Adam Neumann: This is How You Build Iconic Companies

23:08And there's only one guy who's ever been able to do that in this business. And then you pause for a moment and you think to your point about this year's size of the industry. And as you always remember, this is one of the biggest industries on Earth that matters to everybody. And so as Ben and I were talking about it more and more, kind of as you're watching the whole thing happen, it's just like, all right, there's something very special happening here. Kind of independent of the day -to -day blow -by -blow aspects of the business. And then we'll talk more about independent of the financial stresses.

23:37So yeah, the other thing is, you know, we keep very good track of what our portfolio companies use. And they're really good indicator of like the best new products because they really care about products. And you know, almost all of them were we work customers and we thought, wow, that's like super interesting. So we always thought he was a really interesting guy, but you know, because he was with benchmark Mark, we couldn't call him. I mean, so what was the first conversation like? Yeah, so I mean, you may remember it better than I do, but yeah, I just, I was actually, I think it was, was it during COVID?

24:15It was COVID. It was during COVID. I looked it up before the podcast, May 2020. So when the COVID lockdowns hit hard, you know, out here. And I had this, I didn't even have a home office really set up because we always worked out in the office. And so I had just, I was at my dining table with the chair and after about eight hours of some calls, the entire site of my body from my neck all the way down of my ankles would be basically seized up in a pain. And I was like, I can't wait to simply die. I'm not gonna die, COVID, I'm gonna die of crippling whatever this is. And so I started taking three hour walks every morning.

24:45And I went over to the Stanford campus, which was Stanford campus, May 2020, Stanford campus completely deserted, except for me taking a long walk. And then there was one staff guy who was stationed at the head of the quad area where I would park and his job was to yell at me for not wearing a mask. As far as I can tell, I was the only, he did all day. And I would see him every morning and he would yell at me for not wearing a mask. I would wave my mask and just keep walking. Anyway, then I would do three hours of calls. And so I actually remember this is why I remember the calls, because I remember actually standing in a field at one of the fields of Stanford and actually having the call.

25:19And yeah, and it was basically just like, look, like we've always really admired what you've done. And we understand what you're going through from the press. But basically, I can't remember if I told this to you. But like our philosophy always on this is like one of the key ways you evaluate founders is like what difficult challenges have they been through in their lives that they were able to overcome and the best forecast of being able to overcome a profound challenge in the future, which everyone to be able to deal with is having overcome profound challenges in the past. And many of the great founders in history have had significant blowups at various points along the way, including like Henry Ford.

25:51Yeah, exactly. Thomas, there's tens of examples Thomas Watson. Thomas Watson, senior who founded, I found it IBM. The guy who founded IBM, he founded IBM in his 40s. In his 30s, he was convicted by the federal government of antitrust. He was convicted of antitrust violations for running his previous company on CR. Like he was basically already basically been completely taken down by the government at that point and then started IBM. And so there's just this long history of people who have kind of been through these things. And some people get punched in the face hard and they never get up again.

26:19And other people just get punched in the face. And there's like, wow, it's another opportunity for me to stand back up and show what I'm capable of. And so we just always felt like it, because somebody goes through something that's very difficult, if they're able to navigate their way through it and kind of demonstrate their character through it, they often have great potential. And I don't know if it is reasonable for me to draw the kind of comparison to what you were describing for being dyslexic as a kid or whatever, but like being through a fundamental challenge, like that, whether it's in childhood or adulthood.

26:47Yeah, there's a couple of things that go with that. One is anybody who's ever had a great success, knows that the margin between that and a total failure is very, very thin. And the bigger the success of the thinner the margins are, like, you know, all of us who have been through that go, wow, like, you know, one bad piece of luck and it could have gone completely the other way. And then, you know, we kind of philosophically very kind of early on in the firm always felt that what we're looking for is great strength. And like every person has a weakness or has weaknesses and some of them show up in like crazy ways.

27:35But that doesn't even matter because everybody's got that. What matters is are you world class or best in world at what you You can do, not what you can't do. And he was clearly, like clearly, clearly, clearly, like, as Mark said, you know, top two in one thing. There's just very few people on Earth that are top two in anything. So, you know, it was one of those things where, like, we were excited to meet him, not, you know, it wasn't, oh boy, this is Adam Newman. We work, got all fucked up. That was never a thing. And then I mean, maybe one more thing, just a general observation, which is kind of the old adage of failure, failure is a success as a thousand fathers, failures in orphanage.

28:20There's just, I don't know, actually, I can't remember if I've ever asked you this, but like with a lot of people who go through kind of a big public kind of, you know, take down, tear down, or some kind, you know, kind of go through is just like all of a sudden everybody they know, and they're just like, you know, the phone's not ringing, right? I've heard this from lots of people. I don't know if it happened to you, but I've heard it happen lots of people where all of sudden it's just like you develop, you know, develop leprosy or something and people just don't want to talk to you. And it's just this like completely bizarre thing because it's like, all right, this is like a person who people had, you know, super high opinion of and then, you know, lots of relationships with and then just all of a sudden, you know, it's just like poof vanishing.

28:52It's like, you know, what is that? And you know, every one of those people is probably telling themselves some story about how, you know, they're making the right call by separating from the person. But what's, of course, what's happening is what tech is iski, great famous philosopher tech is iski, what's called over socialization, People are too worried about what everybody else thinks. And so people get too wrapped up in the mob, scapegoating cycle of being able to, and sort of this need for this kind of perceived need to kind of, for everybody to agree on everything all the time. And that just has this effect of, I think, too many really promising people being abandoned a few moments.

29:23Anyway, I don't know if that happened to you or how much that resonates, but I have talked to many other people about through this kind of thing. And I know that that happens. And so, to be able to talk to somebody in that, to be able to talk to somebody in at that time I think is it's like a blow against conformity, which I think is always a good thing. And it's a time when people actually could use a call. Yeah. So I think the thing I would add to that is, so I'm not sure we spoke about it. The phone completely was not ringing. Were you called? Yeah. And some people are social. I think I was extra social.

29:56So my phone was ex and I like I'm over talker than it's really stopped. And it wasn't just that. I used to say this sometimes, I speak about it. I had a thousand friends a week before, and I went down to 10, and five of them were family members, which I think was part of it. And for me, also, I had some of my closest friends working with me, because that's part of our ability. And there was a moment where even people who knew me, who were there for the story, suddenly believed what they were reading. And I do believe we live in a different world. I think we're talking now 2019, and we're now 2025.

30:26Hopefully the world is changing, and I've got people now, not to believe everything that they read. But I think that was still an end of an era. And we were right place, right time for that. So it definitely stopped bringing in and something that I don't know if I've said it to you, but it was greatly appreciated that phone call. And it was interesting about phone call. There was no business transaction in that phone call. The phone call was just how you doing. And telling what you think. And there is something I've shared it before, but it's worth it. Where you just said, I don't tell me how you're doing.

30:52And 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. I was like, Mark, please tell me what that stage is. Because you know, the stage when you forgot everything you did and believe everything that was written about you. It's a stage. It will pass. And you also told me, and then you told me the same thing, Ben, that you're speaking about, about you said, let me tell you what I think about what you did. It was very nice. But you also said at the end of it, you said that I'm just so you know, and I'm sure we'll talk again.

31:21You said, there's only going to be one decision that you need to make moving forward. And that's, you're going to get back into ring. You do, do you? More you're not. Yeah, that's right. And he goes, I feel, I don't know you, I feel like you're the guy who's gonna get back in the ring. And that's where he's ended. And I was still thinking back at it today, or if I had someone who was mentoring and they would tell me that Mark called them, I would say, well, call him back. See if there's something you guys could do. There's none of that. It was just that. And the other beautiful thing that you guys did, but Mark it was again you, about six months later.

31:49You called me again. Say, hey, I don't know why I'm spoken. What's up? What are you working on? And I was starting to actually work on residential, cos then, you know, to your point, there was always one idea. But I thought I was working on residential as an investment. It was COVID, cap rates for those, remember interest rates for literally at zero, cap rates for wide, for those who understand real estate, when cap rates compressed, the value of the real estate goes up. So when Mark calls it, what's up now? I said, look, we're doing this, we're doing that. But nothing, nothing that special. And I was like, okay, let us know if something interesting happens.

32:22and between that and the third time that we spoke, I started walking the buildings. And this is something amazing about Corona. So so much change in the world. And I would love to hear Mark because I think it's so interesting because we gave a lot of forecast here in Iincorporna. What's gonna happen to office? What's gonna happen to do a home? But something that was obvious in Corona is people are not gonna give up their homes and where your home is is where your heart is and could get back home and you need some version of community and people back then were so connected digitally more than ever before and no one to talk to.

32:53And especially with the mask, if you really want to make it hard at that barrier, then tell people they're not allowed to be in the same physical space and you get yourself an anti -keyboots moment. And peak anti -keyboots moment was some in the middle of Corona. And me and my team, we were like, hey, let's go buy some real estate. My head of real estate goes namesmark. It goes, Adam, how am I going to buy this real estate? We only know how to buy by talking to the landlords because we don't use brokers. We want to deal. So we want to find the about the seller that really needs to sell and we need a reason to buy.

33:22And I said, go meet them. Said they want meet me. I said, meet them outside, put them over across the table, make sure they have a beer over there. You have a beer over there. And stream to each other. And it goes, no one will do it. I said, everyone will do it. No one's calling them. And everyone did it. And our first five acquisitions would turn out to be amazing acquisitions who are gonna get to talk about afterwards but all have amazing basis. We're done like that. And sometimes all you need to do is call the guy or show up and in Corona, you didn't have to do that much to be very different.

33:55So how did it change from making some investments to we're going to take a massive swing on residential? So two ways. One, I think real entrepreneurs can help themselves, actually. I think in other tests, you said one, what did they go through? I love that. And how did they do the challenges? and also can they help themselves? Is this a problem they must solve, or do you think it sounds good? If they think it sounds good, or they want to be founder because they saw social network, the movie, well, that's not going to be a good reason. Great movie, by the way. That's not going to be good reason, but if it's burning from the inside, and no matter how many people say they have to do it, what happened is I started walking the buildings, and it was lonely, it was solace, it was depressing, And we're talking when I say buildings, buildings we bought, this is 400 to 600 apartments.

34:46These are shared gyms that look as nice as equinox and swimming pools and kitchens. And all these rooms that were designed by people, assuming people are going to get together. And not only is no one there, even when people are there, they're not talking to each other. And I just looked at it. I was like, I could do so much better than this. And step one was just like, let's just find a little bit of technology. So we found the company that existed and we bought it. And said, let's just connect them a little bit, not with big intentions. And step two is, let's find a great property manager. So we had five assets, so we hired five different property managers.

35:18Said, one of them was going to be great. And then we'll have a, we'll tell them what to do. Is asset managers are in real estate if the property manager that runs it. And the asset manager that is the person like the black stones and black rocks of the world that deployed a cache. And they have a relationship between them. And then we use these different property managers. And they were all sort of the same. They all had the same problems. They all told us the same story. They all had the same pitch. and their occupancy was completely controlled by supply and demand. And so at that point, we started working and we started doing it and immediately we started seeing positive results.

35:50So we were like, okay, this is a good direction and we're going to keep doing this. And that was sort of that. And by the third time that Mark and I spoke, Mark read an article in the Wall Street Journal and today we try very hard not to have any articles about us. But that one slipped, so Mark called and said, hey, I read a Wall Street Journal about $1 ,000. You're not telling me, you're starting a business. And I said, no, it's actually more us. We are starting a business. And you said, you have an idea for a brand. I said, I do. But we're doing it just us and we're taking our time. Mark said, sounds awesome.

36:21Maybe you guys can come and share it with us. And I said, I would love to. Without really expecting, again, no expectation. I think the thing about this relationship is it formed organically. It took time. There was no rush to do anything. and that's what made it so real. And then we went to dinner at Nobu, Mark hosted us, Ben was actually not in the first lands. DG was there, he runs growth, and Chris Dixon was there, he runs crypto. And we had this very nice dinner. And I remember coming to the dinner and we sit down and Mark goes, so tell us about this new idea. And I said, well, I actually want to start by talking about lessons learned from we work.

37:02Mark said Adam, we wouldn't have invited you here if that's what we need to talk about, we've done, we know a lot about you, don't worry. We might know more about some of the mistakes. I couldn't use the homework as it was very well documented. Yeah, we read the book, we read it in many series. He said, no, no, we talked to him, and they had a lot of employees. He said, not only have we read them, but you said, no, if we read everything. I know you're board members. I actually know all of the trip. I know them, I spoke to them, and you're here because we wanted you to come. Let's talk about the idea.

37:31And I said, I really appreciate that, but I actually want to learn. I'm sure you have a different take than me. Let me share. And then this is for those of you who don't know Mark. Once you let Mark go, he has a lot to say. So I started and within minutes, you gave me until to the end. Remember you said a few things there that I couldn't believe I never noticed. And one of the things Mark said, so obvious, was what research did you do about what investors you took? What did you know about their history? What research did you do about what employees you took? What did you know about your tech leaders?

38:01Well, he said, I get it at him. You move really fast and you're passionate and you make things happen. But how much diligence did you actually do? And the answer was actually none for my first investors. They came to me. I didn't know anything. I didn't know any better. Do you know what else existed? But if I did, maybe I would have come here and we would have been in a different place. But you know, Ben, you've said it to me. We talked about it. We talk about sometimes. No, no, I believe in a bigger picture. But separate than the fact that I believe in something greater than myself, I generally believe that we go to the place that we need to be.

38:35As long as we're willing to learn lessons and change, I know that today I'm exactly where I need to be. And this partnership, this discussion, we haven't now, wouldn't have happened. So we had that dinner and it was excellent. And then we started talking about the future of living. And we talked about it pure vision and really what we see. I said, well, we're, and I explained what we already have and explained why we could already start leveraging what we have to then take it to the next level. And then we actually went, but then market then said, so what do you think? You think maybe we should explore something?

39:05So look, I don't know you. You don't know me. I was a little burned in the past. We're using all of our own money for this. And then market said to me, how about you take time and get to know us? We'll get to know you. And let's see what happens. And it took six months from that point of people think that this had been fast. It didn't. It took six months from that point to the actual investment, which in this August will be three years. Well, one thing I just want to say that's so remarkable is you not only got back in the ring again, after you're already built an iconic company, you already made more money than you know it to do with, but you also put a large chunk of that liquidity back into the company because sort of a triple down in a way that seems like Elon is the only person who continuously does that.

39:45So I think that one, I give a lot of credit to Mark and Ben. And so when they came, when we started Mark, I wonder if you remember this discussion. So we're starting to talk about the business and I immediately was leaning into asset light because we should be asset light. Why? Because I heard so many times because rework was an asset like for older, all the wrong reasons. I said we need to be asset light. And Mark, you flew and now I know, but you travel down to Miami multiple times. And again, this was before the famous dinner. And we were sitting in the car and we were talking about real estate and you actually talked about your father -in -law.

40:19I'm sure with me a lot of things that you learned from him over time. And I didn't meet him either, but he sounds like an amazing person. He's done a lot for the valley and for California. And you said to me Adam, forget what your team and my team is talking about for a signal because we don't respect them. Respect everybody and we're going to hear everybody's opinions. But I just want to know what you think. If I wanted you to build the largest, really disrupt up the industry and imagine it the way you imagine it. Would you need to own real estate? And I said at the beginning, I would. They asked me why.

40:52And I said, because I want to be allowed to do whatever I want. I want to try everything. I want to fail fast. I want to fix fast. And I want to deploy fast. And I said, I want to change everything. I want to change the technology of how it's run. I want to change the operating people of what they do. I want to change the design. I want to change the smell. I want to change the uniforms. I want to change everything about it until it gets to something that I know is right. And you asked me, how would you know when it's right, I tell you it's a feeling. And you said great. And then you said, I have a suggestion for you.

41:20It's not traditional. You have a dislodge portfolio. Take out of this portfolio, whatever you don't think is a fit for flow. Sell it. But the rest, what do you think is your best stuff? Put it with us, aligned on the top together. And we're with you. We go up, we go down, whatever you do, we do. And it took me a second. And in the beginning, I thought this was some negotiation, made some fancy negotiation tactic, because it ended up being one of the smartest things we've done. I genuinely believe that the reason photo today, and we're going to talk about it more, is where it is, was because of that decision.

41:52But I think Mark, I've asked you this before, I think the reason you're the very, you actually had a simple reason for that decision, that was alignment, something that I think a 16z is really good at. Yeah, in part, that was based on actually watching WeWork, which is by the time you get in a situation where you're fighting with your investors, like things just do not end And we've just seen that across many companies. And so, yeah, if we just are building a business that's so hard, if everybody's aligned, if everybody's not aligned, like it becomes punishingly difficult. Well, I'll push you though and hit a little bit because yes, but for venture capital saying let's go own real estate, not obvious.

42:27So let's talk about that for a moment, because this also goes into what flow is doing. So basically the way I think about this is there's sort of two iconic business models that are kind of held out in Silicon Valley is kind of the best in class, like best business models ever made. And one of them is Microsoft. And the great lesson of Microsoft was you build a horizontal layer of technology, you know, software operating systems and applications. And then you basically run across, you know, thousands of different hardware implementations, thousands of different computer makers and chips and so forth.

42:54So you build a horizontal layer. And you never ever vertically integrate because you want to basically run everything. So that's, so that's lesson number one. And the lesson number two is Apple, where you do where the lesson is, you 100 % always want to vertically integrate it. You never want to be a horizontal layer because you don't have nearly enough control over the user experience. You have to, you know, build Steve Jobs line as if people who, you know, love software need to build their own hardware. You need to actually control the entire thing. You need to be completely vertically integrated because if you're not vertically integrated, you can't control the user experience.

43:22And if you can't control the user experience, you can't deliver the thing. You can't deliver against the vision. And of course, as is true in so much in business and life, those lessons are diametrically opposed. right? They're irreconcilable, like they're directly opposed. And there have been great tech companies built with the Microsoft model and there have been great tech companies built with the Apple model. So, you know, the moral of the story is like it really depends. Specifically though, if you want to control the actual customer experience and you have to vertically integrate, it's the only way to actually do it because otherwise you're in the role of having to kind of control, especially early on, you're in the realm of having to control people who don't share your vision.

44:01into doing the things that are required. Now, having said that, as we talk about all the time, there is an extraordinarily large amount of number of properties out there that could benefit from the brand, the vision, the technology, the platform. And so one of the very interesting kind of things at the heart of the business model for Flow is to what extent, like in the long run, should it be integrated into what extent should be, you know, where we own our own real estate, into what extent should that actually run on across all real estate? And then I think for that, we can learn a lot from hotels because hotels have gone through their process, if you take Hilton and Meriot, where they started by owning a lot of it.

44:34And today, found out mistakenly, and we're talking about thousands of properties, less than 1 % owned. So no matter how much money you could raise and how big, and when we talk about raising money, by the way, we talk about raising money for real estate funds. We're not talking about raising money for a flow per -and -company that door is closed. But no matter how much you would raise, it would always be tiny compared to how big that's a class. And we talked about one of the largest. It really is so large, just so people to understand that we're talking about a $250 trillion asset class. But to try to put it in numbers, a normal building, these multifamily buildings, is $200 million a building.

45:11You buy 10, you're a $2 billion, and a hundred, you're a 20 billion, and a hundred is not a big number. It's just you could sit, you can wear it downtown Miami, you could stand on our roof, and point to 100 buildings that could be flow buildings. And there's five different neighborhoods like that in South Florida, and that's just one area. they go to New York and they get started going all over the planet. So I think, but I do think that that decision allowed us to be who we are. And also, when the time does come now, so we have two choices. But we're also going to do the flag business. When we come to a person who owns the, owns this multi -family, or the other things that are services that we deliver and put our flag, just like the four seasons puts our flag, and actually do a management deal, where it's our brand, our technology, our experience, but the expenses on the, on the landlord.

45:57And some of what's nice also about our alignment is we don't have to make that decision yet today. Right now we have to build the best product. Right. Can we share more about the thesis underlying our bet into flow in terms of how we saw the, you know, why was this going to be one of the biggest companies in the world? I think it starts with, as we got into it, it really came down to, okay, who is Adam? I'm, forget Adam, the entrepreneur, who's Adam, the person? You know, what is he good at? What is he not as good at? What are we good at? Can we get along? You know, it was that kind of thing. We had, I think it was a seven hour dinner.

46:37Oh, you talk about that, yeah. What was the remarkable about it that day? Well, I mean, you know, we really got into it. Remember how it started? Mark told me, I saw Mark twice already. Yeah, I didn't know, now I know Mark. I didn't know back then that Mark wasn't traveling as much and this said I knew that Mark jumps in the plane He comes to see you but Mark calls and goes, Hey, I know we hung out twice. We need one more time I said what's out goes well my partner Ben you haven't met him. He wants to come hang also I was like great. We'll have dinner that turned out to be a seven hour dinner Yeah, it's long dinner You know a lot of how you get to know someone is kind of get into the things that But you shouldn't even talk about it, right?

47:18They're not polite, they're not the kinds of things. So I think Adam asked me, he's like, well, you know, like looking at me, what do you worry about? Like, what are you really worried about? Like, what do you need to think about? And I can't remember exactly what I said. But it was something like, like Adam, like, people look at you and, you know, I watched the show. And in the show, the great moment for you was being on the cover of some magazine, Fortune, whatever. I was like, I could see you didn't even care about that. That was nothing. The great moment for you was when the company went to the brink and you saved it.

47:56And what I need to know is like, I don't want you to chase that fucking feeling because that will cause you to take chances. There are chances that you have to take, and then there's chances you don't have to take. And I don't want you taking the chances, you don't have to take because your vision is so incredible. Like it would be horrible to put it at risk for a non -valid reason. And so we kind of got into that. And I said, look, I know the feeling because I like you to do it too. I've been in it because I've saved the company like that. I know exactly what that, like you never can feel that good.

48:32It's walking back into the building and everybody thought the company was over, and you fucking saved it. You just pulled it out of like fire. That's the most unbelievable thing in the world. But you don't want to be in that position. Well, and it is worth saying, there are founders who will, if they do not have a crisis, they will create one. Yeah, absolutely seek out disaster. Yes, yes. And look, we all like, there's a bit of it in everyone. And if you look at Elon, he takes very aggressive chances, and he's not afraid of it, and he calculates risk, but the chances have big payoffs. And the danger is always when you take the chance and it doesn't pay out, but it could lose the company over it.

49:15And so, you know, we just had it. I would just say the thing I remember about that was, it was a very honest conversation. It was very hard to have an honest conversation about something like that. It's almost like, people don't want to look at themselves like that. And I was impressed with how introspective and honest Adam could be on a number of topics like that. And so my conclusion is, like, I think that this is somebody that we can work with. The thing seeds wasn't good at we work. Like we're very good at putting together a tech team, understanding which of the six ideas are good and which ones we should probably wait on or not do and that kind of thing, that's a strength of us.

50:06It's been a few years, you've been on the board, you've tracked the company. Why don't we talk about how the company is progressing and where we're at? You haven't been super public about it and there's some exciting things happening. So when you're sure you're being respected. Well, it's often an amazing start. I mean, so first of all, the the thesis of the value of the community, the technology, everything that Adams talked about, the design, has proven out like before, you know, the product is maybe 5 % done, but it's already able to kind of generate, you know, kind of much higher demand resulting in people willing to pay much higher rent for the exact same space and exact same location as other places, which is resulted in kind of returns on the buildings that are unprecedented.

51:00We've also, you know, the company had the foresight to expand into Saudi Arabia, which is not something that most entrepreneurs would think of. We will finish selling them 24 month from when we started. But yes, initial and we're going to sell our first asset. We closed last August. We will sell our five buildings. We will sell our first asset in a month and they will keep a management deal for the foreseeable future. And then the other thing is we've built a strategic technological advantage. So real estate software has been hampered by I would say very crafty technology. I won't name the company, but everybody else knows the company.

51:46And the flow team is basically reimagined what living means. So rather than orienting around a building, the software is extremely flexible and can organize itself around the citizens, the people who live in the buildings and the communities, you know, in the world, and meet their needs where they are in the kind of best way possible, the most usable way, that just even like signing up for a building, it's going to take you 100x less time. You know, it's something that kind of obvious and simple. But because of the way these other things are architected, it's very difficult for them. And that's just the beginning because what's possible technically, particularly in a connected world and an AI world is just unbelievable if you have the right architecture.

52:47And so you've got the technological advantage, you've got the community idea working fully. The business is working. So it's been, it's definitely way exceeded our expectations. and I mean, we're looking forward to building a great company. But I mean, our expectations were high. We thought we put a lot of money into this. Yeah. People were like, the time was the biggest investment we ever made. Yeah, real estate hasn't had a ton of tech innovation. Look, what exactly is happening here? What's really interesting? What's the opportunity? Well, there's so many things in the architecture, but it kind of starts with like, how do you model what's going on?

53:31And there's all sorts of components that basically, in a normal real estate world, get completely ignored. So, you know, you really, as a customer, care about everything from your neighbors to the building, to your furniture, to how you get your mail, to how the parking lot works, to how security works. and you not only care about it, but you really don't want a system keeping your information about you. You'd like that to be on your phone and the system to be able to query it, but not store it, so it doesn't get stolen in these kinds of things. And then if you have that, then you'd be comfortable with a lot more about yourself kind of accessible.

54:24And then you can publish what you want to publish, you know, and the way that the company's already taken advantage of that is incredible. So for example, let's say I'm a yoga instructor. Maybe I want everybody in my building to know that. And maybe, you know, they really want to know that I can do that because when it'd be great to take yoga lessons without leaving my apartment building. And so what's happened already in flow is not only has the commerce between residents accounts, yoga instructors, personal trainers, you know, everything you can think of, completely flourished. There are people, many people who, all of their clients for their business, live in the building that they live in.

55:13And so this kind of incredible technological flexibility where you have a single platform where that knows everything about its citizens, well keeping things private, having every service not only that flow provides, but that every other person provides all in one place, is just it changes the whole way you live, and it changes what's possible. And as I said, I think we're at the beginning of that and no other system. When we started with the other systems, and they're just like they're ridiculous by nature. Or in terms of they don't even, people are an attribute of a building. It's how that works.

56:07So think about that. Like I as a human being, I'm an attribute of a building to a real estate piece of software. It's insane. But this has been completely re -architected at the chief technology officer flows, architectural genius, the way he's designed it has enabled not only everything that Adam envisioned, but so many things beyond that, where every time an opportunity comes up, it's there. the other kind of capability of the software that's amazing is because it's so flexible. Yes, this could be multi -family living, or this could be condos, or this could be a hotel, or this could be office space.

56:51And it can change literally with a press of a button, which is, you know, all those are separate, completely separate software packages everywhere else in the world. So to add to what Ben just said, once you're able to use that architecture, which again is something that I do not believe would have been built with other partners. So I think it's another benefit of this partnership. Once you're able to do that, you're able to take that multifamily and really came out of NATO at a multifamily. I just walked in one day and said, hey, furnished apartments. Everyone's doing it in Europe. Why wouldn't the young generation want that?

57:25I'm 22. I finished college. I can't buy my furniture, it never looks right. Give me a furnished apartment for next door, $300 a month. And the team literally said, no, no, the system can't do it. And we were using one of the traditional. So I said, what do you mean it can't? I said, it can't, it's physically can't. I said, well, I want to do it. So they replicated the building. So we had two buildings. And then I said, okay, no more 12 month leases. We want to give shorter term. Some people only wanted for eight months. Other people wanted for 20 months. Oh, no, we can't do that. And I said, well, how about short term stay?

57:53What if some people want to actually, and I said, well, we have this dream. Day to day week to week month to month year to year. Oh, no that you're gonna need four different systems So you take that architecture you take that system you built it in the backend You build a system the front end you have one brand and you train one team to be able to operate all of that and the result will be higher N .O .I Higher buildings are more profitable and just to use a little numbers for that are Building in Fort Lododell N .O .I. Net operating income is 30 % higher than when we took over it It's 95 % full today.

58:25It was 95 % full woman to cover it. It's not higher occupancy. It's slower churn higher rent Obviously better experience and another interesting thing which brand does 80 % of most leases in South Florida come from brokers 90 % of all inbound into flow is direct to the direct to us direct to the website now our brand is still young But even a young brand and whenever say we didn't say this but 40 % of So 70 % of 40 -year -olds and younger in the United States are renters. They spend a third of their wallet, a third of their pocket on that rent. There's not one brand. Whatever it hotels, you know, there's no one brand.

59:05There wasn't one in office before we did that also. And by the way, one of the things that is so exciting about this business, we were got to where it got with no such technological platform. Just a brand. Just a brand. Yeah. This also goes to conversation we had early on about the sort of changing nature of housing in the US, right, which we've talked a lot about since. And I think a lot about which is basically there's a bifurcated housing market in the US is the way I think about it. Basically is there's plentiful cheap housing out the places that don't have great jobs where people don't really want to live.

59:35And then there's basically like a possible bottlenecks on housing stock, especially the cities and especially the cities where lots of young people want to live and especially where the really great jobs are and where the economic growth is. And so just as like a young person starting out in life, like you have a very salt on young people. It's an absolute attack on young people. And I mean, it actually, it's actually hard to even discuss this without getting enraged because we're sitting here in California where they have an infamous prop 13, which is this very explicit handout to boomers at the expense of basically the entire young generation coming up now.

1:00:07But basically, like if you want to live and work as a young person in a place where you're going to have access to top flight economic opportunity in all these growth industries, anyone will work in tack or when we're going to design or entertainment or any of these finance or any of these kind of growth industries. Like number one, you're not going to own a house. You're holding out on the house. This can be completely unaffordable. And so you're going to be in some sort of multifamily, some sort of rental situation. And then the other thing is there's a really fundamental kind of stress point.

1:00:35And I think this is coming fast enough for Gen Z, which is like, are you ever going to be able to get married and have a family? And what is that going to be like? because can you really do that like in a small apartment? And all the data, of course, indicates that in all these cities, by the way, all over the world, birth rates of crashing, population, population sort of declining, you know, people are not even reproducing at reproduction levels. And so there's this like fundamental social, political, cultural, economic, and vice that young people are in. And in the absence of something like flow and the absence of a thoughtful approach, where you could actually imagine having a positive experience and being able to actually have a fulfilling life and a fulfilling experience.

1:01:17I think young people are really in trouble. Well, let's add to thoughts. First of all, I think this is, and we mark, we talk not to the about politics, but generally a lot about politics. I think it's a main issue globally. And sometimes a lot of other issues become louder, but might be the biggest one. It's right because if a person doesn't have a home, a shelter, something that they feel that's theirs, how do you expect them to treat other people the way they want to be treated. How are you even going to ask them to go to that next level of behavior that we expect from all of us if they can't afford a house?

1:01:46And so I think that's why I think it's probably the worst deal a young person can I've paying rent? Traditionally at the end of every month you pay that rent and the only feeling you have is I just threw the money away. And it actually this goes a thousand years back this word, land lord, where these lords and you would get a piece of the land you'd work the land for the Lord. and then you'd give that piece whatever it is. If you're lucky, you got to keep a little bit and was all up to them. The entire concept of real estate is the haves and the haves not, but in a much bigger topic, we hear a lot of noise about a lot of haves and haves not.

1:02:21This is where it's really playing out. So I think with the reality like flow that we're dreaming of and we start a multi -family, but so we said you could take a multi -family. Now it's rental, furnished, un -furnished, short -term, long -term. We need to talk about condos, but Flow launched a condo project five months ago. So you can own, you can buy, you can rent, you can do anything between. But that's when you're living in these towers. Flow sees a future. There are a lot of single family also, which is another huge part, the most single family, the multi -family. Another big part of it. So another part of where Flow can come in and offer all these services.

1:02:56And if you can prove, which you can already see with the numbers and flow, that the returns on the real estate they're actually higher. Then landlords and investors over the world will be very happy to deploy their cash that way. And now they're deploying and we like to call it a win, win, win. The investor can win. Flow can win is running it. And the user can win. And if everybody can feel like they're a winner and they're getting something much better, then you really have a new solution. Now there's a lot of, not for today, but to complete that solution, you have to at some point tackle the word of ownership.

1:03:32But as we said, when you said we're 5 % into the journey, maybe even 3 % into the journey. But we're just starting and the other interesting thing is, so you're seeing the properties in Miami already delivering both on top revenue and profitability. And the reason profitability is such an important metric for us, if we just spend more and made more, that's not going to do anything. You're not going to encourage any investment. We need to spend the same and make more or spend less and make more. And that's why NOI, your net operating income is such a good metric in these buildings. But then to Benz point, and then they're starting to do business with themselves.

1:04:04So you spoke about the people who don't have any other business. The way we like to talk about it a lot is how many classes that yoga teacher need to close the month, just to pay rent. And the answer is not as much about five classes a week. Every week is enough if it's one of ones and then they get to group classes. And that's just one example. Also, you talked about it as a citizenship. Once you become part of the flow community, so we do billing, for example. We build every single piece, and the pieces we haven't built yet, we're building. Doesn't mean we can't use third party software, let's say, on video cameras or different things that need for security or parking lots there.

1:04:41We don't have to invent everything, but we do have to have it all connected. And when you do that and you do it on the right architecture, you're able to see things. I'll give you another example, events. 60 % of our residents, 60 % of the events in flow are run by residents. And because of the tech, they created it, they published it, they invited people, people registered if they wanted to build people, they can build people, and it all happens and 60 % is now and we're early. That number is going to go up to 90 % and great communities, responsible communities, run themselves. So one sign, and I know it used to exist in school, still exist in schools, when you go to tour university, hopefully a student that's really proud of the school they go to is the one touring you.

1:05:22So the salesperson trying to pass you the same thing and the same thing in the buildings. If the community, when someone tours the building, I create one of our great, and we're trying to let everyone, there's no more just leasing agents. Everyone can be leasing agent because again if you're holding the app and that piece is called the host app, you can you can make a lease as Ben said very quickly and everybody has the same information. As you walk around you just introduce the person touring to residents and everybody's excited to talk about. And I think this is a good segue into, so if we didn't make it clear enough, Flow is a vertically integrated real estate company that started in long -term rentals, then introduced all the other aspects of everything you can do in a building, including condo and office, and then we started offering services that put the resident in the front and allowing them to work with each other.

1:06:09Our technology, our brand, and our operations coming together, yield this experience, which is already proven that it's doing a higher return for the owners of the buildings. But before we talk about that, I think the going to Saudi was a very interesting thing. First of all, again, interesting about our dynamics because think of that board meeting. So you have a few buildings in Miami. They're going great. And now you're coming to the board to say, okay, so our third building is going to be and let me guess New York City. No, Austin, Texas, no, very nice place, but no. And then you say, re -add.

1:06:41And I think that's just not, I think that's not your obvious thing. But again, and this is something else, we talked about success, the division's success, and failure being so small. Again, I believe in God. So for me, it's this Mark, and I have different discussion. How we define God differently, but we believe in something greater than ourselves. We, after the investment was made, you guys got quite a lot of phone calls from your helpies. And you reached out to me. You said, I think you might have told me from every single one of them. You have a lot. So that's a lot of fun. And I remember you asked me, Ben, hey Adam, do you mind coming with me to the Middle East?

1:07:15I'm going anyway. And let's share with not everyone, but top 10, 12 LPs. Tell them what flow is. And I'm sure it will be great for you in the long run. And it's great to do. You'll meet great people. And that's what we did. And we walked around. And there are two very funny things that happen. One, we would walk in. And no matter what meeting you take with Ben, at the end of the meeting, forget Flo, Ben gets offered money. That's just, it happened to us again last week. It's an interesting, that's a real segment. It's an interesting, it's an interesting experience to go with Ben. And so people think I'm great at raising money, I'm a beginner.

1:07:51So we go to these meetings and we told them about Flo. And Flo was only in Miami at the time. And what was interesting is without fail, every one of these LPs, they're all from the at least. So we think this concept would be great for the Middle East, specifically Saudi Arabia for Rehad. And even in Abu Dhabi, they said the same thing and Dubai, they said the same for a variety of reasons. And once I heard it for the 10th time, then I was like, hey, maybe we should check it out. And we did. And I went to Saudi, and I think what's interesting when we went, first of all, Saudi's phenomenal for those of you who haven't had the chance to go to them.

1:08:22What I get excited about Saudi, the optimism, the vision. Then I think might have coined the term a founder, are led country. So there's a vision. It's very clearly articulated. It's a vision 2030, but there's also now visions for 2020, 2034 and further. And as part of that vision, you're taking an entire economy that used to depend on oil and you're diversifying it. And 70 % of Saudis are 40 year old or younger. And so it's a very young population. And there are a lot of them are educated in the West. English is spoken everywhere.

1:08:59And not even slowly quite fast, changed a lot of rules that had made foreigners and foreign investors and change rules internally and externally inviting a lot of people in. And I think last week, a lot of us so trumped there and a lot of people were talking about it, but we've been going there for some time. And choosing to go to Saudi was a very big choice for us as a company. And in hindsight, extremely worked extremely well, but was also very difficult because there was a lot a lot of challenges that were happening as we're there. But we got to deploy everything we did. So we went to Saudi.

1:09:32We still want to be vertically integrated. So we chose five buildings that were going to be condos, which means they were going to sell them. We bought them from the developer. We changed the condos into rentals. And we started deploying the brand. We put our design from the outside. We brought our furniture. We launched it on our tech. It was also the first time we got to launch it on our backend system, not just our frontend system. So it was a very good opportunity for us. Our team, our uniforms, our smell, our music, our art, everything that we do, but also very localized. And because of my past, I have a lot of experience entering into new countries.

1:10:04So it's not something that I haven't done before, but it was definitely different. And we, and the way we wanted to do it, is not just use our own money, we're gonna raise a local fund, because the theory was, if and while I'm gonna raise it from local investors, not go to the big investors that run, that run Saudi, but local families. Because I've learned many times if the local families of a country want to support you, they know what's going on in their country. If you go to all the local families and no one wants to invest, maybe your idea is not as good as you thought. And that's what we did.

1:10:32We raised it from actually 33 different investors. We put our own equity. We got debt from the local bank. We bought these five properties. It was about a billion SAR, which is about $300 million. Fund. And we started, and that was in August. And then we started operating. We opened our first building in January. We achieved over 90 % occupancy within 60 days. We opened our second building right after, and we opened our third building last month, and our fourth and fifth building, we've already pre -leased to the enterprise that's gonna release it for the next five years. So the entire portfolio is gonna be stabilized over the next 90 days.

1:11:10That's when you opened in January, and it took 60, it took six months to become NOI positive. And for those real estate people that are listening to this, that's extremely fast for buildings that were at zero. We also have to do everything they do when you go to New Country, which is a higher local team. We're very lucky with the local leader named Fawaz that came from government. There was a CEO himself and did a lot of things. But we're very lucky having a local team. And something beautiful that happens in flow. Whenever anyone needs to go to Saudi, you too many people volunteer. And if you're going to say, who wants to move to Saudi, whether you're getting half -time employees in the company, raising their hands, because in Saudi and in Riyadh, we get to take all these visions that we have, or the only ones doing it.

1:11:54And as good as our product market fit is in South Florida and it's really as excellent, it's phenomenal in Saudi. How amazing is that everybody wants to move to Saudi? I mean, just if you weren't back 12 years, people in Saudi wanted to move out of Saudi. That's completely true. I really think it is and it also for us as a company forced us to do us launching the technology even before we were fully ready, forced us to see what's working and what's not. It also shows you the part of the platform, it's back to that agility. In Saudi, you have to be connected to the government for the rent. For variety of reasons, it actually allows you to take people out to don't pay rent.

1:12:32There's a lot of reasons for the workout really well. Our team did it in four days, we didn't think it was a big deal. We talked to people because the systems built to be flexible, a bonus bill to need to connect to external things if it needs to. And because our architect Scott, who is our CTO, knew that he needs optionality, but because he knew how I operate as a leader, but also because he knew that we just don't know yet what we don't know. And when we meet people and say, so when are you going to connect to the system? They're going to say, what do you talk about? Where are they connected?

1:12:59Then other people ask us, say, when are you going to become a Saudi company? We heard that takes two years. I don't know. We have far was and it took us exactly 60 days. So not only are operating in Saudi, we're operating as a Saudi company. Which I think is very important. And without comparing, but the experience that we're delivering right now in Saudi is not just second to none, but it even competes with our local experience in South Florida. Wow. Talk more about the real estate fund, because I know the one in Saudi did tremendously well, but is this a model that you're planning to roll out across region?

1:13:33Talk more about how that's going to work. So, let's talk about the real estate of Enseldi. It was launched and closed and actually got over -suscracker, mainly because not only are they really up, it's also great to send to your investors back money. So, it's very excited to do that. We're planning to send the first check soon. So, that's very exciting. Also, when we saw that the people are buying, they won't flow to manage it, which is the beginning of the business model that it's going to become. That is the flag model. So, the beginning, I think, you have to be very clear into grade it, because you have to prove it on yourself.

1:14:03you have to put your own money there. But after it's proven, there are a lot of realist and lend of real estate investors that would like to invest in an above market offer. And connecting it to what Ben said about why is the technology lying? The multi -f technology that allows you not just to deliver a better service in the building that creates more loyalty, that lowers churn, that increases rents, that connects the community internally, that allows all these things to happen, by allowing yourself to move from a multi -family to a hotel extended stay furnished apartments, corporate housing, it gives you so much flexibility.

1:14:39So Saudi, for example, a lot of expats are moving in. We learn very quickly that these expats are getting one month from the company that hired them. So some numbers for everyone about Saudi, Riyadh, has 7 .8 million citizens is growing to almost 10 million by 20 or 30s over the next five years, about 5 million expats, big numbers. They get hired by these local companies a lot of them. They get one month that the company pays them and then they're supposed to find they're on to get paid well, they're supposed to find their own place to live. So we said, okay, great. Let's give one month because that's what fits them.

1:15:11And then we'll see how many of them stay. The conversion rate has been phenomenal. 90 something percent of anybody took the month. It's able to stay. But if you're any other landlord and you're the great building manager, That building manager said, hey, I want to sell this new offering. I'll give a month, then I'll give them a lease. The system wouldn't be, I know it sounds crazy. The system wouldn't be able to, you'd find a way to do it if you're very savvy. Then on paper, do a deal, call someone, you do something. But it's not scalable. And I think the other thing about our system that maybe would insane us, we're building it for scale.

1:15:42If we were building this for just multifamily, you don't have to go as deep as we're into the architecture. If we were building this for just one country, for just one use case, I thank a lesson from me from the past. I have zero fear that we're going to grow to be very big. The time, and when the time comes, it's time to put fun, I enjoy it. It's my favorite part. Taking our time now to build a product that's actually scalable. Learning for our mistakes. Taking the time to make these decisions. Building, I wanted to recruit tech engineers faster than Ben and Mark thought was correct. So we made it harder to recruit them in the right speed.

1:16:19I had visions of a huge number of teams that we needed. Mark's very big on great products are built with small things. That was before AI came. Now the AI came, actually, I think a lot of people are starting to understand that. So, when you put all those things together, you're starting a very good offering for two race funds against. That's in Saudi. In the US, we actually bought 30 % of the publicly traded company in Israel where non -controlling shareholders, that company has access to retail investors and institutional investors. And with partnership with that company, we have bought two developments in Miami, South Florida, one in Aventura, and one in a place called El Portal.

1:17:04And again, now you're thinking of flow not just as we're going to run the building, but actually how are you going to run the entire neighborhood? And all those themes that we just said that work so well for the single buildings will work even better in a neighbor. So those two fun structures exist. And because we have all this flexibility built into it, we've already proven that we deliver above market returns. So the people we're going to want to invest in are fun. I'm going to understand that by getting access to flow, the flow's technology, the flow's brand, they're going to get access actually to above market returns, which at the end of the day in real estate.

1:17:36And as you said, Mark only two people did that. But I think the one thing in real estate that's very consistent, if you can deliver the highest returns in real estate for a certain asset class, you're going to attract the kind of money that's interesting investing in that asset class. If you can move between asset classes, you might attract the kind of money that in the past felt uncomfortable with real estate, because even though it's a safe return, we learned something in the past 10 years. You know, before Corona, office was great, and it went to zero hotel, in apartments, everybody wanted one, and then it changed.

1:18:05So it's actually not just the largest class in the world, it's changing. The thing that the funds give us are, it's really twofold and I didn't realize this before. So the first thing is obviously just scale. So as Adam said, there's a lot of real estate out there. There are a lot of people who would love to live in a flow community with kind of, be part of something bigger. And we, you know, doing that kind of just through the flow balance sheet would be insane. So it gives us a lot of scale. But the other thing that it does is the people we partnered with are real geniuses in evaluating real estate and kind of getting the right buildings for the right deal in the right locations.

1:18:56and that's been really amazing to watch, you know, how these people think about how they how they do that and how it works. So it's, and we have lots of demand. We're trying to figure out what to do with all the demand. Ben, we're talking to engineers all the time who are pursuing AI ideas, who are pursuing crypto ideas. There hasn't been that many amazing real -state opportunities for, or the most brilliant technical minds to sink their teeth into, why is this an opportunity? You know, like as an engineer, you want to build things that really impact people's lives and make their lives better.

1:19:37I mean, there's many, many things that you can do that have small impact or questionable impact, but this is something where, you know, you're building an environment where for young people, you know, we, they, as Mark kind of alluded to, you know, it's been much worse than what their parents' opportunity was and even what their parents' opportunity was, which is a new phenomenon. And this is a chance to make it much better, much better than how their parents lived. And, you know, there's not more meaningful work than that. And then it's an extremely complex technological problem, particularly kind of coming out of legacy world and all these.

1:20:29You have to basically start from complete first principles, because you're starting with who's living there. And the software has to be oriented around them, not buildings or apartments or, you know, a bill. Those are, those are features of the person not vice versa. Yeah, let's close the conversation on some big ideas around the future of living. Mark, in your great blog post about the flow investment and just in our conversations in general around COVID, you'd sort of been struck by how the COVID enabled some unique opportunities for us to rethink how we think about sort of the future of cities, remote work, sort of, you know, in office, et cetera.

1:21:14and I know you guys have had some back and forth on that. Why don't you sort of reflect on, you know, there's some things that played out, there's some things that sort of didn't play out exactly as we thought, some things reversed. You know, a few years later, what are your broader reflections? What have we learned? So I feel like COVID through almost every aspect of how at least in the US, how we live and work, sort of up in the air, right? And some of those pieces have landed a little bit, but some of those pieces still feel like they're quite high up in the air. Yep. So just a bunch of observations.

1:21:43So one is look like there had been a 60 -year history of video conferencing not being a thing and not working. The first video conferencing system was rolled out in 1965. It was AT &T picture phone. Completely flopped. There were 50, 60 years. And there's a whole theory about people didn't want to be seen when they were talking on the phone. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. It's the same kind of theory. So that you wouldn't want to see actors talk in motion pictures of sound. Yeah, exactly. So there's only arguments. Every science fiction movie had video conferencing, but the real world never had it.

1:22:09And then all of a sudden, just like boom, COVID, it actually happened, right? And that stuck like that, that, you know, that's now a standard technology everybody's used to. And so, you know, that really opened up the aperture. So that stuck. Then there was the idea that basically all, you know, all work becomes remote, or at least all knowledge work becomes remote. And I would say like that has not stuck that well. It stuck somewhat. And I would say it stuck somewhat in two circumstances. One is a lot of CEOs are really struggling even when they want to get everybody back in the office, having a very hard time doing it.

1:22:37And again, this kind of brings up this issue of like where and how do people live? Because if if you can have a much better lifestyle living and working remotely, then you're tired of for you to come back in the office, but you as a human being are much happier and more satisfied. And so a lot of CEOs found that many of their best people had actually left the vicinity of the office by the time COVID came back. And they have this very difficult choice of trying to kind of course them into coming back or coming back two days a week or three days a week. And so that's quite poorly. So that's a real struggle.

1:23:06Another thing that happened, which I think was kind of a big negative, which I think hasn't really been fixed yet, which is new people entering the workforce had a much worse experience. So COVID was sort of an economist experience where if you were like a 20 or 30 -year veteran of a company and like a high ranking official, it was absolutely fantastic to work remotely because you got to go to your beach house and be with your kids, your grandkids, and be on the golf course, and it's just like this amazing thing. But you put yourself in the shoes of a newly graduated college grad, or 22 or whatever, stuck in some box of department somewhere, and then basically the whole idea of mentorship is just straight out the window because you can't get metered by a face in a Zoom hell.

1:23:46And so there's this sort of failure to launch problem with young kids and their careers. And I think that hasn't been solved. But then finally, I would just say it's not like everybody's just going to go back to work in the office. And the reason for that is because there is this massive shift that happened that I think is still underestimated, which is I described as followed, which is it used to be the case that to have access to the best job opportunities So you had to be in very specific places. And so there was this whole added, that the thing that made Silicon Valley so special is that if you lived and worked in Silicon Valley, you could get 20 other job offers as a database administrator or as a job programmer without changing your parking spot, right?

1:24:20Because the employer is reclustered. And by the way, that's still true. That's still the case. But if you remote, you can have 20 ,000 job offers from companies that are dying for people with your skill set, right? Many of which are not located in Silicon Valley, and they're all available in video. and you can just do that. And there are lots of people now who just like work remotely because they can do that. And then by the way, there's this incredible book called Job Stacking that I always recommend, which is how to manual to how to hold down two jobs. I was just going to say something about multiple, yeah, remotely without letting over employee.

1:24:50It's a very careful how to guide on and make sure each employer doesn't realize that you have the other job and then there's another chapter which is how to do it with three jobs simultaneously. It's all subreddit dedicated. It's all subreddit. Now there's the AI version of it, which is why you can have, you know, a strategy PT you're a job. Anyway, you might as well, they're very helpful to be remotely because the season can do that. And so, you know, their remote thing, like, you know, continues to stick. And so anyway, like this is all just, I think a lot of this is just still up in the air.

1:25:16Right. And we talked to, you know, a lot of Fortune 500 CEOs. And I would say they're all struggling with this. Like they actually don't know how to recover the in -office experience that they used to have. And they don't know if it's possible to do that. And they're, you know, they're literally, you know, they're, you still, it's the point where they're issuing like threats and orders to people of like, you know, we're going to watch your bat, you know, You pay somebody like, I don't know, half a million dollars a year to be like a senior engineer or something. And you tell them you're going to watch their badge reading in and out to like track their, you know, motions and then, you know, somehow figure out cards.

1:25:43You're going to penalize them. Right. It's right. Everybody ends up in a punch card world again. And so, like, I think this is all just still up in there. And then we talked earlier about what this means, especially for younger people in this question of, like, economic opportunity and then family formation and then ability to have and raise kids. And I think the whole concept of how people live in work, I think it's been up ended and I don't think it's landed again. And I think that there's, I think there's interesting questions in every single topic that I discovered. There are all these concepts of in the past.

1:26:12You would have people live, work, go to school, do all those things at the same place. I think part of flow reimagining the future, it also, I think, Corona actually helped us in a big way. Because let's take flow, for example, to build a company of the magnitude that Ben and Mark were talking about, But very hard for us to do things remotely. So let's say our engineers, we hire engineers that want to be in the office and the ones we hired before who weren't, will let them be wherever they were because when they were hired, that was the deal that was made with them. But we're finding a lot of people who want to be in the office because that's what they want, but we're looking for them.

1:26:44But to create a holistic product, there isn't any, sometimes people all in the serum, especially in our world, if the team doing the brand, the team doing the development, the team doing the engineering, the team doing the product, if they don't interact with each They just don't know the things that motivate each other. And you can't get that consistent, perfect experience. So for a company like Flow, it's even more important. Now let's think about enterprise sales. You go to an enterprise in the past, you'd say, I'll get you office. I'll build for you. We work with a regular enterprise. We create an office.

1:27:15But maybe office is not enough for a solution. What if I can give you the rental apartments? Certain number of nights in hotel. a school for your kids in the development or outside of the development and and the office and experiences all around and the retail and before you know it you're creating something very unique. Now a lot of times when developers have tried to do it in a way that was like Disneyland it's so less. If you can then do it in a soulful way that really makes people on an inflow's mission is to connect people to themselves, their neighbors and their natural world. If you could do those three things, leveraging technology, leveraging operations, leveraging everything and make people feel that way.

1:27:57I think for today's world, it is more relevant and more important than ever before. And as we said before, people are so connected digitally. I think they've never been so disconnected and not for everyone, but for a lot of us that connection is so important. Mark was talking even about the birth rate that's going down to different stuff. we need physical interactions and those physical interactions need to be meaningful. And imagine if an enterprise could not just give you a great job with a great salary, but could actually give you, directionally, a community that you would want to be part of.

1:28:30Suddenly, here's what I do with my family and here's what I do with my kids. And there is, I think, a solution that gives a little bit of the good things about working remotely, but also solves the bad things, which is there's a limit to how often we don't want to have social interaction. And I think the future of flow has a tremendous amount of potential. I think we need to keep taking it one step at a time. I think we need to deliver on all the different aspects of the business. So now you heard us talking about funds and raising capital to deploy to people. But only people understand why flow delivers higher value and how it's going to give them a higher return.

1:29:07Keep focusing on the resident as it grows to be a citizen, as Ben likes to call it. Commit to the architecture and keep building the right architecture both in the back and in the front end and create a culture of service and hospitality of people that are excited to be part of delivering this version of the future that we see. I think it's great for the US. We know it's great for Saudi and it's a global challenge and a global solution and I couldn't be more excited to tackle this with our two partners with a great team that we've assembled. Adam, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you, thank you so much.

1:29:43Thanks Adam, thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks Adam, thank you.