Andreessen Horowitz Thinks It’s Time for Adam Neumann to Build
The venture capital firm is backing the WeWork co-founder’s new housing and crypto ventures—and illustrating how little Silicon Valley has learned from the techlash.
Left: Adam Neumann, co-founder of WeWork; right: Marc Andreessen, co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz.
Photos: Angus Mordant; David Paul Morris/BloombergIn April 2020, Marc Andreessen announced what sounded like a dramatic shift for his venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz. “It’s Time to Build,” he declared, arguing that investors and entrepreneurs should focus on making improvements in the physical world. He called for more investments in, among other things, constructing housing, which he said was becoming prohibitively expensive because of a lack of supply.
It sounded impressive, even inspiring. For years, Silicon Valley investors had drawn criticism for encouraging the industry’s brightest minds to build startups focused on privacy-eroding online advertising and for engaging in “regulatory arbitrage” rather than innovating—all while they tended to favor a group of toxic founders with an apparent propensity for grift. Andreessen was announcing a new era of seriousness of purpose. The techlash was over; the era of building had begun.