I want to offer contrarian take. I can't count number of founders who found refuge at WeWork, thrived there, met their co-founders, customers and first employee

I want to offer contrarian take. I can't count number of founders who found refuge at WeWork, thrived there, met their co-founders, customers and first employees. We Work was an essential ingredient of gig culture and founding of countless new companies. Neumann's original vision was, and, in fact continues to be seductive and revolutionary. The incumbent players in these business were simply way too behind in meeting needs of modern startups. Neumann used age-old strategy to ignite this business: throw VC money to create foundation for business while doing that at loss. When he signed the over the top leases, no one - and I repeat no one - ever thought we were going to be off of 0% interest rates. No one thought real estate will plunge. It made sense at the time and VCs threw even more money as everyone held same view. In alternate universe, COVID would have never happened, QEs would have continued for another decade and WeWork would have been highly profitable monopoly. This is not to say Neumann acted in unethical manner. He used WeWork cash and assets as his personal property. But keep in mind VCs always thought of WeWork as his "family business" just like how they thought of Facebook as Zuck's family business.