It was fundraiser heard across Twitter.
Adam Neumann, the infamous entrepreneur behind WeWork, grossed a staggering $350 million by Andreessen Horowitz for an as-yet-unlaunched real estate company called Flow. The investment gave Neumann’s latest venture more than A $1 billion valuationas reported by The New York Times, and came amid what is believed to be a pullback by investors in a bear market.
This is the largest individual check a16z has ever written and the second time the firm has supported a company founded by Neumann this year.
There is no need to recount every single thing that Neumann did wrong; AppleTV+ already did this in the miniseries “WeCrashed.” His disastrous tenure at WorkWork earned him a reputation for mismanagement of workers, and he led the company to a disastrous IPO. He still far away with an exit package of about $1 billion. He failed and the announcement of his a16z round was a reminder that he is still failing.
“The news [of Neumann’s raise] it wasn’t shocking to me,” Nicole Tinson, the founder of HBCU inclusion platform 20×20, told TechCrunch. “I actually expected that because funding discrimination is no different than discrimination in any way.”
One cannot transform, transcend networks, and not assimilate the systemic barriers designed to discriminate against them.
The news set the reality in harsh light, a turning point for many. Women are tired of breaking glass ceilings; their hands are cut by the falling pieces. Some founders are also weary of rocking the concrete ceiling, where gender, race, and often socioeconomics combine to create a discriminatory barrier so strong it can’t shatter like glass; it is as strong as concrete and should be hard to break through.