WeWork co-founder Miguel McKelvey discusses managing rapid retail rollout projects for American Apparel while working at the architecture firm Jordan Parnass Digital Media.
Opinion
McKelvey: WeWork failed on capital assumptions, not operational execution
“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 …”
Opinion
McKelvey: Adam Neumann was trying to save WeWork during 2019 crisis
“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.”
Disclosure
McKelvey: SoftBank pushed WeWork to prioritize market share over profitability
“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.”
Opinion
McKelvey: WeLive and WeGrow were good experiments with real potential
“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…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
McKelvey: WeWork's massive pre-IPO losses were deliberate investments in growth
“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.”
Opinion
McKelvey: Vilifying and punishing Adam Neumann for mistakes does not serve society
“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…”