7 ms·

WeWork's former CEO has a new startup, reportedly valued at more than $1B

41 points by cpeterso 4y ago

habosa 4y ago
I really hope this somehow combines crypto and timeshares. Two of the most famous scams of all time ... brought together under Adam Neumann. It will make for a truly hilarious postmortem.
bantunes 4y ago
We keep rewarding the wrong people, it's no wonder things are as they are.
- simonswords82 4y ago
  Yep, greed always seems to win out. Pretty depressing.
  - anthropodie 4y ago
    I think it only inflates the bubble and bubbles burst sooner or later. Only serious, genuine people working on betterment of humanity eventually win. That's what I like to tell myself.
    - plankers 4y ago
      tell that to the legacy of margaret thatcher and "there is no alternative"
    - inglor_cz 4y ago
      In the long run, we are all dead; how does a win even look like?
      - anthropodie 4y ago
        If you change this world a little for good, you won. It does not matter if you are dead before people realise your contribution to the world. For example, Galileo won.
        Radim 4y ago
        "Good" as determined by whom? For example, there are people who hold the Scientific Revolution ushered by Galileo&co to be directly responsible for genocides and suffering (of humans and otherwise) on an unprecedented global scale. In the long-term view suggested by inglor_cz, "change this world a little for good" is really just feel-good moralistic posturing. Without specifying "good for whom?", and "on what time scale?", it's a vacuous concept.
        sss111 4y ago
        "Good" as determined by me. No matter what you do in the world, there will always be people who like what you do and people who hate what you did. That said, you would benefit from learning about effective altruism, it is a philosophical and social movement that advocates using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis.
    - idlehand 4y ago
      Sounds like the just-world fallacy.
  - aucontrair3 4y ago
    Just stop. Except education and healthcare, none of this is that important; it’s vanity projects all the way down; wowing ourselves since there’s no grand competition between space fairing civs, no Heaven to win entry to. None of us are going to Mars. What wins is apathy; indifference to adopting new agency. Stop believing typical meat bags are anything more; that a network of rich exists is entirely due to belief in them. They’re just meat bags. Their figurative identity is not sacrosanct.
  - Bombthecat 4y ago
    I always say: when in doubt, count on greed. It helps alot in life, project management, planning etc etc.
- Closi 4y ago
  I suspect the personality trait of “willingness to break rules” is somewhat correlated with the success of creating large new companies (particularly in congested markets). It’s not as important in a new market, but if you are in a fiercely competitive market (eg real estate) some rule breaking to advance you against the competitors is probably helpful to make a billion dollar company. I.E. Uber, Deliveroo, WeWork etc might not be the hugely valuable companies they are today if they didn’t break the rules, regardless of how morally wrong that might be.
  - solarkraft 4y ago
    We keep rewarding the wrong behavior ...
  - badpun 4y ago
    > I.E. Uber, Deliveroo, WeWork etc might not be the hugely valuable companies they are today if they didn’t break the rules, regardless of how morally wrong that might be. It yet remains to be seen whether they are a "hugely valuable companies" or just smoke and mirrors for gullible investors in an era of almost free credit.
    - Closi 4y ago
      The value of a company is effectively just what someone is willing to pay for it, with their assumption of future cash flows incorporated (discounted). So they are absolutely valuable.
      - badpun 4y ago
        Right now. The tulips during tulip mania very also extremely valuable. Let's see in 10 years from now.
        Closi 4y ago
        Just because something isn’t necessarily valuable in the future doesn’t mean that it isn’t valuable now. (ie something is valuable if you can sell it right now for a lot of money - so all these companies are highly valuable).
- Gatsky 4y ago
  It's not a zero sum game, is it?
- lnxg33k1 4y ago
  Wrong? Depends from which point of view? As far as I can see the system is engineered to keep money flowing between the people at the top, hiring top-execs from family friends paid a huge amount of money to do anything, kids of owners using the company as a bank machine and owners complaining with employees that there are no money. I think we should not make the mistake anymore to think the system is flawed, the system as is, is working perfectly for the people who made it
guessmyname 4y ago
According to various online publications, Flow is a residential real estate startup. This blog post [1] by Marc Andreessen, has a bit more information about the business idea. And this is Flow’s website [2], which doesn’t have anything as of today. [1] https://a16z.com/2022/08/15/investing-in-flow/ https://a16z.com/2022/08/15/investing-in-flow/ [2] https://www.flow.life https://www.flow.life
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Lol "our nation has a housing crisis". Cheeky bastard. Haha.
- ivan_gammel 4y ago
  For an European it’s weird to read in the first link how renting an apartment is a soulless experience. Going vertical when the land is scarce in most of developed urban areas is THE solution to the housing crisis. Avoiding debt and not taking mortgage is a legitimate financial strategy, that may in certain circumstances yield better financial outcomes. Social life in rented apartments can be fun and community can be stronger. I guess they are solving purely American problem?
  - joyfylbanana 4y ago
    This claim about renting being soulless experience is just bullshit. You can perfectly be friends with your neighbours etc with just renting, if you want that is. Most people usually socialize with other circles. I have been renting and owning along the years, always been on friendly terms with my neighbours, the fact if I am renting or owning hans't been a big factor. I also live in Europe though.
  - nly 4y ago
    > Avoiding debt and not taking mortgage is a legitimate financial strategy Is it though? I don't know about the US, but the UK simply hasn't got any protections in place to protect retired tenants from eviction. I know in Portugal and in other parts of Europe many people enjoy these protections. Retiring on a fixed income when your landlord is free to put up the rent 5-10%/yr during cost of living crisis, or kick you out on the street because they want their investment back isn't a fun way to live. Moving in your 70s is stressful and not fun. Then there's just the cost. Most people simply don't have pensions that can cover a private rent, and lack the financial education and discipline to invest judiciously throughout their life to reach that point. And even if they were so inclined, there's no money left to do so after paying rent! Since the financial crisis repayment mortgags have been as cheap as rent on a like for like home, so the security of owning your home is "free" as far as most people were concerned. Without it being cheaper to rent, your 20% house deposit needs to grow at 6.7%/yr ABOVE the rate of house price inflation, over a 25 year term, to make investing it instead of buying property a viable alternative. In the UK, residential property has matched the stock market. So it simply wasn't a good strategy over the last 20 years.
manholio 4y ago
> Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos, lost investors $1 billion. She faces up to 20 years in prison. > Adam Neumann, founder of WeWork, lost investors $11 billion. He then raised $350 million for his next startup.
- istinetz 4y ago
  She systematically and intentionally defrauded investors. His startup turned out to not be as good as valued. Caveat emptor applies.
  - edrxty 4y ago
    It's also a bit of a reminder that what society considers criminal and immoral-as-hell are often strangely misaligned. It's entirely possible he was being fraudulent as well, but he didn't A. mess with icky medical things or B. cross the line as obviously. If we were a strictly rational utilitarian society he'd be in prison for 220 years but because literally everyone is basically just shooting from the hip roughly all the time...here we are. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just I feel something we all forget very frequently.
    - istinetz 4y ago
      >If we were a strictly rational utilitarian society he'd be in prison for 220 years I don't think you understand how risk works. You cannot judge him only on the downside, without considering the upside that could have been. If you jail every startup founder who fails for 220 years, nobody would try to create risky startups, and your utopia would miss out on innovation.
      - smcl 4y ago
        I think they do. My read was that they're trying to illustrate that there is more that goes into determining what a crime is and what the punishment for a crime should be than the impact it has on a company's market value. And I don't think there's a suggestion that every startup founder whose company fails should be jailed - only that if there's some kind of serious wrongdoing, like fraud, involved. Unfortunately with the popularity of "fake it 'til you make it" it's easy for people cross the line, knowingly or unknowingly.
victor9000 4y ago
Venture Nepotism in full display.
ok_dad 4y ago
Sounds like it might be like a time share at scale for permanent housing. Whatever the case, a few connected people will make money on it and it’ll likely make housing worse somehow. I can’t believe this degenerate can start billion dollar companies left and right and honest people are constantly getting told we’re asking for too much to have things like work life balance or decent pay. I’ll giggle like a school girl someday when the other shoe drops and the rich are being eaten.
- plankers 4y ago
  Lemmy is looking up on us and smiling in eager anticipation
- mindentropy 4y ago
  >I can’t believe this degenerate can start billion dollar companies left and right Don't know how he manages to raise money. Who in his connections would risk such huge investments? Is it some kind of money laundering or something?
  - ReadTheLicense 4y ago
    It's not so much money nowadays. The value of money went way down past 5-10 years. It's just 10 people after a $1B exit allocating 10% of their assets. Sounds crazy, but that's this guy's social circle. Really underlines how important is networking in business.
    - mindentropy 4y ago
      Seriously, I would love to learn his networking skills. With all that trust and funding this guy is set.
    - jmathai 4y ago
      10 billionaires investing 10% of their assets is actually pretty crazy.
- anon9001 4y ago
TrackerFF 4y ago
So let me guess, timesharing model for apartments?
Dwolb 4y ago
Neumann’s track record at WeWork: Money raised - $22B Peak market cap - $47B (while private) Current market cap - $4B IPO price per share - $9.82 Current price per share - $5.47 Looking at this data, he hasn’t proven to be an incredible operator in terms of equity returns. He has however demonstrated an incredible ability to raise institutional funding and drive increased private valuations.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  Something similar can be said about Charles Ponzi.
  - smcl 4y ago
    Bernie Madoff was blessed with a similar gift
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      Committing fraud and being charismatic enough to convince others that they will be able to sell their investments to a bigger fool are not the same. Madoff’s numbers were fake. All of wework’s numbers were real and audited and public.
  - labster 4y ago
    A hundred years after his great invention, Charles Ponzi is still world-renowned. If that’s not success in business, what on Earth is?
- codeflo 4y ago
  Maybe real life works like D&D after all, where maxing out charisma and a few lucky rolls allow you to convince anyone of anything.
- elp 4y ago
  Also the early investors in WeWork did rather nicely. If you are a16z this is probably not a bad investment.
cpach 4y ago
Interesting business idea! I wonder if it will work, we’ll see.
bjarneh 4y ago
> It's not immediately clear how Flow seeks to revolutionize the residential housing industry. I never understood how he revolutionized the "office market" with that wework stuff either. Renting out horrid shared office space with a coffee machine and printer? I guess the beer on tap was sort of original? At my old office we had beer bottles in the fridge, but still... In Oslo the prices for those wework offices were very expensive as well, and there were no quite place. Why not just go to a cafe or public library (or both) and save the money?
- threeseed 4y ago
  Because a cafe or public library doesn't have meeting rooms, whiteboards, monitors and other facilities that you often need. I know when I was looking for a working space whilst travelling in Seoul it served a useful purpose. I think the future will see more people working remote and travelling around looking for nomad and WeWork style places.
  - CaptainZapp 4y ago
    Well, https://www.regus.com/en-us/south-korea/seoul/gran-seoul-tower-1-4581 https://www.regus.com/en-us/south-korea/seoul/gran-seoul-tow...
  - bjarneh 4y ago
    > Because a cafe or public library doesn't have meeting rooms, whiteboards, monitors and other facilities that you often need. Although a cafe will not have any of that, public libraries can often have some of that. But my point was that the horrid place they used to rent out in Aker Brygge (now taken over by another vendor) had very little of that as well. A shared noisy space + extremely tiny rooms for zoom meetings was all they had, and it wasn't cheap to rent a place there.. But at least here in Norway, there are other vendors that have much better deals. Perhaps things are very different in the US, but the product they offered here in Norway was not competitive. When I was in the market for something like that a few years ago, it was easy to find others offering much more (an actual office for myself) with access to a printer + meeting rom etc. for much less.
- 4y ago
jfoster 4y ago
I don't understand why people care if he manages to raise money. What am I missing? If you don't like the chances, but it's not your money, then so what?
- smcl 4y ago
  It is definitely remarkable that someone who ran a fairly high profile company that exploded in value and deflated about as quickly, has managed to secure substantial investment in a relatively similar space. Do I care about this, or am I directly affected or upset about it? Well, not particularly. However I don't think it bodes well for many in the US that there have been a few VCs attempting to work their way into residential real estate. The way things work here is that we tend to comment when we find something interesting, surprising or if we have a useful insight to contribute. You could cut out 90% of the comments on VCs and startups here with the template "I don't understand why people care [about $thing]. If you don't like [$thing] but it's not your money, then so what?" but I don't think it would make HN a better place. Besides that - the people involved are grown-ups, if they're even reading HN at all I'm sure they can handle the criticism.
  - jfoster 4y ago
    It's certainly remarkable and interesting that he's able to raise despite the bad rep. That's definitely worthy of discussion. I'm just surprised that some seem to be almost insulted by it, if that makes sense?
hnbad 4y ago
As much as we like to paint VCs as rational economical actors, some of them (and especially a16z) are as informed by ideology as by economy. Some prominent a16z figureheads have been talking a lot about crypto, not just about the usual value speculation and "decentralized finance" and all that but especially about the libertarian utopian visions that pretty much focus on eliminating state intervention and bypassing regulations, taxes and unions and reframing customers or tenants as "investors". This may not be a crypto startup, but the language around it easily fits the same ideological bent. WeWork wasn't interesting because it was a real estate startup (its ultimate failure demonstrated how nonsensical the valuation was for its business model), it was interesting because of how it framed real estate. In other words: it wasn't functionally different from old school real estate companies but it was ideologically different in a way that appealed to this type of VCs. Given that Flow seems to be another real estate startup by the same CEO, it's likely that the ideological foundation will be similar. Startups often use words like "paradigm shift" to make themselves sound more interesting than they are but I think some VCs and some startup founders genuinely want to "shape how we think" about econimical relationships, and a16z's behavior so far strongly indicates that they have a very specific paradigm in mind, disagreeable as many may find it.
fzliu 4y ago
This is the single largest investment into any company by a16z. This is just insane, especially given that Flow does not yet have a solid product.
- buitreVirtual 4y ago
  Considering that a16z is already invested in the scammy web 3.0, this is not too surprising.
emptyparadise 4y ago
How do you make housing better after raising $22B for your startup? Wrong answers only.
smcl 4y ago
Incredible how this guy has managed to yet again convince VCs to part with millions in cash. I don't agree with the article that he's a "visionary" or that he "revolutionized" anything, but to lose investors so much money and then follow that up by raising a pile for a similar venture is bold as brass. I don't think anything good can come of this. A company helmed by Neumann taking over residential real estate doesn't sound like a great prospect if it succeeds, but given his track record and the eccentric way he ran We[Work] it seems likely it won't.
- nikanj 4y ago
  I think he's a solid early investment (people are investing in him, not the company). Get in on a seed round, get out before the bubble pops
  - threeseed 4y ago
    I would definitely invest in him. He has unlimited, free PR from every media company around the world. He could found a pet rock company and make millions out of it.
  - smcl 4y ago
    I see what you mean and honestly that might be the play they're making. But I dunno if we can call that "investment" anymore, feels more similar to the TikTok kids pulling off NFT pump-n-dumps or just good old-fashioned gambling.
michelb 4y ago
Looking forward to the new series.
benknight87 4y ago
Funny to see the ad hominem attacks coming out with little to no information about the actual company or deal. The well-oiled news outrage machine chugs along, baiting people into emotional reactions about things that don't affect them. Nice.
jwmoz 4y ago
They never learn.
frozenport 4y ago
>> by bringing community and brand to an industry in which neither existed before Lol what? Brand had no content and community didn't exist or was mostly remote companies needing meeting rooms. WeWork spaces were a bad value because I could get a desk at a real startup space, often sponsored by the host city and be surrounded by interesting people.
tppiotrowski 4y ago
Didn't Neumann already try this with WeLive? [1] Does anyone know how this is different? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/13/nyregion/welive-nyc-wework.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/13/nyregion/welive-nyc-wewor...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kelsolaar 4y ago
WeCrashed with Jared Leto and Anna Hathaway on Apple TV presented Neumann in a rather fascinating way. Recommended watching for anyone curious about the person.
- papito 4y ago
  It's pretty faithful to the book - Billion Dollar Loser. The phrase is "unique leadership style", which is a euphemism for "that guy has no idea what he is doing".

41 points by cpeterso 4y ago

I really hope this somehow combines crypto and timeshares. Two of the most famous scams of all time ... brought together under Adam Neumann. It will make for a truly hilarious postmortem.

bantunes 4y ago

We keep rewarding the wrong people, it's no wonder things are as they are.

simonswords82 4y ago
Yep, greed always seems to win out. Pretty depressing.
- anthropodie 4y ago
  I think it only inflates the bubble and bubbles burst sooner or later. Only serious, genuine people working on betterment of humanity eventually win. That's what I like to tell myself.
  - plankers 4y ago
    tell that to the legacy of margaret thatcher and "there is no alternative"
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    In the long run, we are all dead; how does a win even look like?
    - anthropodie 4y ago
      If you change this world a little for good, you won. It does not matter if you are dead before people realise your contribution to the world. For example, Galileo won.
      - Radim 4y ago
        "Good" as determined by whom? For example, there are people who hold the Scientific Revolution ushered by Galileo&co to be directly responsible for genocides and suffering (of humans and otherwise) on an unprecedented global scale. In the long-term view suggested by inglor_cz, "change this world a little for good" is really just feel-good moralistic posturing. Without specifying "good for whom?", and "on what time scale?", it's a vacuous concept.
        sss111 4y ago
        "Good" as determined by me. No matter what you do in the world, there will always be people who like what you do and people who hate what you did. That said, you would benefit from learning about effective altruism, it is a philosophical and social movement that advocates using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis.
  - idlehand 4y ago
    Sounds like the just-world fallacy.
- aucontrair3 4y ago
  Just stop. Except education and healthcare, none of this is that important; it’s vanity projects all the way down; wowing ourselves since there’s no grand competition between space fairing civs, no Heaven to win entry to. None of us are going to Mars. What wins is apathy; indifference to adopting new agency. Stop believing typical meat bags are anything more; that a network of rich exists is entirely due to belief in them. They’re just meat bags. Their figurative identity is not sacrosanct.
- Bombthecat 4y ago
  I always say: when in doubt, count on greed. It helps alot in life, project management, planning etc etc.
Closi 4y ago
I suspect the personality trait of “willingness to break rules” is somewhat correlated with the success of creating large new companies (particularly in congested markets). It’s not as important in a new market, but if you are in a fiercely competitive market (eg real estate) some rule breaking to advance you against the competitors is probably helpful to make a billion dollar company. I.E. Uber, Deliveroo, WeWork etc might not be the hugely valuable companies they are today if they didn’t break the rules, regardless of how morally wrong that might be.
- solarkraft 4y ago
  We keep rewarding the wrong behavior ...
- badpun 4y ago
  > I.E. Uber, Deliveroo, WeWork etc might not be the hugely valuable companies they are today if they didn’t break the rules, regardless of how morally wrong that might be. It yet remains to be seen whether they are a "hugely valuable companies" or just smoke and mirrors for gullible investors in an era of almost free credit.
  - Closi 4y ago
    The value of a company is effectively just what someone is willing to pay for it, with their assumption of future cash flows incorporated (discounted). So they are absolutely valuable.
    - badpun 4y ago
      Right now. The tulips during tulip mania very also extremely valuable. Let's see in 10 years from now.
      - Closi 4y ago
        Just because something isn’t necessarily valuable in the future doesn’t mean that it isn’t valuable now. (ie something is valuable if you can sell it right now for a lot of money - so all these companies are highly valuable).
Gatsky 4y ago
It's not a zero sum game, is it?
lnxg33k1 4y ago
Wrong? Depends from which point of view? As far as I can see the system is engineered to keep money flowing between the people at the top, hiring top-execs from family friends paid a huge amount of money to do anything, kids of owners using the company as a bank machine and owners complaining with employees that there are no money. I think we should not make the mistake anymore to think the system is flawed, the system as is, is working perfectly for the people who made it

guessmyname 4y ago

According to various online publications, Flow is a residential real estate startup. This blog post [1] by Marc Andreessen, has a bit more information about the business idea. And this is Flow’s website [2], which doesn’t have anything as of today. [1] https://a16z.com/2022/08/15/investing-in-flow/ https://a16z.com/2022/08/15/investing-in-flow/ [2] https://www.flow.life https://www.flow.life

renewiltord 4y ago
Lol "our nation has a housing crisis". Cheeky bastard. Haha.
ivan_gammel 4y ago
For an European it’s weird to read in the first link how renting an apartment is a soulless experience. Going vertical when the land is scarce in most of developed urban areas is THE solution to the housing crisis. Avoiding debt and not taking mortgage is a legitimate financial strategy, that may in certain circumstances yield better financial outcomes. Social life in rented apartments can be fun and community can be stronger. I guess they are solving purely American problem?
- joyfylbanana 4y ago
  This claim about renting being soulless experience is just bullshit. You can perfectly be friends with your neighbours etc with just renting, if you want that is. Most people usually socialize with other circles. I have been renting and owning along the years, always been on friendly terms with my neighbours, the fact if I am renting or owning hans't been a big factor. I also live in Europe though.
- nly 4y ago
  > Avoiding debt and not taking mortgage is a legitimate financial strategy Is it though? I don't know about the US, but the UK simply hasn't got any protections in place to protect retired tenants from eviction. I know in Portugal and in other parts of Europe many people enjoy these protections. Retiring on a fixed income when your landlord is free to put up the rent 5-10%/yr during cost of living crisis, or kick you out on the street because they want their investment back isn't a fun way to live. Moving in your 70s is stressful and not fun. Then there's just the cost. Most people simply don't have pensions that can cover a private rent, and lack the financial education and discipline to invest judiciously throughout their life to reach that point. And even if they were so inclined, there's no money left to do so after paying rent! Since the financial crisis repayment mortgags have been as cheap as rent on a like for like home, so the security of owning your home is "free" as far as most people were concerned. Without it being cheaper to rent, your 20% house deposit needs to grow at 6.7%/yr ABOVE the rate of house price inflation, over a 25 year term, to make investing it instead of buying property a viable alternative. In the UK, residential property has matched the stock market. So it simply wasn't a good strategy over the last 20 years.

manholio 4y ago

> Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos, lost investors $1 billion. She faces up to 20 years in prison. > Adam Neumann, founder of WeWork, lost investors $11 billion. He then raised $350 million for his next startup.

istinetz 4y ago
She systematically and intentionally defrauded investors. His startup turned out to not be as good as valued. Caveat emptor applies.
- edrxty 4y ago
  It's also a bit of a reminder that what society considers criminal and immoral-as-hell are often strangely misaligned. It's entirely possible he was being fraudulent as well, but he didn't A. mess with icky medical things or B. cross the line as obviously. If we were a strictly rational utilitarian society he'd be in prison for 220 years but because literally everyone is basically just shooting from the hip roughly all the time...here we are. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just I feel something we all forget very frequently.
  - istinetz 4y ago
    >If we were a strictly rational utilitarian society he'd be in prison for 220 years I don't think you understand how risk works. You cannot judge him only on the downside, without considering the upside that could have been. If you jail every startup founder who fails for 220 years, nobody would try to create risky startups, and your utopia would miss out on innovation.
    - smcl 4y ago
      I think they do. My read was that they're trying to illustrate that there is more that goes into determining what a crime is and what the punishment for a crime should be than the impact it has on a company's market value. And I don't think there's a suggestion that every startup founder whose company fails should be jailed - only that if there's some kind of serious wrongdoing, like fraud, involved. Unfortunately with the popularity of "fake it 'til you make it" it's easy for people cross the line, knowingly or unknowingly.

victor9000 4y ago

Venture Nepotism in full display.

ok_dad 4y ago

Sounds like it might be like a time share at scale for permanent housing. Whatever the case, a few connected people will make money on it and it’ll likely make housing worse somehow. I can’t believe this degenerate can start billion dollar companies left and right and honest people are constantly getting told we’re asking for too much to have things like work life balance or decent pay. I’ll giggle like a school girl someday when the other shoe drops and the rich are being eaten.

plankers 4y ago
Lemmy is looking up on us and smiling in eager anticipation
mindentropy 4y ago
>I can’t believe this degenerate can start billion dollar companies left and right Don't know how he manages to raise money. Who in his connections would risk such huge investments? Is it some kind of money laundering or something?
- ReadTheLicense 4y ago
  It's not so much money nowadays. The value of money went way down past 5-10 years. It's just 10 people after a $1B exit allocating 10% of their assets. Sounds crazy, but that's this guy's social circle. Really underlines how important is networking in business.
  - mindentropy 4y ago
    Seriously, I would love to learn his networking skills. With all that trust and funding this guy is set.
  - jmathai 4y ago
    10 billionaires investing 10% of their assets is actually pretty crazy.
anon9001 4y ago

TrackerFF 4y ago

So let me guess, timesharing model for apartments?

Dwolb 4y ago

Neumann’s track record at WeWork: Money raised - $22B Peak market cap - $47B (while private) Current market cap - $4B IPO price per share - $9.82 Current price per share - $5.47 Looking at this data, he hasn’t proven to be an incredible operator in terms of equity returns. He has however demonstrated an incredible ability to raise institutional funding and drive increased private valuations.

inglor_cz 4y ago
Something similar can be said about Charles Ponzi.
- smcl 4y ago
  Bernie Madoff was blessed with a similar gift
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Committing fraud and being charismatic enough to convince others that they will be able to sell their investments to a bigger fool are not the same. Madoff’s numbers were fake. All of wework’s numbers were real and audited and public.
- labster 4y ago
  A hundred years after his great invention, Charles Ponzi is still world-renowned. If that’s not success in business, what on Earth is?
codeflo 4y ago
Maybe real life works like D&D after all, where maxing out charisma and a few lucky rolls allow you to convince anyone of anything.
elp 4y ago
Also the early investors in WeWork did rather nicely. If you are a16z this is probably not a bad investment.

cpach 4y ago

Interesting business idea! I wonder if it will work, we’ll see.

bjarneh 4y ago

> It's not immediately clear how Flow seeks to revolutionize the residential housing industry. I never understood how he revolutionized the "office market" with that wework stuff either. Renting out horrid shared office space with a coffee machine and printer? I guess the beer on tap was sort of original? At my old office we had beer bottles in the fridge, but still... In Oslo the prices for those wework offices were very expensive as well, and there were no quite place. Why not just go to a cafe or public library (or both) and save the money?

threeseed 4y ago
Because a cafe or public library doesn't have meeting rooms, whiteboards, monitors and other facilities that you often need. I know when I was looking for a working space whilst travelling in Seoul it served a useful purpose. I think the future will see more people working remote and travelling around looking for nomad and WeWork style places.
- CaptainZapp 4y ago
  Well, https://www.regus.com/en-us/south-korea/seoul/gran-seoul-tower-1-4581 https://www.regus.com/en-us/south-korea/seoul/gran-seoul-tow...
- bjarneh 4y ago
  > Because a cafe or public library doesn't have meeting rooms, whiteboards, monitors and other facilities that you often need. Although a cafe will not have any of that, public libraries can often have some of that. But my point was that the horrid place they used to rent out in Aker Brygge (now taken over by another vendor) had very little of that as well. A shared noisy space + extremely tiny rooms for zoom meetings was all they had, and it wasn't cheap to rent a place there.. But at least here in Norway, there are other vendors that have much better deals. Perhaps things are very different in the US, but the product they offered here in Norway was not competitive. When I was in the market for something like that a few years ago, it was easy to find others offering much more (an actual office for myself) with access to a printer + meeting rom etc. for much less.
4y ago

jfoster 4y ago

I don't understand why people care if he manages to raise money. What am I missing? If you don't like the chances, but it's not your money, then so what?

smcl 4y ago
It is definitely remarkable that someone who ran a fairly high profile company that exploded in value and deflated about as quickly, has managed to secure substantial investment in a relatively similar space. Do I care about this, or am I directly affected or upset about it? Well, not particularly. However I don't think it bodes well for many in the US that there have been a few VCs attempting to work their way into residential real estate. The way things work here is that we tend to comment when we find something interesting, surprising or if we have a useful insight to contribute. You could cut out 90% of the comments on VCs and startups here with the template "I don't understand why people care [about $thing]. If you don't like [$thing] but it's not your money, then so what?" but I don't think it would make HN a better place. Besides that - the people involved are grown-ups, if they're even reading HN at all I'm sure they can handle the criticism.
- jfoster 4y ago
  It's certainly remarkable and interesting that he's able to raise despite the bad rep. That's definitely worthy of discussion. I'm just surprised that some seem to be almost insulted by it, if that makes sense?

hnbad 4y ago

As much as we like to paint VCs as rational economical actors, some of them (and especially a16z) are as informed by ideology as by economy. Some prominent a16z figureheads have been talking a lot about crypto, not just about the usual value speculation and "decentralized finance" and all that but especially about the libertarian utopian visions that pretty much focus on eliminating state intervention and bypassing regulations, taxes and unions and reframing customers or tenants as "investors". This may not be a crypto startup, but the language around it easily fits the same ideological bent. WeWork wasn't interesting because it was a real estate startup (its ultimate failure demonstrated how nonsensical the valuation was for its business model), it was interesting because of how it framed real estate. In other words: it wasn't functionally different from old school real estate companies but it was ideologically different in a way that appealed to this type of VCs. Given that Flow seems to be another real estate startup by the same CEO, it's likely that the ideological foundation will be similar. Startups often use words like "paradigm shift" to make themselves sound more interesting than they are but I think some VCs and some startup founders genuinely want to "shape how we think" about econimical relationships, and a16z's behavior so far strongly indicates that they have a very specific paradigm in mind, disagreeable as many may find it.

fzliu 4y ago

This is the single largest investment into any company by a16z. This is just insane, especially given that Flow does not yet have a solid product.

buitreVirtual 4y ago
Considering that a16z is already invested in the scammy web 3.0, this is not too surprising.

emptyparadise 4y ago

How do you make housing better after raising $22B for your startup? Wrong answers only.

smcl 4y ago

Incredible how this guy has managed to yet again convince VCs to part with millions in cash. I don't agree with the article that he's a "visionary" or that he "revolutionized" anything, but to lose investors so much money and then follow that up by raising a pile for a similar venture is bold as brass. I don't think anything good can come of this. A company helmed by Neumann taking over residential real estate doesn't sound like a great prospect if it succeeds, but given his track record and the eccentric way he ran We[Work] it seems likely it won't.

nikanj 4y ago
I think he's a solid early investment (people are investing in him, not the company). Get in on a seed round, get out before the bubble pops
- threeseed 4y ago
  I would definitely invest in him. He has unlimited, free PR from every media company around the world. He could found a pet rock company and make millions out of it.
- smcl 4y ago
  I see what you mean and honestly that might be the play they're making. But I dunno if we can call that "investment" anymore, feels more similar to the TikTok kids pulling off NFT pump-n-dumps or just good old-fashioned gambling.

michelb 4y ago

Looking forward to the new series.

benknight87 4y ago

Funny to see the ad hominem attacks coming out with little to no information about the actual company or deal. The well-oiled news outrage machine chugs along, baiting people into emotional reactions about things that don't affect them. Nice.

jwmoz 4y ago

They never learn.

frozenport 4y ago

>> by bringing community and brand to an industry in which neither existed before Lol what? Brand had no content and community didn't exist or was mostly remote companies needing meeting rooms. WeWork spaces were a bad value because I could get a desk at a real startup space, often sponsored by the host city and be surrounded by interesting people.

tppiotrowski 4y ago

Didn't Neumann already try this with WeLive? [1] Does anyone know how this is different? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/13/nyregion/welive-nyc-wework.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/13/nyregion/welive-nyc-wewor...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

kelsolaar 4y ago

WeCrashed with Jared Leto and Anna Hathaway on Apple TV presented Neumann in a rather fascinating way. Recommended watching for anyone curious about the person.

papito 4y ago
It's pretty faithful to the book - Billion Dollar Loser. The phrase is "unique leadership style", which is a euphemism for "that guy has no idea what he is doing".