Alright everybody, welcome to dead cat, Tom do Tom here. And then I'm Eric newcomer, author of newcomer. And with us we have Ellen Hewitt, my old colleague at Bloomberg, do you see your former colleague at Bloomberg? I always say old I don't mean the old like she's not your Andrew Lila, older than you, Eric, but not by that much. Oh, you are by like months, we used to sit next to each other at the office back when people used to go to the office. Oh, that must have been a nightmare. It was I mean,
you know, what happened is I would be on the phone with like, you know, source or talking to somebody, Eric would get on the phone at the same time having his own phone conversation. And the person I would be talking to me on this phone would be like, did someone else just join our call? I hear a voice so loud that he would sound like someone who had dialed into our call rather than sort of sitting next to me.
Yeah, is this a secure line? It sounds like someone else is listening
to the other thing that would drive me crazy about that. I'm loudest when I'm getting the best information like I loudest when I'm getting real scoops. So all of a sudden everybody starts criticizing me. I'm like, I'm doing great work right now. You know what I mean? It was fucking Bloomberg is open office. But anyway, you know, me not sitting next to Elon was certainly a path that led down to me leaving bloomer financially. It's like, well, you know, I love San Francisco. But then once you don't have to go the office anymore. It's like, Oh, why why I should work for myself. Anyway. Yeah, we're Ellen is one of the foremost experts on we work having written about it as a B reporter. And then creating,
I guess, you say, reporting and hosting a seven part podcast about we were called foundering. So Bloomberg has a like, award winning, right, I have this award winning award winning contest. Yeah, Bloomberg has a podcast series called foundering, where each season tells a different story. First one was that we work. And I'm the host of that. And then second one's not like tick tock and other stuff. It's really good. And I highly recommend you check it out.
I can vouch for that. I mean, you're just saying it because you were on it. But actually, it is a very good podcast. And with the Adam Newman story and specific you kind of delve into the early Adam Newman years, which, you know, for those of the listening who just watched a TV show or listen to other podcasts, you kind of get you know, young Adam Newman has its own story. You get all the key boots here. Yeah,
we sent a reporter to Adam Newman's kibbutz, which was great, and like interviewed people who knew him and all this stuff. So that's fun. It's the
prequel. It's like before Newman was Newman, and I think it's a valuable part of
the story. Thanks, Tom.
So and we're gonna go back a little bit and explain some of the Adam Newman stuff. But just to frame up why we're having the conversation right now. You know, Andreessen Horowitz has invested $350 million, and Adam Newman's new company flow, which is some sort of real estate company, Marc Andreessen himself is taking the board seat, Adam Newman is back we work, you know, is I checked earlier today, like a 3.6 billion market cap company after 10 billion plus getting invested into that we work is not what it once was, but Adam Newman is, is back. And then related to that we've got sort of Marc Andreessen, you know, interested in solving our real estate problems, but also himself, a NIMBY, an extreme NIMBY. Anyway. So that's the conversation.
And as background for what it's worth, I'm also now an expert artists Atherton public housing debacle, because I read literally every single page of that like 270 page document. So anything you want to know about it just
great. Tom, what do you want to start off with here?
I want to start off with Atherton. Let's let's take a trip down to 80. And check out our leafy Peninsula suburb of the richest people in the Bay Area. It is I think, literally the richest the richest city in in an already overpriced overstone No,
no, it's the richest city in America. I was Googling the names in this public comment less than like every single like it was rare for someone to not be like have a Wikipedia page about how rich and influential
Bruce Dunn levy that we were board member from benchmark apparent lives right. It's just like the story even in all these stories intersect because obviously Silicon Valley is a small world,
the Atherton experience before we get into the story, but just maybe to stage settled a little bit for our audience is a lot of reporters go down to Atherton to meet with VC sources. It's pretty it's pretty common that you take the trip down to 80. And there's this one diner in a very small shopping center that I'm assuming you guys have both been to. I can't remember the name of bucks. Is it bad?
No, that's Woodside. Yeah, there's a Yeah.
Woodside. I'm sorry. Are
you talking about bucks though? The one with the fish. Right.
It's the one of the fish. It's the same What sciences Atherton? It's not like that.
It's almost the same as like, you know, in Atherton. This is like the town where, correct me if I'm wrong, Marissa Mayer used to host her crazy like Halloween parties. And although like, like Google, ATMs would go there and she would have like an ice rink in the backyard and rented like a tiger and I'm making this up. So you know, you're
correct from the stories and I believe she also drove a Zamboni around the ice rink is like a famous story with Marissa Mayer when she was the CEO of Yahoo. Yeah. And then the other thing I think of in terms of extravagant executive parties, there is Joe Lonsdale used to throw this as the Palantir co founder and he used to throw like an annual party at his mansion that I think is also is that in Atherton. That was Joe Lonsdale
is now fully in on
that one. I don't know for sure. But yeah, but I'm sure he lives.
He had a Game of Thrones chair that was made for the weekly Game.
Yes, I remember the king.
I've seen it. I've seen I didn't there sit in it. Yeah, yeah. It's a real thing. So yeah, that's the kind of place we're talking about here. It's It's It's comical in terms of its its concentration of when also
in terms of nimbyism, it has minimum sort of lot sizes.
Yes, it has. It has a the town, the town like rule, basically, is that you shall not have housing density that's above one house per acre. So this is why people are so upset.
Talking about enforcing wealthy, you know, minimum, yeah, making sure everyone's wealthy it's like it's expensive neighborhood, and you need to be able to buy, you're seeing an acre
an acre of land. Yeah. So basically, the general understanding of Atherton that has existed for decades is that this is a place where there are not that many people, it's also a small town, but you know, probably 10,000 people or fewer. And you you know, average house, average house price, I'm sure it's like in many millions of dollars, I read an article that said it was seven or 8 million that makes total sense to me. And you end up with these large properties, which means the houses are very far spaced apart. And so a lot of people buy it if they're, like rich and very interested in privacy, and wanting to have kind of this, like, suburban feel professionally.
They're interested in destroying privacy, but personally, they're interested in Yes,
like to protect their own privacy. You know, first and it's not, it is a lot of tech people. There are also a lot of like, you know, it's like the founder of KKR lives there. There's a lot of like banking execs. Steph Curry and his family live in Atherton. Like Joe Laker who I guess is both tech and warriors associated lives and lives in Atherton.
And so part of why this is happening is on a policy lens. Gavin Newsom is and the state of California are pushing cities to start actually building housing. And after this whole long yet, pro housing NIMBY crusade finally, seems like the state is starting to turn the screws to cities like San Francisco Atherton to say, Okay, you're gonna have to build and if you don't, you have to sort of prove why you're, you have to give us sort of good reasons why you're not. And so everybody starts writing letters in Atherton. What are the letters that were so like? Why are rich people in Atherton taking their time to write in to give their public comment?
What's funny is okay, so that, you know, the large scale picture is basically yeah, there are there are multiple things happening at the state level that are requiring cities across the state to have to like propose plans for how they're going to add a certain amount of housing, like the exact details, I think are kind of like, depending on the region and the place and that kind of thing that Atherton is basically on the hook to build something like 350 ish new housing units in the next X years. I think it's like 10, or something like that. It regardless of what the actual proposals are, they were also so part of the like, town council had proposed a change to the housing element, which is basically like their housing plan to the city, which allowed overlay zones to basically like exceptions to the town wide understanding of one house per acre. So these are places where all of a sudden, like you could have multifamily housing, which like, I could be wrong, but as far as I know, does not exist in Atherton at all. And multifamily housing, like was ringing all sorts of alarm bells for these people. It's unclear that there were actually necessarily going to be plans for these things to even be built, but they were upset at the changes in zoning that were being proposed. And, look, my understanding from reading the letters is like, you know, people were alleging that the town council was not very clear that this was happening. They were very upset. You know, it seems like there's a very strong neighbor whisper network in Atherton because they were all talking about like, oh, we were at this meeting. We were at a Zoom meeting where we all the neighbors discussed this and like I heard about it from my neighbor and I'm very upset.
I love that the billionaires are also in like, next door like misinformation threads just sort of like cobbling together Whatsapp. have a name and sort of totally can't think of like a briefer like, I don't know, it goes to all the meetings and gives them like a really like informed download of what's going
on. I mean, my sense is that like some neighbors who were very motivated about this, raise the alarm, because if you read through the letters, you actually start to see a lot of the same form responses and so many people sending in, it's, it kind of looks like, Excuse me, it's like, no, it's like, lightly, you know, we lightly changed the phrasing of exactly the same phrase about how like, we believe that changes to the community like to the plan should be done only with like, strong input from the community or whatever. And everyone has a slightly different.
It's like those Facebook viral posts where it's just like on March 13, Facebook is going to publicly release your personal data. If you do not post this message saying, Mark, please do not tell everybody when I was born and in what hospital and then you see like three of your dumbest friends on Facebook posting it. This is like the billionaire next door version, and then
they get elected to Congress. Yeah,
yeah. So so that people people were very upset about the proposals. They came up with all sorts of reasons for why this wouldn't be, you know, a good idea me not living in Atherton. I don't know how legitimate they are. But it's like, Oh, it's you know, too. There's too much traffic already on this tree like, well, there's a guy who's like a former Nest Labs exec Eric Charlton has his name he says, Atherton as we know it will be gone. And only you have the power to stop that from happening. If you care about our city, you could
be walking down the sidewalk and ask somebody about their pool. And they're like, actually, I don't have a pool and I have an upstairs neighbor. ruin the character. Yeah, there's
a lot of like ruining the character and
the character is not knowing that you have neighbors. I mean, that seems to be when you're dealing with one house per acre, you know, up in fairly hilly areas. There was a letter I believe, from Anthony noto, who was the CEO of SoFi former Twitter exec, who was complaining about the crime rates that had just been skyrocketing.
He says, The Crime has become so bad many families are employing private security, including our family. To be clear, we are writing this letter to communicate our objection to the creation of multifamily overlay zones in Atherton. So which
have not even happened yet right so his crime is skyrocketing in town. If you were to add multifamily hybrid, we're talking about a like you know, Warrior style situation where we're living on the streets
the funny thing about the Anthony Noto letter is it like feels very stream of consciousness and like, they kind of get riled up. They're like, this is gonna be bad for this reason, and this and this, and then also we have a lot of crime, which like may or may not be true, and then they kind of like rein themselves in and Okay, so
you bring this up, do you mind if I, because I did spend 10 seconds on this before we started recording to see what the crime stats were in Atherton. Okay, so, Atherton violent crime per 1000 residents is 2.09. And California, the rate is 4.4. So it's half the crime rate overall in California, and it is below the national median. So there have been, yeah, see, I don't have the trends. So we could be slightly ticked up. There have been zero murders. This year, there have been three rapes, there have been two robberies, and there have been 10 assaults. So look, I don't know what
the better and Atherton would be a good mystery novel, like immediately the scene is set,
right? And I don't know if it's like an African cop that had to do something for the first time in his life to solve it. Or you've got to get like cut from the big city to come down among these rich people.
We're not advocating for murder. But if you did murder someone, we would have a good book on our hands. Yeah, it would be a good story.
The other good recruiting tidbit from these letters is rich people suggesting that their pool houses could be counted as additional housing units for the steamer. And this is multiple people. This is like a guy named Dick elkus, who was like a former like CEO of a bunch of companies. And then Bruce Levy and his wife say this as well. They're like, by the way have we considered have we considered counting pool houses, I would say shows up in several suitors.
Sometimes we work our staff to exhaustion and then they sleep in the pool house overnight. So I think it should kind
of funny thing is like do they actually want to rent out their pool house to someone? I don't think they want to so like I think this isn't going to count. And there are other I think there are other like more in the weeds reasons to like, push back against this. Like, it wouldn't necessarily I think create a ton of affordable housing because like even the townhouses and Atherton are going to be super expensive but I am no housing policy experts that can we
I don't know if you're willing to take a position on the substance or not or what your neutral reporter scruples are on this but I guess there are two competing intuitions like on the one hand you know, what's what's the point of being rich you want you want to be rich to live in like a nice neighborhood and like you shopped for the nice neighborhood and like Like, should there never be like, I don't like I guess that's that's certainly not what I have. I mean, the the sort of hypocrisy, of course is just that like, these are all like extreme capitalists and here they are trying to use like government protectionism to like stop the market from, you know, like building where it's desirable. Yeah,
I think the hypocrisy is like strongest with Andreessen right, someone who has staked his entire, like, public brand on being like, America doesn't build enough anymore. And I'm gonna write a big essay about how people should build and it's gonna be a little vague, don't worry about it. But I am going to specifically talk about how we don't have we don't build enough housing and like, this is a problem and like housing is such a, you know, how is it that like, we, you know, can no longer like, figure out how to, like, get the economic realities lined up so that we can like build enough housing? Well, it's like, Well, turns out people like you are a part of the problem. I'm not saying he's the only problem, obviously, but like, that sort of riles me up a bit. But I would say, you know, I think with the other people, it's like, a little bit harder, you know, it's a little bit more of a stretch. It's like, okay, well, in general, I think tech companies do try to champion like, you know, okay. The idea that there's housing is way too expensive in California means that we should build more. This is like how the markets work. And I think that like, in Aaron Griffiths piece in the time, she points out that like these companies, at large, have supported housing forward policies.
Erin Griffith is the guest that has appeared on the show, I think the most times right. So she's basically writing on behalf of dead cut. Amazing. I mean, secondary employment to her her dead cat appearance.
I'm a huge errand fan, what can I say? And, yeah, she came out with a great piece. And I think she pointed out like, yeah, the companies that these these execs work for it, like have also taken stances in favor of building more housing. Well, like turns out, yeah, when you build more housing, people who live right next to it do get kind of annoyed, but like, that's, that's just like, the trade off. You
have done the whole NIMBY thing like, yeah, that's why it's not in my backyard. Everybody is for building in some abstract, it's like, sure, yeah, I get these people. Somewhere. It's like, the whole point of the yimby movement is you have to be willing to say, Yes, right here where we are where we have political power, we're willing to make it happen. So there's nothing novel about being like oh, yeah, I like building generally, I just don't like it when an inconvenience is me. Like, everybody would subscribers have
that like when so many people I feel now know the concept of being an MD and understand the like, sort of the negative effects overall to like our society that comes with nimbyism. It's a little sad that like even in that position, these people are still exerting like classic nimbyism, right there was like, oh my god, it could not like it is unfathomable that this would happen in Atherton. Dear God, like, please let it happen somewhere else,
right. And we sort of already made this point. But I think it's worth emphasizing a multifamily housing unit or few in Atherton is going to do shit to fix the housing crisis across California. These are you know, this is housing that will probably be a million dollars for the low end, lowest lowest end unit. So really, what this is just is a hilarious display of nimbyism, and, you know, at the most outsized and comical level, what is going on in areas where it actually would be meaningful, but it's being prevented by people who do not want to have any sort of housing affect their way of life, because people in California and in the Bay Area, specifically, cling so hard to their land, and like their perceived status, and privacy or whatever, that they're refusing to allow developers to do anything. And, you know, I think there's some complications. And I don't know, we could talk about this in a different episode here. But like, the end movement is also very tied up in with, you know, what developers want to do, doesn't always allow for, you know, public housing and the kind of low costs that would actually affect the rates of people that don't have a lot of money to find places to live. But yeah,
we can find that when Tom Tom thinks he's the leftist on this podcast, but then I'm like, I listen to him back. I'm like, You don't you don't sound that leftist on this podcast. But now he's now but I'm saying that Clint, that comment was one of the first years I go now he's trying to get some some real leftism on here.
Yeah, I'm on the anti end meme train.
Guy. We could have a fight about that. Anyway, I'm gonna not not get drawn into that. I mean, we've talked around Marc Andreessen. I mean, Marc Andreessen, his wife, like her family is like a major California real estate. Right? Like he's like, Yeah, and this isn't just some like they should know better, right. They know this whole thing.
I can give a tiny bit of background, which is I was a student at Stanford, and so Laura, Laura, who is Marc Andreessen, his wife, Laura Arriaga, Andreessen and anyone who recognizes the name Arriaga knows that like, Yeah, John Arriaga was just like, I you know, now this is embarrassing. I don't actually know what he did to gain his fortune, but he definitely is his name. Miz on like half of the building that Stanford or has like it's like the Arriaga dining commons the like Arriaga gym like that there's like three others and then there's a bunch more that he also paid for but like didn't want his name on for some reason, just remember like if you're spending a lot of time. Yeah. Like I remember trying to dig into this when I was like a student reporter at Stanford obviously didn't end up getting that far. But yeah, he's, you know, the hospital like if you go to the emergency room, which like, one time my roommate fell, while like and I had to drive her to the ER and we're sitting there and it's like Laura Arriaga Andreessen, emergency rooms you just see the name.
That's real reporting. It's like I learned this in the emergency room. Yeah. All we got out your little notebook and you started you have a scene? Yeah, Mars. Anyway. Man, you thanked your friend for getting like that's that's good.
Did you get too close to the truth at some point did you like get called into like the Arriaga conference room? Like he got at speech from network about like,
I remember, like, there was like, we thought that he was funding the like renovations of some of the like, row houses that are like these like dorms. And we like, I don't know if we ever actually staked it out. But I think we like wanted to stake it out in order to like, talk to the construction crew, because we were convinced there was some sort of like, kickback scheme. I don't know. It didn't it didn't get off the ground. But basically, he's you know, he's a huge name tons of money. And very much like, especially in the in the sort of Greater Bay Area. I know, it's tons of land. Tons of land. Yes. And I think I don't know what you're getting at. But I guess it's just like the privileged or the privileged. Yeah,
I'm just saying like, right. And they should know, like, I feel like, you know, one of the biggest issues with California is the tax policy that if you're early landowner, you get taxed in that tax rate. Like this is a family that deeply understands housing, and real estate in California, and is an enabler of the status quo. So it is, yeah, it is just like, it's not like, oh, yeah, they're like, some generically rich person who's like, trying to protect their house. It's also like, they have perhaps like, the greatest one, some of the greatest reach in California real estate and power of anybody. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. So, so then they the Andreessen is together, and we don't really know if it's a mark, mark or Laura thing, right. I feel like that sort of gotten. Everybody's talking about him, but they wrote it together. Right. Yeah,
they wrote it together. I mean, many of the letters, I will say those having read those letters, many of the letters are written and signed by both in general, I would say all the couples ended up being a man and a woman, but like, yeah, both the husband and the wife of this of this couple. Look, you could read you could try to do a little bit of interpretation by looking at whose name was written first, but certainly, I wouldn't like assume Yeah, based on the order of the names and the signature, who actually like shirt the letter if it was one or two.
They had great all caps, right. All caps were immensely
opposed to this thing. There was also someone who was
I've read enough tweets, a Twitter poster. Yeah. I feel confident in saying he was like, no, no, no, honey. I like that. All caps. Yeah.
Yeah. And there was a yeah, there's someone else who had like, a really funny, yeah, some of some of the letters are clearly like, you know, Miss punctuated a lot of all caps, like angry, angry residents, like, deciding to really make their emotions known.
I mean, the best part of Parks and Rec was always when they did the sort of the town, sort of talons people coming in and giving their feedback. And it was always insane. I feel like Oh, my God, this could just be a show where it's just, you know, the wealthy people trying to engage with like, you know, just the people like they're done with their job, they've retired and they just need like, meaning so they're fighting with, like, their super anyway. Or it's a co op board or so you know, all those things. That's endlessly anyway. Okay. So can we can we talk about flow now? Did you have? Have we missed anything on this piece of it?
No, I'm good. I guess what, but before we before we go off the flow, I guess the last thing I want to say on this topic that I find so fitting and hilarious is that tech is also trying to figure out solutions to the housing crisis through their companies, right? There are a lot of venture backed real estate companies, actually, this does kind of lead into flow. who think that like, you know, whereas they do recognize there's a problem, there are some who are nominally good bees, they're ones who will give a lot to give the movements and causes. And they also think that their technology can somehow solve this, right that there's some way in which you can apply, whether it's, I don't know, algorithms or some version of coop living to fix the housing problem. And yet, when it comes to their particular area, it doesn't seem that they're willing to it they're not going to dog food, right. They're not going to be using their own products in order to fix this larger issue. And I think big
word for this. Yeah, exactly. The whole tech philosophy is dog food, your product, do the thing that your suffer through your terrible tech product that you're trying to force on the world, and they won't even dog food. The world that they want, which is a dense urban life, that is, that's a great distillation of the Yeah.
And I think like, if what they're promising is actually going to be great if they are creating a new future that is very livable. And it's something that they are promising, as you know, give us your money, you know, investors, and you as users take part in it, you should be all about this sort of thing. And it seems like either the tech companies that they're building aren't that useful, and aren't actually going to do any of this or they just never believed it in the first place. I have my thoughts on which that is specifically but anyway, so that leads into flow and our good friend Adam Newman, who is
if you're going to support we work, you need to stay in an open office every hour of the day instead of your Yeah, it's like hardwood tape. You
need to drink fucking water out of a cold milk cup.
That's always it's always because it says so on the cup. Yeah,
does it even I actually didn't I don't read these things. It does. It does.
Oh, what are you what are you guys referencing? What's the metal if you go to a we work
the cups that you can like, get to like get your sparkling water from the top or your whatever? Their metal? And they say always have full at least they did a couple years ago. I don't know. It's possible that they've changed but they
I think actually, you know, after all the turmoil we work they had to legally remove them. It was an accurate advertising. I haven't noticed.
Coffee Mugs used to say do what you love. I mean, like, I gotta say, I kind of miss the era of like, we worked aggressive branding. Oh, sorry. There's a siren.
You can't see Ellen's apartment right now. But she has life is good merchandise all over the place. She just she has just like hanging in there cat posters on her wall everywhere. It's just sold just like bland affirmations, just covering every inch of things.
I'm beyond live last love.
I know, I'm actually with you. Because I do work occasionally out of a we work insider. You know, Lisa's one in downtown SF. And I also used to go to a we work occasionally when I was at the information they had won in New York. And yeah, the before and after era, the era of plenty in the era now is stark. And I mean, let's take away you know, the the beer on tap and the hookah and the flavored water. There's just less kind of camaraderie, that kind of bullshit that Adam Newman was really grafting on, when he was making these companies is long gone. But they did keep the metal cups, which if you eat frigid, like I feel like my hand will like us to them at times. But But anyway, so that is the Adam Newman fantasy, he is working his hardest to solve our housing issue. And then now it seems like also our domestic housing issues, or sorry, our office issues, and now our domestic housing issues. So why don't you explain to me before we get into these reasons, and what Eric believes is the backstory as to why Andreessen Horowitz is making their largest investment ever into Adam Newman's comeback. Can you tell us about flow? What is
flow? Yeah, so there's some fun stuff going on here, which is to back up even farther, Adam Newman, apparently, his new favorite word is flow. I'm not kidding. This is just like in an ft article from like six months ago. And that has led to two different ventures. One of them is called flow carbon, which as far as I understand, he is a co founder of but has no real operational like day to day in and probably put money into but I think maybe he like had the idea and then got other people to start building it. And flow carbon is a something related to like using the blockchain to track carbon credits. So imagine it has to do with sort of like renewable energy accounting and crypto. And then he decided to have this other cup so and then for months, there had been stories about like, oh, Adam Newman is doing like a residential real estate play. So like, we kind of knew that this was coming. He there were, you know, people who cover like commercial real estate had tracked places where he had entities that had bought like, residential towers and a lot of the lines Florida, Atlanta and like other parts of kind of the the US. And so we knew that he was like interested in residential real plant like real estate. What we found out with this announcement is that this other company is also called flow, which is just hilarious to me. So we have flow carbon and we have flow, they're two different ones. The flow trademark, you know, they're okay. And the funny thing is that with the flow carbon, they have a token called like, I'm gonna get it wrong. It's like Goddess earth or something like that, like theirs. They have a very funny name for the token.
Hi, Rebecca. Nice. Nice to see your contribution again, by hat tip to Rebecca for reasserting her brand genius.
will show her brand these days is student of Life for life. I don't know if you've heard about soulful, that's how you say the acronym. S O L S L student of Life for life soulful.
Are they still together?
Of course they're together. Do you not believe in love?
I mean, I think so. They actually had another They're had another kid recently. Now they have six. I'm not 100% sure about that. I'm pretty sure that six
I had an anonymous tipster raising questions about this relationship to me, but
whatever. Yeah, we're definitely keep that in.
Yeah. Oh, well, we got the background. You know, we work obviously Adam. Yeah. So the name to the company, which was one of his many scandals. So that's, that's, that's what we've got without cluing you into for the last five minutes here. So now you're in on the joke. Okay. Yeah.
Who knows? Who knows about the trademark for flow? I'll look into it. And the Yeah, so it's a little unclear now. And so yeah, flow as the residential real estate play. Now we know has raised money from injuries and a lot of money. People are still sort of unclear about what exactly it
does. And the terms of it are so it's 350 million, but like Adams bringing some money, Adams bringing some real estate, we don't want the projections, they don't expressly say it's not debt, like, so. I want to point out so we all went crazy on this. The New York Times story said biggest single check ever from Andreessen three 50 million. Andreessen definitely wanted to blast this out to the world. I mean, this was in the New York Times, they wrote a bar blog post Marc Andreessen on the board, they could have done tons of stuff to caveat, they could have been like, Sure, it's a billion. But you know, think about our ownership. You know, they're, they almost like oversold, how ridiculous of a deal. This was in ways where if you start to ask questions, you're like, Well, what did they get for? Oh, anyway, I just, I just want to flag that. But it's still optically and with 350 million in some form, they went all in again, on Adam Newman, a person that many people, you know, would never invest in again in their life and some Yeah, well,
and what's funny is Adam, doing residential real estate is not new. So we work for those who haven't been like totally in the weeds in it. They had a venture called we live for several years, which had two locations, one of them in New York, on Wall Street and the other one in DC. And they were basically like communal, living sort of adult dorms would maybe be like an uncharitable way to describe them. I stayed in one for a story and I'm kind of a like, communal living expert, like I lived in a coop for five years in San Francisco. It's like it's a it's a, it's an intentional community. Where we share resources, such as our grocery shops, and shared communal space, my people
still call them Cuba's seen by the way.
Yeah, oh, Elon is writing a book on an alleged call, by the way about it. So we're teasing all the Bloomberg books. Mark Burgin is gonna come on soon. So I anyway,
nice. Well, Mark, Mark's book is actually coming out soon. Mine is now maybe not gonna come out until 2024. But in two years,
keep an eye out more to build anticipation. You know, keep an
eye out for my book about the alleged sex cold.
Yeah, by the way, I was gonna say between yours and Mark, we'll see which one is sexier.
Marks is longer. Rex is very long. I'm trying to make sure. That's actually
you're trying to sell the book.
I'm ready to pieces about it for insider because I'm now covering YouTube. So I hope it's not too long.
Like it's very word. Do
you have it ready yet?
No, I don't have it. Do you have it?
No, I don't it was supposed to be in the mail. I had to get one from like the Pirate Bay. I have a digital copy. Do you really will keep that in. But
anyway, the funny thing is that like, we live with a flop, staying there, it was like the people who stay there, like didn't give a shit about like, community. They just wanted like a cheap apartment that came furnished and it was like, there were happy hours. But it was just kind of like, I don't know, you know, I think there was some people really liked it. But it didn't take off it. You know, at some point, we weren't had projects
happier was like the respects of the lunch room kind of thing. Right? Like it was no, they
did have like, it's like they had a bar on like, the 13th floor of the building. And like, you know, they could send out a message on the app being like, we got chicken wings, and like Margarita is like Kumbaya and people would come by and like chit chat. And that was nice. And there was a hot tub on the roof. And they would have parties at the hot tub on the roof. And it was very, like kind of like, you know, millennial Dream Dream scene of like, oh, life in the city. Regardless of what the subjective experience of living at we live was, it was objectively, much smaller than Adam had ever predicted. Like they they used to get these presentations about how big we live was going to be in it, like, never progressed past these two locations. And they ended up getting rid of them, selling them off to like other code. This
is a company that spent what 10 billion plus just like
through endless amounts of money, how
much money in the world and make this thing work. I mean,
yeah, I mean, I think at some point, it stopped being a priority for them. So but, you know, of course, it ties very well into Adams, like, lifelong, you know, explorations of community, right. Like, and you can draw this theme where it's like, okay, looked at the kibbutz when he was a teen and like, he was very interested in like, building community at the office and now, Amy, that's what we'll do with flow. Like maybe he'll do. He
is good at Yes. It's funny what Tom was saying earlier where he was shitting on WeWork. Having lost the sense of community it's like funny How could losing Adam Newman, I get that money makes community possible you have free food and people come around it. But it is sort of funny that like, it did feel like Adams, like, essence was able to sort of trickle down in some ways to the actual, we work experience.
Yeah. Look, if I may, for a minute, it's like having spent a lot of time talking to people who worked really close with Adam, I've spent time with Adam, like, we've made this whole podcast about kind of analyzing, like, his effects on this company. It's like, he is, like, really just an exciting person to be around. And I think people underestimate how important that is, like, people would meet him. And they would just like, have fun and like, feel inspired and feel this vision. He has these like crazy ideas. And he's so convinced that they're going to happen, and people have told me that that's like, his greatest gift is kids this crazy idea. People kind of like what, and then he just convinces you like, oh, it's gonna work. And then it does. And then you feel amazing. You feel like you're part of this, like, kind of ability to move beyond like the limitations that you thought existed in your life? And he's, I don't know, he's just like, I think I think I certainly would not underestimate the sort of qualitative excitement that he bring, he would
be a good alleged cult leader, you know, he would be amazing.
He fashions himself in that way. That's what the flowy shirts and bare feet are all about. I'm not joking, right? I think it's all part of the central appeal with him. And I mean, the criticism with WeWork. And Elon, I know you probably have a lot of thoughts here is that there wasn't anything all that innovative about the communal work, office idea. There were other co working spaces, publicly traded companies that offered short term, limited rental space in large apartment buildings. And, you know, we work as a maybe more branded version of it. And there may have been some kind of clever real estate tricks about like upgrading or upzoning a building. You know, because it had the we were branding a monitor it was there for more valuable, there is some smart stuff there. The issue always seemed to me and
genius, self dealing, don't forget the self dealing part. Yeah.
Right. What was that, you know, they had raised so much money, they had to spend this money. And suddenly it became not just like, you know, a nice branding on an existing idea of co working spaces. But this all encompassing communal idea that, you know, people were trying to argue was a What was it $50 billion company or so? 4747?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think like, look, probably in the, like, the self dealing was bad. Like, some of the things, the choices that they made, like eroded trust, and like, we're, you know, but I think, in large part, that's probably like a mall. Like, it's not like the company succeeded, because they self deal like the company like grew and succeeded. I mean, the company grew to this like enormous ideation, because they were able to make this very effective hype machine. And then there were some mistakes that they made along the way that I think like, kind of undercut a lot of that, and then they tumbled down because
they're able to convince masa like I feel like,
it's like, Adams still good at that. And I think he's done it again, right.
Convinced. Yeah. I mean, Andreessen is very similar to SoftBank. I mean, they're both like, have more money than they're like, competitors need to deploy a lot of it. Consider themselves like, idea driven sort of geniuses. And so, yeah, flow. I know, we sort of said, you know, we don't know a lot about it. We've obviously said it has to do with residential, but I don't know what what's, what do we know about it? Or it has to do with apartments? Right? Yeah.
I mean, it seems like they bought up apartment space as well, some retail space. And I, you know, there's there was a story that says that they also are going to offer like, basically a crypto Wallet. So my my guess is that there's a crypto elements, I don't know exactly what and then they're also in the Andreessen post, they kind of hint at like, oh, you know, like, this way renters can, like get ownership of some kind. Or maybe it wasn't quite that frog.
Right. That's what I don't understand. It addresses ownership. But it's a renter thing that we that's the big leap, we don't have a close
look, I think, well, first of all, there's some funny things in that blog posts in which Marc Andreessen basically like shits on renters, and it's like renters don't care about anything. Renters never have community with the place they live, which is like, I think a very, that's like exactly what homeowners think. And I found that.
And I like when I would love to know, Marc Andreessen is ability to do these huge things. We're all talking about him. And he doesn't answer like fundamental questions anybody would have if you announced it like, Mark, please answer these questions. When is the last time you ever lived in apartment ever? You know, what do you mean? Like? I just feel like that's irrelevant. Obviously. The other thing that that I'm really thinking about is, please reconcile your nimbyism and Atherton with your it's time to build like, how do you put out he literally I think the first line of it was like, it's time to build like, he puts out this post that's clearly in line with building any he has. He's so shameless. That He feels no need to answer like all the public stuff about Atherton like he can just pretend they say nothing about it. It's galling to me like it. In some ways, the media just is like culpable here in that we're so willing to just move on to the next headline, and it just like, okay, he doesn't mean he does want to talk about it, we're still willing to get super excited about his new thing, because it's such a good storyline. And I do find, I mean, the media is powerless these days, we were just we take the stories as they come, there's no control, and he never has to face any questions that he doesn't want
to. And by the way, we will link to Eric's article about this topic in the show description of this episode. So we can see that the media is complicit all around here.
We I'm complicit or what do you say?
Yeah, you wrote the article. Oh, but yours was about why I
talked about the other 10. And like, Yeah, I'm talking. I'm critical, like, to some degree. Maybe he's gonna be calling Elizabeth Holmes next. I mean, it was partially just, yeah, we're all writing the narrative wave? Sure. Yeah. Do I follow the news? Like everyone? Yes. Yeah,
I think real estate is a fascinating topic for venture capital. Because the idea that there can really be innovation in real estate, which is the core, I mean, that is the foundational element of tech and venture capitals, that these things maybe exist, some of it doesn't. But if we just put the right minds and enough venture capital dollars towards it, you can transform it. And there is nothing to be transformed. With real estate, you can, it's just branding at the end of the day, right, we can just take an area, put a different name on it, slap a new coat of paint, and suddenly we've decided it has more value. And yet you see venture capital over and over again, trying to do something in a space because it's there. It's so in, you know, like the TAM is enormous. And so we don't really know a ton about this one here, this idea of like what rent to rent to own or like ownership to involve renting, that just kind of sounds like a mortgage, at a certain level, maybe without as much like not as much credit checking. I mean, it's always funny to I worry,
you just go to rent and you own a coin, or something that, you know, you're just like, you can speculate alongside your rental and like lose all your wealth, through the coin to or whatever,
right, you have no ownership, but there's some sort of like liquid market that sits like on top of it, which you can maybe trade up some value, but also lose a huge amount in the process. Brilliant. Brilliant. But yeah, I think it's, it's it's so funny to watch, because every time they go into real estate, it does reveal what I think one of the weaknesses of tech and venture capitalists which is they end up just backing themselves into already existing products. And so like that was kind of the case of we work they sort of just did co working spaces, and then this sort of thing, I guess we don't really know enough yet to cast judgment. But it sounds to me it's just gonna end up being some version of like communal communal living with like a rental ownership and then maybe like a dowel wrapper on it, or some sort of like crypto. Yeah, my
best guess is it's going to be like, in the same sense that like we people think that we work was co working but it's actually more like offices alongside each other with shared amenities. You're not usually like unless you're kind of like the freelancer and steadily over the years, the percentage of WeWorks customer base that was like, small business freelancers entrepreneur type, single unit looking for, like community in the office has gotten has gotten smaller. And it has become more and more like, large companies, you know, insiders A classic example, right? Like, you know, established companies being like, oh, we need an office in San Francisco, like I guess we'll get some we workspace. And so then like, presumably, you have like your own little office corner, where it's like you and your colleagues, and you just happen to like, share an elevator with other people. And like, maybe when you get the coffee you like, walk next to someone, like you don't really know. And I think if I were to guess, this is complete speculation, but that like, you know, maybe the apartment buildings are going to be a little bit more like that. Because like existing real estate as it is, is not that amenable to like actual shared communal living. It is still like individual units where everyone has their own kitchen, everyone has their own stuff. And then maybe you share like, shared amenities like the gym or the lobby or things like that. Yeah,
I always hate those shared amenity buildings. I mean, I live in old style buildings. But yeah, you could see why. Two people who that's appealing you could say, well, what if we cut out the kitchen, you share the kitchen? You save even more anyway, now we're to spec but I mean, there there is, you know, sometimes these things need to get shaken up. And if you can put like a good brand sheen on it. It's an opportunity. I mean, isn't Marc Laurie trying to reinvent the city or do you give up on that RNA now he's isn't doing delivering he's
doing food trucks,
I believe that says, wasn't he the one trying to build a new city
reinventing the city comes up a lot. I mean, Google had Sidewalk Labs that there's always attempts to try to do that.
And isn't there that Saudi Arabian like, Oh, now new
neon? Yeah. Well, the Saudi Arabia thing is interesting because that really ties into your point. Oh, I believe about what exactly is Marc Andreessen trying to do here? And why did he make the investment that he did? Or why did the firm make the investment? Yeah.
Tell us about your troll theory. Eric, I want to hear more about that.
First of all, I think he did it. And this is not the answer you guys want to hear. Because he believes in American dynamism. He has a ton of money. He wants to use capitalism to try and reform this market. Like I what I'm saying with the trolling piece, is that I think Marc Andreessen, Andreessen Horowitz are perfectly happy to drive everyone crazy in doing this. And that's what I was trying to emphasize and how they gave it to the New York Times, they emphasize how much money it was, they did a big check when they could have done a small one. They are totally happy to drive most people crazy. And think what these hypocrites, I mean, the fact that it was coming right after the other in thing they know, you know, the fact that it's going to drive liberals crazy. They know that they like that. That's their branding, the branding is appeal to founders, you're telling the press, go fuck yourselves all your WeWork reporting sorry, Elon, the guy's fine. He goes on again, doesn't matter. And then it tells founders that they're willing, if you're an exciting, ambitious founder, they're there. They're here for you. And so yeah, I mean, I don't think they're, I don't think it's just like, I don't know. But Marc Andreessen does love to troll. I mean, I don't think it's purely trolling. They've a strong articulated thesis around American dynamism and sort of trying to branch out attack, they have too much money, but I do think there's an impulse there, which is, fuck the left, like, Fuck all these people who say, Oh, and I, you know, I was just on a podcast today. I mean, there is like you listen to liberals sometimes talk about this stuff, you know, and I am a liberal, but like, they're like, oh, policy, we need government to solve these things. And it's like, well, government's not really maybe it's slowly helping now in California, but like, what harm is there in if he was going to invest $350 million in some software company, nobody's going to object to that, for the public is probably better than he's using the $350 million, maybe for his LPs, which are another constituent of mine, maybe it's not good for them. But like, you know, I think the average person should be like, great. They're throwing some money at something that could help me, but I feel the the reaction is like, oh, and that I think they drive some joy from that sort of stupidity.
I mean, it is it is in line with, like, Yeah, his his whole point, and it's time to build, it's like, oh, we should the private markets should be trying to do some of these things better. And if they can do them better, like we shouldn't be like, Oh, this is a thing that government needs to solve, like, so if it if it turns out that flow helps solve housing crises. I'm all for it. But I guess we'll have to see.
Yes. Right. Yes. But then I think the piece is like, Is Adam Newman worthy of redemption? I mean, this is a very complicated question. But and I obviously have lots lots of opinions. But Elon, I mean, maybe just to begin to answer that. Do you have a stack ranking of his sins? Or like, this is always the challenge with Uber people are like, what do you think of Uber? And I'm like, well, which issue like, bit like, what do you think are like, the sins of Adam Newman?
So I think there's a few interesting things that most people get wrong about what happened at WeWork? Well, first of all, many people think that we work as like bankrupt, it's not it's still around, they're just selling office space. And he's never been accused of a crime. He's never been that. And that's, and that's an important thing is he has never been accused of a crime. As far as I can tell, I don't know that he has, like committed any sort of crime or done anything illegal, like, it's just doesn't seem like that's really what happened. And if it had happened, I think people would have liked it, if it had been able to be found out, you know, there's been a career making move, if you can, yeah, there's a couple, there's been a couple of very good books about we work, I would be surprised if those reporters hadn't surfaced things like that. And the people who in my mind got hurt the most on sort of a like, you know, received kind of like, disproportionate amount of hurt for at work. Employees who joined we were late in, you know, later on in the companies, like, I guess, maybe in the last few years, between 2017 and 2019. And that sucked. And I think for a lot of those people, it really sucked to have bought into this, like, you know, this decision of what the outcome could have been for the company and for themselves, and maybe put like,
a bunch of white collar workers who thought they're gonna get super rich, and then they didn't, but he got rich.
And so I think I think that's the most egregious like unfairness of it, which is that like he did have to leverage in order to extract himself in a way that left other employees like tons of people lost their jobs, a lot of people that stock that was like, worthless, and like, of course, that's part of being in a startup like you are taking a gamble.
And we crash. There's that scene where he like, lays off a bunch of people and then they have what, like some rapper come in. I mean, do you know if that's true, or Yeah, it's
rundown. See, and that didn't really happen. It's true. It's true. My understanding is that there were like, it was like a couple of weeks later wasn't like that night or something. But the point is, yes, I think some of Adam's worst, worst, like actions are were like his callousness, his like, greed, his kind of like, you know, total loss of connection. I
mean, then there was some self dealings you need. Yeah, the greed selling we were sorry.
Yeah, I'm thinking more as I agree the employees,
I mean, it's harder with victims. It's like, well, he acted unfairly in business sort of, you know,
yeah, he sells Dell there were like, I think some some financial decisions that were like, really not kosher. But again, he was also
I would say, running a business that seemed like it was just gonna, like, collapse if he was allowed to continue. Like, it was just like, when he didn't get the extra like, Wasn't he supposed to get like a $10 billion investment or something from SoftBank? Right? What some he
wasn't something Yeah, something like that. For two years
trying to get a company to go public at like 100 billion that ends up being worth 4 billion, there's, there's a certain like, delusion there like that, that was gonna come crashing down. Well, and
also the atom apologists will say that the problem really wasn't so much with the idea of we work or its growth, but it was when Softbank came in and masa because of his need to have supersize returns on his vision fund. You know, thesis pushed him to go crazier and crazier. That's when you have stuff like we work or we live and we learn, and the really, really stupid shit that you know, we grow, we grow. Yeah, I mean, the stuff that became the worst aspects of the building basically
built a school for his own children like I again, you know, and he was he had a hot tub in the off
bath, not an ice bath.
Oh, that's good. factcheck.
Yeah, no, but here's what I was gonna say about about this. Is that okay, so that's, that's one element of the WeWork story. But from a pure venture capital perspective, we work with a success benchmark made money.
We were early in, we work that was a great check. If you were late. That was that right.
My real takeaway from my piece, whatever you took about trolling, was that the beauty of the venture model? Is it staged capital, you have a seed round, you have an a round, you have to be round. If Andreessen had just written a $20 million check in this thing. People would have still whined about it, but I think it would have been more reasonable. It's like, okay, he is like, really, let's give him another shot. And see if the risk goes down over time. It's the fact that they gave him 350 million that it's just like, we're gonna do the soft bank thing all over again. Yeah, I mean, you guys are a little like glassy eyed on that one, or what you don't know if you agree or not. I just
don't I didn't get as worked up about it. Other than it was funny, there's no question it was funny. And that is one of the goals of trolling, which is why I do buy your trolling thesis to a degree is that there are certain people that are gonna get mad and people getting mad about stuff is funny, and Adam Newman is a clown. And when I see him back on the scene, it makes me happy again. So I'm not against the idea of spending this money, which as you pointed out in your piece, and recent needs to deploy somehow, billions and billions of dollars spread across multiple funds, there are only so many places to put it. Adam Newman, as you pointed out, is very good at spending money. And so if you want to get someone to like, Oh, that
was a good line, what is it? What better way to deploy excess capital than a real estate company run by Adam Newman or something like that, to quote myself? Yeah,
I like your compliment here line and then quoting it and you know, in specific, this is way too much.
I don't know if that was word for word, you know, but, but no, I
agree with you, I'm sorry to say like, I think all of that makes, you know, a ton of sense. At least to a degree, I'm sure Andreessen would love for the money to get returns so that they can please their LPs. But I guess if you're to think about what is wrong with this picture here, if you really want to get mad about something, is that why, you know, we're also talking about this, several weeks after the, you know, the Democrats have put forth a bill that removed the, you know, they weren't able to get rid of the carried interest loophole, which would have tax a lot of these people to a degree that they had never been taxed before, that maybe would have provided a little bit more equity in the kind of Government and Public returns from the kind of excess wealth that is on display here, because of all of these kinds of, you know, tech companies and venture capital firms that are raising a bunch of money here. So I guess if you really want to be mad about something, you should be just like the fact that Andreessen has so much money to deploy, that they're willing to take a certain percentage of it, you know, wrapped up in a troll and a money losing scheme like that, that makes more sense to me than the specific company that they invested in, because it's someone else's money. It's the LPS problem. It's not mine.
Well, I haven't thought which is like, I don't do I mean, I think Eric, you know, a little bit more about like, sort of the decision making behind the scenes and Andreessen or at least have theories about it. So I think also a lot of people could rightfully be really just sort of like mad when they see this news because they feel that there are like other companies With other founders who are not Adam Newman, who are more deserving in some way of getting the chance to build a business. I'm just curious if you think that Andreessen would eat like, I don't know, is that even is that even like a realistic? Is it even realistic to think that if they had chosen not to invest in Adam, that they would have invested in the sort of people that like, yeah, like our, I don't know, like, less likely to get?
Somebody was saying to me and my mentions, like, or I forget where one of them but like, I mean, there is just like a reality, I think, among the wealthy, and like, Silicon Valley is guilty of this, too, where it's like, once you've been a founder, once you've been sea level, it's like, there's almost like a labor union that never let you fall back. There's almost, it's sort of like, the bigger you've gone, the more they're like, No, you're in our class, you're like, you're you're gonna get there, we're gonna help you get there. We'll give you another shot like failed founders are some of the most desirable founders there is like, you've been in the class, like, instead of being like, Oh, well, there's this new person, they haven't even failed they could they have not fucked up
the numbers and lived in Atherton is gonna give them a chance.
Right? It's sort of like he's in the club, he's got he needs to have his way we're gonna give away. I do feel like that's not how anyone you know, in the world would articulate it. But I do think that sort of, I mean, the flip side of that, of course, is that they've had the experiences, he's sort of seen what jams him up, he knows how to do it, he was able to do some of the things like that. That's sort of that's the argument for the repeat founder. And I do think repeat founders are somewhat successful. But but there is also the sense that yeah, once you've broken into the club, now the club isn't, thankfully in America entirely old money. It is very male and white. But yeah, once you've broken in somehow, it's like, oh, now now you're in it. Yeah. But I mean, these things aren't totally zero sum. Obviously, there's still lots of other money, that's not necessarily going to mean diverse founders as they should. But I do agree with the sentiment, that it's like, oh, man, there's almost a preference for like, the the guy who did badly like the thing, the thing that he did badly on a big scale is what they like, you know, well, I
guess I would just, I think we should challenge Andreessen and all these other investors out there who have a lot of money, who needs to deploy work a little bit harder. There are women, there are minorities, there are people you wouldn't expect that have really, really bad ideas that could be good at burning money in ways that you wouldn't expect. And I think you need to look a little bit harder to find that I
was really worried about this tape. I was like, What is he just gonna give like some sincere and really okay, yeah.
The world of bad ideas. I just think there are all kinds of ideas out there that are awful that we haven't explored. And I think if you expand the horizon of the kinds of people you're willing to invest in, you will find new and exciting ways to do that.
And I want to see Yeah, more diversity of villains personally. Yeah. And
like, look, Adam Newman did it in one way. But who's to say, you know, a woman or a minority or other other kind of wouldn't do in a different way? In a way that's fun, but they get their own show. And we've seen Elizabeth Holmes, that's fine. She's kind of a token bad female founder. There are others. There are others. And I think we should try to find them.
Yeah. Don't want Elizabeth Holmes be the only representative of female founders making bad decisions.
Right. Unfortunately, she's the one that actually did get charged with the crime to IV. Right. She
is the worst of them. Yeah,
it is. It is unfortunate.
Right. So this is actually a question is do you think people actually would back Elizabeth Holmes again? Or do you think it's like the criminal aspect is that's the line people are like, we won't we won't go there if she
had not been charged with the crime? 100% Yes. 100%? Yes.
And because she has been charged with a crime, what do you think is gonna like, what do you think Elizabeth Holmes gonna be doing? I
just crossed the line that they're not. It's there's only so much you can actually troll it. I do think maybe in a couple of years when we really get black pilled. About stuff. You could see Elizabeth Holmes getting money, again, for stuff and I don't know if she actually is she legally barred from running a company?
Shkreli sort of coming back. Yeah. I mean, he's trying to find their ways
around the law. But yeah, I do think I do think Elizabeth Holmes because she did. You know, she built something to a degree and she was able to successfully raise a lot of money. She had that kind of Messianic cult leader type ability to convince investors that she had a grand vision. I do think she had a grand vision.
I love it. We skirted this whole thing with Travis Kalanick. He is what he raised from like the Saudis. He was like, fuck everybody. Like I'm gonna do it just like it is. I don't know. Yeah, he's not doing PR. But I mean, Travis has already raised a ton of money. So
yeah, and Uber is the three the most valuable company so it's, you know, he wouldn't even really be considered like that would nothing surprising at all his was just a fight with his board and stuff. But But yeah, I think Elizabeth Holmes 100% would be able to raise a new round if it weren't for the criminal. You
only a couple of people that think it's a good idea. Right? That's that's the thing people always underestimate about the venture model.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when we work, it was really like two people had to agree that we were Work was worth $47 billion. It was Adam and masa. And they did. That's why That's why the company had that tag. And now that the value of work is being decided by many people, it's less. Right. Exactly.
Maybe we can just close here on this aspect, because this is a perfect question for you, Ellen, because you do have experience with intentional living, and these sorts of things. I mean, what would it take for you to live in an Adam Newman started and branded co living situation? What do you look for? What needs to be innovative? I
mean, well, the true answer is I would do it for a story today. So sign me sign me up, send me to South Florida. I mean, you know, maybe
like they give you some burning man like software tools to prepare your camp, then then you go I mean,
if I can get online communal living soapbox for just a second, I don't think that shared amenity apartments count as to me like actual co living to me, I think I have, I have found that the way that you bring people together at their home, is by sharing a kitchen. That's all like you just have to share a kitchen ensuring
a currency, unit currency within that we have a shared token,
and everybody votes on it. Let's just make sure that those who need
housing script, that's it.
I was thinking on the doubt. I mean, part of what's cool about your sort of intentional living is, you know, you guys have these like governing documents. I mean, it is sort of if you bring
it down, yeah, we were down before doubts, like work. Right. Right. And we don't have a token. But I did read a story a couple months ago about, like a company that's trying to do like Van life and communal living, and they are going to run a lot of their business via Dow and they're like, really into the idea that web three, philosophy and technologies can help scale communities by having this sort of governance token type thing, I won't get too much into it. But that you know, there are, you know, people who are into community are looking at, yeah, sort of crypto tools to help manage it. But just
to be clear, your advice to Adam Newman? Is it for this to work, you need people fighting over the leftovers in the fridge?
No. In fact, the opposite is I think, fighting like it takes so much effort to fight over the kitchen. So like no one actually wants that. So I think he's, it's like they're calling it I guess my marketing is like they might they might call it and we don't know that they're calling it co living. We work they like sort of called it co living. And I argue that that's not the real deal. The real deal is when you have to argue you're
saying they want I think they want to leave you community. But yes, but do you think they could apply that at scale? Like do you think you're no one
is sharing a kitchen, and they still call a community? I argue that that's false community.
I agree with you. You need to be forced to break bread. Yeah.
And you can take it a step further. I mean, I have cousins in Israel that live on kibbutzim and raise their children communally. Like there are multiple parents there, you know, that all call themselves like their most people they call mom and dad, because of that, which is something Adam Newman is probably very familiar with.
I think that's really cool.
So if Andreessen Horowitz does this the right way they can be fucking with people's children before we know it. Jesus Christ, I wouldn't I wouldn't be surprised to be living in these things. Like it was not even an overstatement. Like, you know, it's, I mean, yeah,
it would be cool to have like, if they, you know, to have like, communal childcare and stuff, like, that'd be like, that's something people would probably be really into. But I don't know if that's exactly the demographic they're going for. We don't really know
Rebecca in charge of it. Yeah. Well, that's
part of the idea here too, for sure. And, you know, plus, you know, with Elon trying to repopulate the world. We're seeing a lot of different approaches to both creation and hearing. So I think we should be more open to the innovation that they think that they're that they're stumbling across. But anyway, we should probably wrap it up here.
This was so fun. I mean, it's just nice. It's always good when you have a podcast where you're like, Oh, I just want to hang out with this person anyway, so we can have them on. Thanks for coming.
We hope the feeling's mutual. Well. Yeah.
This was very fun. I'm glad to be part of your guest Rolodex Yeah, exactly. It's
a who's who Yeah, our podcast Co Op, you'd like to call it you're now part of the dead cat communal living situation now. Silicon Valley Goodbye, goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.
