Summary of Billion Dollar Loser Book by Reeves Wiedeman

Adam Neumann was not born with the brash self-assurance he’s had since high school. He was the son of Avivit and Doron Neumann, two doctors who met while studying medicine at Ben-Gurion University. Doron went into ophthalmology, while Avivit became an oncologist. They married in 1978, and Avivit gave birth to Adam in the desert city of Beersheba a year later, when she was twenty-two.

Avivit and Doron split two weeks before their tenth wedding anniversary, and Adam subsequently said their divorce marked the most difficult time of his life. As his mother dragged Adam and Adi, his younger sister, to various residences, he grew resentful of her. The three Neumanns moved to Indianapolis shortly after the couple divorced, where Avivit completed her medical residency. At an already challenging period, young Adam Neumann struggled to adapt to a new environment and a new country where he didn't speak the language (the American government even attempted striking the final ‘n’ from his family surname). Avivit described her son as “falling apart.”

In 1990, the Neumanns returned to Israel after two years in Indiana to live in Nir Am, a tiny village a mile from the Gaza Strip, in a stony desert dotted with date palms and pomegranate bushes. Nir Am is a kibbutz, one of the visionary communities that first identified themselves via a blend of socialism and Zionism and had sprouted up in Israel during the previous decades to construct self-sustaining colonies throughout the country.

Miguel McKelvey, like Neumann, grew up under unique circumstances. In the 1960s, his mother, Lucia, lived in Taos, New Mexico, when she and her three friends became mothers simultaneously. According to McKelvey, the fathers left one after the other, and the newly single moms formed a matriarchal collective. They lived apart while raising their children together and discovered ways to survive outside traditional social structures and expectations. McKelvey went on to the University of Oregon to study architecture, graduating with a 4.0 GPA.

WeWork's co-founders' upbringing and life experiences served as crucial spurs in the company's development. Are you in charge of a firm or planning to launch one? You can learn from the highs and lows of the WeWork founders.