Quote · The a16z Show
Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies
Where this was said
The Call That Broke the Silence
At 30:44 · chapter starts 29:50
May 2020. Marc Andreessen is taking 3-hour walks across a deserted Stanford campus to escape 8 hours of Zoom calls that were seizing his entire left side. He calls Adam Neumann from one of the Stanford fields. The phone had been silent on Neumann's end — over 1,000 friends reduced to 10, five of them family [1] — Adam Neumann "1,000 friends down to 10: After WeWork collapsed, Neumann says he went from 1,000 friends to 10, five of whom were family members, illustra…" 29:02 . Even people who were there for the WeWork story had started believing the press coverage rather than their own memory of events [2] — Adam Neumann "After WeWork collapsed, Neumann went from 1,000 friends to 10 — five of them family. Then Andreessen called from a Stanford field during CO…" 29:40 . The call contained no business transaction. Andreessen simply asked how Neumann was doing — and Neumann immediately launched into his lessons-learned monologue. Andreessen stopped him: 'Oh, you're still in that stage.' When Neumann asked what stage, Andreessen said: 'The stage when you forgot everything you did and believe everything that was written about you. It will pass.' Six months later, Andreessen called again to ask what Neumann was working on. The answer, tentatively, was residential real estate. And that is where the Flow story begins.
