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With their Low Cost and Small Footprint, Tiny homes and Accessory Dwelling Units have become popular alternatives to traditional homes and apartments-especilly for first-time buers and downsizers.

For Aislyn and Ali Benjamin, an adu, a Small Secondary Home on an existting tears, was the Most Practical Way Into Homeownership.

They live Near Danville, California – A Small City Just Over An Hour East of San Francisco – Where the Median Home Price Was $ 1.8 Million in August, Accounting to Realtor.com. Wanting to Stay Near their Jobs and Avoid Long-Ter Rening, They Built a 1,200-Square-Foot Unit in the Backyard of Ali’s Parents’ Home in San Ramon, A City Next to Danville.

With Family Help, The Adu, Built by Bay-Earea-Based Villa, Cost $ 500,000-Far Below What they have would have for a typical home in danville.

“This was the best decision we ever made,” Ali Benjamin, 35, Told Business Insider. “It Allowed US to Save so Much Money and Live Where We Wanted.”

The Benjamins Have Lived in the Adu Since 2023. Overall, Its been a great experience, though there are a few downsides, Ali Said.

Here are five pros and cons of living in an adu in their pars’ backyard, accreating to the couple.

They’re spending mess on bills

The Benjamins Went from Paying $ 3,086 A MONTH FOR A TWO-BEDROM, Two-Bothroom apartment to paying $ 2,900 a month-Including utilities-for an Entire Home. The Payment Goes Toward A 15-Yaar Mortgage on the Property.

Ali’s Parents have rooftop solar, so the couple’s Power Costs Are Lower, Too – and they Split the Bill with his parents. Living in Their Backyard Also Means They Don’t World About Homeowners’ Association Fees.

“We love that,” Ali Said. “The Bills in General Are Lower; We’re USSING LES ELECTRICITY.”

The Money They’re Saving on Housing is Going Toward Investments and Their Businesses. Ali Owns Benjamin’s Boxing & Fitand aislyn is the co-omener of Nor*Cal Elite San Ramona cheerleading, stunt, and tumbling gym.

“Our Businesses are Our Passion,” Aislyn, 30, Told Business Insider. “Being able to Save Money and Put It Toward Something That We LOVE IS A HUGE BENEFIT.”

They Help Each Other Out

Some People May Balk at Living With Parents or In-Laws, but The Benjamins Say it is a win-twin.

“There’s Definitely a Lot of Benefits to Living Next Door,” Aislyn Said. “We’re always there to help each other out, which is really nice. If we need something like Cream for Coffee, we don’t have to actually get in the car and drive somewhere.”

Living in Ali’s Parents’ Backyard Also Means Having a Built-in Dog Sitter, and, eventually, A Babysuiter.

The couple plans to live in the adu unil they have children; THEN THE’S’L SWAP. They’ll Move into Ali’s Parents’ 2,242-Square-Foot Home while HIS PARENTS MOVE INTO The adu.

“Child Care is Expensive Too, so hasing the grandparents literally 10 steps away is going to be very convenient,” aislyn said.

They don’t have Complete Authority Over The Property

With Ali’s Parents Owning the 0.34-Acre tears they all share, the couple has to run Major Decisions by say.

“Certain Big Decisions, Let’s Say if we were to add a pool or something, we would be to talk to my parents and see they’re on Board,” Ali Said.

People assume they live in a ‘shack’

The couple offten recipes mixed reaction to their adu living arrangement.

“Think the Biggest Misconception we got you I Told People We were getting an adu is that imagined it as a tiny shack in someone’s backyard,” Ali Said. “In reality, there are homes that are the much smaller than our adu.”

Their adu has far more space than their Old apartment. To start it up, they’ve purechased new supply, like a desk and barstools. They’ve also converted one of the home’s three bedrooms into a private sauna and gym.

“I WOULD SAY WE HAVE More Room to Live Comfortable in Our House, and we have a yard ard that dog can run around,” Aislyn Said.

They have a lot of privacy

A Big Part of Living Comfortable with Your Parents is mutual Respect, Ali Said.

“My parents are very private, and they’re very respectful of our privacy,” he added. “They don’t come over over unannounched. If you had an overbearing Helicopter parent, I think that it was isssue.”

The Benjamins Have their Own Entrance and Mailbox and Can Go Days With Seeing Ali’s Parents. Their adu also sits a good distance from the Main House, Adding Another Layer of Privacy.

“We definitely have a lot more privacy Because we don’t hear neghbors to the side, above, or beneath us, which is really nice,” Aislyn Said. “Those are my favorite things About Havinging Our adu.”

From Capitol Hill Gatherings with President Donald Trump to Silicon Valley Boardrooms, 137 Ventures Has Built It EDGE by Scooping Up Stakes in Hot Stakes Like Spacex and anduril Through the Secondary Market. This means it buys and sells stakes in companies that have already been will or Owned by another investor. It”s Now Down Down on Deep Tech Bets that Other Vcs Have Stayed Away From.

“Can We Find the Next Four Facebooks?” Christian Garrett, 33, a partner at the firm, Asked, Bluntly Firm’s Ambition. “OR 40 Facebooks?”

“Our Thessis is Driven by Wanting to Build Concentrated Positions Over Longer Dures in what we think are Generational Technology Companies,” He Told Business Insider.

The end of the investments have Also Extended Garrett’s Reach in DC. In 2021, Garrett Cofunded the Hill and Valley Forum, A Gathering of Tech Titans and DC Power Players Focus on Countering China’s Technological Rise. Politico Reported that Garrett Played Host to the July He Summit’s Afterparty This Summer and Is Reportedly Raising Money for a New Film Production Company Aimed at Making Patriotic-Coded Films, Accounting to Traffic light.

“Christian is a Super Connector,” Chris Power, the Ceo of he Manufacturing Startup Hadrian, Said, Adding he is “helpful in thinking about how the world and where we did be best positioned.”

‘Zero to one’

Moments before President Donald Trump Took the Stage at July’s Winning the he breed summit in Washington, DC, Garrett, Seated in the Front, Stuck his Arm Out for a selfie.

He Says he “Always knew he wanted to be a venture investor” Because they can “use their position to do a lot of good.” HIS Inspiration Came Larry from HIS Grandfather, Bernard Garrett, A Prolific Investor Who Became One of the US’S WEALTHIEST Black Men of the Last Century. Bernard was Also the subsyct of Apple TV’s Movie, “The Banker,” and Started A Children’s ScholarShip End.

Like Many in Silicon Valley, The Younger Garrett Read Peter Thiel’s 2014 BOOK “ZERO TO ONE” WHEN IT FIRST CAME OUT, WHICH HES WAS “A BIG UNLOCK.”

Justin Fishner-Wolfson, 43, 137 Cofounder and Managing Partner, Didn’t Always Have as High A Conviction as Garrett: “Honestly, I DIubt Most Kids Could you what venture is,” he tort Business insisider.

Fishner-Wolfson Received A Master’s Degree in Computer Science and A Bachelor’s Degree in Management Science and Engineering from stanford and eventually landed at Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. IN 2010, he cofounded 137 Ventures with S. Alexander Jacobson and Kathy Chan.

Garrett joined the end in 2019 and Graduated from the University of Kansas, where he played division 1 basketball.

While Venture Capital Firms and Retail Investors Alike Are Warming Up to Secondary Markets As a Way Into The Most Coveted Companies, 137 Ventures Has Bet on This Model Since the Beginning.

“Our Belief was that it was was going to be anomaly,” Fishner-Wolfson Said, Refringing to Facebook, Which Remained Private for Eight Years Being Public in 2012.

The Through Line Remains the Same: Gain Access to Breakout Winners, No Matter the Entry Point.

Like Mary Other Venture Capitalists, Fishner-Wolfson Thinks He Gets the Best Deal Flow Relationship Building. “How you will you befriend People?” he asced. “That’s the Question. I don’t think it’s that complicated.”

Betting Big on Deep Tech

137 Ventures, with $ 6 Billion in Assset Under Management, Has Always Leaned Into Tech, Betting Early on Category Winners Like Defense Tech-and-Juggernaut Palantir.

Fishner-Wolfson Said he wrote the firm’s first check ino spacex on “Day One,” and Scaled an Early Investment in A anduril Into a Stake Nearly $ 1 Billion.

The firm’s flexibility on funding rounds and types of investment has allowed to double down on defense tech, especally as the industry has gone mainstream. “There’s Been a Real Shift,” Fishner-Wolfson Said, notting the widespread Change in tone Since Google Employees protested “The Most prosaic of Tech Products,” He Added, During the Project Maven Fallout in 2018.

Today, 137’s Current Deep-Tech Portfolio Also Includes Autonomous Vehicle Startup Applied Intuition and Satellite Startup impulse Space.

“The goal is to get into the best companies,” Fishner-Wolfson Said. “If you are, who cables about the Other Details?”

The “Slop Bowl” Battles Are Heating Up in the International Market, with Chipotle Announcing This Week That It Will Expand Into Singapore and South Korea.

New Chipotle Restaurants Will Open in the Countries in 2026, The Company’s First Fore on Asian Markets, as part of a partnership with Spc Group, A Leading South Korean-Based Food Company.

“Both markets have a distance, fast-glowing out-of-home dining cultures that prioritize real food, and consumers are Highly familiar with American brands like chipotle through Education, Travel, and Social Media Conversations Relevant Celebrits,” a Chipotle Tol Insider About the Expansion. “Operationally, The Dense Urban Footprints of Major Korean Cities and Singapore Also Maken Very Manageable Markets to Enter.”

The South Korean and Singaporean Restaurants Will Closely Mirror the Look and Feel of Chipotle’s Restaurants in the us, with an openChen format and the full core menu that american consumers are accustomed to, the spokesperson said.

Chipotle Opeates 3,800 Restaurants in the US, Canada, The United Kingdom, France, and Germany. IT PLANS TO Open as Many 345 New Restaurants This Year, with a long-term target of operating 7,000 locations in the us and canada, accorting to a press release about the expansion.

The new Chipotle Locations Will Compete Directly with the Australian-Awned Fast-Casual Mexican Chain, Guzman Y Gomez, Which Went Public Last Year. Guzman y gomez has a prominent presence in singapore and has plans to expand to 1,000 outlets in australia over the next 20 years, Business insider previously Reported.

Chipotle isn’t the only fast-casual mexican chain expanding into Asia. In July, Goto Foods Announched It Wold Open New Moe’s Casa Mexicana Restaurants in India, a reimagining of its moe’s southwest grill concept.

Julianne Moore, 64, Says She Can’t Resist working on her rest days.

In an interview with People Published on Sunday, The Oscar-Winning Actor Spoke About Her Ideal Day off.

“I LIKE A LITTLE OF EVERYATING,” Moore Told People. “A perfect day is not Having to get up too and drink my coffee, and read the news and ansors my email.”

HER Ideal Day off Wold Also Include Some Time for Yoga, a meal with her family, and unwinding with a show she enjys before bed, she said.

That’s though her schedule already seames Packed, Moore Says She Still Tries to Carve Time for “A Little Bit of Work” to Stay Engaged.

“Maybe i shoot something, or i’m working on a script, or i’m learning something,” she said.

Moore Says She Tries to Take Better Care of Her Health Now That She’s Older.

“When You’re Younger, you don’t think about much at all. I mean, you really feel impervious to everything, and to anyding health and wellness related,” She Said. “But I think, the most life you’ve accrued, the most precious it Becomes.”

Moore, who has two children with her Her Husband, film Director Bart Freundlich, Added That She Also Has Family to Consider.

“You have more People that you’re taking care of, you have more People that love, and you realie that you depen on your body, and if something goes with your body, then it really affected,” Sheid.

Moore has talked about Aging before. In a 2021 Interview with as if Magazine, she Said it’s “sexist” to say that a Woman is “Aging Gracefully.”

“Is there an an ungraceful way to age? We don’t have an option, of Course. No one has an option about Aging, so is it not a positive or a negative, it just is,” she said.

A representative for moore did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by business insider outside regular hours.

As Conversations Around Wellness and Aging Evolve, We Should Also Rethink What Work-Life Balance Means, Veronica West, A Psychologist, Told Business Insider in 2024.

“It used to mean diving work time and personal time ino neat, equual slice,” West Said. “But Let’s Be Honest, Life Rarely Play Nice like.”

Instead, it might be more helpful to think of it “Work-Life rhythm,” West Said. “The Trick is Learning How to Balance Energy, swimming time, so you’re surviving and enjaying eAch part of your day.”

Engaging in Purposophul Work Can Help Protect Cognitive Abilities As We Age, Karen Glaser, A Professor of Gerontology at King’s College London, Told Business Insider in 2024.

Ben Meyers and Fabrizio Villero, Researchers at Longeviques, Told Business Insider in 2023 that one commmonary trait among the over 1,000 centenarians they are working hard went old age.

Earlier this year, Several 80-Something Americans Told Business Insider that they have been working past retirement, not for Money, but for the senses of Fulfillment and Social Connection it.

One of my greatness in life is travers with my children, who range in age from 10 to 15 years old.

We regularly take the road Trips Throughout the United States and they have also been to various destinations in Africa, Europe, and Asia over the years.

As Much as I Enjoy these Trips, i offen Feel likes i am forcing my children to live out my travel dreams we spend the night freezing in the desert or crouching through dinner, dank pyramids in egypt. While riding a camel in the Sahara, my daughter took the opportunity to remind with that het close was living it up at an all-inclusive resort in the caribbean, doing not getting a tan.

SOMESTEMES, I THINK THAT MY CHILDREN WOULD RATHER Go BACK TO DISNEY WORLD OR LUNGE BY THE POOLL AT A TANE TAG ALONG ON MY BUCKET TRIPS, but ben Too Afraid of the Answer to Ask.

Recently, my children and i were plotting where to go Next. We were hating a hard time narrowing things down. Against My Better Judgment, I Asked Say Who of Our Trips they like the Most. Their Answers Surprised Me.

Jordan

Visiting Jordan Had Been on My Bucket List for Years. For as long as I can remember, i wanten to experience floating in the Dead Sea, swimming in the red sea, and climate the ruins of Petra.

I guess i shouldn’t have ben too surprised to be my children weren’t happy time to told us we were speaking their sprout break this traveling halfway around to hike in ancient town that haen abandoned for and sleep in a remote benu. with a shared bathroom.

Howver, During Our Conversation About Where to Go Next, I was surpassed to discover that my children aggregated that a nine-day trip to jordan was their trip of all time. They have admonted to enjoying roughying it in the desert, or at least not hating it as much as they thught they wasted. That’s a win in my book.

I Think That Jordan Offers the Perfect Blend of Adventure, History, Beaches, and Cities, Making it an ideal destination with a little bit of everything. I was glad to discover that my children aggree. Plus, The Food Was Surpringly Good. My 10-Yaar-Old Son is Still on the Hunt for Falafel As the Kindy he tried in Jordan.

Poland

Poland isn’t on Everyone’s List of Dream European Destinations for A Summer Vacation. Howver, My Children and I Found ourselves there are we scored Taylor swift tickets for her show in warsaw last years.

We were stunned by how Much there was to do durying the nine days we spent in the Country. My children confessed to especially Enjoying the historic to krakow, which retained its Old-World Charm IT WAS Spared Bombing During World War II.

My Children’s Favorite Spot in Poland, Howver, was the Beautiful Mountain Town of Zakopane Where We Enjoyed Gorgeous Hikes and Relaxing Hot Springs. They Also Enjoyed the Cosmopolitan Warsaw, with it Big Parks and Restored Historic Center.

South Korea

Our visits to south korea was a five-day add-on to a longer vacation to the most popular japan this past summer. We Only Stopped in Seoul, South Korea’s Capital, for A Few Days Because Our Flight Had a Stopover there. SINCE WE HAD TO SWITCH PLANES IN SOUTH KOREA ANYWAY, IT SEEED LIKE A Good Opportunity to see a new place while we battled the effects of jet lag.

South Korea tourned out to be one of my children’s top stops durying nearly month-long trip. UNXPECTEDLY, ACCIVING TO MY SON, The Highlight of Our Trip was Visiting the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH KOREA.

My Children Said They Love Walking Along South Korea’s Iconic Suspension Bridges and Becoming Immersed in K-Pop Culture Along K-Star Road. They Also Enjoyed Exploring South Korea’s Picturesque Namsan Park, which we are Accidentally stumbled uppon Because it was adjacent to our hotel. I wish we had spent more time in south korea to see more of the Country.

An expedition Cruise Around Iceland

My children have been on two cruises. One was on Royal Caribbean, A Huge Kid-Fryently Ship Full of Days at Sea, Unlimited Ice Cream, and a Visit to A Private Island with Massive Water Park.

The other was an expedition on a small national geographic -lindblad expedition Ship that we have took AROUND THE COAST OF ILAND. On that cruise, they a lot of tears ice cream but learned how to steer a ship, heard tales about the mythical trolls that are said to inhabit iceland, took countless rides in zodiacs that go close to pufffins and whats what on hikes on islands are Reach.

I was pleasantly surprised when my kids told with they would be on an expedition cruise than sail on a ship to be kid-free with a non-stop carnival-like atmosphere.

I’m still not sura where ours next trip will t take my family. Howver, I am relieved to know that my children enjoy, and don’t just tolerate, the out-of-the-box ideas of come with-the right toy goch goach.

ABC Shocked The TV Industry Last Night by Pulling Jimmy Kimmel Live! Off Air Under Pressure from the Trump Administration, Prompting Anxiety Over State Censorship and A Wave of Support for the Late-Night host. Earlier wednesday (September 17), Brendan Carr, The Trump-Appointed Chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), HAD Threatened the Network with Retaliation if it did not work is Jimmy kimmy for a joke, on monday nonday ntight, thrat Linked. Kirk’s Allegated Shooter with “The Maga Gang.” Celebrities Including Ben Stiller, Wanda Sykes, and Jean Smart, As Well As Unions Such As the Writers Guild of America, Strongly Criticized ABC’s Decision.

In the comments for which he is under fire, kimmel said that “the maga gang” was “Desperately trying to characterize this kid who murthed charlie kirk as anything other one of the saying and doing they can to score political points from it.” He Added, “In Between the Finger-Pointing, there was grieving.”

Carr, interview on a right-wing podcast on wednesday, Said kimmel’s remarks were part of a “Concerted Efffort to Lie to the American People.” The FCC, he added, “Have remedies that we can look at.”

Conservatives have portrayed kirk’s al The allegated shooter, Tyler Robinson, as a politically motivated Radical Leftist, but analysis of His communification a more ambiguous picture. Robinson’s Mother Told Prosecutors That Her Son Had Recently Become “More Pro-Gay and Trans-Rights Oriented.” But, as a ken clippenstein investigation Uncovered, some of Robinson’s Friends Questioned the Notion that His Beliefs on Sexuality Represent A Wider Left-Leaning Position, For Instance, HIS Support for the Second Amendment.

Some of the Strongest Condemnations of ABC’s Decision Came From Unions: The Writers Guild of America (WGA), The American Federation of Musicians (AFM), and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television Artists (Sag-Aaftra). Their storms criticized both the government and abc, a network Owned by the walt disney company. Disney’s Chief Executive, Bob Iger, and Television Chief, Dana Walden, Made the Decision to Suspend Jimmy Kimmel Live!Told Sources The New York Times.

Photo: Joe Darrow; Filippo Bacci; Michael Kovac/Getty Images; Getty Images/Getty Images

In early January, employees of the We Company, formerly known as WeWork, gathered in Los Angeles for its annual summit. As with many of the company’s events, it was more tent revival than corporate off-site. The Red Hot Chili Peppers performed. Jaden Smith and Adam Rippon spoke. Diddy and Ashton Kutcher announced the winners of the annual Creator Awards. Adam Neumann, one of WeWork’s founders, took the stage as he typically does at such gatherings. Neumann is six-foot-five with long dark hair and the easy charm of a man worth several (theoretical) billions of dollars who still manages to surf regularly and used to skateboard around the office. He is known for making bombastic pronouncements, like this one at an all-company event last year: “There are 150 million orphans in the world. We want to solve this problem and give them a new family: the WeWork family.” In L.A., Neumann told his employees that the newly formed We Company would now have three prongs — WeWork, WeLive, and WeGrow — with a single, grandiose mission: “to elevate the world’s consciousness.”

WeWork was born as a co-working space based partly on the idea that it should be easier for entrepreneurs like Neumann to get their ideas, good or bad, off the ground. Its core business is simple: lease offices from landlords — the company owns hardly any real estate — slice them up, and rent them out in smaller portions with an upcharge for cool design, regular happy hours, and a more flexible short-term lease. There are hundreds of co-working companies around the world, but what has long distinguished WeWork is Neumann’s insistence that his is something bigger. In 2017, Neumann declared that WeWork’s “valuation and size today are much more based on our energy and spirituality than it is on a multiple of revenue.” He has long maintained that categorizing WeWork as a real-estate concern is too limiting; it is a “community company” with huge ambitions. “We are here in order to change the world,” Neumann said that same year. “Nothing less than that interests me.”

In this mode — which is his usual one — he can sound like a satirical version of a start-up founder. The years between Steve Jobs’s ascension to business deity and the fateful afternoon when Elon Musk tweeted that his company might go private at $420 a share have cemented the legend of the iconoclastic founder as a modern American folktale. Spreadsheets are out; megalomaniacal ambition is in.

And what Neumann has accomplished is staggering: WeWork now has 466,000 members working out of 485 locations in more than 100 cities in 28 countries. Its revenue has grown from $75 million in 2014 to $1.8 billion last year. Three years ago, it had 1,000 employees; today, it has 12,000 and is adding 100 every week. It has installed 22 million square feet of the glass partitions that have defined an era of workplace aesthetics, and last fall, it became Manhattan’s largest tenant. (In Central London, it is second only to the British government.) In the wake of Uber’s (disappointing) debut on the New York Stock Exchange, the We Company is now America’s most highly valued start-up, at $47 billion — at least for the moment. At the end of April, Neumann announced that the company had filed paperwork to begin the process of an IPO.

Inside the company, however, employees and executives describe an environment that can be marked by the chaos, churn, and misbehavior that have come to characterize hypergrowth start-up life, not to mention questions about its business: WeWork lost $1.9 billion last year. But WeWork has already reshaped the commercial real-estate world, and it has its eyes on the rest of our lives. As Neumann recently told a person close to the company, he believes that WeWork’s size and scale could put it in a position to help deal with some of the world’s largest problems, like the refugee crisis, saying, “I need to have the biggest valuation I can, because when countries are shooting at each other, I want them to come to me.”

Dock 72 in the Brooklyn Navy Yard will house a giant WeWork space. Photo: Ian Bartlett

One day this spring, Neumann sat at a large conference table in his office at WeWork headquarters in Chelsea and apologized that he had only limited time. “It’s hard in a short time to get to know someone and to be able to authentically describe truth,” he told me. Beyond elevating consciousness, Neumann explained, each of the We Company’s three parts has a more specific mandate. WeWork is building “a world where people make a life and not just a living.” WeLive, which offers furnished studio apartments in the Financial District starting at $3,175 a month, is a salve to the global increase in loneliness and suicide and a way to ensure that “no one ever feels alone.” WeGrow, an educational arm that includes an elementary school and a coding academy, is tasked with “unleashing every person’s superpower.” I asked Neumann what his superpower is. “Change,” he said. “I think it’s the best superpower to have.” He then asked if I had seen the TV show Heroes. “There was one (character) that was very strong,” he said. “He had the ability to have all superpowers.” Neumann neglected to mention that this was the show’s villain: a serial killer who murdered people to get their powers.

Neumann was born in Israel and moved to New York in 2001 after what he has described as a difficult childhood. His parents divorced when he was 7, and he lived in 13 different homes over the first 22 years of his life. He served five years in the Israeli navy before moving into a Tribeca apartment with his sister, a former Miss Teen Israel who had become a successful model. Neumann enrolled in business classes at Baruch College, and as he told its graduating class in 2017, he spent his early days in New York largely going to clubs, “hitting on every girl in the city,” and figuring out how to get rich. As Neumann tells it, a friend from Israel visited and asked if all the partying was worth leaving his home, at which point Neumann dropped out of Baruch to pursue his first big entrepreneurial idea: a collapsible women’s heeled shoe. It didn’t work, so he pivoted, as a single, childless man in his 20s, and launched a company called Krawlers, which sold baby clothes with built-in kneepads. The tagline was “Just because they don’t tell you, doesn’t mean they don’t hurt.”

Krawlers failed to take off. “We are already noticing the tough economic times,” he told Women’s Wear Daily in early 2008 as the recession hit. By then, Neumann had met Miguel McKelvey, an architect with a similarly unusual upbringing. While Neumann spent several years living on a kibbutz in Israel, McKelvey was being raised by a collective of five single mothers in Eugene, Oregon. After college, where he studied architecture, McKelvey moved to Tokyo and started a website called “English, baby!” that used American pop lyrics as a language-learning tool. He eventually got bored and moved to New York to take a job at a Brooklyn architecture firm, where he spent several years designing American Apparel stores. By 2008, McKelvey had persuaded Neumann to move Krawlers to Dumbo, where Neumann sublet part of his space to another company to save on rent. Both men were itching for something new, and after a bit of brainstorming, McKelvey and Neumann convinced their landlord to let them try an experiment: They took over an empty space in one of the landlord’s nearby buildings, divided it up into semi-communal offices, and rented them out.

The original space, Green Desk, was an instant hit, and the landlord wanted to expand it into his other Brooklyn properties. But McKelvey and Neumann decided to sell their share of the business and go off on their own. They opened the first WeWork in 2010 on the corner of Grand and Lafayette Streets. It had exposed brick and exposed wiring, which McKelvey installed himself, and was modeled less on a traditional office than a boutique hotel.

The original WeWork still exists as an homage to a new era. Nine years later, it’s now slightly dated but still filled with the same mix of small companies working out of tiny glass-walled offices, some of which have been there since the beginning. (An architectural-rendering firm has a model in its office of an Australian building designed to look like Beyoncé’s body.) There are now four more WeWorks within a few blocks and 66 in total throughout the city. Courtney Wallace, who has worked for the company at that location since 2011, told me he was certainly amazed by WeWork’s growth but didn’t think Neumann was. “I would argue Adam would say he’s surprised it took so long,” Wallace said.

Neumann and McKelvey didn’t invent the idea of “co-working” — the New York Times had already devoted an entire article to the concept and the many such spaces that had opened in recent years — but the pair realized there was money to be made from the recession. Real estate could be had for cheap, even in Manhattan; laid-off workers needed space to launch their freelance careers; and millennials were looking for more from their workspace than a watercooler and a cubicle. While McKelvey brought his design-and-construction background to WeWork, Neumann dove into the aggressive world of New York real estate with a hustler’s verve. He struck a deal for WeWork’s second space, across from the Empire State Building, while polishing off a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black with David Zar, whose family owned the building. After touring a property owned by Jared Kushner, then a young real-estate mogul, Neumann coaxed Kushner into a bar for shots of tequila and later settled a dispute by beating him in an arm-wrestling match. (Neumann and his wife, Rebekah, remain close with Kushner and Ivanka Trump.) “The past ten years was the decade of ‘I,’ ” he said in 2011. “This decade is the decade of ‘We.’ ”

And, in many ways, it has been: Everything from the bedding company Brooklinen to “post-cable” streaming network Cheddar has been incubated in a WeWork. A Breitbart writer worked out of a WeWork near the White House. Billy McFarland, who later created the Fyre Festival, was often late on his rent in Tribeca. More recently, WeWork has rented space to giant companies from Facebook to Amazon.

But disrupting the deeply entrenched world of commercial real estate required capital, and Neumann excelled at pitching his company to investors. Neumann has raised more than $12 billion in venture-capital funding, and early investors talk as much about buying into his energy and ambition as they did WeWork’s bottom line. “WeWork Mars is in our pipeline,” Neumann declared in 2015. (He told WeWork’s staff at one point that he’d met with Elon Musk and offered the company’s services in prepping for any future Mars missions but that Musk wasn’t interested.) Early on, Neumann told friends he was building a $100 billion business.

The charisma and soaring rhetoric he presented to investors also appealed to a workforce willing to work long hours with relatively low pay in exchange for believing they were building a world-changing company. Within WeWork, a mystique quickly developed around Neumann, who did little to downplay it. (Until recently, an executive conference room at WeWork headquarters was decorated with a large photograph of Neumann surfing a wave.) He has bragged about working 20-hour days and regularly called executive meetings that would begin after midnight. “I’ve had meetings that started at 2 a.m. where he joined us 45 minutes late, but that meeting was worth millions,” a former WeWork executive told me. Many people told me they bought into WeWork’s grand mission only when Neumann was doing the preaching. At the beginning of every week, WeWork employees were required to stay after work for a “Thank God It’s Monday” team-building event that could last for hours. Neumann would typically speak, after which employees often walked around handing out shots of tequila.

WeWork spaces earned an early reputation for having a partylike atmosphere thanks to free-flowing beer kegs, and the corporate environment was no different. One former employee says Neumann offered her tequila during her job interview, and liquor was a constant presence at pretty much every company event, another perk for the largely millennial staff. Many employees know the name of Neumann’s favorite tequila, Don Julio 1942, and offices around the country would keep it stocked for when he came to visit. One morning in 2014, not long after WeWork opened a new location in Washington, D.C., an employee arrived to find the game room trashed. There were cups lying around the room, which smelled to him like weed. When the employee reviewed the security footage from the night before to identify the culprits, he saw Neumann and Michael Gross, WeWork’s vice-chairman, drinking and playing on the Time Crisis arcade machine.

The ultimate perk for many employees — and a nightmare experience for others — was the annual Summer Camp, a multiday affair initially held at an upstate camp owned by the family of a WeWork executive. All kinds of activities were offered — yoga, ax throwing, leaf printing, a drum circle — along with entertainment by an expensive array of visiting performers. The Chainsmokers once played and received WeWork stock as part of their fee, while the Weeknd was flown in from Toronto by helicopter. (TenaciousWe, an employee band, has also performed.) “It was just so much everything,” one former executive said. “Alcohol, drugs — there was not a lot of food. That was the only thing there wasn’t a lot of.”

In 2017, the event was moved to a park outside London; employees were flown in from around the world. One told me that he and his colleagues would simply walk up to the bar and ask for two bottles of wine each. “They would give you two bottles of rosé, and we’d drink them like Edward Forty-Fucking-Hands” — it’s a drinking game — “while we’re watching Florence + the Machine,” he said. One employee told me she knew it was time to leave the company in 2017, when she woke in her teepee to find an unknown colleague urinating on the canvas just above her head. “Talk to any community manager under 24, and it’s the greatest weekend of your life,” the employee said of Summer Camp. “But I am not here to get peed on.”

Summer Camp was also the place where Neumann’s gravitational pull was at its strongest. At last year’s event, according to a report in Property Week, a British real-estate publication, Neumann sat onstage next to his wife and McKelvey as the crowd sang “Olé, Olé, Olé.” A WeWork employee from India started chanting, “Let’s go, WeWork, let’s go!” while another from California screamed, “You’re changing the world, Adam! We love you.” Augusto Contreras, a WeWork employee from Mexico City, proposed to his girlfriend next to a dodgeball tournament. “I felt like I was surrounded by my extended family,” he told the company blog. He had been at WeWork for seven months.