I met WeWork founder Adam Neumann for the first time yesterday. “Met” might be a stretch—I charged over to him as he was coming out from behind stage at Fortune Brainstorm Tech in Deer Valley, Utah; just in time to catch him putting on a black baseball cap and saying how he wished he had gotten to talk more about his new startup Flow. I quickly offered him the opportunity—10 minutes to sit down with me, so I could ask a few of my burning questions about the business he is building that has garnered what is reportedly a16z’s largest check ever, and that sounds quite a bit like WeWork 2.0 (more on that later).
Neumann quickly turned me away. And one of his handlers, right on cue, swept in, saying Neumann had a flight to catch. I will hand it to him—Neumann showed up. He was here, talking publicly on stage. Since the (first) WeWork IPO went bust and Neumann stepped down as CEO, these kinds of appearances have been few and far between. In the meantime, Neumann has turned into a Silicon Valley character of lore, with a television series, documentary, and books all detailing WeWork's tremendous rise and tremendous crash. (Since Neumann’s departure, WeWork has since gone public and is currently trading at a $532 million market cap, an incredible depletion of value from the $47 billion valuation it once boasted.)
