Why Is Anyone Still Betting on Adam Neumann?

> we love seeing repeat-founders build on past successes by growing from lessons learned," Andreessen wrote. Neumann's success was really developing a hype machine and getting money from investors into his pockets. Color me extremely dubious that this will end up being a good deal for the renters, unless they're the very high end ones. To generate VC-worthy returns, there needs to be a significant cash extraction from the renters. VCs will care about value when the company goes public or gets acquired, the valuation could total fluff to that point but there needs to be a better profit for this venture over traditional real estate or it's not particularly attractive. The delta between reality-distortion valuation and real-reality valuation is what got Adam his platinum parachute the first time around. I suspect the innovations are about monitoring the denizens and monetizing the data. But, open mind, there may be innovations around how apartment buildings get tied to infrastructure, to the other resources of the city, to maintenance, energy, disposal services that provide efficiency without acting like a landlord.

If you're rich, it's easy to convince rich people to give you their money, and you can keep some. So it's smart to be one of the first people to give a rich person money. The rich person will then go get even more money, at which point the original investors can cash out with big returns, leaving the last person to give the rich person holding the bag. Hope you learned your lesson, Masayoshi Son.

I'm imagining a cycle where Flow raises a bunch of money, lights the money on fire to gain market share, then either dies because of bad unit economics or goes on to dominate its space. If so, I think there may be a chance to profit in the second stage, or at least enjoy the sweet smell of burning money. Will they be selling/renting condos at a steep discount heavily subsidized by VC money? Can I potentially get in at a good time?

Obviously, given the scam nature of this thing you'd need to be careful - but there is no real profit without risk...

It’s not rent to own.

You get credits for the rent you pay, you can move to a different rental and add to those credits. At some point in the future you have some capital value in the program itself, not in any particular property.

This allows you to move as much as you want (to other flow properties). Your credits accumulate and you can use that to either cash out or (more desirable) to create your own flow enabled properties with access to great terms via flow.

You will never own the properties themselves, just credits in a company that holds all the real estate.

Flow, Neumann's new play backed by A16Z and other high profile VCs:

> It’s possible this is a rent-to-own play, which would put it in a segment of the real-estate business that’s notoriously predatory, one the Federal Trade Commission has warned is full of high fees and catches that end up burning would-be owners.

All is new in the world, and yet all is the same.

FLOW sounds like an an adult college dormitory. Tenants would rent/buy a private bedroom & bathroom. Living room, kitchen, offices, recreation would be common facilities.

This probably wouldnt work for adults who wish to raise families.