Color me skeptical, but the deliberately vague strawman arguments in the post read between the lines to be something like: "If you're a homeowner we want to your equity and if your a renter we want your rent". I don't harbor any illusions that flow wants to help anyone but themselves.
I have no idea what flow actually is, but if it's something like "airbnb but permanent on the blockchain" like we work was "Airbnb but for your work desk", then no. Heck no.
"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 to live there on VC’s dime (just like WeWork was great when subsidised by VCs).
"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.
My guess is it is a new way of quickly moving furniture so they can have you move locations every 29 days so you don't get any legal eviction protections. But your rent for this new venture buys into a blockchain ponzi scam and you get some kind of token out of it.
> There’s a reason the federal government started subsidizing home mortgages: someone who is bought in to where he lives cares more about where he lives.
Hasn't this thought process proven wrong in europe. Renters were similarly engaged in local communities where there were sufficient protections for long term renters.( I can't find the study now ).
I really don't understand why govt need to be in the business of providing home ownership subsidies. Seems like it has contributed to exacerbating current situation in US.
> 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?
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.
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.
This is really gross. Andreessen, who’s used his sway to stop any slight increase in housing density in his own town, talks about the broken housing system and how investing billions into a failed scammer will revolutionize housing in a way that’s completely unstated, but presumably involves attempting to find ways to collect rent from people who need housing while also putting all the capital risk onto those individuals as well. The worst thing we can do for housing is to give any credence to this company’s plans.
Unfortunately, This scammer 'Adam Neumann' hasn't failed and still was able to exit out of WeWork with a ton of money. So he is not entirely a failed scammer and was able to get away with it and try again.
An actual failed scammer is Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos.
I guess a distinction between a "successful" scammer (Adam Neumann) and an "unsuccessful" scammer (Elizabeth Holmes). Scammers alike but I guess different post-scam collapse treatment by the investment community. Makes you wonder about a lot of things.
Or a different type of character reference; a character count for the landing page which requires multiple paragraphs of information before confidently claiming to have solved shelter for all mankind.
Let me see if I got this right. Instead of a16z using its resources to actively push for YIMBY changes in society and politics that would actually have positive outcomes on the problems stated, it's investing in the next idea from the WeWork dream seller / scammer, and we don't even know what the venture is? Is this what the venture capital world has become in 2022?
I used to have a high opinion of venture capital, seeing them as tech visionaries and folks with access to deep pockets that fund the best technology that is truly changing the world. Maybe something has changed, but now all I see are just financial hustlers, working markets, trying to capture or corner spaces with "unicorns", looking for M&A activity that might have already been pre-negotiated looking for something to fill that spot, and weird market plays that never seemed to make sense financially (Web3? WeWork?). My perception now of VC is much like any other private equity play. They're in it for the financial hustle, and I don't feel that their "ideas" really hold much water. Why we look up to VCs as thought-leaders and visionaires when they are financial creatures beats me.
While the top VC players may have earned the respect by themselves being visionary entrepreneurs (once, decades ago in many cases), the rest of the VC market is filled with also-ran investors who have never been practicing entrepreneurs, following markets like lemmings and looking for a relatively quick buck while not even understanding the markets they invest in. When I hear someone is an investor, especially if they're not one of the handful few of well-known investors, I just think to myself "banker". I don't know if it's always been like this, but it certainly feels like it's gotten worse.
Occasionally, VCs fund something that changes the world, but I don't think that is necessary (and maybe also not even strictly sufficient) to make money in that business.
Andy Grove's response when John Doerr decided to leave intel for kleiner
"Come on, don't you want to be a general manager and own a real P&L? I'll let you run Intel's software division. John, venture capital, that's not a real job. It's like being a real estate agent."
I think VCs reflect the market. Alot of the fundamental new things have been done already. So if you’re looking for new sources of huge returns, you’re looking for ways to do things differently vs inventing some new technology.
The other thing is that you have more really rich people who control lots of money without a lot of governance.
> While the top VC players may have earned the respect by themselves being visionary entrepreneurs (once, decades ago in many cases), the rest of the VC market is filled with also-ran investors who have never been practicing entrepreneurs, following markets like lemmings and looking for a relatively quick buck while not even understanding the markets they invest in. When I hear someone is an investor, especially if they're not one of the handful few of well-known investors, I just think to myself "banker". I don't know if it's always been like this, but it certainly feels like it's gotten worse.
Funny you say that because a16z was a top-5 (maybe even better) performing VC in the 2010s and the guy who wrote this article is the Marc Andreessen who created Mosaic/Netscape.
I think this just goes back to the classic "live long enough to see yourself become the villain". I mean seriously, a $350 million round to a company that doesn't yet exist and is led by a bona fide fraudster. Boggles my mind.
Becoming a villain is a choice. There are plenty of counterexamples in our industry, folks who succeeded in tech and/or finance and didn't go on to make investments in fraudsters and whole industries of fraud.
I figured it's valuable that he did create something that's valued at nearly $4 billion dollars today, but then I looked at it and he did raise $22 billion.
The question is, is it trivial to take $22 billion dollars and create a $4 billion business? In some cases I would say yeah, its still valuable. I'm not entirely sure I could create a $4 billion business regardless how much money you gave me. On the other hand its real estate, so I could just buy $22 billion of real estate and hopefully come out somewhere just shy of that amount. I'm not sure but the spread between $22 and $4 leaves plenty of room for error.
But there is something to say about failing. Traders that have lost a lot of money are more valuable than those that have never had any downs. But from hearing Adam Neumann speak, it strikes me as though he hasn't learned any lessons. He's a master at deflection and has an excuse or explanation for everything. He has no self awareness or humility. You can listen to his interview from 2021 and it's really incredible.
Anyway, that's all to say I'm surprised anyone would give him another chance.
Maybe 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.
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.
I dont get why creating more housing means housing is no longer an investment. It's still an safe investment, it's not going to zero, just will not continue to be a great investment.
Finally! A potential solution to the housing crisis. Newly VC-infused and rehabilitated Adam Neumann. Yes yes yes. The world needs more of this.
This is also a good hedge against the crypto pyramid starting to slow down. Leveraging peoples' willingness to try to get rich quick to create a pyramid was profitable, but once people lost their money and crypto lost its luster, they wandered off and were no longer easy victims^Wcustomers... but imagine if VCs could also control your housing. Wandering off is so much harder! Built-in market protection.
> revolutionized the second largest asset class in the world — commercial real estate — by bringing community and brand to an industry in which neither existed before
This sounds very disingenuous. Starbucks was arguably the first 'community brand' where people would associate one with an informal meeting place rather than to drink a coffee. Even in Silicon Valley, there are cafe chains renowned for this meeting vibe.
And then there are country clubs, which are newer and more bourgeois.
Even the neighborhood newspaper kiosk in historical European cities did a better job of bringing community and brand to real estate than WeWork.
Maybe dependent on locale, but country clubs never really went anywhere. They tend to be more of an invaluable networking tool with more traditional professions vs tech, but my lawyer friends consider country club memberships to be more or less an essential part of doing business.
It's notable that there are no references in this article. We actually have a 9 month supply of new housing now (which is a lot, that's up from a low of just a few months). Population growth in the US continues to go ever lower (but isn't going negative). Here is a nice data-driven video overview of this current economic situation and also about how this likely indicates a worsening recession ahead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6JBX8Y8XQM
It would be nice to see this data explored in a more localized way. I know there are excesses of new housing in some places and shortages in other places. I also don't know how much of the current excess housing supply is due to houses being built in less desirable locations.
Of course there are no references. The whole pitch is about vibes. Fun to see investor storytime being regurgitated by the investors in question with even fewer details than they probably got from Adam.
Something like localized analysis of housing probably doesn't "scale" enough for a VC firm like a16z.
I see a lot of confusion over why anyone would want to take a stake in an Adam Neumann biz. Some guesses…
VCs are looking for return, and quickly, which is why they have glommed on to crypto projects. In the old model, you invest money, wait 5-10 years, and get a payoff when the company goes public or gets sold. With crypto, there is a much more immediate payoff with unregistered securities, AKA “tokens”. And then maybe a second payoff in 5-10 years.
There are no details from a16z or Flow on what this actually is, but I am guessing tokenized rent payments on a blockchain in some fashion, promising some sort of equity to renters, and quick returns to a16z. They came out with a splashy investment and a high valuation, and are hoping to make their money back on the unregistered securities, AKA tokens, and who knows, maybe more in 5-10 years.
There are few industries as cynical as venture capital. They won't ever invest in projects explicitly designed for public welfare because "the economics don't work" or "the innovation isn't there".
But they will invest eye-watering sums into financing student newspapers for the middle-aged (Substack) or 'turn your car into a public taxi' businesses, knowing that 90% of them won't amount to anything.
> There are few industries as cynical as venture capital. They won't ever invest in projects explicitly designed for public welfare because "the economics don't work"
Well then it's unfortunate that our economy is structured to deliver economic returns to early stage investors that are grossly disproportionate to the company's actual performance in the market.
Flow will be no different. They will need to hire thousands D's of people with low interest VC cash and expand to 10 countries in order to deliver the same profitability as say a mid sized law firm. .
Never saw an ad for WeWork. Did see them with $3 sq/ft office space in Oakland renting for $12. Softbank gave him an incentive to blow it up, thus he did. Cleared a few billion in cash and will probably be back to buy the remnants of WeWork and rights to Jared Leto's sequel. A real meanie though.
Easy for AH- they charge fees on the capital they deploy. Adam and his BS are ultimately the problem of your poor grandmother’s teaching pension getting invested in a noted charlatan.
This is almost certainly going to be a rent-seeking venture that attempts to sell "freedom of movement" by having something that feels like student accommodation for adults and small families... a kind of shared living space that can be rented month-to-month with some perks like community spaces and services, pre-furnished, etc. To sell a lifestyle.
Of course that comes at a cost, one that very few people can afford. At least, it will be unaffordable to most. It is always true that more people than one realises is actually awash with money (thanks to the prior generation benefiting from incredible growth of their assets) and for them this freedom of movement by renting on a rolling short-term basis and upping on a whim will allow them to further access high paying work.
I'm really not sure that what housing needs is for large-scale VC money to be poured in (and the corresponding expectations of return on that).
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.
That's a lot of words to find out exactly zero about Flow and what it's doing, for which the buried link to the website also does nothing to explain.
Also, it's kind of rich to hear a billionaire wax poetic about the woes of the real estate market. According to a quick search, he of no surprise owns several properties, including a $177 million property.
Hey, seems like a cool idea! I've always lived in apartments and wished there was an easier way to meet people than relying on bumping into them in the hallways. Have you built anything yet? By the way, I noticed a typo -- "aprtment."
nothing built, other than the carrd.co website there. i kind of wanted to put something down 'on paper' to try to develop the idea a bit more myself, maybe show it around online here and there - at least see if i'm just a monster or if other folks have the same problem, etc. and it's def helped to put the site together - it's just allowed me to take the next step - think about:
- how to contact people,
- what types of friendships/relationships/apt-family people might be interested in making/creating,
- how would we actually set up an initial meeting between future-apt-family members
- is 'family' too strong a word/idea? part of my goal is to increase solidarity generally.
- could / should these communities be able to evolve into something much more thna 'just' a family -- tenant union, buy the building/property, land/building-type trust stuff?
i thought of 'competition' (co-opetition?) that already exists, things like:
- apt communities doing 'pizza days' or whatever once a month
- some communities have fakebook groups, etc.
- some folks will actually meet around the building - parking garage, street, laundry room, dog park, walking around the hood, etc.
- some folks will meet on Nextdoor
and i didn't want to fall into the 'trap' of trying to build something online -- or mostly or only online.
my natural inclination for a lot of things these days seems to be 'avoid doing this venture online because it will suck -- almost by definition'. that's a bit harsh, but just my take. some of my ideas, like a kb idea, it's online-only and that's fine/good. but when i think of 'online apt community', the closest thing i can think of right now is 'nextdoor' -- which... has always felt like a racist/classist cesspool to me, whenever i checked into it. just my take. so doing yet another online community like Nextdoor, or fakebook, just has an 'ick' factor for me.
one buddy said his communities' 'pizza days' are all he has ever needed to make NEWFOREVERFRIENDS in whatever city he has ever been in, and that this MyAptFam idea is completely stupid or worse.
and then i met a kid who said, during some discussion i wasn't even involved in, "i'm NEVER moving to another city where I don't know someone again."
Oh man I wish there were pizza days in my neck of the woods.
I really like your thinking about keeping this from being entirely online. How about something involving flyers or bulletin board notices, but maybe the app somehow facilitates that?
Another thought that bubbled up in my head is that I wonder if there's a way to gamify the act of meeting neighbors ... ooooh now that feels like it has potential to me. Your building gets points for how many people have met each other, and there's a geographic leaderboard. Or maybe you could set up the incentives to encourage deeper interaction, like involving some of those icebreaker games (some of them are actually not lame IMO). Honestly if this app took off, I could see the apartment's "social score" affecting property value. Ok now I'm getting excited. Also worried about potential negative consequences.
yeah, flyers, bulletin boards, etc. -- lot of this stuff, in a sense, you're confined/constrained to doing online things because presumably we don't own / manage / control the building, but we could either operate without the blessing of building management, or work with them.
i'm guessing building management-type community-building software already exists -- i've used some of it to pay rent -- but nothing that actually tried to build community, that i remember.
to me, having building mgmt involved is problematic, but.... not necessarily a dealbreaker. maybe your pitch would be, "hey, use our software for $5/apt/month, and we'll increase your lease renewal rate by 5%, and therefore you'll end up saving/making a net of +$6,000 this year for your 150-apartment complex. (I don't actually have any idea of the economics.)
i did talk to a friend who is part of an investor group that owns apt buildings - he's not interested in this solution from an ownership perspective (maybe he should be?) - but presumably he would be able to get in touch with the companies he/they hire to manage the buildings. i think the mgmt companies get 10% or something to run/maintain a building, and presumably if they don't hit their revenue targets, then a new mgmt company is hired (??) - no idea tho really.
so, we would not have at least my ideal scenario of a perfect apiring-to-be-a-family community -- b/c it would ultimately be controlled by the apt mgmt -- but we could still achieve _some_ level of camaraderie/family/solidarity/friendship amongst the tenants -- and that might be where we have to start.
i kind of think of it like tv during the clinton years (i think?) when he/they/the gubment/tv/media were pushing the whatever communications act of 199x -- basically, giving away much of the tv/some?? spectrum for free to the megacorps (instead of licensing for real money from taxpayers, providing some of the spectrum for public broadcasting, etc.) -- and all the major news channels/shows/etc. just didn't cover it -- so the public/taxpayers never knew about this heist of the century.
so, something similar could happen with an apt community 'bulletin board' -- someone posts, "Hey, my rent is going up $300 this month, wtf??" -- and building mgmt is like "nope, deleted." -- so, that would suck, but....i would argue the tenants could/would at least know each other enough to take their organizing on that topic to another forum and/or offline.
i suspect a lot of this hippie-dippie community stuff is what adam neumann is trying to do with flow.
i like the gamification idea. i usually _hate_ those 'team building exercises' in various settings, so....i might be too biased in this particualr use case to see clearly, but it sounds cool/fun - if you're actually into meeting your neighbors. coming up with things/ideas/games/etc. that would actually work would be difficult, but prob also fun, interesting, etc.
what would the potential negative consequences be? maybe a building has a '0' social score? :-D
to me, right now, most apt complexes with 50+ units deserve a score of approximately 0 anyways.
Yeah, status quo is almost all apartments get a score of 0! OTOH, I did have some friends that lived in a giant apartment complex in Santa Monica that was one big debuached party 24/7. People who moved there knew that that's what they were in for. Not sure what conditions set that up. It seemed like the reputation of the building was self-sustaining.
My concerns about the gamification are that it would be quite easy to accidentally make things really creepy. E.g. lets say you have a game intended to get you to share stories with your neighbors, and the win condition is that you prove to the app you know stuff about each other, and then you accidentally end up with neighbors aggresively researching each other, and it's 1984.
interesting tho if you think that certain buildings could have personalities -- oh, this is where the partiers live, hippies over there, capitalists over there, etc.
yeah - i can see the risk of creepiness from gamification, and just other stuff.
we could do something to try to set up guardrails, but lot of creepy folks out there, and others who just don't know how to act -- i.e. possibly unintentionally creepy, might be immature, just make a mistake, etc.
guardrails might be a 'School of (Apartment) Life' HOWTO Guide, with something like:
- don't go into someone's apt, or let them into yours, unless/until you know them really well
- don't be aggressive with asking about people's personal stuff -- take things slowly
- don't shit where you eat (you are free, of course, to date / break-up with, marry / divorce the people you live with / near, but we STRONGLY recommend against it -- for various reasons -- read more...)
- etc.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 199 ms ] threadColor me skeptical, but the deliberately vague strawman arguments in the post read between the lines to be something like: "If you're a homeowner we want to your equity and if your a renter we want your rent". I don't harbor any illusions that flow wants to help anyone but themselves.
I have no idea what flow actually is, but if it's something like "airbnb but permanent on the blockchain" like we work was "Airbnb but for your work desk", then no. Heck no.
I am looking for ones where all age groups live together. People with kids, young ppl , grandparents ect.
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 to live there on VC’s dime (just like WeWork was great when subsidised by VCs).
Hasn't this thought process proven wrong in europe. Renters were similarly engaged in local communities where there were sufficient protections for long term renters.( I can't find the study now ).
I really don't understand why govt need to be in the business of providing home ownership subsidies. Seems like it has contributed to exacerbating current situation in US.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Do they care? If they cashed out on Masayoshi Son's money then it was still a great deal for them.
An actual failed scammer is Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos.
Although I think he dumped the rest into Luck right before he hi-rolled Softbank.
source: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/marc-andre...
While the top VC players may have earned the respect by themselves being visionary entrepreneurs (once, decades ago in many cases), the rest of the VC market is filled with also-ran investors who have never been practicing entrepreneurs, following markets like lemmings and looking for a relatively quick buck while not even understanding the markets they invest in. When I hear someone is an investor, especially if they're not one of the handful few of well-known investors, I just think to myself "banker". I don't know if it's always been like this, but it certainly feels like it's gotten worse.
"Come on, don't you want to be a general manager and own a real P&L? I'll let you run Intel's software division. John, venture capital, that's not a real job. It's like being a real estate agent."
The other thing is that you have more really rich people who control lots of money without a lot of governance.
Funny you say that because a16z was a top-5 (maybe even better) performing VC in the 2010s and the guy who wrote this article is the Marc Andreessen who created Mosaic/Netscape.
I think this just goes back to the classic "live long enough to see yourself become the villain". I mean seriously, a $350 million round to a company that doesn't yet exist and is led by a bona fide fraudster. Boggles my mind.
The question is, is it trivial to take $22 billion dollars and create a $4 billion business? In some cases I would say yeah, its still valuable. I'm not entirely sure I could create a $4 billion business regardless how much money you gave me. On the other hand its real estate, so I could just buy $22 billion of real estate and hopefully come out somewhere just shy of that amount. I'm not sure but the spread between $22 and $4 leaves plenty of room for error.
But there is something to say about failing. Traders that have lost a lot of money are more valuable than those that have never had any downs. But from hearing Adam Neumann speak, it strikes me as though he hasn't learned any lessons. He's a master at deflection and has an excuse or explanation for everything. He has no self awareness or humility. You can listen to his interview from 2021 and it's really incredible.
Anyway, that's all to say I'm surprised anyone would give him another chance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgp-CM-gQik
I don't think another VC-funded app with cool branding is going to save us.
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.
This is also a good hedge against the crypto pyramid starting to slow down. Leveraging peoples' willingness to try to get rich quick to create a pyramid was profitable, but once people lost their money and crypto lost its luster, they wandered off and were no longer easy victims^Wcustomers... but imagine if VCs could also control your housing. Wandering off is so much harder! Built-in market protection.
Brilliant.
This sounds very disingenuous. Starbucks was arguably the first 'community brand' where people would associate one with an informal meeting place rather than to drink a coffee. Even in Silicon Valley, there are cafe chains renowned for this meeting vibe.
And then there are country clubs, which are newer and more bourgeois.
Even the neighborhood newspaper kiosk in historical European cities did a better job of bringing community and brand to real estate than WeWork.
It would be nice to see this data explored in a more localized way. I know there are excesses of new housing in some places and shortages in other places. I also don't know how much of the current excess housing supply is due to houses being built in less desirable locations.
Something like localized analysis of housing probably doesn't "scale" enough for a VC firm like a16z.
VCs are looking for return, and quickly, which is why they have glommed on to crypto projects. In the old model, you invest money, wait 5-10 years, and get a payoff when the company goes public or gets sold. With crypto, there is a much more immediate payoff with unregistered securities, AKA “tokens”. And then maybe a second payoff in 5-10 years.
There are no details from a16z or Flow on what this actually is, but I am guessing tokenized rent payments on a blockchain in some fashion, promising some sort of equity to renters, and quick returns to a16z. They came out with a splashy investment and a high valuation, and are hoping to make their money back on the unregistered securities, AKA tokens, and who knows, maybe more in 5-10 years.
Never underestimate the cynicism of a16z.
But they will invest eye-watering sums into financing student newspapers for the middle-aged (Substack) or 'turn your car into a public taxi' businesses, knowing that 90% of them won't amount to anything.
As oposed to which industries exactly?
Flow will be no different. They will need to hire thousands D's of people with low interest VC cash and expand to 10 countries in order to deliver the same profitability as say a mid sized law firm. .
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2022/08/17/adam-neum...
Of course that comes at a cost, one that very few people can afford. At least, it will be unaffordable to most. It is always true that more people than one realises is actually awash with money (thanks to the prior generation benefiting from incredible growth of their assets) and for them this freedom of movement by renting on a rolling short-term basis and upping on a whim will allow them to further access high paying work.
I'm really not sure that what housing needs is for large-scale VC money to be poured in (and the corresponding expectations of return on that).
Will it be profitable? Yes. Is it ethical? No.
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.
Also, it's kind of rich to hear a billionaire wax poetic about the woes of the real estate market. According to a quick search, he of no surprise owns several properties, including a $177 million property.
The disclaimer at the end is nearly half the length of the post.
I guess this is where wework was headed before he got forced out
I put together a simple site to try to develop the solution to at least one of the problems of apartment living -- loneliness
https://myapartmentfamily.com/
and thanks for the typo note -- fixed.
nothing built, other than the carrd.co website there. i kind of wanted to put something down 'on paper' to try to develop the idea a bit more myself, maybe show it around online here and there - at least see if i'm just a monster or if other folks have the same problem, etc. and it's def helped to put the site together - it's just allowed me to take the next step - think about:
i thought of 'competition' (co-opetition?) that already exists, things like: and i didn't want to fall into the 'trap' of trying to build something online -- or mostly or only online.my natural inclination for a lot of things these days seems to be 'avoid doing this venture online because it will suck -- almost by definition'. that's a bit harsh, but just my take. some of my ideas, like a kb idea, it's online-only and that's fine/good. but when i think of 'online apt community', the closest thing i can think of right now is 'nextdoor' -- which... has always felt like a racist/classist cesspool to me, whenever i checked into it. just my take. so doing yet another online community like Nextdoor, or fakebook, just has an 'ick' factor for me.
one buddy said his communities' 'pizza days' are all he has ever needed to make NEWFOREVERFRIENDS in whatever city he has ever been in, and that this MyAptFam idea is completely stupid or worse.
and then i met a kid who said, during some discussion i wasn't even involved in, "i'm NEVER moving to another city where I don't know someone again."
I really like your thinking about keeping this from being entirely online. How about something involving flyers or bulletin board notices, but maybe the app somehow facilitates that?
Another thought that bubbled up in my head is that I wonder if there's a way to gamify the act of meeting neighbors ... ooooh now that feels like it has potential to me. Your building gets points for how many people have met each other, and there's a geographic leaderboard. Or maybe you could set up the incentives to encourage deeper interaction, like involving some of those icebreaker games (some of them are actually not lame IMO). Honestly if this app took off, I could see the apartment's "social score" affecting property value. Ok now I'm getting excited. Also worried about potential negative consequences.
i'm guessing building management-type community-building software already exists -- i've used some of it to pay rent -- but nothing that actually tried to build community, that i remember.
to me, having building mgmt involved is problematic, but.... not necessarily a dealbreaker. maybe your pitch would be, "hey, use our software for $5/apt/month, and we'll increase your lease renewal rate by 5%, and therefore you'll end up saving/making a net of +$6,000 this year for your 150-apartment complex. (I don't actually have any idea of the economics.)
i did talk to a friend who is part of an investor group that owns apt buildings - he's not interested in this solution from an ownership perspective (maybe he should be?) - but presumably he would be able to get in touch with the companies he/they hire to manage the buildings. i think the mgmt companies get 10% or something to run/maintain a building, and presumably if they don't hit their revenue targets, then a new mgmt company is hired (??) - no idea tho really.
so, we would not have at least my ideal scenario of a perfect apiring-to-be-a-family community -- b/c it would ultimately be controlled by the apt mgmt -- but we could still achieve _some_ level of camaraderie/family/solidarity/friendship amongst the tenants -- and that might be where we have to start.
i kind of think of it like tv during the clinton years (i think?) when he/they/the gubment/tv/media were pushing the whatever communications act of 199x -- basically, giving away much of the tv/some?? spectrum for free to the megacorps (instead of licensing for real money from taxpayers, providing some of the spectrum for public broadcasting, etc.) -- and all the major news channels/shows/etc. just didn't cover it -- so the public/taxpayers never knew about this heist of the century.
so, something similar could happen with an apt community 'bulletin board' -- someone posts, "Hey, my rent is going up $300 this month, wtf??" -- and building mgmt is like "nope, deleted." -- so, that would suck, but....i would argue the tenants could/would at least know each other enough to take their organizing on that topic to another forum and/or offline.
i suspect a lot of this hippie-dippie community stuff is what adam neumann is trying to do with flow.
i like the gamification idea. i usually _hate_ those 'team building exercises' in various settings, so....i might be too biased in this particualr use case to see clearly, but it sounds cool/fun - if you're actually into meeting your neighbors. coming up with things/ideas/games/etc. that would actually work would be difficult, but prob also fun, interesting, etc.
what would the potential negative consequences be? maybe a building has a '0' social score? :-D
to me, right now, most apt complexes with 50+ units deserve a score of approximately 0 anyways.
My concerns about the gamification are that it would be quite easy to accidentally make things really creepy. E.g. lets say you have a game intended to get you to share stories with your neighbors, and the win condition is that you prove to the app you know stuff about each other, and then you accidentally end up with neighbors aggresively researching each other, and it's 1984.
interesting tho if you think that certain buildings could have personalities -- oh, this is where the partiers live, hippies over there, capitalists over there, etc.
yeah - i can see the risk of creepiness from gamification, and just other stuff.
we could do something to try to set up guardrails, but lot of creepy folks out there, and others who just don't know how to act -- i.e. possibly unintentionally creepy, might be immature, just make a mistake, etc.
guardrails might be a 'School of (Apartment) Life' HOWTO Guide, with something like:
https://www.vox.com/recode/23142106/adam-neumann-crypto-carb...
https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/07/17/adam-neumanns-new-...