Posts Tagged “WeWork”
Adam Neumann, the Israeli-born co-founder of co-working space giant WeWork (We Company) is stepping down as the company’s CEO amid allegations of misbehaviors, including self-dealings, ahead of an expected IPO (initial public offering).
Neumann will continue to serve as non-executive chairman of the board. In a statement released on Tuesday, Neumann said, “As co-founder of WeWork, I am so proud of this team and the incredible company.”
“While our business has never been stronger, in recent weeks, the scrutiny directed toward me has become a significant distraction, and I have decided that it is in the best interest of the company to step down as chief executive.”
The move came less than a week after the Wall Street Journal published a report detailing alleged strange behaviors on the part of Neumann and speculations that the company’s biggest investor, SoftBank, was looking to move him out of a leadership role. Other investors also criticized WeWork’s governance, business model, and its ability to be profitable.
Earlier this year, WeWork was valued at $47 billion and an IPO initially expected last week was postponed after it was estimated that the IPO valuation was a third of that sum – a sharp drop that made investors shaky. They were also “dismayed by the number of potential conflicts of interest” disclosed in the IPO prospectus, WSJ reported, including Neumann “leasing properties he owns back to the company and borrowing heavily against his stock.”
“Even some of We’s private investors said they were angered to learn that an entity Mr. Neumann controls sold the rights to the word ‘We’ to the company for almost $6 million – before public pressure led him to unwind the deal,” according to the report.
Neumann, the Wall Street Journal wrote, led WeWork “with unusual exuberance and excess,” combining “entrepreneurial vision, personal charisma and brash risk-taking [that] helped the company surpass $2 billion in annual revenue, and made it the country’s most valuable startup.”
“Now many of the same qualities that helped fuel his company’s breakneck growth in the private market are piling up as potential liabilities as the company prepares to go public – helmed by a CEO who looks little like a typical public-company chief,” according to the report.
Neumann founded WeWork in 2010 in New York alongside Miguel McKelvey. The company grew quickly, conquering shared workspaces worldwide in under a decade with now more than 500,000 members in 100 cities across 29 countries. One of its first international locations was Tel Aviv, where it now has seven sites. WeWork also works with enterprise customers (members with over 1,000 employees) and Fortune 500 companies, including major ones such as Microsoft, Facebook, Adidas, and Salesforce.
This article was originally posted by NoCamels.com. Featured article: Artificial Intelligence.
Diane Israel is a Chicago native and long-time supporter and advocate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She is also famous for her culinary recipes. Diane can be reached at Diane@IsraelOnIsrael.com
Learn more about Diane Israel. Also, see Diane Israel on LinkedIn.
Original reporting of this article appears in NoCamels.com. Congrats to Aidoc, WeWork, and Lishtot for making Time’s Top 50 “Genius Companies”!
Three Israeli firms were among fifty ventures elite by TIME Magazine for its list of fifty “genius companies” for 2018 revealed late last week and out there in newsstands.
It is the primary annual “genius companies” list by the prestigious magazine, renowned for its hard-hitting cowl photos. The publication same it asked its immense network of editors and correspondents “to nominate businesses that square measure inventing the longer term,” and evaluated candidates “based on key factors, together with originality, influence, success, and ambition.”
Companies on TIME’s list embody trade giants like Apple, Amazon, Airbnb, Disney, GoFundMe, Nike, and Lockheed Martin. Recent ventures embody Bird, the electrical scooters sharing company that in launched in urban center and Paris this summer, Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty cosmetics line, and therefore the genetic science testing company 23andMe.
AIDOC
Aidoc is a man-made intelligence-powered computer code that analyzes medical pictures of organs to spot the presence of diseases. It assists radiologists in expediting problem-spot detection through specific parameters like neuron-concentration, fluid-flow, and bone-density within the brain, spine, abdomen, and chest.
TIME wrote that “to date, its computer code has worn nearly 260,000 images, saving 50,000 hours of human work,” and therefore the technology is getting used in fifty medical facilities around the world.
Learn more about Diane Israel. Also, see Diane Israel on LinkedIn.
Aidoc was supported in 2016 by Guy Reiner, Elad Walach, and Michael Braginsky, graduates of the elite Israeli military program Talpiot, that trains recruits with advanced skills in science and technology to become analysis and development consultants.
“The quantity of knowledge out there has created associate degree overload,” Walach, 30, told TIME. “AI will offer the worth from the information that may extremely impact patient outcomes these days.”
Aidoc has raised $10.5 million thus far, closing a Series A funding spherical for $7 million in Apr 2017. In Dec, it declared that it received atomic number 58 (Conformité Européenne) marking for the world’s 1st business head and neck deep learning medical imaging resolution. It additionally has government agency approval to scan pictures for brain hemorrhages.
Walach same in an exceedingly statement that Aidoc was “truly proud to be operating with such a robust R&D team, that was able to develop a line of merchandise that created market traction vital enough to steer to the present call.”
“It is exciting to determine that radiology is back within the line of med-tech. we tend to square measure a lot of dedicated than ever to continue our half in operating towards addressing growing challenges in radiology, and in developing innovative solutions to resolve a number of the largest knowledge and imaging challenges of our generation,” he wrote.
Aidoc was named by NoCamels jointly of eight innovative Israeli startups confronting brain technical school.
LISHTOT
Lishtot, Hebrew for “to drink,” develops merchandise able to effectively and quickly observe contaminants in beverage – while not ever touching it. Lishtot’s TestDrop and TestDrop professional ($49.95) take a look at water quality at intervals some seconds via a hand-held keychain device that tests a sample electronically and returns a blue or red lightweight to point whether or not a water sample is nice to drink or not. they will take a look at for twenty contaminants together with E. coli, lead, arsenic, mercury, copper, chlorine, and macromolecule at Environmental Protection Agency and World Health Organization standards.
The Jerusalem-based company, co-founded by Dr. Alan Bauer, World Health Organization is chief somebody, and Netanel Raisch, World Health Organization is chief operating officer, additionally developed the Lishtot App, that permits users to report issues to utility firms and search, supported location, for knowledge concerning any contamination events, still as add videos, images, comments, and access their testing history.
“We wish to form a platform for beverage quality knowledge and data like nothing that exists these days,” Raisch told NoCamels earlier this year. “People haven’t any plan what’s in their water and it’s the second most essential resource that just about everybody on the earth pays for in a way or another. we expect folks need to understand a lot of concerning the water they drink and that we hope to cement Lishtot because the place everybody goes for information concerning their water.”
The TeStraw, a pen-shaped device presently in development, can provide users associate degree correct indication of specifically what kinds of contaminants square measure within the water sample, still because the specific concentration level. Another future device is that the TestPipe, a sophisticated water-monitoring product that checks the standard of water in residential homes. presently undergoing any development and analysis, the TestPipe is about to suit simply beneath any sink and connect with a LED-light show on the room regulator that, at any given moment, makes positive the faucet water isn’t contaminated.
The startup created international headlines this year with its innovative technical school, snagging 1st place in Jan at the Startup Night competition at the CES 2018 annual conference, the biggest technical school and innovation tradeshow of its kind.
Lishtot was additionally among eighteen Israeli firms elite in Apr for the India-Israel Innovation Challenge, that supports Indian and Israeli entrepreneurs in partnering for digital health, agriculture and water technology solutions in India. Company representatives flew to India with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a part of a business delegation.
WEWORK
Workspace empire WeWork was co-founded by Israeli businessperson Adam Neumann and Miguel McKelvey in 2010 in ny. the corporate has since mature to incorporate 373 locations in sixty-nine cities, together with ten in Israel, a majority in urban center.
Last year, when a $300 million investment by Japan’s Softbank, it became valued at over $20 billion and holds the title of the seventh most dear private-market start-up within the world.
The company has additionally commenced offshoots, launching WeLive, associate degree urban co-living community that has well-found flats, communal areas, and shared amenities.
Diane Israel is a Chicago native and long-time supporter and advocate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). She is also famous for her culinary recipes. Diane can be reached at Diane@IsraelOnIsrael.com