YouSaid · the spoken record

Adam Neumann

lines on the record: 111
first: 2026-07-08
most recent: 2026-07-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And I think the future of flow has a tremendous amount of potential. I think we need to keep taking it one step at a time. I think we need to deliver on all the different aspects of the business. So now you heard us talking about funds and raising capital to deploy to people, but only people understand why flow delivers a higher value and how it's going to give them a higher return. Keep focusing on the resident as it grows to be a citizen, as Ben likes to call it, commit to the architecture and keep building the right architecture, both in the back end and the front end, and create a culture of service and hospitality of people that are excited to be part of delivering this version of the future that we see. I think it's great for the US. We know it's great for Saudi and it's a global challenge and a global solution. And I couldn't be more excited to tackle this with our two partners with a great team that we've assembled.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everything and make people feel that way, I think for today's world, it is more relevant and more important than ever before. And as we said before, people are so connected digitally. They've, I think, never been so disconnected and not for everyone, but for a lot of us, that connection is so important. And Mark was talking even about the birth rate that's going to all the different stuff. We need physical interactions. And those physical interactions need to be meaningful. And imagine if an enterprise could not just give you a great job with a great salary, but could actually give you directionally a community that you would want to be part of. Suddenly, here's what I do with my family and here's what I do with my kids. And there is, I think, a solution that gives a little bit of the good things about working remotely, but also solves the bad things, which is there's a limit to how often we don't want to have social interaction.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know the things that motivate each other And you can't get that consistent, perfect experience. So for a company like Flow, it's even more important. Now let's think about enterprise sales. You go to an enterprise in the past, you'd say, I'll get you office. I'll build for you what we used to do. We work. We're very good at enterprise. We created office. But maybe office is not enough for a solution. What if I can give you the rental apartments certain number of nights in a hotel? A school for your kids in the development or outside of the development. and the office and experiences all around and the retail. And before you know it, you're creating something very unique. Now, a lot of times when developers have tried to do it in a way that was like Disneyland, it's soulless. If you can then do it in a soulful way that really makes people and Flow's mission is to connect people to themselves, their neighbors, and their natural world. If you could do those three things, leveraging technology, leveraging operations, leveraging”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Work. I think it's been upended, and I don't think it's landed again. And I think that there's interesting questions in every single topic that I just covered. There are all these concepts of in the past you would have people live, work, go to school, do all those things at the same place. I think part of flow reimagining the future, it also, I think Corona actually helped us in a big way because let's take flow, for example, to build a company of the magnitude that Ben and Mark were talking about, very hard for us to do things remotely. So let's say our engineers, we hire engineers that want to be in the office and the ones we hired before who weren't, we let them be wherever they work because when they were hired, that was the deal that was made with them. But we're finding a lot of people who want to be in office because that's what they want, but we're looking for them. But to create a holistic product, the reason you need sometimes people all in the same room, especially in our world, if the team doing the brand, the team doing the development, the team doing the engineering, the team doing the product, if they don't interact with each other, they just don't.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, you know, the remote thing like, you know, can you continues to stick? And so, anyway, like this is all just, I think a lot of this is just still up in the air, right? And we talk to a lot of Fortune 500 CEOs, and I would say that they're all struggling with this. They actually don't know how to recover the in-office experience that they used to have, and they don't know if it's possible to do that. And they're literally, you know, still it's the point where they're issuing threats and orders to people of like, you know, we're going to watch your bad, you know, you pay somebody like, I don't know, half a million dollars a year to be like, you know, senior engineer or something, you tell them you're going to watch their bad, their badge reading in and out to like track their, you know, emotions and then, you know, somehow figure out that you're going to penalize them. Right. Right, it's like everybody ends up in a punch card world again. And so I think this is all just still up in the air. And then we talked earlier about what this means, especially for younger people in this question of economic opportunity and then family formation and then ability to have and raise kids. And I think the whole concept of how people live.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This whole subreddit, and now there's the AI version of it, which is why you can have ChatGPT do your job anyway. So you might as well, so you're very helpful to be remotely because it's easier to do that.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Remotely without letting overemployed. Very careful how to guide on and make sure each employer doesn't realize that you have the other job. And then there's another chapter, which is how to do it with three jobs simultaneously.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But then finally, I would just say it's not like everybody's just going to go back to work in the office. And the reason for that is because there is this massive shift that happened that I think is still underestimated, which is I describe as following, which is it used to be the case that to have access to the best job opportunities, you had to be in very specific places. And so there was this whole adage that the thing that made Silicon Valley so special is that if you lived and worked in Silicon Valley, you could get 20 other job offers as a database administrator or as a Java programmer without changing your parking spot, right? Because the employers were clustered. And by the way, that's still true. That's still the case. But if you remote, you can have 20,000 job offers from companies that are dying for people with your skill set, right? Many of which are not located in Silicon Valley, and they're all available on video, and you can just do that. And there are lots of people now who just like work remotely because they can do that. And then, by the way, there's this incredible book called Job Stacking that I always recommend, which is sort of this how-to manual to how to hold down two jobs.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A week or three days a week. And so that's going poorly. So that's a real struggle. Another thing that happened, which I think was a kind of a big negative, which I think hasn't really been fixed yet, which is new people entering the workforce had a much worse experience. And so COVID was sort of a, there was this sort of dichotomous experience where if you were like a 20 or 30 or veteran of a company and like a high ranking official, it was absolutely fantastic to work remotely because you got to go to your beach house and be with your kids or your grandkids and like be on the golf course. And it's just like this amazing thing. But you put yourself in the shoes of a newly graduated college grad who's 22 or whatever, stuck in some box apartment somewhere and then basically like the whole idea of mentorship is just straight out the window.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's all these arguments. Every science fiction movie had video conferencing, but the real world never had it. And then all of a sudden, just like boom, COVID had actually happened, right? And that stuck, like that, that's now a standard technology everybody's used to. And so that really opened up the aperture. So that stuck. Then there was the idea that basically all work becomes remote, or at least all knowledge work becomes remote. And I would say that has not stuck that well. It stuck somewhat. And I would say it stuck somewhat in two circumstances. One is a lot of CEOs are really struggling even when they want to get everybody back in the office. They're having a very hard time doing it. And again, this kind of brings up this issue of like where and how do people live. Because if you could have a much better lifestyle living and working remotely, then it's harder for you to come back in the office, but you as a human being are much happier and more satisfied. And so a lot of CEOs found that many of their best people had actually left the vicinity of the office by the time COVID came back and they have this very difficult choice of, you know, trying to kind of coerce them into coming back or coming back two days.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Feel like COVID threw almost every aspect of how, at least in the US, how we live and work sort of up in the air, right? And some of those pieces have landed a little bit, but some of those pieces still feel like they're quite high up in the air. Yep. So just a bunch of observations. So one is look like there had been a 60-year history of video conferencing not being a thing and not working. The first video conferencing system was rolled out in 1965. It was AT&T picture phone completely flopped. There were 50, 60 years. And there's a whole theory about people didn't want to be seen when they were talking on the phone. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. It's the same kind of theory that you would want to see actress talk in motion pictures of sound. Yeah, exactly.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, there's not more meaningful work than that. And then it's an extremely complex technological problem, you know, particularly kind of coming out of legacy world and all these, you have to basically start from complete first principles because you're starting with who's living there. And the software has to be oriented around them, not buildings or apartments or a bill, those are features of the person, not vice versa.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These people think about how they do that and how it works. So it's, and we have lots of demand. We're trying to figure out what to do with all the demand. Like as an engineer, you want to build things that really impact people's lives and make their lives better. I mean, there's many, many things that you can do that have small impact or questionable impact, but this is something where you're building an environment where For young people, you know, as Mark kind of alluded to, it's been much worse than what their parents' opportunity was and even what their parents' opportunity was, which is a new phenomenon. And this is a chance to make it much better, much better than how their parents lived.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's actually not just the largest asset class in the world, it's changing The thing that the funds give us are it's really twofold. And I didn't realize this before. So the first thing is obvious just scale. So as Adam said. There's a lot of real estate out there. There are a lot of people who would love to live in a flow community with kind of, you know, be part of something bigger. And Doing that kind of just through the flood balance sheet would be insane. So it gives us a lot of scale. But the other thing that it does is the people we've partnered with are real geniuses in evaluating real estate and And kind of getting the right buildings for the right deal in the right locations. And that's been really amazing to watch how.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Neighborhood. And all those themes that we just said work so well for the single buildings will work even better in a neighborhood. So those two fund structures exist. And because we have all these flexibility built into it, we've already proven that we deliver above market returns. So the people who are going to want to invest in our fund are going to understand that by getting access to flow, the flows technology, to Flow's brand, they're going to get access actually to above market returns, which at the end of the day in real estate, so you said, Mark, only two people did that, but I think the one thing in real estate that's very consistent if you can deliver the highest returns in real estate for a certain asset class, you're going to attract the kind of money that's interested in investing in that asset class. If you can move between asset classes, you might attract the kind of money that in the past felt uncomfortable with real estate because even though it's a safe return, we learn something in the past 10 years is, you know, before Corona office was great and it went to zero hotel and apartments, everybody wanted one and then it changed.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Taking our time now to build a product that's actually scalable, learning for our mistakes, taking the time to make these decisions, building. Was correct. So we made it harder to recruit them, recruit them in the right speed. I had visions of a huge number of team that we needed. Mark's very big on great products are built with small teams. That was before AI came. Now that AI came, it's actually, I think a lot of people are starting to understand that. So when you put all those things together, you start seeing a very good offering for to raise funds against. That's in Saudi. In the US, we actually bought 30% of a publicly traded company in Israel where none controlling shareholders. That company has access to retail investors and institutional investors. And with partnership with that company, we have bought two developments in Miami, South Florida, one in Aventura, and one in a place called El Portal. And again, now you're thinking of flow not just as we're going to run the building, but actually how you're going to run the entire.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll give a month, then I'll give them a lease. The system wouldn't be. I know it sounds crazy, the system wouldn't be able to, you'd find a way to do it if you're very savvy, pen and paper, do a deal, call someone, you do something, but it's not scalable. And I think the other thing about our system that maybe we didn't say enough, we're building it for scale. If we were building this for just multifamily, you don't have to go as deep as wind in the architecture. If we were building this for just one country, for just one use case, I think a lesson for me from the past I have zero fear that we're going to grow to be very big. The time and when the time comes, it's time to put foot on the guy. I enjoy it. It's my favorite part.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From a multifamily to a hotel, extended stay furnished apartments, corporate housing. It gives you so much flexibility. So Saudi, for example, a lot of expats are moving in. We learned very quickly that these expats are getting one month from the company that hired them. So some numbers for everyone about Saudi, Riyadh has 7.8 million citizens, is growing to almost 10 million by 2030 so over the next five years, about 5 million expats. Big numbers. They get hired by these local companies, a lot of them. They get one month that the company pays them and then they're supposed to find, they're on the get paid well. They're supposed to find their own place to live. So we said, okay, great. Let's give one month because that's what fits them. And then we'll see how many of them stay. The conversion rate has been phenomenal, 90-something percent of anybody who took the month is able to stay. But if you're any other landlord and you're the great building manager, that building manager said, hey, I want to sell this new offering.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So let's start with the real estate fund in Saudi. It was launched and closed and actually got oversubscribed, mainly because not only are they really up, it's also great to send to your investors back money. So we're very excited to do that. We're planning to send the first check soon. So that's very exciting. Also, when we sold it, the people were buying, they won't flow to manage it, which is the beginning of the business model that it's going to become. That is the flag model. So the beginning, I think you have to be vertically integrated because you have to prove it on yourself. You have to put your own money there. But after it's proven, there are a lot of real estate investors that would like to invest in an above market offering. And connecting it to what Ben said about why is the technology allowing us, the moment you have technology that allows you not just to deliver better service in the building that creates more loyalty, that lowers churn, that increases rents, that connects the community internally, that allows all these things to happen. By allowing yourself to move.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Saudi, you have to be connected to the government for the rent for a variety of reasons actually allows you to take people out who don't pay rent. There's a lot of reasons for the workout really well. Our team did it in four days we didn't think it was a big deal. We talk to people because the system is built to be flexible and it's built to need to connect to external things if it needs to. And because our architect Scott, who is our CTO, knew that he needs optionality, both because he knew how I operate as a leader, but also because he knew that we just don't know yet what we don't know. And when we meet people and say, so when are you going to connect to the system? The rent said, what are you talking about? We're already connected. Then other people ask us, say, when are you going to become a Saudi company? We heard that takes two years. Like, I don't know. We have Fawaz and it took us exactly 60 days. So not only are operating in Saudi, we're operating as a Saudi company, which I think is very important. And without comparing, but the experience that we're delivering right now in Saudi is not just second to none.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really think it is. And it also for us as a company forced us to do us launching the technology even before we were fully ready, forced us to see what's working, what's not. It also shows you the power of the platform. It's back to that agility.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very lucky with a local leader named Fawaz that came from government and was a CEO himself and did a lot of things, but we're very lucky having a local team and something beautiful that happens in flow whenever anyone needs to go to Saudi, too many people volunteer. And if Flow right now say, who wants to move to Saudi? You're getting half the employees in the company. Raising their hands because in Saudi and in Riyadh, we get to take all these visions that we have, but we're the only ones doing it And as good as our product market fit is in South Florida, and it really is excellent, it's phenomenal in Saudi.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Opened our second building right after, and we opened our third building last month. And our fourth and fifth building, we've already pre-leased to an enterprise. That's going to release it for the next five years. So the entire portfolio is going to be stabilized over the next 90 days. That's when you opened in January. And it took 60, it took six months to become NOI positive. And for those real estate people that are listening to this, that's extremely fast for buildings that were at zero. We also have to do everything they do when you go to a new country, which is hire local team.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the way we wanted to do it is not just use our own money. We were going to raise a local fund because the theory was, and we're only going to raise it from local investors, not go to the big investors that run Saudi, but local families. Because I've learned many times if the local families of a country want to support you, they know what's going on in the country. If you go to all the local families and no one wants to invest, maybe your idea is not as good as you And that's what we did. We raised it from actually 33 different investors. We put it on equity. We got debt from the local bank. We bought these five properties. It was about a billion SAR, which is about $300 million fund. Started, and that was in August, and then we started operating. We opened our first building in January. We achieved over 90% occupancy within 60 days.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And in hindsight, extremely worked extremely well, but was also very difficult because there was a lot of challenges that were happening as we were there. But we got to deploy everything we did. So we went to Saudi. We still want to be vertically integrated. So we chose five buildings that were going to be condos, which means they were going to sell them. We bought them from the developer. We changed the condos into rentals. And we started deploying the brand. We put our design from the outside. We brought our furniture. We launched it on our tech. It was also the first time we got to launch it on our back end system, not just our front-end system. So it was a very good opportunity for us. Our team, our uniforms, our smell, our music, our art, everything that we do, but also very localized. And because of my past, I have a lot of experience entering into new countries. So it's not something that I haven't done before, but it was definitely different.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Vision than I think might have coined the term a founder led country. So there's a vision, it's very clearly articulated. It's vision 2030, but there's also no visions for 2020, 2034 and further. And as part of that vision, you're taking an entire economy that used to 70% of Saudis are 40 year olds or younger. And so it's a very young population. And a lot of them are educated in the West. English is spoken everywhere. And MBS, the leader has not even slowly, quite fast, changed a lot of rules that have made foreigners and foreign investors and changed rules internally and externally, inviting a lot of people in. And I think last week a lot of us saw Trump there and a lot of people were talking about it. But we've been going there for some time. choosing to go to Saudi was a very big choice for us as a company.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's an interesting experience to go with People think I'm great at raising money. I'm a beginner. So we go to these meetings and we told them about flow. And flow was only in Miami at the time. And what was interesting is without fail, every one of these LPs, they're all from the Middle East, said we think this concept would be great for the Middle East, specifically Saudi Arabia for Riyadh. And even in Abu Dhabi, they said the same and in Dubai, they said the same for a variety of reasons. And once I heard it for the 10th time, Ben was like, hey, maybe we should check it out. And we did. And I went to Saudi and I think what's interesting when we went, first of all, Saudi is phenomenal for those of you who haven't had a chance to go there. What I get excited about Saudi, the optimism.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I remember you asked me, Ben, hey, Adam, do you mind coming with me to the Middle East? I'm going anyway, and let's share with not everyone but top 10, 12 LPs. Tell them what flow is. And I'm sure it will be great for you in the long run, and it's great to do. You'll meet great people. And that's what we did. And we walked around, and there are two very funny things that happened. One, we would walk in. No matter what meeting you take with Ben, at the end of the meeting, forget flow, Ben gets offered money. It happened to us again last week. It's an interesting”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then you say Riyadh. And I think that's just not your obvious thing. But again, and this is something else, you talked about success, the difference between success and failure being so small. And I believe in God. So for me, it's this, Mark and I have a different discussion how we define God differently, but we believe in something greater than ourselves After the investment was made, you guys got quite a lot of phone calls from your LPs, and you reached out to me and you said, I think you might have told me from every single one of them. You have lots, so that's a lot of stuff.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think this is a good segue into so if we didn't make it clear enough, flow is vertically integrated real estate company that started in long-term rentals, then introduced all the other aspects of everything you can do in a building, including condo and office. And then we started offering services that put the resident in the front and allowing them to work with each other. Our technology, our brand, and our operations coming together yield this experience, which is already proven that it's doing a higher return for the owners of the buildings. But before we're talking about that, I think the going to Saudi was a very interesting thing. First of all, again, interesting about our dynamics, because think of that board meeting. So you have a few buildings in Miami. They're going great. And now you're coming to the board to say, okay, so our third building is going to be, and let me guess New York City. No, Austin, Texas. No, very nice place, but no.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because of the tech, they created it, they published it, they invited people, people registered if they wanted to build people, they can build people. And it all happens. And 60% is now when we're early. That number is going to go up to 90%. And great communities, responsible communities, run themselves. So one sign in, I know it used to exist in school, still exists in schools. When you go to Tor University, hopefully a student that's really proud of the school they go to is the one touring you. It's not the salesperson trying to pitch you there. Same thing and same thing in the buildings. If the community, when someone tours the building, one of our great, and we're trying to let everyone, there's no more just leasing agents. Everyone can be a leasing agent because, again, if you're holding the app and that piece is called the host app, you can make a lease, as Ben said very quickly, and everybody has the same information. As you walk around, you just introduce the person touring to residents and everybody's excited to talk about.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Week every week is enough if it's one on ones and then they can do group classes. And that's just one example. Also, you talked about it as a citizenship. Once you become part of the flow community, so we do billing, for example. We built everything, so we're vertically, we're completely vertically integrated. We built every single piece. And the pieces we haven't built yet we're building. Doesn't mean we can't use third-party software, let's say, on video cameras or different things they need for security or parking lots there. We don't have to invent everything, but we do have to have it all connected. And when you do that and you do it on the right architecture, you're able to see things. I'll give you another example, events. 60% of our residents, 60% of the events inflow are run by residents.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can win, flow can win is running it, and the user can win. And if everybody can feel like they're a winner and they're getting something much better, then... You really have a new solution now. There's a lot of not for today, but to complete that solution, you would have to at some point tackle that word of ownership. But as we said, Ben, you said we're 5% into the journey, maybe even 3% into the journey. But we're just starting in the other interesting thing is, so you're seeing the properties in Miami already delivering, both on top revenue and profitability. And the reason profitability is such an important metric for us. If we just spent more and made more, that's not going to do anything. You're not going to encourage any investment. We need to spend the same and make more or spend less and make more. And that's why NOI, your net operating income is such a good metric in these buildings. But then to Ben's point, and then they're starting to do business with the self. So you spoke about the people who don't have any other business. The way we like to talk about it a lot is how many classes does the yoga teacher need to close the month just to pay rent? And the answer is not as much about five classes.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Haves and the haves not, but in a much bigger topic, we hear a lot of noise about a lot of haves and have-snot. This is where it's really playing out. So I think with the reality, like flow that we're dreaming of, and we started multifamily. So we said you could take a multifamily. Now it's rental, furnished, unfurnished, short-term, long-term. When you talk about condos, but flow lunch to condo project five months ago. So you can own, you can buy, you can rent, you can do anything between, but that's when you're living in these towers. Flow sees the future. There are a lot of single family also, which is another huge part, or more single family than multifamily, another big part of it. So another part of where flow can come in and offer all these services. And if you can prove, which you can already see with the numbers in flow, that the returns on the real estate are actually higher than landlords and investors all over the world will be very happy to deploy their cash that way. And now they're deploying, and we like to call it a win-win-win.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you would get a piece of the land, you'd work the land for the Lord And then you'd give that piece, whatever it is, if you're lucky. You got to keep a little bit. And it was all up to them. The entire concept of real estate is”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's add two thoughts. First of all, I think this is, and we, Mark, we talk not today about politics, but in general a lot about politics. I think it's a main issue globally. And sometimes a lot of other issues become louder. Might be the biggest one Because if a person doesn't have a home, a shelter, something that they feel is theirs, how do you expect them to treat other people the way they want to be treated? How are you even going to ask them to go to that next level of behavior that we expect from all of us if they can't afford a house? And so I think that's probably the worst deal. A young person can have paying rent traditionally at the end of every month. You pay that rent, and the only feeling you have is I just threw the money away. And it actually, this goes a thousand years back, this word landlord.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All the data, of course, indicates that in all these cities, by the way, all over the world, birth rates are crashing, population are declining. People are not even reproducing it at reproduction levels. And so there's this fundamental social, political, cultural, economic vice that young people are in. And in the absence of something like flow and the absence of a thoughtful approach, where you could actually imagine having a positive experience.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's an absolute attack on young people. And I mean, it actually becomes harder to even discuss this without getting enraged because we're sitting here in California where they have the infamous Prop 13, which is this very explicit handout to boomers at the expense of basically the entire young generation coming up now. But basically, if you want to live and work as a young person in a place where you're going to have access to top flight economic opportunity and all these growth industries and you want to work in tech or you want to work in design or entertainment or any of these finance or any of these kind of growth industries, number one, you're not going to own a house. Owning a house is going to be completely unaffordable. And so you're going to be in some sort of multifamily, some sort of rental situation. And then the other thing is there's a really fundamental kind of stress point. And I think this is coming fast enough for Gen Z, which is like, all right, are you ever going to be able to get married and have a family? And what is that going to be like? Because can you really do that like in a small apartment? And it's all.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The brand This also goes to conversation we had early on about the sort of changing nature of housing in the US, right? Which we've talked a lot about since, and I think a lot about, which is basically there's a bifurcated housing market in the US, the way I think about it. Basically, is there's plentiful cheap housing out the places that don't have great jobs where people don't really want to live? And then there's basically like possible bottlenecks on housing stock in, especially the cities and especially the cities where lots of young people want to live and especially where the really great jobs are and where the economic growth is. And so just as like a young person starting out in life, like you have a very”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you take that architecture, you take that system, you build it in the back end, you build a system, the front end, you have one brand, and you train one team to be able to operate all of that, and the result will be higher NOI. Higher buildings are more profitable than just use little numbers for that. Our building in Fort Lauderdale, NOI net operating income is 30% higher than when we took over it. It's 95% full today. It was 95% full when we took over it. It's not higher occupancy. It's lower churn, higher rent, obviously better experience. And another interesting thing which brand does, 80% of most leases in South Florida come from brokers. 90% of all inbound into flow is direct to us, direct to the website. Now, our brand is still young, but even a young brand, and we never said we didn't say this, but 40% of 40-year-olds and younger in the United States are renters. They spend a”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So to add to what Ben just said, Once you're able to use that architecture, which again is something that I do not believe would have been built with other partners. So I think it's another benefit of this partnership. Once you're able to do that, you take that multifamily and it really came out of NATO. We had a multifamily. I just walked in one day and said, hey, furnish apartments. Everyone's doing it in Europe. Why wouldn't the young generation want that? I'm 22. I finished college. I can't buy my furniture. It never looks right. Give me a furnished apartment for an extra $300 a month. And the team literally said, no, no, the system can't do it. And I said, we were using one of the traditionals. I said, what do you mean it can't? Said it can't. It physically can't. I said, well, I want to do it. So they replicated the building. So we had two buildings. And then I said, okay, no more 12 month leases. We want to give shorter term lease. Some people only want it for eight months. Other people want it for 20 month. Oh, no, we can't do that. And I said, well, how about short-term stay? What if some people want to actually, and I said, well, we have this dream day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year. Oh, no, that you're going to need four different systems.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We will finish selling them 24 months from when we started. But yes, and we're gonna sell our first asset we closed last August. We will sell our five buildings. We will sell our first asset in a month and we'll keep a management deal for the unforeseeable future.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. And look, we all like there's a bit of it in everyone. And, you know, if you look at Elon, he takes very aggressive chances. And he's not afraid of it, and he calculates the risk, but the chances have big payoffs. And the danger is always when you take a chance and it doesn't pay out, but you could lose a company over it. And so, you know, we just had, I would just say the thing I remember about that was a very honest conversation. It was very hard to have an honest conversation about something like that. It's almost like. People don't really want to look at themselves like that. And I was impressed with how introspective and honest Adam could be on a number of topics like that. And so my conclusion is, look, I think that this is somebody that we can work with, the things he wasn't good at WeWork, like we're very good at”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I've been in possession. I've saved a company like that. I know exactly what that, like, you never can feel that good as walking back into the building when everybody thought the company was over and you fucking saved it. You just pulled it out of like fire. That's the most unbelievable thing in the world, but you don't want to be in that position. Well, and it is worth saying.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what I need to know is, like, I don't want you to chase that fucking feeling because that will cause you to take chances. There are chances that you have to take. And then there's chances you don't have to take. I don't want you taking the chances you don't have to take because your vision is so incredible like it would be horrible to put it at risk for a non-valid reason. And so like we kind of got into that. And I said, look, I know the feeling has like you.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a long dinner, you know, a lot of how you get to know someone is kind of get into the things that You shouldn't even talk about, right? Like they're not polite. They're not. Kinds of things. And so I think Adam asked me he's like, well, you know, like looking at me, what do you worry about? Like, what are you really worried about? Like, what do you need to think about? And I can't remember exactly what I said. It was something like, like, Adam, like people look at you. And, you know, I watch the show. And in the show, the great moment for you was being on the cover of some magazine, Fortune, whatever. I was like, I could see you didn't even care about that. That was nothing. Great moment for you was when the company went to the brink and you saved it.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Remember how it started? Mark called me. I saw Mark twice already. Now I know Mark. I didn't know back then that Mark wasn't traveling as much. And I knew that Mark jumps on a plane. He comes, he sees you. But Mark calls and goes, hey, I know. I know we hung out twice. We need one more time. I said, I go, well, my partner, Ben, you haven't met him. He wants to come hang also. I was like, great, we'll have dinner. That turned out to be a seven-hour dinner.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it starts with as we got into it, it really came down to okay, who is Adam? Forget Adam, the entrepreneur, who's Adam, the person. What is he good at? What is he not as good at? What are we good at? Can we get along? It was that kind of thing. We had, I think, a seven-hour dinner. Oh, yeah.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The landlord. And some of what's nice also about our alignment is we don't have to make that decision yet today. Right now, we have to build a best product.”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just you could sit, you can wear in downtown Miami, you could stand on our roof and point to 100 buildings that could be flow buildings. And there's five different neighborhoods like that in South Florida. And that's just one area. Then you could go to New York and you could start going all over the planet. So I think, but I do think that that decision allowed us to be who we are. And also when the time does come and now, so we have two choices. But we also can do the flag business, where we come to a person who owns this multifamily or the other things, the other services that we deliver and put our flag just like the four seasons with our flag and actually do a management deal where it's our brand, our technology, our experience, but the existence expenses on the...”
2026-07-08 · a16z Podcast · Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source