WeWork co-founders Miguel McKelvey (left) and Adam Neumann (right); via WeWork
Back in 2008, there was an architect in Brooklyn who was bored with his job. Wandering around his office building, he befriended a failing entrepreneur who was trying to start a baby clothing company. The two decided to take a shot at something new and opened a co-working space on a vacant floor of their building. Nine years later, the two own one of the world’s most valuable startups, WeWork, valued at around $17 billion. It’s worth nearly as much as AECOM, the world’s largest architecture firm, and they have raised more than $1 billion in startup capital without going public, making it, in the parlance of Silicon Valley, a unicorn. It’s the tech equivalent of winning a Pritzker Prize.