Notes From The Field By Simon Black

September 26, 2019  Bahia Beach, Puerto Rico

“We” Not So Crazy after all…

I’ve never really been prone to schadenfreude-- feeling satisfaction from someone else’s misfortune.

But I am a big believer in the Karmic justice. If you’re a dirty scumbag who constantly lies, cheats, and steals, sooner or later the universe is going to catch up with you. And I love seeing justice served.

That’s why I couldn’t help but feel delighted when I saw that Adam Neumann, founder of the so-called ‘We Company’, stepped down as CEO two days ago.

Neumann’s company operates the WeWork office business. I’ve dumped on this plenty of times-- it’s been the latest flavor of the month among all the other heavily loss-making ‘tech’ startups like Snap, Uber, Lyft, etc.

These companies lose billions of dollars per year and no one cares. The more they lose, the more valuable they become.

But WeWork was something truly special… so incredible it almost seemed made up.

Sure, WeWork lost $1 billion just in the first six months of 2019 alone. But no one cares about that; all the big tech companies lose money these days.

And yeah, WeWork isn’t actually a tech company-- they’re in the real estate business. But no one really cares about that either. Adam Neumann says they’re a tech company, so people just went along with it.

WeWork doesn’t really own any real estate either. In fact, the company owns practically no assets at all. But no one really cares about that either. Assets schmassets.

WeWork’s Board of Directors screwed its shareholders by awarding nearly dictatorial control to founder/CEO Adam Neumann, and stripping equal voting rights from other shareholders. But no one cares because, hey, that’s what SnapChat did. And look at how well they’re doing.

Neither did anyone care that Neumann retained voting control of the company even while simultaneously selling off hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock to personally enrich himself before the company has earned a single penny in profits for shareholders.

Nor does anyone care that Neumann is a textbook megalomaniac who thinks he should be President of the World.

Neumann has notoriously engaged in the most egregious conflicts of interest, including, famously, borrowing money from WeWork to buy an office building, only to lease it right back to WeWork at a profit for himself.

But, amazingly enough, no one even cared about that.

The one thing… the ONE THING… that made people lose their minds, was that Neumann sold the rights to the word ‘We’ to the company for $6 million.

That’s right.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://www.sovereignman.com/investing/we-not-so-crazy-after-all-25635/

To your freedom & prosperity, Simon Black Founder, SovereignMan.com