Adam Newman has attracted his biggest outside investment since January 2019, when Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank placed a $47bn valuation on WeWork, the office space company he co-founded, which is now valued at $4bn.
Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz said Monday it is backing residential real estate firm Flow. Newman It’s been building since a failed attempt to take WeWork public prompted him to resign as chief executive.
Andreessen Horowitz has invested $350mn at a valuation of roughly $1bn, a person familiar with the matter said. In May, it invested an undisclosed amount in FlowCarbon, another Newman-backed company that is trying to make carbon credit markets more transparent using blockchain technology.
A BlogCo-founder Marc Andreessen hailed Newman as “a visionary leader who revolutionized the world’s second-largest asset class – commercial real estate.”
“Only one person has fundamentally redesigned the office experience and led a paradigm-shifting global company in the process: Adam Newman,” he said.
Acknowledging past controversies, Andreessen added: “We like founders to build on past successes by growing from lessons learned. For Adam, the successes and lessons are many.
Newman, left WeWork A billionaire has revealed few details of Flow’s plans: its website features only the words “flow for life” and “coming 2023”. A spokeswoman for Newman declined to comment.
But one Interview He told the Financial Times in March that he was tapping into the housing and affordability crises, which are forcing more young Americans to rent instead of buy.
He saw a “tremendous opportunity” to provide more of a sense of community in multifamily housing, he said at the time, and was targeting cities like Austin, Miami and Nashville, which have growing populations of young adults with job growth, cultural attractions and well-being. Weather.
Andreessen, an early backer of Facebook and Airbnb, gave few details on how Flow would work, but said it would involve “rethinking the entire value chain, from the way buildings are purchased and owned to the way residents interact with their buildings.” Route value is distributed among stakeholders.
After leaving WeWork, Newman began buying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of affordable rental housing.
“We started by buying this real estate, but as I started walking the buildings, I realized and I realized that we could do a lot more to make life better for these tenants,” he told the FT in March.
Newman ventured into residential properties with the launch of WeLive, but only managed to open two of its communal apartment buildings before leaving WeWork.
In 2020, her family office led a $42 million fundraiser for Alfred, which provides tenants with services ranging from their dry cleaning to booking communal yoga sessions.
However, Alfred’s chief executive, Marcela Sabone, said Flo will not be using her “residential experience” company’s product. “It’s typical of Alfred, but he would focus on his buildings,” he said. “His belief is that it’s good for both of us.”
Andreessen drew widespread attention at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, pouring more of his money into Silicon Valley to build physical assets.
His Article He said that led to less investment in all forms of manufacturing and construction, “which led to house prices in places like San Francisco skyrocketing like crazy, making it almost impossible for ordinary people to move in.” Take future jobs.”
However, earlier this year Andreessen and his wife, philanthropist Laura Arrillaga Andreessen, attacked a plan to change zoning rules in California, the wealthy Silicon Valley city where they live, to allow them to build multifamily homes, The Atlantic reported. The zoning plan was abandoned in July.
This article has been edited to correct the date Newman’s family office raised funds for Alfred.
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