They say there is no such thing as "bad publicity", and there are people who prove it time and time again, like Adam Neumann, who despite the headlines and investigations, manages to establish a new startup and raise hundreds of millions of dollars for it. And just like before, he is doing it with the help of a reputable venture capital fund, and it also involves a lot of real estate.

The fund that invested in Facebook before it became Facebook

One of the world's most respected venture capital funds, Andreessen Horowitz, announced yesterday (Monday) that it will invest $350 million in Neumann's new startup, called Flow– according to the New York Times. Andreessen Horowitz invested in some of the biggest tech companies of all time when they were still in their early stages like Airbnb, Anki, BuzzFeed, Coinbase, Facebook, Foursquare, GitHub, Groupon, IFTTT, Instagram, Lyft, Lime, Oculus, Pinterest, Slack, Soylent, Skype, and Zynga. In Israel, the VC also invested in Overwolf and helped turn Deel into one of the fastest-growing unicorns. It also recently launched a new Remote First accelerator, to catch the next hit in the tech world before Y Combinator does.

The WeWork of housing?

Andreessen brings the money, but Neumann also brings something to the table besides his name and reputation: Neumann has used his money to purchase more than 3,000 housing units in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta, and Nashville. Not much has been revealed about Flow, but from what we know, the company is supposed to be a sort of WeWork for the rental housing market and will offer different community services and features. Flow's platform will also be offered to other projects and third parties.

As part of the investment, Marc Andreessen himself joined Flow’s board, which has yet to be launched. Andreessen said in the announcement: "...Just one person completely changed the office experience and led a global company that changed the paradigm along the way." In the little that Andreessen did mention about the company, he said that "giving tenants feelings of security, community and ownership can change our society." To be clear, there is no connection between Flow and Flow Carbon which is another venture Neumann founded that Andreessen invested in.