Surely you remember adam neumannthat entrepreneur who managed to create a fabulous bubble with his workspace rental and coworking company WeWork, which after being valued at 47,000 million dollars, fell from grace.
Well, this man, far from having retired, is embarking on a new commercial adventure with Flow, a real estate company that will start operating by the year 2023but which has already received an investment of 350 million dollars (approximately 352 million euros) from the capital of Andreessen Horowitz and has an estimated valuation of 1,000 million dollars.
The beginnings of Adam Neumann: in search for the american dream
Lets start by the beginning. Adam Neumann was born in Tel Aviv in 1979 and at the young age of 22 years old decided to move to New York, looking for opportunities to get a good job and to be someone in life.
Shortly before finishing university, he retired to dedicate himself completely to the business world, starting with some small projects with little success, such as the case of folding heels and baby clothes with built-in knee pads named krawlerwhich later ended up becoming a hit called Egg Baby.
During these years he met Michael McKelveywith which he came up with the idea of a business of vacant office space rental whoever wanted a space temporarily, with which Green Desk emerged. This company was sold but it would be the beginning of WeWork.
The first WeWork office opened in the New York neighborhood of Little Italy. I quickly caught the attention of big investors like the Japanese Masayoshi Son, owner of soft bank, which invested large amounts of money, expanding to more than 120 cities in 40 countries to become one of the most valuable startups in . Even Neumann’s empire spanned other businesses like WeLive, a kind of community housing for single people; a school named Students Of Life For Life; and Rise by We, a chain of gyms.
Although everything seemed perfect, soon investors began to have doubts about whether the company was really worth the estimated 47 billion dollars and mistrust was planted around Neumann’s management capacity, especially due to his fondness for luxurious parties and for questionable actions such as the acquisition of real estate that he subsequently rented to WeWork, so they decided to further investigate the company’s finances and postponed its IPO in 2019.
After investigation, Neumann was forced to resign as CEO of WeWork and even some investors came to denounce him in court, although the lawsuits did not prosper.
Flow, a new commercial adventure
Now, Neumann has been reborn and off to a spectacular start. Flow, his new business venture, has received an investment of 350 million dollars from the venture capital Andreessen Horowitz, co-founded by Marc Andreessen.
In one, Andreessen has revealed that his investment in Flow is “community driven », because “our nation has a housing crisis”further adding that «Neumann and his colleagues at Flow are a direct way to attack this problem.”
But there is an elephant in the room called WeWork, so the statement states that, “Adam is a visionary leader that revolutionized the world’s second-largest asset class, commercial real estate, by bringing community and branding to a sector where none existed before. Adam and the WeWork story have been extensively narrated, analyzed and commented on. Despite all the energy put into covering the story, it’s often underestimated that only one person has fundamentally redesigned the office experience and led a paradigm-shifting global company in the process: Adam Neumann.”
But the question about Flow is that it is still not known for sure what it is and how it will achieve such a revolutionary change. In fact, the company’s home page does not seem to give many clues, beyond that it will arrive in 2023.
What we do know is that during these years of inactivity, Neumann has been buying properties, accumulating residences valued at 90 million dollars (just over 90 million euros), located in New York and California. On top of this, as of 2020 he owns nearly 4,000 affordable apartments that are spread throughout the number, valued at $1 billion.
It has also been known that Neumann and his wife Rebekah have been buying forest land in Ecuador, to create a company called Flow Carbon, with a business model focused on selling carbon credits to companies that want to offset their emissions, so it is possible that Flow is not an independent company, but rather a holistic brand looking to solve all the problems of modern life, while making huge profits.
It only remains to wait and see where this new adventure is headed.
Image: Flickr
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