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One Vision, One People.

What future founders can learn from the rise and fall of WeWork’s Adam Neumann.

Derick David
6 min readApr 25, 2021
Image: The Guardian

Adam Neumann comes from an immigrant family whose parents are both doctors but divorced when he was 7 years old. After that, he and his younger sister moved to the United States with their mother for her medical residency.

Back in Israel, he graduated from the Israeli Naval Academy and served as an officer in the Israeli Navy for five years, and was discharged with the rank of captain.

And on his return to the United States, he decided to attend Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College in New York City.

What happens next will change the entire course of Adam’s life.

In 2010, Adam Neumann alongside his co-founder and friend Miguel McKelvey, co-founded WeWork, just after the successful sale of their previous venture, GreenDesk.

There’s a lot we can say now about WeWork’s story and it’s easy to see all that went wrong, but let’s have a look at what went right — at least for the first several years of the co-working space giant and Neumann’s incredibly enthusiastic meetings.

Part of what made WeWork a sensation is the founder’s story.
In this story, we’ll learn the importance of:

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Derick David
Derick David

Written by Derick David

1M+ views. Seen at Forbes. 10x Top Writer in Technology, Innovation, and Design. https://twitter.com/jeazous

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