Billionaire founder and entrepreneur, Adam Neumann is making headlines again for a different company this time. Since his monumental departure as CEO of WeWork, the business co-working empire, Adam has set his eyes on a bigger and better project: crypto wallets.
That’s right, the WeWork founder has raised more than $350 million from Silicon Valley once again. This time the capital came from the firm Andreessen Horowitz, with a full vision of how to change the landscape of crypto wallets forever. This is especially in relation to real estate, where Neumann’s new company, Flow will have advanced real estate software integrated into it.
From WeWork to WeCrypto
If you aren’t familiar with Adam Neumann, then you might have been sleeping under a rock for the past few years as WeWork overtook the office industry by storm. With a business structure more akin to a real estate firm, WeWork launched in the heart of New York City before expanding through the continental United States and later through the major capitals of Europe and Latin America.
With the great expansion, came great sacrifice, and it came in the shape of Adam’s CEO role. After pushing his board of directors through one of the most aggressive expansion plans for a Silicon Valley unicorn (a startup with a valuation of $1 billion), Adam was faced with the inevitable axe for his leadership.
And just like that, like the former CEOs of Uber and once Apple, Adam lost his charge and walked away with several hundreds of millions in his payout. What did he do with his hundreds of millions from the founding of WeWork?
In Crypto We Trust
As expected it wasn’t long before Adam Neumann set his sights on crypto and the ocean of blockchain protocols popping onto the scene every other week. In fact, just like Adam had trusted in the future of WeWork, so too does he see the potential in blockchain technology.
So much so that, Adam has begun working on not only one but two separate blockchain projects. The first is his environmental project FlowCarbon, where he plans on creating an ecosystem for investors to tokenize carbon through a credit system. Essentially, echoing what so many others have stated in the crypto community, that zero carbon trading is possible through the use of carbon tokens.
From this project alone, Adam was able to raise more than $75 million from Andreessen Horowitz as well. Adam will be planning a grand debut but has put them off for the company citing volatile market conditions. So we can expect a world-saving crypto project from Adam very soon.
Andreessen Horowitz’s Love For Crypto
The story does not end with Adam Neumann and his love affair with the a16hz venture company. Major players at the firm are not just bullish on everything and anything coming from the mind of WeWork’s founder but they are also eyeing other prospects as well.
As of the time of writing, Andreessen Horowitz is lining up a litany of crypto projects to invest in. These projects include small crypto wallets and major players like Ready Player Me, a crypto company seeking to franchise off of the popular film and book series, “Ready Player One”. Andreessen has already gone on to fund the avatar company with $50 million in its series A rounds of investments.
Andreessen isn’t stopping at simply investing, they are actively calling out major social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram for concentrating all of the power of web 2.0 onto their platforms. In particular, their CEO, had this to say about what he sees as a very clear infringement on what is going on in Silicon Valley and abroad,
“I don’t think this is a good outcome, both societally and from a business point of view, because our business is investing in entrepreneurs … the idea of having the internet controlled by five companies is very bad for entrepreneurs and bad for VCs.”