Adam Neumann

Israeli-born Neumann is bringing startup culture to Big Business. With 54 locations across the U.S., Europe and Israel – twice as many as it had at the end of 2014 – WeWork’s perk-filled, keg-friendly communal workspaces have attracted more than 30,000 members across the globe, including startups and, increasingly, Fortune 500 companies like American Express and Microsoft. A $400 million funding round this summer from Fidelity, J.P. Morgan and other major investors brought the company’s total funding to an estimated $1 billion and raised its valuation to $10 billion—double its $5 billion last December. Like some of its fast-rising peers in the so-called sharing economy, WeWork recently faced a labor dispute with an important part of its workforce—its cleaners, which it had employed as contractors. But the company responded by doing what its peers have been loathe to do: it hired an in-house janitorial staff as full-time employees, with benefits including equity.