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Adam Neumann is a New York-based Israeli entrepreneur, investor, and co-founder, and former CEO of WeWork. Adam Neumann was born in Israel in 1979. He spent his childhood in both the United States and Israel, lived on an Israeli kibbutz as a teenager, attended the Israeli Naval Academy, and served as an officer in the Israeli Navy between 1997 and 2002. In 2002, he returned to the United States and enrolled in Baruch College in New York.
While in college, Neumann founded a women's shoe company that failed to gain traction and Krawlers, a baby clothing line company that produced pants with built-in kneepads. Neumann dropped out of Baruch College to pursue entrepreneurial activities full time, four credits short of the requirements for graduation. Neumann eventually completed the required credits via independent study and earned his degree from Baruch College in 2017.
In 2008, Adam Neumann co-founded Green Desk, a shared-workspace business with a focus on sustainability, with Miguel McKelvey. Neumann and McKelvey sold their shares in GreenDesk in 2009 and used the proceeds, along with a $15 million investment from Brooklyn real estate developer Joel Schreiber, to found WeWork in 2010. Neumann became the CEO of the co-working space company, a position he held until 2019. WeWork expanded to over 12,000 employees in 485 locations in twenty-eight countries, and in 2019 the company was valued at $47 billion.
After WeWork's failed IPO, amid controversy over WeWork's value, the profitability of the company's business model, the company's culture, and Neumann's leadership, Neumann was ousted from WeWork and resigned as CEO in September 2019. When investor SoftBank bailed out WeWork on October 2019 in for $9.5 billion, Neumann received a golden parachute that included $1 billion in stock, $500 million in credit for loan repayment, and a $185 million consulting fee.
In 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported that Neumann had become a multifamily real estate investor and landlord. Entities related to Neumann purchased over $1 billion in majority stakes in over 4,000 apartment units in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta, Nashville, and other cities in the Southern United States.
The New York Times reported on August 15, 2022 that the venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz would invest approximately $350 million in Neumann’s residential real estate brand, Flow, which is set to launch in 2023. (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/15/business/dealbook/adam-neumann-wework-startup.html)
In 2021, Forbes listed Neumann's net worth at $750 million, having dropped off the Forbes billionaires list in 2020. Adam Neumann was listed number eight on the Forbes America's Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40 list in 2016, was named in Forbes Richest In Tech and Global Game Changers lists in 2017, and was number 478 on the Forbes billionaires list in 2019.
Adam Neumann has invested in GoTo Global, EquityBee, The Faraday Grid, InterCure, Hometalk, Selina, Tunity, Feature.fm, and Pins. Notable exits of Adam Neumann include InterCure and Hometalk.
