Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, also called a16z, took a large but unspecified stake in the apartment holdings of former WeWork boss Adam Neumann in return for its recent $350M investment in Neumann's latest residential company, Flow, The Wall Street Journal reports.
If Neumann's new venture fails, Andreessen Horowitz will presumably keep the multifamily stakes, either to sell to someone else or hold as an investment, though venture capital firms rarely own real estate assets directly.
The $350M investment is the largest amount the Menlo Park, California-based Andreessen Horowitz has ever put into a single round of funding for a company, and it values Flow at about $1B.
Neumann left WeWork in 2019 with more than $1B after its initial public offering failed. He used much of that sum to buy about 4,000 apartment units in Florida, Georgia and Tennessee over the last two years.
Neumann has said that he wants his new company to "shake up" the rental-housing industry. Flow is reportedly going to be a residential real estate company, though its exact business model hasn't been spelled out yet.
“Adam returns to the theme of connecting people through transforming their physical spaces and building communities where people spend the most time: their homes,” Andreessen Horowitz General Partner Marc Andreessen wrote in an August blog post announcing the investment.
Flow will offer furnished apartments and flexible leases, as well as common space and social activities, something like what WeWork was designed to do, The Real Deal reports, citing people familiar with the venture. Some of Flow's tenants might be digital nomads who spend their time in different cities and do not want to commit to a conventional apartment lease in any particular place.
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