It was the fundraiser on Twitter.
Adam Neumann, the infamous entrepreneur behind WeWork, has raised a staggering $350 million from Andreessen Horowitz for a yet-to-be-launched real estate company called Flow. The investment gave Neumann’s latest venture a more than $1 billion valuationas reported by The New York Times, and came amid what is believed to be an investor pullback into a bear market.
It is the largest individual check a16z has ever written and the second time the company has supported a Neumann-founded company this year.
There is no need to repeat everything Neumann has done wrong; AppleTV+ already did that in the miniseries”WeCrashed.” His disastrous tenure at WorkWork earned him a reputation for employee mismanagement, and he led his company to a disastrous IPO. He nevertheless walked 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] was not shocking to me,” Nicole Tinson, the founder of the inclusion platform HBCU 20×20 told toptecheasy.com. “I was actually expecting this because discrimination in funding is no different than discrimination in any way.”
You cannot overeducate, network and out-assimilate the systemic barriers designed to discriminate against them.
The news cast a harsh light on reality, a breaking point for many. Women are tired of shattering glass ceilings; their hands are cut from the falling shards. Some founders are also exhausted from taking swings at the concrete ceiling, where gender, racial and often socioeconomic conditions combine to form a discriminatory barrier so strong it cannot shatter like glass; it is firm as concrete and must be laboriously pierced.
