Life inside the Wework bubble

How a boozy summer festival was all in a day’s work for Weworkers

In mid-august 2013, a seaplane circled over Raquette Lake, a picturesque vacation spot in the Adirondack Mountains. It skidded on to the surface and slowed to a stop, bobbing in the water. Adam Neumann stepped out. Wework was throwing a summer-campthemed party 275 miles north of New York City, and all its staff and members were invited. Its staff attended for free, and members paid nominal sums to join… With more VC money in hand, Wework wanted to show members and staffers alike that Wework was the complete opposite of a sterile corporate firm. The startup took over an entire summer camp… Hundreds of attendees waited on Manhattan street corners, where they were picked up by a caravan of green charter buses. The drive was nearly five hours, but the free-flowing booze helped the time pass. Once they made it through the mountains to sprawling Raquette Lake, the passengers traded the bus for a boat, which ferried them across the lake to cabins. The property was packed with everything a 12-year-old at sleepaway camp could dream of. For three days, the attendees could rotate among archery, high ropes courses, rock climbing, swimming, canoeing, motorboating and softball. Throughout the weekend, there were pie-eating contests and giant team games, all doused with alcohol. Neumann lorded around the camp and cut to the head of the line where attendees waited for boats to take them waterskiing and elsewhere on the lake. At night, the camp turned into a music festival, complete with lasers and smoke machines. Eight bands were brought in. It was a mix of indie rock – Ra Ra Riot was the headliner – and EDM like White Panda. The crowd danced with glowstick headbands. When Ra Ra Riot played a set, Neumann had them deviate from their act to play Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’. The CEO sang on stage alongside the band. Neumann’s VIP treatment – even in a campground – marked a contrast to his co-founder. Miguel Mckelvey didn’t fly in by plane, instead opting to take the bus along with the employees. Around that time, Neumann stopped informing Mckelvey of certain key decisions, including some that took place during private discussions with Wework’s directors… If there was any discord below the surface, it wasn’t apparent to the hardpartying Wework faithful who had gathered upstate. On one of the nights, Neumann got up on the band stage to speak and address everyone. ‘Thank you. Thank you for being part of something that actually has a meaning,’ he said, clutching a microphone, his face taken over by a big smile. ‘The thing that all of us know is, if you want to succeed in this world, you have to build something that has intention…’ he said, looking out over the crowd below. ‘Every one of us is here because it has a meaning – because we want to do something that actually makes the world a better place,’ he yelled. His voice continuing to rise, quickening in pace, he added: ‘And we want to make money doing it!’ Extracted from The Cult of We: Wework and the Great Startup Delusion by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell (Mudlark, £20), which is out now