I committing to? Is there something here I don't see?

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  But to be fair, including myself, most 30 something year olds sitting in that seat, those numbers that

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  This is the Israeli from the kibbutz, who came to New York City and lived with his sister, who was paying his rent for the first six years, and then Rebecca paying for the following three years. And I go, "What am I gonna do with another bill?" He said, "You'll do secondary, for you and for all your investors and for all your employees, and everybody will have an exit." So they feel this. Okay. And I should have been scared. I wasn't. I should have been scared. I've never thought about this before. I should have been terrified, because I was way more. I should have done that first lesson that I learned in Kabbalah. Pause, what a wonder. But I didn't. I took that pen and I signed that document.

• 1:08:51Rick Rubin?

  Right there.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  On the spot. On the spot. He offered it on the spot.

• 1:08:56Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  I signed one. In the art of the deal, which deals sometimes have momentum. They have moments. They're second in time, just like channeling. But the deal can go from both sides. And just, I wanna make this clear. Not only do I not blame Master for anything.

• 1:09:09Rick Rubin?

  No.

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  I am so grateful, so appreciative.

• 1:09:12Rick Rubin?

  He trusted. He saw the vision.

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  He trusted. He trusted completely.

• 1:09:15Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. How could you be mad at that guy?

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  I woke up because other people, many times, after, "Oh, he pushed you to grow so fast." We're gonna say what happened. We're gonna get there, but I couldn't be. I couldn't be. I wouldn't be. And there's nothing. If he called me today, said, "Adam, I need this or that. I am on that plane and with him, as fast as engines can take me."

• 1:09:35Rick Rubin?

  Of course.

• 1:09:36Speaker 01

  Straight away. I walk out of that car. Again, in hindsight, I couldn't know at that moment. That's when a mission-driven company that was based on belief, that came from kibbutz, that came from all the right things, with all the right energies, switched to become about growth, money, and valuation.

• 1:10:00Rick Rubin?

  And because you had now a commitment to live up to. Before that, you were building at the fastest pace you could with what you had. And now you're put in the situation of multiplying it by a hundred times.

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  Yes, but I wanna take more accountability than that. Before all that happened.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  I had a choice. I could walk out of that car, take a deep breath, really pause, maybe go talk to Rebecca, go talk to some of my spiritual teachers, go to people I know who are more experienced than me. I signed already. Let's say this, I've thought about this many times. I could have not not signed. That wasn't in the cards. Not that Adam, then, not. Maybe Buddha could. I could have not not signed.

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  I could have taken a deep breath and said to myself, this is more money than I've ever touched. This is a tremendous responsibility. Yes, he wants me to grow very fast, but that's not what he really wants. What he really wants is the result in five years from now. What would be the best way? And I could have thought for a second about my spiritual studies by this point, about five years. And when things come really easy, we tend to not appreciate them. And we don't appreciate them, we tend to short circuit. But I didn't. Instead of that, and I remember it, I walked. It was like 58th Street, I think, where's? And our HQ was in 18. I walked down New York City. Every step I took, the ego went up. It was under control. It was there, but I had Rebecca and I had my kids.

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  And I just have, I have a beautiful relationship where I get given feedback all the time with the executives, where the teacher that we worked with. There are a lot of controls around us to keep it. But it went above my threshold, above my spiritual level at the time.

• 1:11:44Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:45Speaker 01

  And it came up, and I walked into that HQ, a different version of myself. The purpose and the mission suddenly became not the goal. Those promises that were made on growth and revenue became the goal. But that wasn't the DNA of what we built. I'm not saying that there aren't companies that could be built that way.

• 1:12:04Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  I, Adam, don't operate that way. I cannot build a company that way. And then we really started growing fast. If fast was fast before then, then we started flying.

• 1:12:14Rick Rubin?

  I feel like you're being very hard on yourself, considering you've been in business for six years. You've been sprinting or flying the whole time, only having success. And here's someone who believes in you even more than you believe in yourself, saying, you can do this. I don't know anyone in that position who would not move forward with that.

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  So I appreciate you saying that. I don't view my words that I just said as hard. I cherish that moment because in hindsight,

• 1:12:50Speaker 01

  that is what made me who I am today.

• 1:12:52Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  In general, I think, for me, I think it's relevant for other people. If we can start taking those moments that at the moment we can view as a mistake and actually say, "It's not a mistake. It's exactly what needed to happen, as long as I can learn. If I can learn from it, it's meant to be and it's part of my journey. If I'm gonna go and make that decision again, that makes it a mistake. But yes, that's where we were."

• 1:13:22Rick Rubin?

  You wouldn't make that same decision today because now you have more experience.

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  I didn't. Similar in the magnitude, but I had a version. I didn't.

• 1:13:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  I took almost six months to make the decision to start the next business.

• 1:13:34Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Now, is there a world in what Massa believed could have happened?

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. Almost it. We were very close.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  If I played 2019 differently, there's a very high likelihood that it would. But it's very important to say, you know this concept of, on the one hand, we have free choice, on the other hand, it's meant to be?

• 1:14:04Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  When I say that to people, I say, "How would you explain that?" The way I would put it is...

• 1:14:09Rick Rubin?

  How would you say it?

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  We get to a fork in life. We all do many times. You have free will. You choose one choice and it actually ends up working out or what you perceive as working out. You're like, "Oh, meant to be." Choose another choice and suddenly things don't work out. If you take those things that didn't work out and you learn and grow from them, you're right back to meant to be. So it's our future. It's again that thing of us not controlling, us controlling our reaction. It's that. So to answer your question, I'm gonna caveat what I'm about to say. Without everything happening exactly the way you did, I wouldn't be where I am today. Yes. And I love where I am today. Of course, no regret. Not only no regret, I think I am, as a person, happier.

• 1:14:54Speaker 01

  I think I have the capacity to build things that are tremendously larger, as you said. If Kibbutz was here, then Greindesk was there, then WeWork was this. I think flow is the next level and would have never been able to be born without those steps. So I'm so happy. But here's a difference, an easy scenario for you. If instead of my investors, I would have Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz as my partners, my partners today. And I'm saying this from knowledge because I've gotten to know them. I sit with them. We have a board meeting in two days. I'm very excited about it. I'm going to get to sit with both of them in the room. Best part of my business, without a doubt, is the nine hours of sitting with Marc and Ben. Yeah. Knowing that they're going to tell you what they actually think, not what you want to hear, and learning from people who are not just, in my opinion, the best investors in the world.

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  They've built their own businesses. If they were sitting around that table when the whole thing was happening, the one thing they wouldn't have done is said, "Adam, you should step down." That they knew was not going to work because it's been tried many times. And literally, if you look at the history, almost has never worked. They would have said something like, "Adam, we need to have a serious talk." Maybe taking me somewhere, lock the door, throw in the key, and said, "Okay, Adam, you've proven that you're the fastest growing company in the world. You've proven that it's time to prove profitability." Because if we're going to mature to our next stage as a business, and if we're going to want to go to Wall Street, they're not going to understand this unstoppable growth. And we know that the four-wall units are profitable.

• 1:16:24Speaker 01

  Let's prove it. That's the first thing they would have done. Second thing they would have done again now that they know then, they would have said, "Adam, our tech is not working." Because if our tech was working, we would be able to show things in a way that would be very clear to everybody. The fact that we can also means that we can't control, which means we need to go and fix that also. That's the thing that in September of 2019... If happened differently, we would have had a chance for Masa's idea not only to have worked, but to have worked phenomenally, because remember what happens then? Corona comes. And in Corona, WeWork would have had an opportunity to press the reset button. All those leases, we haven't talked, we don't need to get into the details of the business, but we were taking these long-term leases,

• 1:17:08Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  selling against short-term commitments. We then started going into enterprise that was taking longer. If you remember in Corona, everybody left office. No one paid their rent, except for one company, WeWork. Because the people running it, it wasn't their money anymore. They didn't treat it like it's theirs, so they paid. No one was paying their rent. If we were there, me and our original team, and we sat there and we actually had the opportunity to reflect, have partners that were honest with... By the way, the honesty could have included saying if we said, "Adam, you did great taking the company from one to 3.6 billion in revenue." We talked about the size of it, but the revenue grew from zero to huge. "We should bring in a professional CEO that should do it daily, and you should become chairman." The discussion could have been a very real discussion. We had no discussion.

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  And then when Corona happened, the reset button would have been set. And I actually think what's interesting about Corona, I know that there's been time to think about it, work has never been the same since. It needed leadership. It needed a vision. So yes, I think Masa could have been right.

• 1:18:14Rick Rubin?

  What happened in 2019, where it changed?

• 1:18:18Speaker 01

  I think, as I said, what happened started actually in that December of 2016.

• 1:18:25Rick Rubin?

  Getting out of the car.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  It all moved to chase these things, and it became bigger than us. And we just grew for the sake of growth. And Masa saw us go from 450 to 900 million. A lot of companies promised him that, we're the only ones who hit. Then he saw us go from 900 million to 1.8 billion. So then he came in again, and then it became even bigger. And by this point, we were rushing. And SoftBank was going through their own set of challenges, and they had their own public stock challenges in the Japanese stock market. And this is not 2019, it's 2018. In March of 2018, Masa...

• 1:19:05Speaker 01

  Comes to me and says, why don't we buy WeWork from all your investors at a $20 billion valuation? How many investors did he have at that time? Not that many institutional investors, the biggest ones, best ones, the biggest ones. You know, seven to eight institutions plus 10 individuals, maybe not that many. And why did he want to do that? He wanted to build a trillion dollar company. Yeah. He wanted to go huge. Yeah, and he could see it working. He saw it working. He knew it was gonna cost money. He had no problem with it losing money. He knew that if it needed to go public, Wall Street won't understand it, but he understood it. He wanted to grow to a way bigger revenue and then do the pause and the cleanup. I see. He wanted to keep going. He just wanted to wait longer before the cleanup.

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  He wanted to truly own the category. Yes. At this moment, people are copying from all over the world. There are 40,000 companies that got funded, registered and opened copying WeWork, 40,000. So he saw and he just wanted us to own it. And to do that, he offered a $20 billion valuation, $10 billion for all of our investors and employees, and $10 billion on the bank account. Just so you have this, and this is at the time the company is losing about a billion, eight to two billion a year. Again, this is where a different board would have done things differently. I can't be part of that decision because I'm staying in. I wasn't selling, wasn't even selling secondary in that this. I was keeping everything because I'm aligned with him and we had goals.

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  The deal, it was a deal 7030 his way approximately. And every time the management team hits a goal, we go up in ownership or at the end when we hit the final goal, which was a very big goal, but we believed we could hit it. We would own 51% and he would own 49. Everybody would get more equity. It was, was a big plan. He was a big thinker. And though they had hiding in it, not just WeWork, it had WeLive, so it had residential hiding in it. It had construction as a new category hiding in it. It saw the future.

• 1:21:04Speaker 01

  And because I was staying in the deal, I was a conflicted party and therefore I couldn't take any part in accepting the deal. So the board did what's called a special committee. And that special committee's job was to negotiate with Masa and do whatever they need to do. And I think they made, again, mistakes, everything, the way you and I talk about mistakes. I think they were greedy. Because instead of saying, we'll take the win, we'll take a $20 billion company. The $10 billion, by the way, these investors, these investors that put 20 million, they were walking out with 2.4 billion. Clean cash. They thought the company was worth 100 billion. They believed also.

• 1:21:45Speaker 01

  So they go into this lengthy negotiation from March until September towards October. Deals have momentum. Again, if I'm sitting on a board and there's a founder like me, and the founder brings a $20 billion acquisition to our company that has a great vision, but currently he's losing money every month. I go to the founder and I say, Mr. Founder,

• 1:22:10Speaker 01

  is this what you want? And if the founder said yes, yes, maybe it's hurtful that he wants me to sell and doesn't agree with me. But if he says yes, and it has happened to me, and I've done it multiple times. If the founder, I just did it on a company three months ago. The founder says, yes, this is what I want. I say, thank you so much for working so hard for the past nine years. Yeah. And good luck. And I walk out with my, in this case, 100x return on my 20 million more, 150, because they pulled out money. But now they negotiated. And Masa told them very clearly, this is my, I didn't negotiate. I gave you a huge number in cash for a company that we all know needs a lot, still work to do. And they negotiate from March till September. Then the Japanese market starts changing.

• 1:22:56Speaker 01

  Then when they see there's a problem, they stop negotiating. And they're still fighting till they go down and then, until in Christmas, they finally decide, okay, we're not negotiating. A little before, not negotiating anymore, they agree to everything and they pass it to Masa. Now here's the problem. Because this is all happening. Masa and I are already planning that the company is going to grow very big. I'm already signing a lot of deals. I'm already planning for this to happen, but I'm not in charge of it happening.

• 1:23:22Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:23Speaker 01

  And there was a guarantee, there was a protection that if it doesn't happen, Masa still needs to invest a certain amount. And I trust Masa because we've done this before and he invested. So we're, we're signing deals, we're running really, really quickly. This is not happening. And then suddenly our, our special committee decides, okay, now it's time to agree.

• 1:23:43Rick Rubin?

  I just want to say one thing. You're running quickly and this is what Masa wants.

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  Exactly what he wants.

• 1:23:49Rick Rubin?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:23:50Speaker 01

  To the T, the speed he wanted.

• 1:23:52Rick Rubin?

  You didn't go rogue in trying to build the company fast. This is what you signed up for with Masa and you were doing it.

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  I did the opposite of going rogue. People who know me will know that I make a partner that keeps his word. If you and I are partners and I'm going to change something or I want to change something, I will call you and I will ask for permission. And I'll always offer something. And if you say no, I will say, I understand. And then I would say, don't get offended that I tried. I wanted to go a different direction, but I respect our partnership. It's what I signed up for. It's what we took the money for. Also, our partners were all there with us. Now remember, the employees are killing it. They're running for it. They're running through walls.

• 1:24:29Rick Rubin?

  Had the Japanese market not changed, would the picture have been different?

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  Had, and again, we're doing a lot of ifs and maybes. Had the board, special committee, got on a plane the next day. Said, Masa, you already have two board seats in the company. You know everything. We don't need to, we don't need to disclose anything. Twenty billion, here's a term sheet, here's our bank account, please sign.

• 1:24:53Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:54Speaker 01

  It would have happened the next day. They would have all been out. The cash would have been there. And when Corona hits, we wouldn't have had the whole 10 billion because we would have been burning, but we would have had enough. And again, we wouldn't be where we are today, which I'm very happy about. But I think the interesting thing to connect it to where you and I are sitting right now. It's December 2018. I am sleeping in a house three minutes away from here.

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  I get a phone call from Masa. Adam, I am so sorry. The Japanese market has changed. Our stock is down thirty percent. My CFO told me that if I go through with this twenty billion dollar acquisition, our stock will crash. My first responsibility is to my shareholders. I know I promised. I know you've been growing. I can't go through.

• 1:25:46Speaker 01

  I remember Rebecca is in the kitchen, playing with the kids, the house that we were living here and has like a kitchen with couches in it. So the kids are next to the kitchen. Everyone's hanging out, they're eating, they're drinking, everyone's smiling. They're really having fun. I decide I'm not gonna say anything today.

• 1:26:05Speaker 01

  I just went and hung out.

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  And took many, many deep breaths.

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  That night when everybody was sleeping, I told Rebecca what happened. She had a nice wish with Masa also. Said, let's go see him.

• 1:26:20Speaker 01

  Where is Masa at the same time? Can you guess where he would be? Because the universe, remember who is writing the story? If you're directing the story, where would Masa be?

• 1:26:28Rick Rubin?

  Um, not far.

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  Exactly, has to be not far because the movie set can't go too much.

• 1:26:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:26:33Speaker 01

  He's fifteen minutes away.

• 1:26:35Rick Rubin?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:26:36Speaker 01

  We go and said.

• 1:26:37Rick Rubin?

  And you didn't know that before.

• 1:26:38Speaker 01

  Didn't have a clue. Didn't have a clue. That's how, that's when you're in flow. Bad things or perceived bad things can happen when you're in flow also.

• 1:26:46Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:47Speaker 01

  If they're still in flow, it's just another clue to tell you they're not bad. They might be seen bad. We go fifteen minutes away. We walk in. We discuss. Again, in hindsight, legal, you promised, I grew because of it. There's all these things I could have done, but no. This is my partner. I understand what he just said.

• 1:27:07Rick Rubin?

  He wasn't happy to make the call to you.

• 1:27:09Speaker 01

  No, not at all. You could see it, no.

• 1:27:12Rick Rubin?

  No.

• 1:27:12Speaker 01

  It was not easy for him. He didn't want to make the call.

• 1:27:14Rick Rubin?

  Of course.

• 1:27:14Speaker 01

  It was esteemed. It was esteemed this, but.

• 1:27:17Rick Rubin?

  And it was just the reality of the situation changed? And he was at the mercy of the reality of the situation?

• 1:27:22Speaker 01

  He did the right thing.

• 1:27:24Rick Rubin?

  He didn't really have a choice.

• 1:27:26Speaker 01

  This was not, this is not Masa-san money.

• 1:27:28Rick Rubin?

  No.

• 1:27:28Speaker 01

  This was SoftBank money.

• 1:27:29Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 1:27:30Speaker 01

  And Vision Fund money, but SoftBank. This, so this, the other thing we didn't say, this is not even Vision Fund. This is a SoftBank acquisition. Small Vision Fund, big SoftBank. So it's SoftBank money. He did the right thing. So then we talked, we said, well, what are we gonna do? We've been spending, we agreed on an amount that will still go. Yeah. So it was still very supportive.

• 1:27:49Speaker 01

  At this very large valuation, that's where that forty billion dollar valuation comes from. And I walk out. And now it's January of twenty nineteen. We have this big offsite in L A. Rented Universal Studios. Again, a moment of reflection. I could have gone on that stage, told everybody what happened, told the stories what I really, really would not like to be in any similar situations ever again. But if I were, I would go up on that stage, tell everybody exactly what happened, say, this is what we have in the bank, because this is all we get. And we're turning this company profitable now. Yes, which was doable.

• 1:28:33Speaker 01

  Hundred percent doable, hundred percent doable. But I get on that stage, I say a light version of it, not exactly, but I say, we're gonna get serious to the. I had one close person on that board that was really close to me. His name is Stephen Langman. He's amazing, he's still a close friend. He lost a lot from being a part of this and never did he say a word, except call me and laugh about it and be a great friend. He's the definition of it. How do we define a great friend when things are actually challenging? Yeah. Are the day for you? He comes and sees me, I was in somewhere around here, he comes, sits with me, we talk about the fact that we're gonna make the company profitable.

• 1:29:12Speaker 01

  We make the commitments, we're clear, we're gonna do what needs to be done, we know exactly what needs to be done again, because we're the leaders, we know where everything is buried, we know exactly what to do, to do it. And then my CFO goes to the left IPO. This is like a month later, we're warming up to use it to do. And it's on fire and it's all about revenue. It has nothing to do with profitability. He goes, Adam, based on their value, we're worth, it was on their revenue, we have more and they're getting multiple of revenue. And then the fire starts, now the IPO story. And the fire starts and basically he says, and not only him, bankers, and those bankers are not any bankers, these are the biggest bankers on the planet, come to me. And show me books, which obviously we still kept,

• 1:29:56Speaker 01

  that show the valuations that we're gonna go public in. And they all make sure to go above forty billion, because that's the last valuation. Because they're making a sale, again, all stuff that today I understand, but back then I had no clue. Yeah. And basically, if you keep obtaining growth of this magnitude, the markets will understand that you can always pull the lever and turn profitable, grow faster, grow more, we'll take the company public for this gigantic number. And home run. And what happened? Life happens. Never plan on everything being perfect, just like if this works and this works. A second ago, and again, just look how many times the universe tried to come in and tell me, how many messages?

• 1:30:40Speaker 01

  Turn it profitable the first time, the second time, the third time. What actually happens is we start running for this IPO. We keep growing, we don't slow down at all, so we keep earning, because we're told it's gonna be a multiple of revenue. There's Lyft and there's Uber. And as we're preparing for this IPO, Uber goes public and immediately crashes. Value goes down, because the public markets don't want just revenue. They actually want profitability. And there's this split that happens in the public markets a lot, where it goes in one second from we all want revenue, multiples of revenue, to we want profitability. You're living in a world today where you're gonna see, you're gonna see some very valuable AI companies go with huge revenue, a lot of losses, and they're gonna get some mega valuations.

• 1:31:25Speaker 01

  And I hope for all of them that they can turn the switch whenever they need and do whatever it is they need. I'm sure they know what they're doing. But the market flips in a second. It's not about revenue, it's about profitability. For us, we needed nine months to turn this ship, it's sailed really far for us to suddenly move this. And now suddenly we have to take the company public. If we don't take the company public, they won't have enough money, or so we're told. And at this point, the bank that, and again, without getting into it, because it's so many details and... But the two banks that are fighting on us end up choosing one of the banks. And that bank is... Leading us into the IPO and we're doing the meetings and they're not going well.

• 1:32:11Speaker 01

  And

• 1:32:14Speaker 01

  the articles start coming out because people are in the meetings and that the valuation is not there and it's not going to be forty, it's going to be thirty. There's this thing in growth companies, you can't catch a falling knife. Once it starts dropping, you don't know where the bottom is. And Masa calls me. And says, Adam, I don't want you to take the company public. It's not good. Something looking good, things are not working well. Let's rethink, let's regroup.

• 1:32:39Speaker 01

  But the leaders around me, and this is a big, big choice. And again, I'm saying this again, so it's heard again. I take full accountability, but the leaders that I put around me. And when did I start putting those leaders, really? After that, twenty sixteen, the leaders, because I was at the beginning attracting people that were mission and purpose oriented like me. But when you stop being mission and purpose oriented, then the people you attract will stop being mission and purpose oriented. Yeah. They all wanted that IPO, everybody was doing math. And they're pushing IPO, IPO and the bank and everything, everything. You can't talk to Masa, you can't talk to Masa. If you talk to Masa, it will all be ruined. Even as I tell you the story, I think about. Again, this is why

• 1:33:20Speaker 01

  life and experience is so important. Today, I was advising me, I said, close everybody out. Who gave you the most money? Masa, has he trusted you? Yes. Has he believed in you? Yes. Go talk to Masa. Don't worry about what they tell you. Go to Masa. Of course. And say, Masa-san, you trusted me so much. I am grateful and appreciative. I'm sorry we got into this. The truth is, we were gonna buy the company. And then you changed in the last second, so you put me in a little bit of an uncomfortable situation. They then told me I can go public, so I take accountability, but we did it as partners. I never had that conversation. We did it as partners, Masa. What should we do as partners now to solve it? That one conversation didn't happen. Yeah. And it didn't happen. And today I know a lot more about it for two reasons. One,

• 1:34:05Speaker 01

  because I needed to be where I am today and I wouldn't get there. But a more technical reason, because there are a lot of people who had different agendas. And when the numbers are of that mag, we were not dealing with billions, we were dealing with tens of billions. And going to potentially hundreds. When the numbers are of that magnitude.

• 1:34:25Speaker 01

  If you didn't surround yourself with people that are actually there for the right reasons,

• 1:34:32Speaker 01

  your chances of getting the right advice are very small. Remember also that at that time, I'm very good at this. Yes, I have a spiritual practice and yes, I'm very good at this. Going into a retreat for a week and

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  stopping everything and breathing and meditating and really asking myself, who do I have that I can trust? And going and talking to them would have been the wise thought. And then maybe similar things would have happened, but we never even gave it a shot.

• 1:35:03Rick Rubin?

  Even though Masa made the call to you that you didn't like, the first call of like, things are changing. I'm guessing you still trusted Masa.

• 1:35:14Speaker 01

  So again, this is, I was not able to quiet down the noise that came around me because the people were telling me, don't do that.

• 1:35:27Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:28Speaker 01

  Were the most powerful people in the business world. We're talking about the heads of the banks. We're talking about the biggest venture capitalists on the planet. We're talking about, we're talking about a lot of the board members. We're talking about people that have built this repertoire for a very long time.

• 1:35:44Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, and they have more experience than you. They've been through this before. This is your first time, anybody's first time at this scale.

• 1:35:53Speaker 01

  There were a few voices out there. I missed two, two voices called me that I missed. Mark Benioff calls me, he wasn't such, we were close friends, but not the closest.

• 1:36:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:02Speaker 01

  Said, Adam, I don't need to know a lot to know what's happening. I can read the press. You don't know this sales force was gonna go public. I pulled back, I reshuffled, I did it again. You must pull back and fire your CFO and general counsel. And I don't need to know who they are, I just know they're not advising you right right now. Missed that one. There was another super powerful person, comfortable saying Ruth Barat, superstar. Same story, sends me someone from a different bank to advise me, said Ruth sent me. But I missed the science, there was so much noise. And I'm not talking to Massa, and the noise is all around me. And he's not talking to me, and now the bank that was supposed to go as public is telling me we're having real issues.

• 1:36:47Speaker 01

  And this is moving really fast, and the articles are coming and this, and again, everyone keeps telling me how SoftBank is doing this to me and SoftBank is doing that to me. They actually painted SoftBank as the enemy, but they weren't. He wasn't and they weren't. And then I have this very monumental meeting on a Sunday, with the head of the bank that's taking us public, where he sits me down and basically says, Adam, you're gonna have to step down. And if you do it when you do, we'll take care of the business. We'll fund the business and we'll do the different things. And I remember talking to him and saying, but I don't think someone else is going to understand how to, I understand what needs to be done. He says, yes, a lot of founders think that, and then things survive without them.

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  They don't really, I don't know a lot of examples for venture-backed businesses that then become huge success without.

• 1:37:37Rick Rubin?

  But that's the arrogance of the people with the money. They think because they have the money, they know what the right thing to do is, and it's often not the case.

• 1:37:45Speaker 01

  I think so. I also think he truly believed in what he was saying. I actually think his team told him that it's possible, and maybe they didn't understand what the magic of WeWork really was.

• 1:37:54Rick Rubin?

  That's what I'm saying. I don't think he did.

• 1:37:55Speaker 01

  So I'm not so, again, I don't know how much he knew himself.

• 1:37:58Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:59Speaker 01

  Because he has a big team and he's doing a lot of things, this is one other meeting. Again, no blaming at all.

• 1:38:03Rick Rubin?

  No.

• 1:38:04Speaker 01

  And I did, I did mistakes before, there's many, many things that I did. But that's the idea that was given. And I come back with my partner, and now I have the beginning of a family office that was with me, three individuals. And I'm like, okay, we're gonna need to, it looks like we're gonna need to step down. And the guy who's running my family office. He says to me, his name is Elon. He says to me, I don't like it. There's a clause and one missing piece of the story that you don't have is at the same time, I have debt of over 400 million that I borrowed against equity from that same bank that was telling me to step down.

• 1:38:45Speaker 01

  And he says to me, I don't like you have a clause that says that if you step down, then you're in breach of your contract because you're not, it's a control clause. And then they can call back the money. I said, no, he wouldn't. He's the one who told me he'll protect me. He said, I don't like it. So we go and we bring it up. I have a board member that says, of course, I'm going to talk to them. And I talked to them and there's no problem and it won't happen and everything is good. I get comfortable, even though my team is not as comfortable because again, I'm speaking to the people running the place and I trust, I do actually, I trust. And I stepped down on the board meeting, on the board call. And nine minutes later, I receive an email from the same bank.

• 1:39:28Speaker 01

  There were two other banks part of it, but that bank was the biggest part. That I'm in breach of contract and that they're calling all my shares.

• 1:39:37Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:39:38Speaker 01

  And I have 15 days to pay back 435 million dollars, which of course I didn't have and there's no chance I could have done.

• 1:39:49Rick Rubin?

  That's unbelievable.

• 1:39:51Speaker 01

  And just so we're clear about the nine minutes, a bank cannot create a document in nine minutes or in a day. It has to go through a lot of legal process, at least a weekend, if not a week, on a very, very fast example. So it was perfectly executed.

• 1:40:08Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:40:09Speaker 01

  I walked right into it.

• 1:40:13Rick Rubin?

  Terrible story.

• 1:40:13Speaker 01

  And then, no, it's not a terrible story.

• 1:40:15Rick Rubin?

  It is, it is. At this point in the story, it's a terrible story.

• 1:40:18Speaker 01

  That's interesting. I've never told it, by the way.

• 1:40:20Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it's a shocking story.

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  I think these stories occurred, but we never hear these stories. I think there are versions of this story.

• 1:40:28Rick Rubin?

  I think they happen more often than we know.

• 1:40:29Speaker 01

  They happen more often than we know.

• 1:40:30Rick Rubin?

  And every time, it's a tragedy.

• 1:40:34Speaker 01

  Well, let me tell you, it's interesting, and maybe this is me.

• 1:40:38Speaker 01

  So now I'm really getting down. Now I feel down.

• 1:40:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:41Speaker 01

  Now my ten years of spiritual practice are in the garbage. I am properly depressed. Everybody told me, and at the same time, articles are coming out at a speed of one every three to five minutes. This is now 2019, this is Trump's first term, there's a lot of noise in the media. I have a friend who called it the first time social media was used. It was like social media before social media was fully there, and the speed that the articles were coming out. And I said, but no one knows the story. And another story, and another story, and another story, and I'm feeling really low. And my spiritual teacher calls me. And this is like two days into this, and he goes, "Adam, just call to see how you're doing."

• 1:41:26Speaker 01

  And I said to him, "This is not a good time, I'm not doing great. The things are really tough right now, and I'm not sure what's gonna happen." And he says to me, "I thought you might say that. I just called to remind you the one thing we learned." I said to him, "We've been studying for eight years." Same as Aetan. He said, "Aetan, we studied for eight years. We did not study one thing. I studied three times a week. I think we studied more than one thing." I was wrong. We actually only studied two things, but they're similar. Oh, we only studied two things. One, treat other people the way you want to be treated. The rest is commentary. Two, and this is the real one. "The darkest moment of the night is a second before dawn." I want you to know something, he says. "I've seen you for the past eight years with belief and connecting people

• 1:42:11Speaker 01

  and speaking about spirituality and the business. Of course you believe in the universe. When you were flying like this, no one's ever seen something like that happen before." That's not belief, that's you'd be an idiot if you don't believe and that happens. Belief is measured when everything goes wrong. And you can look up to the heavens and say, "I don't know how, I don't know why, but this will end up working for the best."

• 1:42:38Speaker 01

  And he says, "If you can," I know it's hard, and most people can't, "if you can actually change your perception right now, because belief is a choice, and choose to believe that this will work out, I don't know how, the new version of yourself that will come out of this will be so much more powerful, so much stronger, so much smarter, that you will actually be able to reveal the thing that you were put on this planet to do." Just like that first lesson. "I hear it. I breathe it. I almost feel it, almost there. I'm not there yet, and I hang up the phone, go to sleep. I wake up at 5:00 AM, sweating, crying. I don't cry.

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  I cried as a child, I don't cry as an adult. Everything's fine, nothing is as bad as what I had as a kid, so nothing is bad." Rebecca wakes up, 5:00 AM, looks at me, she's never seen me cry, and together we're at this point, 12 years, 13 years. "Because you cry?" I said, "Yes." She goes, "Why?" I said, "Because it's all gone." She said, "What?" I said, "Everything. It's all gone, they're gonna take it all away. It's gone. I did, I made this mistake, I meant, that's all gone." She goes, "Everything?" I go, "Everything." She goes, "Well, remember we spoke about you once putting 100 million on my name, so in case one thing happens, we'll have something like bankruptcy remote?" I said, "Yeah, I never did that." She goes, "Well, remember, we spoke about the fact that we never signed a personal guarantee,

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  so it's not all gone, we didn't sign a personal guarantee." I said, "No, we're signed on a personal guarantee." "This piece for you, if you really wanna understand, because we're gonna go public, that debt I had, that after an IPO, you're supposed to be in a lockup period, so they can't use that as collateral. So I wrote in the documents that for the six months after the IPO, it's personal guarantee. But my lawyers forgot to write, but if there's not an IPO, no one thought there wouldn't be, then that guarantee goes away." So I say to her, "No, we're personally guaranteed." "We're in relationship." I think we all get to a moment where the two sides get actually tested. Something real happens. Yeah. Many ways Rebecca could have answered this. Many ways other partners could have reacted.

• 1:44:50Speaker 01

  She took a deep breath. She looked at me and goes... You know, my mom's house in upstate New York, she owned it for thirty years, she doesn't have a mortgage. We could move there. We had five kids at the time, we'll take our five kids. We're gonna homeschool for a little, we don't need to send them for school. You're gonna take a second to find yourself again. If you wanna go back into business, amazing. If you don't, we'll move to Costa Rica. We'll do a little real estate, kids will be homeschooled, we'll serve every day. It'll work out either way.

• 1:45:21Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 1:45:22Speaker 01

  No matter what, you got me and the kids. What are you crying about?

• 1:45:28Speaker 01

  At this moment, I understood something. When we're children, and we have a hard moment, when we really have a hard moment with our parents, like it's difficult that you're like, suppose you trust them and they're not there for you. That's why it's so sad when children go through horrible things. There's no one there.

• 1:45:44Speaker 01

  But as adults, if we do have a partner, if we have a few close friends, they say you have one close friend, you have a whole world. If we have a few close friends, if we have a family. Suddenly, I felt like I'm not a child anymore, and there's something I can lean on. It's not the end of the world. But she looks at my face and she sees that I'm not. I'm almost there, she knows me, but she didn't get me over the hump. I'm still a little depressed, and it's not like me, because I don't get depressed. And she goes, and by the way, something I've meant to tell you. When we met, you were broke. I find you much sexier broke than I do with money.

• 1:46:23Speaker 01

  Then I smiled. Now I was happy.

• 1:46:28Speaker 01

  I walked downstairs, remember I had fifteen days to pay back four hundred and thirty million that doesn't exist. I walked downstairs. I have three employees. A week ago, I had thirteen thousand. I went down from thirteen thousand to three, because now it's all gone. The three family office who came just joined me a few months ago to manage all this money that now we don't have.

• 1:46:51Speaker 01

  And I'm smiling at 6:00 a.m. We started at 6:00 a.m. because we had to deal with this horrible situation. And I'm smiling. They're like, "Why are you smiling?" I said, "First of all, I'm smiling because it's all gonna work out." They thought I lost my mind. They're very rational investors. They're world-class. They're all three of them are with me still. Elon, DJ, and Max, they're unbelievable. They think I lost my mind because they're real investors and they think the situation is done. They think we're going bankrupt, it's finished. So I said, "We're gonna work out. It's all gonna work out because I believe." And I don't know how, and I don't know why. This was the darkest moment. Dawn is coming. It's gonna take a deep breath, it's gonna show itself. And my wife thinks I'm sexy.

• 1:47:40Speaker 01

  Amazing. Do you know who saves the day? If you wrote the movie, who saves the day? But how? Who is his messenger? Do you know that by talking to you now, I'm actually understanding myself, what happened? Do you know how many times you told me that I should talk about this and I haven't? And you're like, "Adam, we should talk about it." And I was not expecting us to talk about this. Today, I was expecting to talk about a lot of other things. But by saying it, I myself am understanding something. There's some actions I'm gonna need to do after I've done this. Masa. Masa saves the day. How? He pays back the debt. Wow. He calls through Marcelo with his team. They call, Marcelo calls me for a meeting. So here's, okay. So now we're gonna connect and this is all going to connect.

• 1:48:24Speaker 01

  It's back to belief. I celebrate the holidays. I'm celebrating Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. It's a day of reflection. We don't eat, we don't drink, we pray. Or we pray to go to the next version of ourselves. We pray to be forgiven for all of our sins. We pray to learn from our past mistakes. And it's Rosh Hashanah and then Yom Kippur. And in Rosh Hashanah, a close friend of mine comes with me and everybody around me is down, by the way. And people are really affected by what happened. And I'm very affected because I feel extremely bad for the employees and for everybody that was at the churning with me. The investors, all the investors, except for us, have all made money already multiple times.

• 1:49:09Speaker 01

  I have this sense of belief. I don't know how it's going to work out. And so we do this Rosh Hashanah and this, and then between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. And then Yom Kippur happens, and we're praying. And there are many different, without getting into, in Judaism, there's different sectors and they don't all get along. And I practice with many different sectors. I practice with this sector and that sector, so three different sectors. Who do not get along with each other, which is a shame, but it's the truth. All three of them send representatives to pray with me, that Yom Kippur. One of the biggest rabbis sends his sons. They've never not prayed with him in Yom Kippur. The other one, the head of the organization, and his number one guy comes, Aitan, the guy that spoke, and his.

• 1:49:52Speaker 01

  Michael Berg. All these people come together around me, and we are praying like there is no tomorrow. We're praying for a miracle. And suddenly, before it ends, Max, one of those three comes. I see on his face, he has something really important to tell me. I say, "Max, it's all business. Don't talk to me. 24 hours, no talking, there's no business." And he's sitting there, he can't help himself. And he keeps trying to want to tell me something. I said, "Max, please. Unless it's life and death, I need you to let the sun go down. Participate, enjoy. Join us. We're not talking business." And it ends. And he says to me, "You won't believe this. Marcelo is inviting you for a meeting. He wants to work the situation out."

• 1:50:37Speaker 01

  I go in with Marcelo. He basically says, "Adam, we trusted you. We've invested for a minute's amount. We want to save the company the way we see fit. We would like you to give us the keys. In return for that, we will pay your debt in full, so no one has a gun to your hand. Because we don't like how they're treating the situation." Again, at this point, they were from the outside, because everybody else was able to keep them locked out, is what was really happening. If I would have gone before, if we were together, they wouldn't have been able to keep them locked out, but they kept them locked out.

• 1:51:12Speaker 01

  We'll buy your controlling shares for approximately a hundred million dollars. Supposed to be even more. We will pay back your debt a hundred percent and in full and on time. And we're going to invest an amount in the company so the company can go to its next level.

• 1:51:33Speaker 01

  And we will buy from you and from all the other shareholders at the discounted valuation, the approximate valuation of ten billion, because the last valuation was forty. Thirty percent. It will be a billion to you and two billion, because I own thirty percent of the float of everything minus their piece. And then there was the Miguel part and two billion to everybody else, all your investors, all the employees, everybody. And we said yes. And I stepped down. And they put Marcelo, the beginning was running it himself. My interactions with Marcelo were always, whatever he promised, always happened. And then he chose the CEO that he chose. He asked me to not be as close. Again, this is back to the old playbook. This is the playbook of keep the founder away and like this.

• 1:52:16Speaker 01

  And they come in and the thing on the first day they do is they fire all the people closest to me. The problem is, they were the ones who knew everything. The only ones who knew. Not only ones who knew. They lived it and breathed it, but it's an old playbook. You take out the king, then you kill all of his loyalists. They called me, the two biggest loyalists called me, said, Adam, should we stay because the business will go down? I said, of course you should stay. They got fired first. They put a new CEO.

• 1:52:46Speaker 01

  And we negotiated the three. And remember, when I go, the reason I stepped down also and the reason I accepted is we negotiated three billion for the whole company, not just three billion for everybody to take out money. Three billion for the whole company. So the company is funded. They have a new CEO. And the payment is scheduled, the three billion to the company, money in the company goes in. The three billion for, because it's their company now and they own most of it. The three billion that's for everybody else is scheduled to come in April first, two thousand and twenty.

• 1:53:15Speaker 01

  Corona hits March. And the last day of March, we get a letter from SoftBank saying, "Force majeure," even though it wasn't in the contract, "we're not paying all the money that I thought was coming was gonna go." By the way, by this point, I'm a practiced samurai. Deep breath. And Rebecca, a month before, said, "It's never coming." And she was like, "It's never coming." It was like, "Too good to be true. We're gonna have a little more. We're not out yet." I took a deep breath, then come in,

• 1:53:51Speaker 01

  and I got the last gift that Master gave me, the gift of litigation. Litigated. We learned a lot about that.

• 1:53:59Rick Rubin?

  What is it like having strangers write things about you you know are not true? And people reading it or watching a TV series about it, what's that like?

• 1:54:11Speaker 01

  You know, connecting to what you and I just spoke about, there are a lot of things I knew I was giving away when I stepped down. The one thing I completely missed was that I was giving away my narrative. I had a platform and I had a microphone. And then in one day, I stepped down, which to the eye, that's not experience. Probably means he must have been wrong. Everything he did was wrong. Otherwise, he wouldn't have given them back the keys. The story that you just heard, the build-up, they didn't, no one knew any of it. That's something I now understand. So I handed over the control over my narrative.

• 1:54:53Rick Rubin?

  You were never accused of doing anything illegal? You were never brought up on any charges? It was all just innuendo, storytelling?

• 1:55:04Speaker 01

  It was me being a novice to the game of life when it comes to communication and media. I remember the first time I met you, you did not need to hear the story to know the story. And another person, when we met both of you at the same time, when we were in Malibu, Mark Anderson. Mark Anderson calls me a few weeks after I stepped down, knowing that because he heard so much noise from the media, that he knew what the story wasn't. He didn't know what the story was. And in hindsight, now that I know him and Ben so much better, we've spoken about it a little. For them, getting such media coverage and hearing so many stories means pick up the phone and call. There's something very interesting. There's an opportunity here.

• 1:55:46Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, something's going on that's not being said. Because this story that's being shouted, it's too much.

• 1:55:54Speaker 01

  Not only is it too much, in their eyes, we know what WeWork built. He calls, first phone call. Adam, you might not know who I am. I'm Mark and Drew said I'm investor. Mark, know exactly who you are. A16Z is already very big at this point. This is 2019, right after, a little after. This is 2020. And he goes, and what do you think? And I start telling you a little bit what I think. And I'm speaking a little bit like the story that's being told about me. And he goes, oh, you're still at that stage. He said, what stage is that, Mark? The one where you believe what other people are saying about you and you forgot what actually happened. This is like the first time I meet with a guy like I love this guy. This is amazing. I said, well, Mark, yes, you might be right.

• 1:56:36Speaker 01

  He goes, would you like me to tell you what we think about you here at A16Z? Said, please. He said, you're the only company in our entire portfolio, at the time about 400, today over 1,000. You're the only company in our portfolio who every single startup that we have either is using today or used in the past. We have no other company that we could say that about. What you've built was not built in run room with a bunch of engineers. Actually, your tech was your weakest link. We could talk about that one day. What you built is you had to be in 50 countries. You were in 70 languages. You were doing construction. You built a brand. You created a movement. The word WeWork, he said, is a verb almost. It means.

• 1:57:20Speaker 01

  I mean, the WeWork said, do you know how many pitches we get on the WeWork of this and the WeWork of that? You created a category. That's what we think. I said, thank you so much. And I hung up the phone. Missing the fact that he actually wanted to do some business or get to know me better. Because I was at that stage, but back to your question. I handed over the mic.

• 1:57:43Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:43Speaker 01

  And I didn't understand that by doing so. The story is gonna run away from me. But because we never actually did anything of the things that you just said. All it was was a story. Makes a good book. I hear it makes a good television show. But so I haven't watched the television show. I watched the first episode because my friend Stephen Langman really wanted me to. But I know from my friends who've watched it and people who watch it and the stories and this. If they have thirty percent of the story right, that would be a big number.

• 1:58:15Rick Rubin?

  What's interesting about the TV series about you. I'll call it a smear piece is everyone I know who's seen it. Thought that both you and Rebecca were the heroes of the story.

• 1:58:29Speaker 01

  I think this is connected to what we said before. I think truth and authenticity are the biggest tools that we can have. So even though I gave away the mic and let everyone else run with it. Somehow, the truth, even in something that was supposed to be a smear piece, floated to the top and I'll tell you a little bit how I think. So Jared Leto, so we talked about Andrew Finkelstein. He's a character in our story I see, which is excellent. He made sure, by the way, to write himself out of every show. Because he's in Hollywood, he's very powerful. But not this one, he doesn't get to write himself out of this one. Andrew Finkelstein keeps getting emails from Jared Leto's agent.

• 1:59:14Speaker 01

  Saying Jared's gonna play Adam, he's a method actor, he must meet Anna. And I'm ignoring, ignoring, ignoring, ignoring. And eventually Andrew calls me and he says, look Adam, they're driving crazy. Can't we take one meeting with the guy? He'll come in, come out, he's a movie star, he's an Oscar winner, be fun. So I have a defamation law at the time and when the show is gonna come out, we're like, how's it legal? How can Apple tell a story about us using our name that we haven't approved, that we haven't read, that we didn't write? There's this whole thing, if you're a public figure, you could do this, you could do that. I think fifteen years ago, it wouldn't be today, obviously, there's social media today. We're in a different place. But I remember talking to the lawyer, he said, "Look, Adam, if it's so horrible,

• 1:59:57Speaker 01

  because Jared Leto is also a producer and this, the credit, at least we'll tell him some of the true story, and maybe it will play favorable for us." I also remember the whole time reaching out to Apple and sort of being, I sent an email directly to Tim Cook, actually, saying, "If Apple is all about personal privacy and safety and security, how can on the one hand you be that when it represents your iPhone? But when it comes to you making content, you can use a person's name and a person's family and a person in a story that I know you're not gonna have the right story, because you guys never spoke to me, so factually wouldn't be correct." We never got a response from Tim. We did get a response from his lawyers, that read the following. You're gonna like this one. "We reviewed the series again. Your claims will go to court.

• 2:00:42Speaker 01

  You will litigate for three years, and you will lose. We're moving forward. You're a public figure, and you will lose. Not you're wrong, or you're this, or you're that."

• 2:00:52Speaker 01

  So that was that. So then, we say, okay, to Jared Leto, we say, "Fine." And we meet him in Miami. He walks into the house. I'm sure you've met him before. He's a little shorter than me. Looks up, puts his hands on my face like this. And in a, his version of my accent, I think, very good accent, and a very good, but very good demeanor, I think he had it. In a demeanor, in his version of Adam Neumann, starts talking to me and saying how he's been looking at me for three months, and this, and this, and that. I'm not familiar with Hollywood, I've never met many actors, the whole thing for me is a little bit outrageous. And we just do this thing for the next hour and a half, and then Rebecca's there, and he's talking, then at one point he looks at Rebecca, he goes, "You know, there's this scene when you and I are stooping." He goes, "Jared, you and I are not stooping.

• 2:01:36Speaker 01

  It is a television show. It is not the truth." She's laughing, but it's, it's a surreal moment. You ask, "How does that feel?" I'm looking, and he said, "I'm gonna have these prosthetics," and I said, "How you gonna..." Then he sits at the table, the kids start walking in. And they say, "Who is this?" And I said, "This guy's gonna play me in a television show." And all the kids are like, "Wait, but he's shorter, but he doesn't look like you, but this." And every, every kid has his own very smart thing to say. This is in the midst of Corona, all of this is happening. And we finish our two hours together. And I walk Jared outside, he asks me if we can have a picture together. Yeah, I am the interesting thing for him, which I'm sure usually he's the one that people take pictures with.

• 2:02:17Speaker 01

  He looks at me and goes, "Listen, you're calling it a smear piece. This was supposed to be a takedown. I know, because I read the script. It's a shame we didn't meet before, because I would have gone and fought for the script. But don't worry. I now know who you are, and I'm gonna play you the right way." And I said, "Who is that, Jared?" He said, "That's a My Truth, I'm a method actor. But there's the real Jared. The real Jared loves music. I love being on stage. I love being a rock star. You're a rock star. I'm gonna play you like a rock star. I saw your family. I saw your kids. You're a good guy." What I was told was not accurate. I wish I knew it before. Said it twice. But don't worry about it. You're gonna come out like a rock star. Just do me a favor. Don't watch the show."

• 2:03:01Speaker 01

  I knew you kept your word. I said, "You got it." Beautiful. I said, "You got it." Beautiful.

• 2:03:06Speaker 01

  But let's, let's, let's really go into this for a second. How many times in life do we think the IPO is supposed to be my big moment? Yes. The moment I was gonna, it was gonna be amazing, ends up being a total utter catastrophe. We never even get to the IPO. The television show coming out was supposed to be this horrible moment. Even my team, by the way, got very stressed about that television show. It was supposed to be that horrible moment where it all goes down. Yeah. And yet it comes out, and the day after it comes out, the inbound starts. Entrepreneurs wanting investments, partners wanting to partner, employees, everything. It was It's fascinating. Land gates. I've never seen that happen before.

• 2:03:50Speaker 01

  There's a very famous story in the Bible about it. The Jews, led by Moses, are coming out of Egypt. All the local nations are very afraid they're gonna come. And there's this balak and bilam, a king and a sorcerer. He wants to curse the Jews. And the sorcerer says to the king, "Look, the Jews, they have God." It's hard to curse, I don't want to this. And it's a, the story is longer, but he says, I'll dream, I'll meditate about it. And in the dream, God tells him, don't curse the Jews. He wakes up in the morning and he says to the king, God spoke to me, don't curse the Jews. And even though he wasn't, he was working for the negative side, even people who work for the negative side have their own connection to the universe. It takes power to win both sides. And three times, and eventually the king forces him, pays him the fortune, forces him to this.

• 2:04:33Speaker 01

  They go on a mountain and he's starting to curse the Jews and the blessings come out. And he's cursing the Jews and the blessings come out. Eventually, at his last curse, he foresees Messiah and the entire coming and the salvation of the world. Crazy story. In the Bible is where we hear stories like this. I think

• 2:04:53Speaker 01

  the truth is the truth is the truth.

• 2:04:56Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:56Speaker 01

  I think if I were to have done something that was actually one of those things that you said before, it would have ended differently.

• 2:05:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:04Speaker 01

  I think I was saved by actually my relationship with Rebecca. She kept me straight, honest, loyal. We didn't keep our word every time, but we tried so hard to do the best we could. We kept our commitments. We did our version of what we thought was right to do.

• 2:05:22Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:22Speaker 01

  And even though a lot of our close friends used to say, I had a thousand friends. Then in one day, I went down to 10. Five of them were my family.

• 2:05:35Speaker 01

  And even that was a gift.

• 2:05:36Rick Rubin?

  The other thing that's interesting about the smears, Rebecca was always smeared.

• 2:05:41Speaker 01

  Oh, she got the worst of it.

• 2:05:42Rick Rubin?

  She got the worst of it. As if they were saying she was incompetent because she was a woman. That's what it was all about, which was like, is that the story in 2020? That because she's a woman, she's incompetent? That's what the smears were.

• 2:05:54Speaker 01

  You know how many times I think when things like this happen, the woman gets portrayed even worse? By the way, let's be clear. I was CEO and chairman.

• 2:06:03Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:04Speaker 01

  The 100%, it wasn't Rebecca.

• 2:06:07Rick Rubin?

  But they negated the fact of what she brought to you.

• 2:06:12Speaker 01

  Which you recognized. And what she brought to the brand, you know, if you just as a word, the brand that everybody knows, WeWork that everybody knows, WeWork, Adam and Miguel, was a hardworking, let's go build office space with this logo with the man with the hammer. We started breaking the Macintosh computer. You would have loved it as Miguel did it as our original hammer, breaking the original Macintosh computer, a little bit of a, I think of a old Steve Jobs, that old commercial with the woman throwing. When Rebecca walked into WeWork, in the first 90 days, she created, do what you love, create your life's work, build a world where people make a life and not just a living. She gave it so much intention and so much meaning that then I ran with it,

• 2:06:55Speaker 01

  like it was nobody's business, but she brought, which is what she always does, intention, meaning, and the other word, authenticity. For people to know Rebecca, she does not lie. If she does something wrong, she will tell you. All you need to do is ask her. Tell me what happens with the IPO. So let's do it, let's go for it. So April 1st, money doesn't come in, the whole world is under Corona. My kids, even my kids realized the money wasn't coming. They go daddy, it's April's fool's days. Of course the money was never gonna come in. Like, yeah, you guys are geniuses. We're in Israel at the time, because we always wanted to try to live there. And this was our opportunity.

• 2:07:38Speaker 01

  And suddenly, a second ago, in the end of 2019, when we stepped down and the media and all the craziness felt like we were secluded and the whole world was open and we were like locked up. Suddenly, everybody was sort of where we were. Yeah. But we had six months heads up. We were already in the bunker when that hit. Remember from the story, we did have the original amount of money that was given to us. We never got the billion, but we got that original amount that they bought from us to pay. We had a team and we just got to work. And everybody else was busy understanding what's happening. I started, we started learning how to trade stock and, and how to invest in different ways and small businesses and big businesses and early stage and late stage. And even though we weren't using a big pool of capital, we were hungry and we were ready and willing and with a very open mind.

• 2:08:20Speaker 01

  The world just changed, but part of how I approached life, like a child, okay, today's a new day, now there's Corona, what does that mean? What's gonna go up now, what's gonna go now? So as all of that is occurring, this is the beginning, the seeds were starting to grow. What's gonna set residential? Presidential is gonna be interesting because even if people stop going to the office, the homes were the hardest. So part that aside, the litigation starts because we want to to get paid the 3 billion that was promised not just to us, we're a third of it, but the other 2 billion is all the investors, all the employees, everybody. And it was promised, it was signed, it's contractual. So we start getting into litigation. And as we get into litigation, we move now from Israel back to the Hamptons. We live in East Hampton.

• 2:09:05Speaker 01

  Andrew Finkelstein is living right next to us. Another interesting thing about him, so many close friends that I had disappeared when this happened. I do think that's probably the saddest thing of the whole thing. And some of them don't think they disappeared, and I forgive, so I'm like, I'm over it. But you really get measured when your friends are in their toughest moment. And you don't get measured. By the way, it's nice to send a text and to pick up a phone call. But Andrew calls me and goes, "Hey, Adam, you know, I'm in Hollywood agent, Corona, I can do my work from anywhere. Do you want to come and live next door? I'll rent a house next to you. If you're going through a tough time, we'll do our own coworking space. We'll make a WeWork out of one of the houses." Beautiful. "We'll do a beach house coworking, our own WeWork, we'll have fun,

• 2:09:50Speaker 01

  we'll work from the jacuzzi." Like, "Sounds amazing, Andrew." And he moves in, so he's there with us, and he's in the house next door, and we're there. And we are starting this litigation, and it's not working. It's not working because the contract wasn't perfect, and we didn't did it, and we weren't there. And SoftBank is very powerful, and they don't want to pay, and they did put the money in the business, and they control the business now. So we can't get any information. And I am a person, until this point, that has always negotiated with power and leverage. I'm very good at momentum. And when I have the leverage and I have the power, I'm very good at negotiating. But now I have no leverage, no power.

• 2:10:34Speaker 01

  I'm completely on the outside. Nothing I can do. We're litigating. The litigation doesn't look like it's headed in the right direction because of a variety of reasons, but also because WeWork's not really partnering with us because we're the founder that was from the outside with the story. And at this point, if you're in WeWork, you believe 100% or 90% to all the press that you read, because that's... And I do think the world's different today. I hope people today don't believe everything they read, but this is still 2020. People are just wising up. And I remember going and I was doing these meditation sessions of an hour each. And I'm doing one of those. And as I'm like very deep while listening to music,

• 2:11:17Speaker 01

  I suddenly have this, again, moment of vision. Which basically what I see is that if a different person, if I found someone who could get excited about WeWork and would want to take WeWork public, tax for the time, so it was back, then must sign SoftBank and all people fighting, paying the 3 billion, would want the company public because they own the majority of it, would settle the litigation because no worth fighting it, and would let the company go public. And if all those things went out perfectly, then everything would be resolved. I come out of the meditation, I call my dad, who I'm very close to. He's actually right outside here, hanging out right now, waiting for me. He was surfing with me this morning.

• 2:12:00Speaker 01

  And I say, "Dad, I have an idea. I'll find a guy, he'll say he wants to invest, we'll take the company public, SoftBank will settle, everybody will get paid, SoftBank will make back their money, everybody will be happy. It's all gonna work out." He goes, "Dad, that's too many things that are gonna work out." And my dad and I argue, he does not believe in God and I believe in God. I said, "Dad, if this happens, will you believe in God? Looking for an opportunity." He goes, "No, I believe that I have a very talented son." I say, "Okay," he's the last cast. I said, "Okay." And I call UBS and say, "Give me two names of people that might find WeWork exciting." They give me two names, meeting number one, meeting number two. Second meeting, the guy goes Gaga.

• 2:12:43Speaker 01

  He loves it. His name's Vivek. Ends up taking it public. He knew Steve Jobs, when Steve Jobs was this, he was part of the coming back. He knew this story, knew that, so he had all these stories in his head that fit this perfectly. But I was very clear, I said, "Here's what I would do." I gave a clear plan of how to make WeWork profitable. Again, I still know the levers to pull.

• 2:13:01Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:13:01Speaker 01

  I told him exactly what to do. So now you understand, now you understand all the pieces on the board. We have no power, we brought the guy to basically do this back, but we're litigating at the same time. They're in control and they don't want to settle because they don't want to pay anything, they don't want to pay a billion, they don't want to pay... We're going back and forth, back and forth. And we try to give them this IPO, but they don't know that they want to go public. And they don't know they will do well publicly because they're not sure that anybody, the spark in WeWork is gone. So they're not sure that's going to solve their problems. And the last thing they need is another headache. So the going public was good, but not enough to push it over the edge.

• 2:13:36Speaker 01

  And part of what happens when you do litigation is everybody does discovery. Everybody's all the different things. And you say, oh, we're going to say all these things about you. You're going to say all these things about this. And this happened, that happened, your fault, our fault. And we're getting very close to it. And the contract's going to say this, contract's going to say that. And we're getting very close to a litigation date, to a court date. They're going to court. And then you're going to fight whose contract is right. And very close to it, after we all, basically, everybody threatens everybody with everything, we agree on a settlement. And the settlement is this complicated thing where the money will get paid in six months. First, the company will go public, then this, and all these different things. And then the money will get paid after.

• 2:14:18Speaker 01

  And this is four days before Rebecca gives birth. And I had a lawyer at the time who ran his own firm. His name was Eric Seiler. Now he's a partner with me. And he and I reached a settlement. It's all happening on Zoom because this is Corona. So this whole thing is happening with Zoom. Their lawyers, our lawyers. They spend 10 times as much as we're spending. They have the biggest lawyer in the world. And Andrew Finkelstein, our Hollywood friend, is sitting right behind the screen. And for three weeks as this negotiation is going, he does not work. He's just doing that. At the end of it, I say, Andrew, you need to work. So that I'm in Hollywood. The biggest show in the world is happening right now in front of my face, and I'm not missing a beat. Let me be. Wow. Corona, remember, no acting, no, nothing's happened. He's there.

• 2:15:03Speaker 01

  And once in a while, when he feels there's something important to say, he writes it on a piece of paper. He shows it to me above the screen. I read, I listen. Again, who do you trust? Put it down. We're negotiating, negotiating. At some point, they're like, we're gonna pay, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that. But we're gonna pay you in six months. I say, it's not gonna work. And he said this, I said, look, even Marcelo, even if I wanted, you know, I can't go back to Rebecca and we make decisions like this together. I can't tell her in six months. She's, it's not gonna work. Goes, call Rebecca and I wanna talk to her. She's four days before giving birth. We call that stage, with six kids, we've seen it a few times, couch commando. That's when she's on the couch and orders are given, couch commando. And so I get up to call her in, cause that's what he said, and then we all know each other.

• 2:15:47Speaker 01

  And Andrew picks up the paper, if you call her in, we will all be in court next week.

• 2:15:54Speaker 01

  You fix it. I read it, I sit back down, I said, you know what, Marcelo, and second thought. Let's figure this out. Let's just agree, how are we gonna be protected? And we basically work out the deal that's gonna be done, but we get paid in six months after the IPO. After this, after that, with all these maybes and ifs, not just us, all the employees. But it's the best we could get. We couldn't get a better settlement, and if I don't settle, there's no IPO. And again, I tried to do what I think is best for everybody. And I thought taking it public, if I get the chance. We agree? I go to Rebecca to tell her the great success that we did. She goes, no. So what do you mean, no? She said, for ten years you're running this business, never have I told you once what to do. This is how much the narrative is wrong. Once. She's very respectful.

• 2:16:39Speaker 01

  She can give advice. She would not tell me what to do. She respects, this is my business, she supports it. It's our business and equity holding, but she's very respectful, and I'm very respectful of her businesses. But they didn't pay us. We had a contract, we didn't get paid. One time you do it to us, we learn a mistake. Second time, why are we agreeing as a settlement? For all of us, not just for us, for the employees, for, to get pregnant a year and a half. Please, go back and said, no deal, I'll see you in court. Said, no, you don't understand, the IPO will blow up, the whole thing. Said, no, they'll fault, they're bluffing. They're acting like a bully. And my father was a bully. And there's only one way to deal with a bully. Gun to your head.

• 2:17:20Speaker 01

  They're laughing. And I'm, this is after, I'm like, this is an emotional roller coaster. I go, Andrew and I, to get Andrew's with me. He's like, ah, I thought we had it. I'm like, oh, I thought we had it. We're done. Then Eric Seiler calls me. Very famous phone call in our, in our lore. Goes, Adam, I just learned something. I said, what is it, Mr. Seiler? Again, he owns his own firm. I don't work for you. I work for Rebecca. I said, how did you learn that? He goes, well, she called me and completely disagrees with my legal strategy and told me that we're going to court, not settling. It's different from what you and I agreed. Therefore, I work for her, not for you. I said, well,

• 2:18:00Speaker 01

  I feel like I work for her because I know that all my blessings come from my wife.

• 2:18:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:05Speaker 01

  And if she feels strongly about something, I support her. There's no question. She has better intuition than me.

• 2:18:12Speaker 01

  So I support her. You support me. Then yes, we're gonna go with her way. He goes, okay, then. Just wanted to clarify that. I said, what do you think's gonna happen? He goes, I don't know. This is uncharted territory. I would accept. I said, but what if they do? What if she's right and they do? He goes, you don't understand. They gave all these promises. I said, Eric, we just litigated for a year about all these promises about a contract. What's a promise? Either the money's in the bank or it's not. So

• 2:18:41Speaker 01

  he goes, okay. Let's get on the call. It's gonna be a very bad Zoom. We get on the Zoom with the litigators, with the this, with the that. They have their general counsel, some scary individuals. I'll basically say, look, guys, it's not me anymore. It's me and Rebecca. We make choices together. We have a scheduled C-section Friday, 9:00 a.m., which is also the first day of pulling. Holiday. The money's not in the bank at 8:30. All of it. We'll see you in court. And even though court is in eight days, the court date, which is the bris of my new son that's gonna be born, I will miss the bris. Or I will do it in the courtroom. But I will see you in court.

• 2:19:24Speaker 01

  Boom explosions, screaming, and behind the scenes is like this tragedy. Done, done. If we were watching the movie, you and I would be like, that's it, it's gone. We're staying in court, next scene, court with the bris happening outside of the court with the red bike, with the mohel.

• 2:19:42Speaker 01

  Four hours later, Marcelo calls me, he's on the walkie with the video, you see him going, "Adam, please call Rebecca in." I said, "Okay, Marcelo." Called Rebecca, "It's just Marcelo, no litigators, no anyone else."

• 2:19:55Speaker 01

  And she says something beautiful, "Said Rebecca and Adam, I want to apologize to both of you. You guys were 10 years ahead of your time. It could be that if you had the keys to this car, when you needed the keys to the car, we would have been in a different place. It is what it is, we are where we are now. The money will be in your account 30 minutes before your planned C-section. You have my word, but separate from it, you will see it. You do not need to go forward with the litigation. Let's be partners, I'm gonna bring in a CEO. I'm gonna choose to do things my way. I know to call you if I need to. I respect you, respect me. Let's move like that." I say, "Thank you, Marcelo." I look at Rebecca, she goes, "All good." I said, "You're not worried?" She said, "I'm not worried, this is, we're all good."

• 2:20:40Speaker 01

  Say, "Thank you." At 4:30 a.m., don't ask me how they know money could transfer. 4:30 a.m., it hits the account. At 9 a.m., we're in the birthing room, our sixth son, Moses, was born.

• 2:20:55Speaker 01

  Four months later, is the television show.

• 2:20:59Speaker 01

  Wow. That is the true story. That's what actually happened. That's amazing. The fact that they chose to make her the villain, because it's easy. Yeah. By the way, it shows you a lot about society. But not only is it not true, whenever people hear something I've learned, when you hear two stories, there's a small group saying one story and a large group agreeing. Listen to that small group and really take your time listening. Yeah. This will be the last piece, and then I think we can, we can part ways with reword once and for all. A year into this, with this CEO, I see that they're not managing right. Stock starts dropping, we're like, "Oh my God, they're doing not one thing that we would have suggested."

• 2:21:43Speaker 01

  I called a few people. We have money at this stage again and said, hey, if I put a big cheque, will you guys come in with me? Immediately, one day, commitments to a billion. Now, it's not that we didn't send the documents, we didn't do it, but it was so quick that it would have come. We would have raised more if we needed it. Because I told people exactly what I was gonna do. And again, Corona was happening, buildings were empty. It was very clear, this to us, what the right thing would be to create a movement back to, to, to deal with the situation. Because these moments of change for creatives who are in their field, those are the biggest moments. This was my market, this was office, this was a change. It wasn't the end of office, it was time for a new office. And I called the CEO, I was like, look, we have soft commitments for a billion, but we're ready to go. I want to share with you the strategy, I want to see this.

• 2:22:26Speaker 01

  We will invest into the company, we will buy in. We want to support, we just want to make sure we have the same this. We want to share it with you and we want to help you. Let's make this company successful. Corona should be the win, not the loss. Schedules it all with us. Our investors, top guys on the plane. We're all on our way to go. Sends me a text, I'm sorry, Adam, whatever reason. It's a pass.

• 2:22:49Rick Rubin?

  Cancel the meeting.

• 2:22:50Speaker 01

  Cancel the meeting, never takes it.

• 2:22:52Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 2:22:53Speaker 01

  Drives the company all the way to bankruptcy. We were ready to put our money, we brought new money and we brought a new plan. Now, I'm not telling you that it would have worked.

• 2:23:02Rick Rubin?

  No, you can't know.

• 2:23:04Speaker 01

  Can't know. All I'm telling you is...

• 2:23:05Rick Rubin?

  But it would have been different.

• 2:23:06Speaker 01

  I'm just telling you what happened and that was that.

• 2:23:08Rick Rubin?

  That's wild.

• 2:23:11Speaker 01

  So you asked how it's all connected. As all of this is happening, Marc Andreessen is calling us. Called the first time, we missed the fact. Called the second time. Then an article in the Wall Street Journal comes up saying that Adam Neumann's family office has purchased over a billion dollars' worth of real estate in South Florida. We've moved to Miami at this stage. And he calls Marc and he says, hey, Adam. I thought, because every time, at the end of every call, said, if you're gonna do something, let's talk. Said, I thought we said that we're gonna talk if you're doing something. I said, yeah, of course we are. Said, you're obviously doing something, you bought a lot of real estate. Said, no, Marc, that's just real estate. Because, no, it's not. It's your idea for the future of living. It's a new brand. It's We Live But Better.

• 2:23:54Speaker 01

  I say, well, honestly speaking, yes, I've been having thoughts. But it's not that. Said, do you have an idea? Said, I do. Said, are you clear about how you're gonna do it? Said, I'm clear about how it would start. Said, do you have a name? Said, I don't. Said, do you want to talk about it? Said, whatever you want. And we're gonna really connect it. And I said, let's talk about it. I said, okay. And we sort of leave it in the air. I still don't follow up.

• 2:24:20Rick Rubin?

  Tell me when that call was.

• 2:24:22Speaker 01

  Back to the timeline. The first call is happening 2020, end of winter. Second call, about half a year later. This third one is happening before the television show. Our sixth child was born on Rebecca's birthday, which is February 26. So that's 2021. So this needs to be 2022. So the team is now very worried because we have worked one foot after the other to build ourselves from the beginning, business-wise and reputation-wise. A lot of people believe this false story is selling. And again, I'm walking into room every time, needing to explain what really happened. And they're worried. And the story's gonna come out, and that's a horrible thing.

• 2:25:06Speaker 01

  But with Marc Andreessen that's been calling us. And then one of the team members has a idea, a great idea. What if you call Marc Andreessen? And he will interview you, because we know what he thinks about you. He's the biggest investor in the world. He'll interview you about what really happened. And not only that, what if we do it in South by Southwest? Because the show, Apple was very smart about it because it was a tech-oriented.

• 2:25:28Rick Rubin?

  They premiered it South by Southwest.

• 2:25:29Speaker 01

  They premiered it South by Southwest. The first time anything was done like that.

• 2:25:32Rick Rubin?

  So you were gonna do a live?

• 2:25:34Speaker 01

  My idea was, no, my, the person who gave me the idea, a live interview with the biggest investor in the world. With the truth, the same time it premieres.

• 2:25:42Rick Rubin?

  Great idea.

• 2:25:43Speaker 01

  Great idea. So I schedule, I text to Marc, which in this time, I've never taken, I've never jumped into any discussion. And I ask his assistant, and this is for a Friday. And the show is scheduled whatever, a month after. I need to talk to Marc. Wanting to ask him, I don't have a close relationship. Would he be willing to do that?

• 2:26:00Rick Rubin?

  You've only talked to him three times?

• 2:26:01Speaker 01

  Only three times. This is the third time. I only talked to him twice at this point.

• 2:26:04Rick Rubin?

  So only twice before? And the calls, how long reach are those?

• 2:26:06Speaker 01

  They're good calls. The first one is 20. Marc is, as you know, an amazing guy to talk to. They're great calls. I let them go as long as he's, as long as he's interested, I want the call. So great calls about many topics. But always coming back to that same topic of, the call's basically, Adam, when are you getting back in the ring? That's like the theme of the call. Very motivating, by the way. Very, very powerful. Better than most of the friends I had, and we didn't even know each other. I really appreciate it. And so I'm scheduling this other call. And I'm gonna basically try to convince him to come. I know it's hard to travel to South by, or if he can't travel. I say, I was gonna, my idea was, I'll come to you and they'll zoom it in. But no matter what, we're in front of a live audience in South by.

• 2:26:49Speaker 01

  Or maybe he's on Zoom and I'm live, but whatever, if I can get him to come there, maybe.

• 2:26:55Speaker 01

  We scheduled the call for a Friday and a few days before. Because again, I'm just starting to understand what the word woke means and this whole media and social media, and I'm starting to learn what I went through. Suddenly, I have this thought in my head. What if South by Southwest wouldn't want? What if I'm offering Mark something that they wouldn't put on stage? Yeah. And I asked two people, I said, what are you talking about, Adam? This is the biggest thing that's happening, is this show getting premiered. How would you and Mark talking on stage not be good for the conference? If you're running South by, are you letting this interview go? I would say yes. Of course, I would think so. But I suddenly, because I'm starting to understand how the world works, or at least how it works, not how it should work, or regretfully how it does sometimes. And I realized I should ask someone before I ask Mark.

• 2:27:39Speaker 01

  And I called someone that's very close to the people running it. And I said, can you check if I get Mark to say yes, would they be interested in this interview? In this fireside chat, live?

• 2:27:51Speaker 01

  And they called me an hour before my call with Mark, that I'm planning to. Say, Adam, you won't believe this. Answer is no.

• 2:28:01Speaker 01

  Said, no? Now I'm really, you know, like the show is coming out, the takedown already happened before it didn't. Said, please tell me why no? I said, interesting, because I asked, because I knew you were gonna ask me. Starts with Mark, sitting on the board of Facebook. And they hate Facebook. Says, 2022.

• 2:28:17Speaker 01

  So that's reason number one. I said, but he's a board member, he's this, this, that. That's what they said. You, on the other hand, they're willing to have next year. Depending how the show comes out. If the show comes out and you're an evil villain, no. If the show comes out and people like you, they'll have you next year. I was like, fuck then.

• 2:28:38Speaker 01

  So now I'm an hour before the call with Mark. I really have nothing to say. And this is back to that same story. I call my partner Elon. He's like, Elon, I'm canceling the call. He goes, no, you're not. It's like, I'm canceling the call. He goes, why? Mark was excited about the call. He's finally you're talking. And like, Mark's excited, don't cancel. I said, well, I don't have anything to say. He said, yes, you do. You have a vision in your head. It doesn't have a name. It's a new business. You have the vision of the future of how people are gonna live. Tell him that. I said, I'm not clear about it yet. He said, so Adam, I'm your partner. It's hiding inside of you. It's your perfect founder market fit for this thing. It's always been there. It's your original idea. Your original idea was no WeWork.

• 2:29:21Speaker 01

  Your original idea was called Concept Living when you're in college. It's your original idea. It's from the kibbutz. It's how people live. It's the future of living. Tell him that. I say, Elon, I'm not ready to say it. He's the biggest investor in the world. I don't want to have thought idea. I articulated clear. It was no problem. Tell him you'd love to do it face to face. He's gonna invite you. It's gonna take a second. We're gonna get a second to get our act together. We'll do it then. Call is about to come. I'm sweating. I can't believe, why am I sweating? This is after the, all this stuff. Why am I again acting like I'm a 32-year-old? What am I stressed about? We own all this stuff. We're doing, we're building, or my family. I've learned a lot. I'm in a much better place. I feel happier. How am I stressed again?

• 2:30:04Speaker 01

  Like I'm pitching to an investor at age 28. At the exact same time that I have that thought, my second feeling is like, wow. I like this. I miss this. This is how it feels to be in the ring.

• 2:30:16Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:17Speaker 01

  I feel alive. I get on the call and very honestly, I say what I say. I say, I wanna do it face to face. Talk for half an hour about other stuff. Said, would be my pleasure. A week later invites me. We go to Malibu. Four weeks later. We sit down. And the whole way.

• 2:30:34Rick Rubin?

  It's the first time you're meeting him.

• 2:30:35Speaker 01

  First time meeting face to face. Never met before. Didn't know he was that tall.

• 2:30:39Rick Rubin?

  Very tall.

• 2:30:39Speaker 01

  Taller than me. Him, his head of his crypto fund, Chris Dixon, another tall guy. All of them, first time. We're in Malibu. We walk in and start talking. It's high level, ta ta ta ta ta. Everybody sits down. And Mark starts saying, so Adam, we're all here. We'd like to hear. I say, Mark, I would like to talk about We Work First and my lessons learned. Because you don't need to. I said, I understand, I would really like to. He goes, Adam, let's be clear. We called you here because we know what we think has happened. Assume that we've spoken to most people that have ever worked with you, definitely to an engineer that has ever worked with you, and all of your board members.

• 2:31:21Speaker 01

  Let's talk about the future of living. I say, Mark, I really appreciate it. But I've never spoken to you about this. Especially if you know so much about it. Maybe I can learn one more thing. I know I learned a lot, but maybe there's one more lesson hiding there. I want to talk about it. And this, for those people who know Mark, he'll say twice. But if you let him loose, he's gonna go. And there is no filter. And it's going to be some of the smartest things you've ever heard in your life. He almost does a version of this. Said, okay, Adam, let's go. And we go for it. And for the next hour and a half, not only do I share what I share, I learn at least five new things about it. The craziest one being, he goes, hey, when you took the money from Benchmark, did you ever check how many founders they ever ousted?

• 2:32:06Speaker 01

  I said, no. He goes, interesting. Jack Dorsey, Travis Kalanick. And then he names five other ones. Goes, they're known for it. So it's not that they said they're great investors, but it has happened there many times. Did you even know that? I said, no, I didn't. He goes, okay, so we learned one thing about you. You did not do your homework. I said, no, I did not. I trusted. He goes, okay. We then talked for the next three hours. Then we talked about the future of living. Said, Adam, what would you want to solve if you solve? What do you think the two biggest problems? I said, loneliness and ownership. He goes, great. How are we gonna solve that? And then we talked about how I think we're gonna solve that. And at the end, he goes, so? What do you think about considering new partners?

• 2:32:51Speaker 01

  Because by this point, I'm funding the business 100% on my own. I don't want partners. I don't need partners. I'm traumatized. I said, I genuinely didn't think about it. He goes, well, how about you do your homework? And call a lot of people who we've been investors of. Because we've already called a lot of people that know you. See what you think. And basically, for the next six months, we get to know each other. But as we're getting to know each other, we shape. The business already existed. There were buildings, already bought the small tech company that we were using. There were things that were occurring already. But we shape it even bigger. And Mark is playing a very active role. And every time I think big, he thinks bigger. But not the way Masa thought bigger, grow faster. The way, think longer. Build a better product.

• 2:33:37Speaker 01

  Take your time. Don't worry about profitability, not because you're chasing revenue. Don't worry about profitability, because if we can actually challenge loneliness and ownership in a real way, we're gonna have a world-changing business. And Mark says to me, and I am here to build the big one, not the middle one. So it's again that energy of wow, here's someone thinking as big or bigger than me. But he's not telling me go crazy. He's teaching me history. Said great tech teams are small, they're not big. Starts naming every single great tech product that was built and how it was built. And as we do this partnership, and Ben Horowitz is starting to jump in. But the first board meeting was only Mark, and starting the second, Ben joins. The one thing we agreed in advance is when it comes to technology,

• 2:34:22Speaker 01

  they will help choose the leaders. Great. Amazing. They will help choose the leaders. And on our board meetings, we're gonna spend time talking about the whole business, but we're really gonna spend time talking about tech. Because when it comes to building a brand, a global movement or real estate, they truly trust me. Comes to building technology, they wanted me to truly trust them. Now, even though my investors before were tech investors, not once did they give any advice. I love this. I'm like, great. And then they have the, and then Mark has the haha moment that even takes it to the next level. Said, how much money? He looked at all of my real estate portfolio. He said, choose the best, tell me how much equity it is, and that's what we're going to invest.

• 2:35:03Speaker 01

  So I put 350 million in the form of equity of real estate, not debt, not value of real estate, just the equity. And they put 350 million cash. We both had skin in the game. The one rule between the two of us, they told, said, Adam, we're aligned with you. Even though you weren't actually misaligned with your investors because you didn't do anything wrong. Yeah. Not only was there the perception of misalignment, you found yourself misaligned. Let's make a rule. When you buy, we buy. When you sell, we sell. We're together. I said, great rule. Great rule. Can't wait to be with you aligned. And just to lend this point home, and then we'll take it to what it is that we've been building. It's time to find a CTO. Something people don't know about Flow. Flow spends more money on technology than anything else, not on real estate. Really?

• 2:35:47Speaker 01

  Well, I'll explain in a second why. So it's time to find a CTO. And we go on this six-month journey of interviewing the best on the planet because we're not going to make that mistake again. And we get to four final candidates. And I choose my final one, and then I introduce all four to Ben. And Ben Horowitz, an amazing CEO himself, but also a coach of CEOs. He's a great recruiter and hireer, seen it all done at home. And Ben interviews, I interview. Ben calls me, goes, hey, Adam, I finished my four interviews. I know my pick. I said, great. He goes, first I'm going to tell you who you picked. I said, let's go, Ben, because you picked the Amazon guy. I said, yes, I did. He goes, great pick. He has the experience. He's a great guy. He worked in a great company. He checks all the boxes.

• 2:36:31Speaker 01

  He's not your guy. I said, why, Ben? Because your guy is the WhatsApp guy. I said, why is my guy is the WhatsApp guy? I was going to tell you something. His name is Scott. I'm going to tell you something about Scott that Scott doesn't know about himself. Scott is extremely smart. Scott head to architect a very complicated situation in WhatsApp and dealt with billions and billions of users and huge numbers that you've never imagined the numbers that he dealt. And we know about his engineering team and how he cleaned it up and how he did the architecture. And there's a lot of really good things that we did our diligence on. But Scott has one quality that builds excellent tech teams that you need. I said, what is that? I said, when someone says something stupid next to Scott, Scott does this with his face. He can't help it. He doesn't even know he does it. And Ben, that's important for our tech team?

• 2:37:16Speaker 01

  Because it's the most important. I said, why? Because I'm going to tell you secret about tech teams. And why small tech teams are great. One bad apple ruins the whole thing. We always manage to the lowest basis, not to the highest. He can't help it. Even if you won't be able to tell them you're fired, they will see on his face that he thinks they are not great. And they will go find another job. This for Flow, Flow's tech team needs to be world-class. Because Flow is trying to solve very large problems. And it's going to take time to build what you want to build. And we have to make sure the core is correct. Because if our foundation is not there, we won't be able to deliver on this big mission. He's your guy. Again, old Adam might have argued. New Adam chose his partners because of what they know.

• 2:38:01Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, what they have to bring.

• 2:38:03Speaker 01

  And what they bring.

• 2:38:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:05Speaker 01

  I don't know if Ben thought this was going to be an argument or not. I said, great, yes. He was like, that's it? I said, of course, that's it. That's why, that's why we're partners. I know you know more than me. And obviously, I didn't do a good job last time on this topic. Bring it up.

• 2:38:19Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:19Speaker 01

  And we recruit Scott.

• 2:38:21Rick Rubin?

  How many CTOs did you hire in the past?

• 2:38:25Speaker 01

  Six.

• 2:38:26Rick Rubin?

  And how many has he hired in the past?

• 2:38:29Speaker 01

  He's hired so many entrepreneurs, by the way, who act as CTOs at the beginning, right? In pure tech companies, we're more than just a tech company. In pure tech companies, many times, the founder is the CTO at the beginning. And then they all have to hire CTOs. So he has over a thousand companies. So he's done this over a thousand times, this way or that way, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly.

• 2:38:49Rick Rubin?

  So he has some level of experience that feels good trusting.

• 2:38:56Speaker 01

  It also disconnects to our past. At WeWork, because we were trying, especially now that we know the story, at some point to start chasing revenue. We were trying to build systems that can count and manage. At Flow, from the first day, our mission was oneness. Oneness for a person and themselves, a person and their community, and a person in the natural world. To achieve that, you need to build technology. Now, we talk a lot about AI to think instead of humans. At Flow, we talk about AI to empower humans to be the best version of themselves.

• 2:39:31Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful.

• 2:39:32Speaker 01

  To create spaces that empower humans to be the best version of themselves. Our technology does not need to think for us. It needs to make everything so smooth and make things work so organically that we can be part of something greater than ourselves. And that's why our CTO was such an important pick. So now he starts, and it's three weeks into the job. And counselor says, hey, Adam, I have good news and bad news. The good news is I have an idea of the architecture that would build what we need to build to deliver on your vision of solving ownership and solving loneliness and on creating this energy of oneness or togetherness. The bad news is current real estate

• 2:40:16Speaker 01

  technology is built on databases and does not put the resident or the member first. Puts a lot of other things first, but not that. We're gonna have to build it from scratch, all of it. Back to the WeWork days, I was told by many CTOs I need to build from scratch. I built all the time from scratch, and I had nothing, very little to show for it. So it's got, I'm not sure I'm ready for this adventure, but you're in luck. I have a board meeting next week. I truly trust my partners. If you're ready to walk in and present how you're gonna build real estate from scratch, architecture, be my guest. I'm just telling you, this might be a short partnership for the two of us. And I really started to like you. It's only been three weeks, but I like the energy because I'll take my chances.

• 2:41:01Speaker 01

  Because, by the way, I'm here to fulfill your vision. He said, I want to explain to you something that I'm gonna tell them. Your vision is gonna change so many times that if I don't give you an extremely flexible system that's truly rethinking everything, I won't be able to keep up with you. I might at the beginning, but one day you're gonna ask for something I can't do. I'm gonna preempt it. But it's gonna be tough for you because then I'm gonna tell you I need a year for you not to bother me. And all the little things that our CTOs might have built for you, nice apps and front-facing and all the gimmicks, you don't gonna have any gimmicks. But when I'm done with what I'm doing, you're gonna have a powerful system that can basically tackle on the future of how we live. It goes into the board meeting, and you should have been there. They go at it for three hours.

• 2:41:44Speaker 01

  I don't have a lot to say because it's not my field. Mark is very strong in architecture. Ben is very strong in use cases and how it's used. And they just go. And after three hours, they say... We agree. Then go out to dinner. And they argue between themselves for another two hours about it.

• 2:42:04Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 2:42:04Speaker 01

  Big decision. It's a very big turn and the guy just started. It's a lot of trust. And at the end of it, Ben is like, Adam, I'm good. I said, why? Because because Mark is good. We've been working together for thirty years. And I love this, by the way. For me, this is no problem. We've been working together for thirty years and I know when to trust my partner. He's good, I'm good. It's like, you guys are good, I'm good. And we start this journey of rethinking how the architecture for, when I say architecture, I mean the digital architecture. In a way that will allow us to put the resident, the member.

• 2:42:41Rick Rubin?

  Why is digital architecture so important in housing? I don't understand.

• 2:42:45Speaker 01

  So without giving away all of our secrets, I'll explain to you how it's built today. Think of it as a database. Let's build data on data on data on data. And now you want to put AI on top of it. You're really getting the top layer. You're not actually understanding everything. And if you want to leverage technology in a way that truly understands everything. You have to re-architect how the data is stored.

• 2:43:08Rick Rubin?

  From the beginning.

• 2:43:09Speaker 01

  From the beginning. You have to actually rethink it. And this is where we got luckier than smart. This is two and a half years ago. Blockchain is in place. AI is in place, not the way it is today, but it's all starting. So everything is built, taking in mind the newest way of doing things. It's the edge of the edge of how to build things.

• 2:43:29Speaker 01

  And I told you that we're going to have a board meeting in two days. We're going to present for the first time. How not only it all comes together theoretically. But how it's working and how it's starting to deliver. And it's going to only work better from here, but we see the results. And how do we see the results? And much more profitable buildings. But we also seen much happier residents, much more connected.

• 2:43:51Rick Rubin?

  How many buildings are there now?

• 2:43:52Speaker 01

  So Flow now has nine buildings, four in the US and five in Saudi Arabia. And Flow is how these communities come together. And we're doing it by tackling the technology.

• 2:44:04Speaker 01

  The brand, the world it represents, and the experience. And we're really doing it one thought at a time.

• 2:44:10Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:10Speaker 01

  And again, the big difference from the past, we're not rushing. We're going after the right product. And we're doing it in a way that's truly gonna make you, the user, feel like you're having this experience that's truly unique. And when we talked about this two years ago, we said mind, body, and soul, and how it all comes together, people maybe had a little tough time. Everybody wants to feel like they're in flow. Everybody understands what flow state is for them. Everybody is connecting to it. And the buildings are really starting to show it.

• 2:44:43Rick Rubin?

  Wow. Each time that you have a new building, do you learn new things about what works and what doesn't work?

• 2:44:51Speaker 01

  What a great question. We just launched a new building in Brickell in Miami. Six hundred and thirty-two apartments, very large, brand new, completely empty. And Flow is not just able to run buildings. Flow is now developing the beginning of small neighborhoods. So it's a single building, but there are three more plots. It's six point two acres, which for Miami is a very large plot, to build over twenty-two hundred apartments with office space, with retail, with a school that we're considering.

• 2:45:19Rick Rubin?

  A whole community.

• 2:45:20Speaker 01

  A whole community. And as you start thinking about it as a community, you start saying, well, what does a community need? You don't limit it to just a single building. You're saying, what are obvious things? Well, community, oh, then it needs a barber shop, it needs a nail salon, it needs... But then it needs this, it needs a coffee shop. And you start adding all these things that make it tremendous sense. And what else does community? Community loves music. Community loves food. Community loves art. And you start thinking of all those things bringing together. And before you know it, we get to not just experience all these things, but experiment them. So I'll give you an example. Do you know how many times you've driven by empty construction sites that are fenced up?

• 2:45:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:55Speaker 01

  So we had three of those because we have one finished building and three construction sites. We take one of them. And this was Rebecca's idea, actually. And we plant, we put sand to make it like a beach. We put palm trees. We put a little, you know, the indigenous structures that they love to create in Miami. Like a tiki hut, but a large one that's gonna have a floor. We're like, we're gonna do music here three times a week. And here's two foot trucks and we're gonna open it up for the public. Beautiful, like a park. Like a park. Costs very little to do, but for the next two years, instead of having an empty construction site you gave to the community. This one is on the river. We say, hey, what about a farmer's market? We launch a farmer's market. Great. We have this amazing woman. Her name is Shelley. Do you remember Jelena's? She used to be the CEO of Jelena's. If you remember Jelena's, you know what she does.

• 2:46:40Speaker 01

  The best food. The best food. And from what I hear from a lot of people, the best experience. Yeah. She brings it all together. So we say to Shelley, all we have to say is we want the farmer's market with intention. It's like an AI, you just give it a prompt. You come to the farmer's market. Every booth has a story. This mother, this daughter, this local, this. And they're also inspired. Now people start walking it and they're so inspired. And now you're giving to your local community. But what you're really doing is you're also attracting a lot of people and you're starting to tell the flow story. And it actually starts and at the beginning, but we can't get a lot of people there because no one's ever heard of this farmer's market. So we throw a yoga class. And we launch a runs club. And we're at a walking club because some people prefer walking than running. And before you know it, there are over a thousand people coming.

• 2:47:23Speaker 01

  There was one, I didn't see the last one because I was here with you. There was one yesterday. And it's every week. And the more exciting the environment is downstairs, the more it affects the upstairs. Right. And people start coming in. And now all these tours are coming. And because we're leveraging, and then we write a sign on the building. What if it all goes right? And two weeks ago, someone goes on their boat on the river and takes a video. What if it all goes right? This is a woman with thirteen thousand followers. She gets twenty-two and a half million views. She went viral. And she writes, sometimes it only takes one sentence to lift you up. She must have not been the only person. It was shared over one point eight million times. It was huge numbers.

• 2:48:09Speaker 01

  All it said is what if it all goes right, but it was on a building. Landlords don't usually say things. No. And who do you think, by the way, came up with that sentence? The person who people like to make a villain. Of course. Classic Rebecca. Classic, because it's so, I said, where did, when she comes. So simple. I said, where do you come up with that sentence? She said, it's you. You think it always gonna come, no matter what happened to you in your life, you found a way to think, what if it all goes right? Yeah. You stand for it. So I put it on the building. She has a way of building brands that is so authentic. I am now understanding, there's so much depth there. By the way, she does three hours a week, the rest is all us. Because we don't need more than that. And she doesn't need to, if she gave us more than that, we couldn't keep up. And she's full-time mom.

• 2:48:54Speaker 01

  And just launched a school and is doing all these different things that she's doing. Yes, full-time mom, just launched a school, she's doing a lot. She's tackling the world the way she sees in a way to make a difference. But you suddenly have this flow building. It has a farmer's market, it has a park. Everybody's coming in, tours are flying in. We don't know what to do with them. And because of our same architecture, that digital architecture we spoke about, it works very well connecting to social media. We can count and measure every lead that comes in. We can start pulling, we can do a million things that other landlords can't do. We start pulling that lever in that new building. And it's filling up so fast. First of all, I'm slowing down for a second because when something is working that well,

• 2:49:36Speaker 01

  you gotta take a second, take a breath and say, wait, maybe it's priced wrong, maybe. But it's filling up at least at five times the speed of the market. It traditionally would take eighteen months to fill up a building with four hundred apartments. That's the market number. This building has six hundred and thirty-two apartments, it will fill up in six months. Wow. And that's just the beginning. We're gonna use AI to keep it maintained. We have a team to do that because it's very creative, leveraging a lot of tools. But afterwards to maintain it, you'll do it with a lot less people. And the other thing that we've done in this community, another lesson from the past, we have ambassadors that live there. Each one of their chooses a topic that they love. They host the events. They make it all happen. We just empower them through the app, through the tech to be able to do. Once a month, each one of them, five of them, so once a month, so that's five events a month.

• 2:50:22Speaker 01

  Then the trainers are from the building, the yoga instructors are from the building, the meditation is from the building. And people are really reacting well to it. Beautiful. Tell me, since.

• 2:50:34Rick Rubin?

  You and Rebecca started your spiritual journey together. How it has grown?

• 2:50:41Speaker 01

  So, spoke about Shabbat a little bit. When my boys were born, we had an experience with a rabbi that wasn't willing to get paid. He did the bris and he wouldn't take the money. His name is Rabbi Heller. And he's a very special person. And no matter how much we chased him, he wouldn't take the money. Until I sort of didn't believe, I was like Rebecca, this guy is just playing a show. I'll, I'll force him to take the money. And I go to his house, thinking there's some trick up his sleeve or something. And I see a very humble house and a very humble man, and amazing wife and amazing kids. I'm so inspired and impressed that I said to Rebecca, we gotta find a different, he's not gonna take the money, it's a no, it's a no. But let's do something else.

• 2:51:27Speaker 01

  And he encourages us to practice more our own practice, starting by the Friday night and this, and then encourages us to try Shabbat one time.

• 2:51:37Rick Rubin?

  What are the rules of Shabbat?

• 2:51:38Speaker 01

  So the rules of Shabbat, forget the religious rules, let's do the spiritual rules. The rule is that you take one day a week and you disconnect from 24 hours, from the external world and you connect to the internal world, yourself, your wife, your kids, your close friends. No technology. No technology, no cooking, no working. You don't talk about business, no matter what, no talking about business on Shabbat. Best ideas, by the way, for business, come on Shabbat. Don't talk about it, but it's the time. And it's, it's a rule that existed 3,000 years ago is when it comes from. As relevant as it was then, I think it's never been more relevant than today.

• 2:52:21Speaker 01

  And I tell this to people all the time, forget the religious part. Take your phone and put it in the cookie jar, up there, close it, and take 24 hours. And I say, here's what you're gonna experience. Notice how many times for the first three hours, you're gonna put your hand in your pocket to grab that phone, which means you're addicted. Just notice it. But then make it through the night and go into the next day. And I say, I don't know if you do it on Saturday or Sunday, choose your day. You know, the pope that passed away, he used to call it technology Shabbat. He would preach it, say technology Shabbat, technology Shabbat. And the next day, be disconnected from the phone. Drive, do everything else you want to do. Just don't use your phone. Make your plans in advance so it works. Tell me afterwards if you had a better week. If you had a better week, do it again.

• 2:53:05Rick Rubin?

  You are allowed to read a book?

• 2:53:08Speaker 01

  You are encouraged to read a book.

• 2:53:09Rick Rubin?

  Encouraged to read a book.

• 2:53:10Speaker 01

  So again, in my practice, you would also pray. You pray Friday night, you pray on Saturday. But I'm putting myself on the side for a second. And I'm saying, anybody who tries this, when you disconnect from your phone, you're giving a gift to your kids, you're disconnected. They're disconnected, but you're all much connected to each other. Especially for people who work very hard.

• 2:53:30Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 2:53:31Speaker 01

  Imagine the gift of 24 hours. Before you know it, they're gonna be 18, they're gonna be out of the house, and you miss this beautiful thing. When we do it, we don't touch anything.

• 2:53:40Rick Rubin?

  When did you start doing it?

• 2:53:41Speaker 01

  10 years ago. 10 years ago, my boys are 10, so right after their birth, so 10 years ago.

• 2:53:48Rick Rubin?

  Would you say of the different things you've done, that was one of the life-changing decisions?

• 2:53:53Speaker 01

  I would say without a doubt that the biggest move that I've made spiritually is keeping Shabbat. On those days, the biggest channeling of ideas for Rebecca and I happened at 8:00 AM, Saturday morning. Now, remember, we don't write also, because we don't this, so we just remember them. But the action happens Saturday morning. And then we also host sometimes the Shabbat, where everybody comes together and reads the Torah. We host a Shabbat. So then we're hosting other people, and we're bringing them together. And then everybody shares this experience. And we sit in a circle, and we talk before the Torah reading about this week's portion. We share how is it relevant to our everyday life. But sometimes we just take the Saturday off, and we don't participate in that. And we're just with our kids and our friends.

• 2:54:38Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful. There's something happening now, I don't know if you know about it, called the Quiet Revolution.

• 2:54:43Speaker 01

  Tell me about it.

• 2:54:44Rick Rubin?

  Young people are interested in going to church. For years and years and years, the people who went to church were getting older and older, and the amount of people was declining, declining, declining, declining. And something happened in the last few years, where young people are interested in going to church. More Bibles are being sold. Something's happening.

• 2:55:08Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. It's everywhere you go. People are more open. People are ready for it. It's natural. As technology is going to make us more and more digitally connected, we're gonna feel more and more disconnected. The more disconnected that we feel, the more we're gonna crave a real connection. A real connection will never come by buying another car or buying another house or owning another material good. A real connection comes from the inside. A person who has unity from the inside, has unity to the outside. Here is what I think. We're connected to this week's portion. We all have something that we're slaves to.

• 2:55:51Speaker 01

  We all have an addiction to anger, to ego, to power, whatever it is, idol worship that we have. We all have an Egypt. We all need to leave that Egypt, come out of it. When we come out of that Egypt, we all face the Red Sea. When we see that Red Sea, we all need to have the courage to walk into it so far that we drown. Only when we're willing to drown, will the Red Sea be split and we'll go to our next level. When then go to our next level, we see the Red Sea split. It's not even like, oh, everything is okay. Then we forget. The moment we forget, we step into the desert. We all have to walk to our version of desert. That desert is between us and God, no one else.

• 2:56:36Speaker 01

  The only decision we get to have is how long we're gonna journey through that desert. Are we gonna journey for 14 days? Like the children of Israel were supposed to? Or we're gonna journey for 40 years? Because we're not learning our lesson. Our choice is not are we gonna get into the desert or not? It's how long will we be there? And once we go out of that desert, we all have our version of the promised land. And if we have the courage to look inside, see our own correction, our own limitation, look at it clearly now and say, I see you, and I'm gonna get over it. I'm gonna learn, I'm gonna grow, I'm gonna understand that life is not about falling down. It's about how I'm gonna get up. I'm gonna fall a thousand times, so I can get up a thousand and one times.

• 2:57:20Speaker 01

  And in that last time when I get up, and I'm actually ready to go to my next level, I'm gonna wish for you... Para mim, por favor, que tenhamos o coragem de ir para o nosso próximo nível, porque sabemos que a terra prometida está esperando lá atrás. E que não seamos medrosos quando o mundo inteiro está dizendo isso ou aquilo sobre nós. Quem se importa? É sobre o que você pensa, o que sua esposa pensa, o que seus filhos pensam, e o que o universo pensa.

• 2:58:28Speaker 07

  O que pode cair dentro da esfera de tetragramatina? Counterculture? Tetragramatina. Sacred geometry? Tetragramatina. The avant-garde? Tetragramatina. Generative art? Tetragramatina. The tarot? Tetragramatina. Out-of-print music? Tetragramatina. Biodynamics? Tetragramatina. Graphic design? Tetragramatina. Mythology and magic? Tetragramatina. Obscure film? Tetragramatina. Beach culture? Tetragramatina. Esoteric lectures? Tetragramatina. Off-the-grid living? Tetragramatina. Alt spirituality? Tetragramatina. The canon of fine objects? Tetragramatina. Muscle cars? Tetragramatina. Ancient wisdom for a new age.

• 2:59:15Speaker 07

  Upon entering, experience the artwork of the day.

• 2:59:20Speaker 07

  Take a breath, and see where you are drawn.