Biblical: WeWork founder claims ‘Adam’ trademark
Jackal Pan/Visual China Group via Getty Images
When WeWork’s CEO-in-exile cum con artist Adam Neumann was paid a whopping $5.9 million for use of the word “we.”, the world went mad. How is it that a pronoun is worth as much as a 129-year-old Ottoman masterpiece ”Quranic Instruction, Green Mosque" by Osman Hamdi Bey? Something is clearly wrong with this world powered by blockchain and kombucha.
Neumann is back in the spotlight this week to complete his trademark-focused entrepreneurial gambit by claiming the use of name ‘Adam’ from the Book of Genesis. Real estate emperor’s new clothes will be sponsored by lifelong royalty payments from any Adam-related entertainment & religious content (sorry for the tautology). Has anyone done that before? No, Adam is the first man (see what I did there?).
For those who are not very familiar with Judeo-Christian and Islamic human race pioneer, here is a Blinkist version of the story. Adam lived in a luxurious five-star SoftBank-sponsored resort Garden of We. He had a private jet, jacuzzi and marijuana. Life was good. Too drunk with success, Adam fell off a corporate ladder and broke his rib. When he removed the cast, it was a woman. Her name was Eve or Rebekah, I think. They kept partying until they ate from the tree of financial knowledge of good, evil and pre-IPO due diligence. Furious about disobedience, God shouted 'I shut my eyes and pretend nothing happened’, and gave Adam a $1.7 billion one-way ticket out of the Paradise.
People say Masayoshi Son ‘went soft’ and ‘lost his Vision’ by feeding ‘the monster he created’ with such a hefty dollar diet. But he has to save WeWork, SoftBank and Adam’s carefree retirement - whatever the price is. We have to understand and despise him accordingly. After all, it’s not that easy to run the Japan’s second largest publicly traded company with endlessly deep pockets and impressive ability to forgive strategic oversights.
Maybe Adam just knows too much? Maybe he is Silicon Valley’s Jho Low? Or maybe, as Adam would say himself, “All I have are genius thoughts’. Is it just me, or is it getting crazier out there?