CNN Business
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Nearly three years after Adam Neumann stepped down as CEO of WeWork following a failed attempt to take the company public, he would once again be in charge of a billion-dollar real estate startup.
Andreessen Horowitz, the prominent venture capital firm known for its early investments in Twitter and Airbnb, has injected around $350 million into Neumann’s new venture, called Flow, according to The New York Times, citing unnamed sources briefed on the deal. The investment valued the startup at more than $1 billion, according to the report.
Representatives for Flow and Andreessen Horowitz did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In a blog post On Monday, Marc Andreessen, co-founder and general partner of the venture capital firm, announced the investment, without disclosing financial details. He also explained his thinking in supporting Flow, a residential real estate company, and Neumann despite the founder’s high-profile fall at WeWork.
“Adam is a visionary leader who has revolutionized the world’s second largest asset class – commercial real estate – by bringing community and brand to an industry where none existed before,” Andreessen wrote in his post. Monday. “Adam and the WeWork story has been comprehensively, at times accurately, chronicled, analyzed and fictionalized. office experience and led a global company that changed paradigm in the process: Adam Neumann.”
It’s not immediately clear how Flow seeks to revolutionize the residential housing industry. Flow currently has a simple website, with the slogan “Live life in flow” and two words indicating that it will launch in 2023.
Andreessen positioned the new company as a long-awaited solution to the country’s “housing crisis”. He used a mix of jargon-filled terms — “community-focused, experience-centric service” — to explain how the new startup would “create a system where tenants receive landlord benefits.”
“We think it’s only natural that for his first company since WeWork, Adam returns to the theme of connecting people by transforming their physical spaces and building communities where people spend the most time: their homes,” said writes Andreessen. “Residential real estate – the largest asset class in the world – is exactly ready for this change.”
Under Neumann’s leadership, WeWork has evolved from shared coworking spaces with elaborate perks to experiments with gyms, a school, and housing. The latest of these efforts, called We livelet guests rent a bed or private room in a co-living venue, with common areas available for yoga, ping pong and more.
Once valued at $47 billion in the private market at its height, WeWork endured a disastrous bid to go public, largely foiled by IPO documents that exposed Neumann’s unchecked power and numerous corporate disputes. potential interests, as well as WeWork’s staggering losses. Neumann finally was ousted from his position as managing director at WeWorkbut walked away with an exit package worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Former WeWork CEO Receives Massive Payout (2019)
The dramatic rise of WeWork and its spectacular first attempt at an IPO inspired a TV showwhich partly depicts Neumann as the poster child of the excess of startup culture.
We work finally made public through a Special Purpose Acquisition Company, or SPAC, in 2021. WeWork currently has a market value of approximately $4 billion.