8/1/2023 0 Comments Webook scam![]() ![]() After selling Green Desk for a cool $3 million to their then-landlord, Neumann and McKelvey recalibrated the Green Desk model on a new scale: subtracting the environmental angle, adding a Manhattan office, and renaming their creation “WeWork.” When Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey co-founded WeWork in 2010, they pulled from a company they had already invented: “Green Desk,” billed to enthusiastic Brooklynites as an eco-friendly coterie of desks for rent, where the growing class of digitally-employed, remotely-sourced laborers could chip in their dues in exchange for workspace, plush provisions, and community. On Fortune’s “ Unicorn List,” last updated in 2016, you’ll notice the names of some of the brightest stars of the “unicorn economy”-Spotify, Pinterest-plus companies that have proven themselves to perform less than admirably with time: Theranos, and, of course, WeWork. If you don’t know the word, you’re at least familiar with some of the companies to which it’s been applied: Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Instacart. In 2013, venture capitalist Aileen Lee coined the term “unicorn,”-that is, a start-up that accrues investments over $1 billion. But when WeWork-a co-working startup with a bananas valuation of $47 billion-imploded, announcing up to 4,000 layoffs worldwide, I couldn’t stop wondering: Could it be that the biggest “scam” of our generation is what’s currently happening to our labor force? And if so, why does nobody seem to care about it? ![]() Icons like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg have created the legend-familiar to investor, consumer, and worker alike-that to “move fast and break things” is the way to get things done that nothing is impossible if you simply say it isn’t.Īnd then Trump got elected, and the stock market soared while wages continued to stagnate, and 2019 became “the year of the scam.” Jia Tolentino wrote “ The Story of a Generation in Seven Scams,” and we obsessed over Elizabeth Holmes, and Fyre Fest, and Instagram influencers, and the dangerous mythology of Silicon Valley. Our contemporary economy is predicated on a myth: the beloved brainchild of the overlooked (boy) genius, some ground- and rule-breaking idea that will change the world (and, of course, make gazillions). Falling somewhere between blissed-out new age guru and frothing capitalist, the start-up founders most widely covered in the media tend to be young, unconventional (Always barefoot! Loves weed!), and cocksure, capable of sweet-talking their companies into massive, previously unthinkable valuations with grandiose visions of what their technology offers not just the market, but the world. Maybe you also have a sense of the typical successful start-up founder. This is the millennial workplace: where, if the pleasure-to-work ratio has been calculated correctly, work is your favorite place to be. If I say “start-up,” you get the idea: wide open windows with dramatic views, luxurious amenities designed to blur the line between “work” and “life,” meditation, hammocks, kombucha on tap, free staff T-shirts with cheesy catchphrases (“Thank God It’s Monday!”) and epically raucous parties. ![]()
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