New York/San Francisco | When Adam Neumann was studying at New York’s Baruch College 20 years ago, he pitched an idea he called “concept living” to its start-up competition: a communal twist on apartment rentals that sounded like a student dorm for urban professionals.
His professor quickly dismissed it, telling him that no entrepreneur could raise enough money to change how people live. Neumann dropped out to launch a few other start-ups (which also fizzled) before founding what he dubbed another kind of physical social network: WeWork, the co-working business whose rise and fall was to become a byword for start-up hubris.
