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by kumarvvr 1408 days ago
> Adam is a visionary leader who revolutionized the second largest asset class in the world

I was of the opinion that Adam made a serious and flawed business decision of taking long term leases with borrowed money, but selling short term fluid leases for revenue leading to books that are incredibly risky. At the time of collapse, the sky high valuation was basically a branding exercise, rather than actual business value (adjusted for risk)

> it’s often under appreciated that only one person has fundamentally redesigned the office experience and led a paradigm-changing global company in the process

How is that A16z is oblivious to the fact that astronomical valuations were tempered after scrutiny of the business of WeWork?

>We understand how difficult it is to build something like this

Again. They took cheaply available VC money, turned it into long term leases. That is a terrible business to be in, risk wise.

Not to mention bullshit about "community" and what not that they tried to build around WeWork.

>Adam returns to the theme of connecting people through transforming their physical spaces and building communities where people spend the most time: their homes.

What is novel about this? Aren't Cul de Sacs supposed to be this? Or even apartments?

3 comments

Adam should write a book “how to fail upwards in silicon valley”

What is infuriating is that there is so much great work done by great people on building strong resilient and affordable towns which are a pleasure to live and work in, but the easy VC money flows to the wierdo charlatans instead.

Many of the top VCs still see themselves as the 'weird outsider' despite being unfathomably successful, and shovel money at moonshot projects led by charismatic charlatans.

Listening to Marc Andreessen talk about Web3 use cases was eye-opening. Despite being the guy that made web browsing mainstream (Netscape), he sounds like your typical crypto Youtube shill, all buzzwords all the time.

>How is that A16z is oblivious to the fact that astronomical valuations were tempered after scrutiny of the business of WeWork?

Do they care? If they cashed out on Masayoshi Son's money then it was still a great deal for them.

Meh A2z or whatever they’re called doesn’t really care about the OPM. I’d fund him just for entertainment factor. The world needs more spirituality in its valuations. And they’ll just dump their shares on a bigger fool like SoftBank.
The reality is that fame (even the notoriety version) gives people the ability to summon literally hundreds of millions of marketing for free.

All things being equal, that makes them a pretty good bet.

Flow probably will have a far easier time getting PR than almost any other startup this year. Same goes for inbound CVs, follow on investment, and basically anything else that makes startups tick.

So it's not that surprising that he can raise from an S Tier investor with a smile and a landing page that's literally just a logo.