Last week, troubled flexible workspace group WeWork warned that “substantial doubt exists about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern”. The admission comes almost exactly five years after it held its now infamous 2018 ‘Summer Camp’ in, of all places, Tunbridge Wells in Kent.
In August 2018, we sent undercover journalist Thomas Hobbs along to the event to see ‘cult leader’ Adam Neumann in action. It was there that his wife Rebekah uttered the immortal line thanking followers for helping “men [like Adam] manifest their calling in life”, words subsequently picked up by New York magazine writer Reeves Wiedeman for his book Billion Dollar Loser and referenced in WeCrashed, the hit Apple TV+ series starring Jared Leto as Neumann and Anne Hathaway as Rebekah.
Five years on, Hobbs recalls the day he joined members-cum-disciples at the summer camp and sheds fresh light on the turning point moment when the cracks in the WeWork business started to show.
Perhaps my creeping paranoia was due to a lifelong obsession with horror movies. Nevertheless, I was convinced I was being followed.
It was a hot day back in August 2018 and I was at the WeWork Summer Camp for employees, held at a countryside retreat in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, and featuring a headline performance from pop princess Lorde. Having already seen the company’s messianic chief executive Adam Neumann deliver a rambling speech about WeWork opening schools and hospitals in every major city in the world, I decided to conduct some spontaneous vox pop interviews, asking attendees why they were so keen to drink this man’s Kool-Aid. My chats with attendees seemed to follow a similar pattern, the starry-eyed WeWorkers worshipping Neumann as though he was the Dali Lama.
Things were going relatively smoothly until I asked someone whether she agreed that the organisation was akin to a cult and she looked at me as if I had insulted a recently deceased relative. It turns out I had accidentally exposed the fact I was an undercover journalist – writing a cover feature for Property Week examining WeWork’s plans for world domination and rumours of a cult-like atmosphere within its head office – not to another mere acolyte but to someone important in the WeWork hierarchy.
“Who signed off on this!?” snapped the officious looking woman, who turned out to be a WeWork PR. I swiftly found a way to get out of our awkward conversation by escaping to a nearby green juice bar, but for the next hour, whenever I looked over my shoulder, the PR wasn’t too far behind. I also noticed two men who seemed to be observing me from afar as I purchased a vegan beer and rubbed shoulders with a white man with dreads wearing a T-shirt adorned with the words: “I stand with Black Women!”
Perhaps it was my overactive imagination, but it was reminiscent of 1973 folk horror film The Wicker Man. I felt a bit like Police Sergeant Neil Howie, who slowly realises he is being followed by the minions of Sun God-worshipping Lord Summerisle. Clearly, I was unlikely to meet the same gruesome fate as Howie, who was burned to death inside a giant wooden effigy, but the fact these thoughts crept into my head were a reflection of just how surreal the whole experience was.
Everything about the camp was weird, particularly for a Brit. I witnessed people sat in ceremonial circles chanting corporate spiel and peered into meditation tents filled with humming hipsters. There were axe throwing targets and flower power stages where dramatic TED-style talks were being delivered by slick Goop-ified WeWork executives. The most bizarre speech was courtesy of Neumann’s wife, Rebekah, a first cousin of Gwyneth Paltrow, who spoke passionately about how women must “help men [like Adam] manifest their calling in life” without a hint of sarcasm in her voice.
It became abundantly clear that my negative line of questioning wasn’t welcome and having conducted more than enough interviews, I finally decided to leave. One of the hired agency workers running the bus service back to the train station half-joked: “It’s a bit like a cult here, isn’t it?” He wasn’t wrong, and frankly, it was a relief to hear him say it — it was now obvious I wasn’t the only person who felt like something was off.
What had started life as a pretty straight forward B2B commission to take a closer look at the corporate culture of one of the world’s fastest rising companies and gauge whether WeWork’s desire to be listed was realistic now had all the ingredients required for a piece of Gonzo journalism.
The reaction to the subsequent feature, entitled The Cult of We Work and published in Property Week, was dramatic. I was interviewed by New York magazine writer Reeves Wiedeman for his book Billion Dollar Loser, looking into the historic fall of WeWork; CNBC had me on as a pundit; and an Apple TV series, WeCrashed (starring Oscar winners Anne Hathaway and Jared Leto), featured scenes and lines of dialogue inspired by my feature.
In hindsight, I was one of the first reporters to raise questions about the corporate culture at WeWork and Neumann’s messianic persona. Until that point, the business was widely eulogised. There was none of the disillusionment there is today about business leaders with God complexes. Today, in the wake of Neumann’s ousting in 2019, WeWork’s ongoing struggles and its admission last week that there is “substantial doubt” over its future, I look back on what happened at that summer camp five years ago as an early, if not the first, chapter in the cautionary tale of what happens when a company CEO believes too much in their own genius and prioritises building a following over driving sustainable profitability.
As for the marching band that exclusively played “Seven Nation Army” at the festival and gathered up WeWork workers having too much fun so they could attend yet another corporate speech, it ruined The White Stripes for me forever. Thanks, Adam.
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