Adam Neumann: This Is How You Build Iconic Companies

**Adam Neumann** (0:00)
You said, Adam, tell me how you're doing, and I jumped straight into my lessons learned, and this had an answer. And you were like, oh, you're still in that stage.
And we don't know each other, but I was like, well, Marc, please tell me what that stage is. It was, you know, the stage when you forgot everything you did and believe everything that was written about you. It's a stage that will pass.

**Erik Torenberg** (0:21)
Today, we're bringing back one of our favorite conversations from the past year. Few founder stories have generated as much attention or debate as Adam Neumann's. After building WeWork into one of the world's most valuable startups, experiencing one of the most public corporate collapses in recent memory, and returning to start Flow, Neumann's journey has become a case study in ambition, resilience and second chances. In this conversation, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Adam Neumann and I discussed the lessons from WeWork, the vision behind Flow, the future of housing, and why Adam believes community is one of the most overlooked challenges in modern life.
Adam, welcome to the Ben & Marc Show. I'm glad we have another head of hair on the podcast.

**Adam Neumann** (1:07)
It's a very brave thing to say.

**Erik Torenberg** (1:11)
We were just talking at lunch about how some entrepreneurs have many ideas. But Adam, you have one idea that you've been refining over your life, just getting it better and better and better.
So why don't we go back from the beginning and talk about your background and how you can find a thread to how that led to Flow Today.

**Adam Neumann** (1:28)
I was born in Israel and my parents got divorced when I was eight. My parents are both doctors and we moved 13 times in my childhood. So I remember moving from community to community, from place to place.

**Ben Horowitz** (1:42)
And what generated all the moves?

**Adam Neumann** (1:44)
First of all, I think in Israel, being a doctor, because it's such a small place, you study in one place, you follow in another, then you go from one thing to the other. So I think that generated about three of them.
Then my parents' divorce generated another one. I think my mother could not stand to be in the same country as my dad, at least for two years, which actually pushed us, which not a lot of people know about it. I lived in Indiana, Indianapolis. I was a Hoosier for two years. I went to Pacers games and saw the Indy 500, and learned about the three S's. So those were some of the moves. But the other one, my mom, and she's actually comfortable speaking about it, she's bipolar and she's an oncologist, and she's very good at her craft. But being an oncologist and also having the mood swings, she would fight very hard for her patients. And no matter what happened, if you were my mom's patient, she would go to war, including with the head of the hospital, to fight for you. And Israel has this medical basket, and not everything is included, and some people could afford things, some people couldn't, and she was always finding a way to get people the best treatments she could. But because she was such an excellent doctor, whenever one head of hospital had enough with her, there was always two other heads of hospital ready to recruit, which is something we know about great talent. Great talent always finds a home.
So I think that led to a lot of those moves, but for me as a kid, I think for kids, moving is a very difficult thing. I think it's good because I think it makes us stronger, but I also think it's difficult. And when you enter a new community as a new kid, you have no friends, and you always find yourself looking, who are you going to be with? And I used to be attracted, also they were the only ones who would have me, to the uncool kids. So I was the ones who were a little different.
And so I would get to a new place, if somebody knew my place, I would go immediately to the different kids. And my thing in life was I would befriend them, we would become great friends. Then I would make my way into the social structure of whatever community I went to. And I would bring with me those kids. That was my big winning moment. The toughest community I ever went to was when I lived in the kibbutz. And for those of you who don't know, that's also where I lived the most. And the kibbutz is where it's almost like a commune. The kids lived together from, in our kibbutz they stopped it, but a lot of them lived together from age two to 18