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Say what you will about Adam Neumann, but he didn't commit fraud
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Investing in Flow
81–90 of 133 posts
Re: Investing in Flow
#82> The second model: you rent an apartment, but: it’s a soulless experience; do you even meet your neighbors, much less have any friends in your complex? Does it feel like home, or just a place to sleep? Are you proud to bring friends and family to visit, or hesitant?
Excuse me, what? I've absolutely met my neighbors. In past buildings in Brooklyn I've gone out to dinner with some, spent hours on the stoop having conversations with others, taken care of their kids while they ran an errand, and had all sorts of positive (and negative) experiences with them. That's what living in apartments in a dense city community is like. People come hang out in my place all the time.
It's hard to even comment on what they're proposing, since there are no details, but the last thing we need is more single family homes and corporate landlords.
Re: Investing in Flow
#83Maybe the solution to the housing crisis is to build more affordable housing and to eliminate the practice of using housing as an investment / safe place to park money. Also, outlaw or heavily regulate Airbnb. I don't think another VC-funded app with cool branding is going to save us.
Honest question: why are there so may Airbnbs? What's the advantage over traditional hotels / hostels? Are the prices significantly lower?
They were definitely lower when AirBnB launched, although most of the difference is gone nowadays (might vary by locale).
AirBnBs are also far more likely to have a fully equipped kitchen setup, separate rooms, and larger setups for families and groups, none of which are impossible with hotels but are definitely not very common.
I do think AirBnB generates way too much negative externalities for the value it brings, but there is value in it for the consumer.
Re: Investing in Flow
#84My guess: A network of apartment complexes across the country that you can own equity in the entire enterprise instead of one single home. You can "freely" move between the apartments without having to go through financing etc. This can be interesting with a massive capital and enough time to build out the network but seeing this cocaine addict's name in the mix make me feel this is going to fail fast. Real estate is…
Lot of people dunking on Neumann here. But the space is very interesting and certainly there is a market need. No one seems to understand that Neumann built a massively successful company, because they watch the documentaries and think he’s a scumbag for failing to deliver an IPO.
I don't know, taking $22 billion to make a company worth $4 billion doesn't seem that impressive. It's just office space at the end of the day, what's so interesting about that? He just was able to grift his way into a fortune is what I see as the impressive part.
Re: Investing in Flow
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Why have 3 roommates in a house when you could have 300 roommates and live in a recently, cheaply converted commercial building designed to be a clone of the Googleplex?"
Co-living is actually pretty great when done properly: it’s not a solution to the housing crisis, and suffers from the same economic problems as WeWork did with office space, but as a resident, it’s great — assuming you want to live with other people. Most co-living spaces end up going broke (including the one I’ve lived in) so I don’t have much faith in Flow’s viability if it is co-living… but it’d probably be great…
"Done properly" is probably highly correlated with a high degree of control and ownership (if not in a financial sense, in a sense of ownership and responsibility), both of which are extremely ill-suited to a large company running things nation-wide.
Re: Investing in Flow
#86> The second model: you rent an apartment, but: it’s a soulless experience; do you even meet your neighbors, much less have any friends in your complex? Does it feel like home, or just a place to sleep? Are you proud to bring friends and family to visit, or hesitant? Excuse me, what? I've absolutely met my neighbors. In past buildings in Brooklyn I've gone out to dinner with some, spent hours on the stoop having conv…
I guess the only frame of reference this set of VC/founders have to go on is the last time they rented before becoming millionaires.
Re: Investing in Flow
#87Just flag it, it's not worth the effort to get into this. For anyone not aware of the context, look into the recent NIMBY bullshit by Andreessen.
And if you want a TL;DR:
Andreesen, who this article is written by, was himself trying and succeeding to get his own city council to axe housing development in his own neighborhood, causing the very problems he's writing about.
Re: Investing in Flow
#88> The second model: you rent an apartment, but: it’s a soulless experience; do you even meet your neighbors, much less have any friends in your complex? Does it feel like home, or just a place to sleep? Are you proud to bring friends and family to visit, or hesitant? Excuse me, what? I've absolutely met my neighbors. In past buildings in Brooklyn I've gone out to dinner with some, spent hours on the stoop having conv…
This is so classist (not your comment but op). To imply that folks who don't own their home shouldn't/couldn't be "proud" to bring their loved ones there. Are you kidding me? Entire generations, communities, families have lived and died in rental housing. Entire swaths of the population. This shows very little respect for them.
Re: Investing in Flow
#89tl;dr it's wework but for residential real estate... nobody asked for this, it sounds awful and fuck adam neumann
Re: Investing in Flow
#90I am surprised to see so many negative responses. I bet most of the people here agree 100% with the problems and structural shifts this memo identified, and that technological innovation in the housing space to facilitate both social cohesion and affordability would be a *very good thing*. Sure, Adam had some highly publicized issues at WeWork. Also, a16z is on a lot of people's shit list right now. Still, why do so…
> and that technological innovation in the housing space to facilitate both social cohesion and affordability
My gut reaction to the news is totally negative. I agree with your above point, but I see that innovation coming from outside Silicon Valley-VC bubble. We need communities to organize and modernize zoning. We need modular housing to drive down the cost of construction. We need to focus on the basic economics (supply & demand) of housing.
If I had to guess, a16z & Adam are going to throw money into being shitty landlords. They are going to get their cut. I'm very skeptical they will make the world a better place.