WeWork Cofounder Neumann’s New Startup Sounds Like One He Invested in in 2020
forbes.com
forbes.com
I think Flow's long-term plan is to offer an alternative to mortgages, i.e. rent-to-own with increasing fractional ownership without actually taking out a loan. I think there is a similar startup in the UK.
Not sure why you need tokens here, they are only redundant for loyalty points. The most naive idea is that the tenant receives tokens as a reward for each month of rent paid, and hopes that in the "crypto" bull market these tokens will rise in price so much that it will be possible to buy an apartment ;)
EDIT. The model that makes sense: the more reward tokens you accumulated the larger will be the discount if you'll decide to buy the apartment you are renting. If these tokens will be listed on the secondary markets their price will become linked to the residential real estate prices in the properties operated and owned by Flow.
It makes me think of how they had some sort of WeWork OS project at WeWork and being a tech company rather than a real estate company can help increase valuation.
I may be completely wrong on this ofcourse but just a theory.
> An important running theme of this column is that one of the best things you can do for your financial career is lose a billion dollars. This is not necessarily actionable advice, for most people; it requires someone trusting you with a billion dollars to lose. But if you ever do find yourself in a position where you can lose a billion dollars of someone else’s money, and you do it, that could open up a lot of doors to you. Losing a billion dollars tends to be a high-profile affair; it will definitely get your name out there. People will be impressed that you were entrusted with a billion dollars, and that you took a big swing and lost it. And they will assume that you learned important lessons and, next time, won’t lose it.
No investor (esp. one who has built companies before) tries to build a new company just because they can't acquire enough. There is always a price to get it done and that is infinitely cheaper than investing your own time. The likely answer is that the company was underperforming and not executing the way Neumann wanted.
It’s common to buy a company and scale it up as opposed to building one from scratch (a recent example is Travis Kalanick of Uber fame buying and scaling up CloudKitchens).
But, Neumann still having shares in Alfred constitutes a conflict of interest. If you ask me, he probably wants to outcompete the startup with his hefty funding and buy it on the cheap.
Maybe I'm just becoming a boomer, but the last thing I'd want when I come back home is to open up some app and "connect" with neighbors.