SoftBank and the Real Tragedy of WeWork

It was an all-hands speech that would have fit with 2023’s cost-conscious corporate dogma: A tech founder urged his employees to check if the lights were turned off when they were leaving the offices, telling them, “The universe does not allow waste.” 

That was Adam Neumann talking to WeWork employees in 2016, a year before SoftBank began dumping money into the company. It was Neumann recognizing a pre-SoftBank startup economic reality—that money wasn’t free. The rest is history. Masayoshi Son got Saudi Arabia to help him raise the largest ever tech investment fund in 2017. He encouraged money-losing expansion around the world. “In a fight, who wins?” Son reportedly asked Neumann in one meeting. “The smart guy or the crazy guy?” (Son said crazy was the right answer.)