Adam Neumann reimagined the millennial workplace as a capitalist kibbutz, and so dazzled Wall Street that his company was valued at $47 billion. He spent lavishly, and pressed forward even as “the narrative of the unicorn was ending,” says an executive. Now, after the collapse, he’s said to talk of himself as a martyr.

The Wall Street Journal had just published an explosive article chronicling what it said was his reckless management of the coworking start-up, the era’s preeminent unicorn. Neumann is dyslexic, and reading is a challenge, so advisers quickly briefed him on the story’s most troubling details: vivid accounts of his heavy drinking, marijuana use, and habit of making grandiose pronouncements like wanting to be elected president of the world, live forever, and become humanity’s first trillionaire.