The Real Deal New York

Adam Neumann is the co-founder, with Miguel McKelvey, of WeWork, an office rental business characterized by locations in fashionable neighborhoods, with interior design and amenities catering to young technology and media freelance workers, startups, and small businesses. The business, founded in Soho in 2010, has made Neumann a billionaire on paper. His previous, less successful ventures included a business selling women's shoes and children's clothing. The WeWork business model grew out of another Neumann-McKelvey office-sharing startup, GreenDesk, which was focused on environmental sustainability. Separately, Neumann, who was raised by a single mother in Israel, is working on an office-to-residential condominium conversion of the top 25 floors of the Woolworth Building. He spent two years of his early childhood in Indianapolis, where his mom trained as a doctor, and then on a kibbutz near the Gaza Strip. Neumann served for five years as Israeli naval officer, then moved to New York to manage his sister's modeling career while taking business courses at Baruch College. As of 2015, he lived in lower Manhattan with his wife, Rebekah, a filmmaker, and two daughters, Elle and Loulou. Neumann has dyslexia.