WeWork

“So he had a couple of startups One of them, both of them, I think, were baby clothing companies, and he had sort of an idea for innovating in baby clothing by putting knee pads in baby's pants, so to protect their knees. They were called crawlers.”

“And Adam and I, like, we, when we talked about this, we're like, this is a hundred year challenge. It's not like, hey, we're building a company so we can sell it and move on. We're doing this because we think this is the most interesting and biggest challenge …”

“We did have a non-compete with our green desk partners. So we had a limited number of areas we could go. So we were looking in San Francisco and also in Manhattan.”

“I think when we first opened the first floor, we were probably in the 70 to 80% range. And then within the first couple months, the first two floors were pretty much full.”

“And we had no building. We had no signed lease, even, and we proposed a forty-five million dollar valuation. And that's pretty high for a business that is unproven. And so he said, yes, you know, he said, okay, I want to be a third partner.”

“I mean, back then we did all incandescent lighting. To do that in a workspace at the time, it just didn't exist. You had like a cool Brooklyn restaurant in an old auto garage. You had, you know, other people say doing boutique hotels with that vibe, but in wor…”

“By the way, if her childhood story sounded somewhat familiar, it's probably because you heard her brother Miguel's version on a previous episode of this show. He's Miguel McKelvey, founder of the multi-billion dollar company WeWork. Miguel also grew up in that…”

“There were five women who were all really good friends, you know, best friends for a long time. They had all pretty much decided to have children without the fathers in the picture just because it was a time when they wanted to break free from normal sort of a…”

“We did have a non-compete with our green desk partners. So we had a limited number of areas we could go. So we were looking in San Francisco and also in Manhattan.”

“And Adam and I, like, we, when we talked about this, we're like, this is a hundred year challenge. It's not like, hey, we're building a company so we can sell it and move on. We're doing this because we think this is the most interesting and biggest challenge …”

“One of them, both of them, I think were baby clothing companies. And he had sort of an idea for innovating in baby clothing by putting knee pads in baby's pants to protect their knees. They were called crawlers.”

“I think when we first opened the first floor, we were probably in the 70 to 80% range. And then within the first couple months, the first two floors were pretty much full.”

“And we had no building, we had no signed lease even, and we proposed a forty-five million dollar valuation. And that's pretty high for a business that is unproven, and so he said yes. You know, he said, okay, I want to be a third partner, and so I'll commit to…”

“He's Miguel McKelvey, founder of the multi-billion dollar company WeWork. Miguel also grew up in that all women's collective, and like his sister Sadie, he also rebelled against it by going into business.”

“I signed for a WeWork office starting May one, back when WeWork was still very small. I think they had, like, two buildings in New York. And then I officially registered as a LLC June one in Delaware.”

“We were the first, I think, visible high profile company to go public post WeWork, which meant there was a ton of negative sentiment around companies that were investing capital into their business and around, you know, these, the startup And side of things.”

“You can look at Adam as an example of a person who did a bunch of things and was attacked and vilified and sort of canceled. There was some shadow in him, and there's some shadow in me, there's some shadow in all of us, and what's the best thing is for us to b…”

“It wasn't like we were overextended in our ability to execute on the business model. I think what we were overextended in was the Ability that we could get the continuous capital we would need to continue that expansion, you know, and those are two completely …”

“No, I haven't. And I think a lot of the reason for that was that I was always trying to make sense of it myself, and I don't really feel like participating in someone else's agenda was helpful to me in, in any way.”

“When SoftBank made that investment, it opened us up to a new way of thinking about how do you build a company and the way that, you know, I would say they prescribed and we agreed to was that capturing as much market share as possible was the way to go.”

“What I saw him trying to do through that process was save the company, you know, in every step of the way, his goal was to preserve WeWork and to preserve what we had built.”

“The challenge that we are facing is that it's not that those losses were a surprise. They were by design. You know, again, we were a fast growing company and we were investing in our growth. And so we were making the decision to lose money.”

“In the case of the things you talked about in terms of we live and we grow, I actually think both of those were really good experiments, you know, for us to be looking at other ways to build our company, you know, with a more diversified offering. I think thos…”

“If you look about what did the market want, it completely changed after Uber's IPO. And all of a sudden there was a shift in terms of the market narrative.”

“Sort of out of sight, out of mind. It's not a great model for entrepreneurship. You know, I think you have to be responsible for everything when you're a founder.”

“WeWork, by the way, still exists today. There are about 330 locations around the world.”