Adam Neumann is doing interviews again, talking about failing spectacularly in front of the whole world and getting back up.
WeWork peaked at $47B valuation. Then the crash happened. Company imploded. Failed IPO, which later led to bankruptcy.
Three years later, Andreessen Horowitz wrote him a $350M check for his new company. The biggest single check in the firm’s history.
Adam is now telling the story himself, in a 2 hour interview with Steven Bartlett. Why? Because he’s now taking ownership of his own narrative, and I bet we’re going to see more of him on social media from here on.
But my question is: Could this comeback have happened in Europe? I honestly don’t think so. Not at that speed, and not with that kind of backing.
In the US, failure reads as experience. Andreessen Horowitz even said that’s why they invested in him. Because he got back up and tried again after that big of a public failure. Only very few outliers do that.
In Europe, it reads more as a permanent record. For starters, the culture around failure is different here. Secondly, capital behaves differently. Smaller funds, longer memory.
Only one of the two continents hands you a second act like this. And only one kind of founder goes out and tells the story himself.
Am I wrong? Would he have been funded again in Europe? Would we accept him trying again here? Curious what you actually think.
