The non-death of Adam Neumann: alt-exiting, serial-founding, and failing up in Silicon Valley venture capital

Tim White

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Adam Neumann surely ranks among the most disgraced corporate leaders of our time. The former WeWork founder and CEO, who was ousted from the company in 2019, became emblematic of the corporate excesses and hollow boosterism of post-dotcom Silicon Valley. In the public imagination his name is synonymous with failure and fraud. But to the outrage of many he is back on the scene, securing unprecedented backing from venture capital titan Andreessen Horowitz for his new real estate venture Flow. This essay unpacks the non-death of Adam Neumann, interrogating why someone seemingly so untouchable is being funded at the highest level by one of Silicon Valley’s most infamous VCs. I argue that, through his atypical ‘exiting’ of WeWork, whereby he extracted billions from the company without initial public offering or acquisition, Neumann attained a level of wealth and power that made him ripe for reinvestment. The case challenges the liberal ‘fake-it-till-you-make-it’ myth of Silicon Valley meritocracy. US tech today increasingly takes the form of billionaire VCs funding already-powerful, deceptive and ruthless repeat founders. It is this increasingly consolidated and cynical system that enables Adam Neumann to ‘fail up’; rewarded rather than punished for his extreme misdemeanors.

Keywords: venture capital; founder; Silicon Valley; real estate; US finance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F3 G3 J01 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 13 pages
Date: 2026-02-10
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Published in Finance and Society, 10, February, 2026. ISSN: 2059-5999

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