There are plenty of private companies with outside capital that are not structured for a stock market debut. WeWork was one of them and the investors tried to list it on the stock markets anyway.
Neumann played the best cards available to him and cemented his consolidated ownership, with a different share class becoming a mere conduit for payment, and voter control allowing for unilateral signing off on contracts to himself and his other entities.
Sure, the people who chose to work for WeWork now have worthless equity, but that's always a risk when working for a startup, and they knew that going in.
imo this is always one of the first tells that company owners aren't good to be in business with. I've never had a good experience with family-run businesses in my entire career- have learned to completely avoid them at this point.
Neumann, by taking money from SoftBank, was completely complicit. He knew his financials, he knew the company was a flaming dumpster, he knew he had no plan to fix it, other than buying a wave pool company and assigning his family to high-level positions.
You really think if the company had gone public, Neumann would have what, stepped up and said "see, this is why we need to add more investor protections"?