We have all heard of WeWork, the failed IPO startup that never showed a profit. The original Neumann company “WeWork” had its valuation drop from 47B to 10B in just under a month of its IPO. The main funder in WeWork — SoftBank, conducted a takeover of the company and offered Neumann a golden parachute to exit the company as chairman of the board for 1.7B. Months later SoftBank revalued the company at 5B, giving the company a 42B loss in market capitalization in its first few months. Due to this, WeWork began a lay off of over 2,400 employees in which an outcry soon followed throughout the public.
Neumann soon after created a notorious name for himself, a majority of the population view that he exited investors and staff out of their investments both time & money while also walking away with a nice lump sum of change for the effort. Many would view that because of the fiasco that institutions would reject any new Neumann companies based on his past. It’s much of a surprise that his new concept — Flow, has shut critiques & analyst naysayers down with its recent raise of 325M.
The new concept Flow, which hasn’t even entered the marketplace yet — already has been valued at a 1B valuation and with its recent 325M raise people are talking. The new venture’s website is extremely vague and doesn’t offer much if any detail on what services the company will be offering. The New York Times reported that the new concept is “Effectively a service that landlords can team up with for their properties, somewhat similar to the way an owner of a hotel might contract with a branded hotel chain to operate the property.”
The leading investor in Flow is famous private equity investor Andresseen Horowitz went on to say in a recent blog post that Neumann’s development for WeWork often goes under-appreciated. He went on to say “We love to see founders learn from their mistakes and continue on with new ideas and ventures.” Flow is set to enter the marketplace in the beginning of 2023.
This post is based on the opinion of writers at Real Estate Today
