Adam Neumann could soon be taking on his former company WeWork head on. Nearly four years after he was ousted from the coworking company, the controversial founder said his new venture, called Flow—which he describes as a "residential consumer-facing real estate company"—will either "compete or partner" with WeWork as he bets on the work-from-home trend continuing.
Neumann famously stepped down from WeWork following its botched first attempt at an IPO in 2019—a debacle that ultimately cost investors billions of dollars and thousands of employees their jobs amid concerns over corporate governance and reports of a toxic work culture. (WeWork has since gone public.) As part of his exit package, Neumann signed a noncompete and non-solicit agreement with WeWork—which expires in October of this year, Neumann said onstage Tuesday at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Deer Valley, Utah.
Despite the trend of companies beckoning employees back to the office, Neumann noted that the vast majority of residents they have surveyed still work from home several days a week. In a world where "work and living has been integrated—where, we're not ready, actually, for these solutions because these buildings have not been designed for that, the operating systems are not there, the tech is not there, the teams are not there to run it, I think Flow has only two choices: compete, or partner" with WeWork, he said.
Neumann ruffled feathers when he reentered the entrepreneurship game in 2022 as the founder of the new residential real estate-tied Flow. The bigger shock was the massive sum that top venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz invested in the firm: $350 million, reportedly its largest-ever single check.
Asked about getting a second chance with such a large check, Neumann said he is sure there are other entrepreneurs who deserve investments more than he does and aren't getting it.
Neumann said he'd spent a lot of time reflecting on lessons learned in the wake of his WeWork exit, such as surrounding yourself with people who provide honest feedback about the "hard truth." As an investor in startups in recent years himself, Neumann said he's now realized the frustration investors feel when founders won't listen to their advice.
The Flow founder hasn't shared much about what the new company will actually do or look like as of yet. Neumann said Tuesday that the business model for Flow broadly is a "vertically-integrated system" of owning and operating the buildings as well as building technology and a community.
Even in a nearly hour-long panel with a16z cofounder Marc Andreessen and general partner David Ulevitch in November, which the VC firm released publicly earlier this year, Neumann was short on details, but described four pillars of the company: a branded, "technology-first" management company that runs the buildings; an asset management or real estate fund that owns the buildings; a financial services company; and a "mechanism that's going to take some of the value and share it with the value creators," seemingly some form of fractional ownership. There have also been reports about Flow incorporating a digital wallet for crypto. “We want to create an elevated experience for the resident,” he said. Neumann said they own 3,000 apartments and have over 150 employees.
What a partnership or direct competition with WeWork will look like is yet to be seen. Flow's website, meanwhile, still says "coming soon."
