Looks like he has a couple billion dollars in the bank, so if you have any suggestions on how one might dummy themselves down to "idiot billionaire" level, I am all ears.
I mean, at the risk of making this political, I think we can find at least one ostensible billionaire that most people are not arguing for the intelligence of. I'll let you figure out who I might be implying.
I think intelligence is helpful, but not a necessary component to become really rich. I think there can be combinations of luck, opportunity, and charisma. It doesn't hurt that silicon valley investors appear to be the most gullible people on the planet.
I don't know the guy, but I did hear reports of him constantly drinking and smoking weed at the office, and him claiming that they're making a "human based operating system", a claim that does not make sense.
The only billionaire I am 100% sure is a genius is Jim Simons. For the rest, the most common trait seems to be that they are good at spotting trends early
If you read about interactions with him, he's preternaturally confident and charming. I think he's also deranged. Per Wikipedia, "The Wall Street Journal reported in 2019 that Neumann had aspirations to live forever, become the world's first trillionaire, expand WeWork to the planet Mars, become Israel's prime minister, and become 'president of the world'."
There are plenty of nutty rich people like this. If you would like to follow the path to lunatic billionaire, I'd suggest you start by being very tall so as to impress and dominate people. Definitely come from a broken home, the wilder the better. A sufficiently dysfunctional early environment will fuck you up for life, but it also gives some the ability to thrive in chaos. Make sure to be a charming sociopath, so that you can manipulate people, quite a lot of people, without being crushed by the moral weight of the harm you do. You'll also need some desperate character flaw that makes you insatiable: sane people will get enough money and stop, but you'll have to have some sort of unfillable void that compels you to keep going beyond all need.
Lastly, make sure to be very lucky. You must be born into the right moment, such that there are people foolish enough to give you a lot of money. Luckier still to fall into the right context, so that you have plenty of enablers around you who will effectively institutionalize you. Even luckier that your crimes against society are of the sort that either aren't currently illegal or are sufficiently inconvenient to prosecute.
Holmes got federal prison time. Neumann did not. Arguably, Holmes did worse. Holmes was about to start selling snake oil, or rather snake oil blood test, which is essentially a medical fraud, although this is not the type of fraud that brought her to she to the prison cell.
Neumann took stupid VC money for a ride. Unethical? Yes. But they giving it to him very willingly. His actions arguably could do more damage, because maybe WeWork bankruptcy can finish off SF commercial real estate market – I don't know how much of their 13 billion lease obligations are in the city. But it's hardly his fault that the system is so brittle.
