SXSW Review: Tales from the Cult of Adam Neumann in 'WeWork: or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn'
In the summer of 2019, the WeWork saga was rampant. Initial public offerings (IPOs) were reaching higher and higher levels (that continue to this day), and WeWork was just another tech unicorn in a long line of high profile companies that had planned on making their public offerings that year. The other major IPO of that time was Uber, and just like Uber, both companies had former CEOs who eviscerated billions of dollars of market value in the span of a few weeks because of their unapologetic god complexes and sheer commitment to defy reality.
Adam Neumann, the six foot five CEO and Silicon Valley cartoon character, had in essence peddled WeWork as a technology company which was a far cry from what the company actually did. WeWork’s business model entailed leasing property from a landlord, renovating the space to give it a new look, and then subleasing it to people and businesses who wanted a co-op style of work. Any outsider with a bare grasp of reality could have told you that this is not a technology company, but within the occupational cult of WeWork and through his own deft charisma, Neumann was able to convince investors that his company was worth *$47 billion*. The tales of which are nothing short of amazing.
WeWork: or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn documents the rise and fall of the infamous office co-op company from both the inside and out. Getting testimony from former employees, lawyers, business professionals, scholars, journalists, and the ilk, WeWork constructs a traditionally formatted documentary of anecdotal evidence to paint its rightfully scathing rebuke of Adam Neumann and his unhinged superiority complex.
The doc goes through the motions of building up his character — what he did before WeWork, how he started the company, etc. — and proceeds to depict how one individual could create a top-down work culture fixated on Neumann himself. With an infectious cult of personality as the CEO, it doesn’t take long for the viewer to recognize how woefully removed from reality Neumann actually was.
As the film moves closer to the inevitable and titular $47 billion valuation, the more insane narratives start to pile on. Mandatory work retreats of excess and debauchery. Inter-manager competitions to reduce headcount numbers. Burn rates of billions and billions of dollars with warped GAAP definitions that misrepresented profitability to the public. Pulling venture capital from SoftBank’s Vision Fund, an investment fund dedicated to future technologies that will shape humanity, for nothing more than an office subleasing company.
The doc does an apt job conveying the mass scale of monetary waste at the hands of WeWork, as if someone lit a mountain of cash on fire everyday and did so non-stop for nine years, but make no mistake, the primary focus is on Neumann. Anecdote after anecdote, testimony after testimony, WeWork paints a portrait of how a dellusional CEO became consumed by grandeur and created one of the most publicized corporate implosions since Enron while simultaneously examining the radical and reckless ideologies of tech start ups that breed destructive human resource practices. And ultimately that’s what you’ll take away from this doc — that is if you can accept a blindsiding message about COVID tacked on right at the end. It doesn’t blow the doors off documentary filmmaking by any means, but sometimes its just nice to hear deranged stories about “tech” CEOs and the follies they propagate throughout corporate America. Fun times indeed.
—
Cinema As We Know It’s SXSW Online 2021 Coverage
You’re laughin’? There’re more SXSW reviews to read and you’re laughin’?
