Meet the Anti-Adam Neumann

Is Jamie Hodari the future of co-working?

If you’ve seen the Apple TV+ miniseries WeCrashed, the name might already ring a bell. In the show’s fifth episode, Jared Leto’s Adam Neumann sits across from Jamie Hodari on a private jet, comparing notes on their rival firms.

Where Neumann is (accurately) portrayed as a charismatic, larger-than-life personality, Hodari is buttoned-up and awkward. “I kind of liked being played as the nerdy, serious foil,” Hodari says. And the contrast certainly seems apt.

But first, let’s backtrack a little. Adam Neumann co-founded co-working real estate company WeWork back in 2010 and served as its CEO and celebrity figurehead until 2019, when he was forced out by the board.

After growing the company to a $47 billion valuation in January 2019, concern over Neumann’s governance and spending as well as the company’s potential profitability sunk WeWork to a $10 billion valuation and saw Neumann and his family members removed from their positions in the company (though Neumann was retained as a consultant for an annual salary of $46 million).

Hodari founded Industrious with childhood best friend Justin Stewart in 2012. While it currently sits at a valuation under $1 billion, it faired much better through the pandemic, taking a ‘slow and steady’ approach. With 200+ locations to WeWork’s current 586, it’s still the underdog, but its unique approach to the co-working space makes it a more stable option than its competitor.

WeWork grew so rapidly by signing long-term leases and subsequently renting that space out as co-working offices on a short-term basis. But that means that when demand is low, like during the pandemic, WeWork is on the hook to pay its landlords from its own pocket despite its limited revenue.

By contrast, Industrious uses a management-agreement model that gives a share of profits to the landlords it partners with, reducing the risk for Industrious when demand is low. Even WeWork seems to be moving towards a similar model.

While their approaches to business may seem polar opposite, Hodari does have one thing in common with Neumann — he’s tried his hand at a lot of different things. From a school in Rwanda to a Montauk lifestyle magazine, here are the cool and crazy things Hodari and Neumann have been involved in over the years, right up to where they are now.

Early days

Believe it or not, before WeWork, Adam Neumann was an officer in the Israeli Navy.

After moving to the US to study business in NYC, he left Baruch College before completing his degree to found a children’s clothing company, Krawlers. (He’d finally graduate in 2017, 15 years after he enrolled.)

Then, he met future WeWork cofounder Miguel McKelvey, and together they started their first co-working company Green Desk in 2008.

Hodari’s first gig was as a reporter for the Times of India after he learned Hindi and Urdu at college. (Times of India is the largest selling English-language daily paper in the world and the second-oldest Indian newspaper in circulation!)

He’d originally gone to college to study Public Policy, getting his Masters from Harvard following a BA at Columbia.

And according to at least one source, he even worked on the Obama presidential campaign.

Law & Finance

Alongside WeWork, Neumann invested in a number of industries. Incredibly, he even partered with a former Israeli Prime Minister on cannabis startup InterCure.

Other ventures included EquityBee, a stock option marketplace, Selina, a hospitality company, and shared mobility company GOTO Global.

Through WeWork, Neumann also invested in co-working space The Wing and Wavegarden, which designs artificial wave devices.

More controversially, Neumann also purchased many properties only to then lease them back to WeWork.

Before Industrious, Hodari studied law at Yale and went on to work as an attorney at the multinational law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, advising companies in the finance and energy sectors. (Fun fact: that’s the same firm Peter Thiel worked at before founding PayPal!)

Then Hodari moved on to an analyst position at investment fund Birch Run Capital, but became “disillusioned with the culture.” The tipping point? He said a colleague made a joke about the Fukushima reactor melting down so that Japanese stock prices would fall — which he says clarified that he didn’t belong there.

Hodari fishes for bass in Prospect Park

Education

Neumann and his wife Rebekah announced the launch of their private school, WeGrow, in 2018 — and closed its doors for good at the end of the 2019 school year. The $42,000/year school was a “Montessori inspired learning environment for ages three to nine” located within WeWork’s New York headquarters.

Rebekah bought back the curriculum of WeGrow from WeWork in 2020 and relaunched it under a new name, The School of Life For Life, “a hyper-localized, Earth-based, holistic approach to teaching and learning.”

After Birch Run, Hodari went to Rwanda to lead Kepler, an education nonprofit, where he transformed a scholarship program into an accredited “experimental, hybrid university”. To date, they’ve enrolled over a thousand students, 25% of whom are refugees and many more orphans of the Rwandan genocide.

Partially, this endeavour came from Hodari’s personal love of education — he did attend three Ivy League colleges, after all. He says he “hasn’t ruled out going back to it [academia] one day.”

Rebekah Neumann’s WeGrow, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group

Habits

Neumann has a plethora of interesting habits, but one of the lesser-known ones is the way he managed his employees. He and his wife would often send WeWork employees to their home to fix things for them; they even once made employees spend “three full days” downloading movies to keep Neumann’s kids occupied on an upcoming family holiday. And Rebekah once tasked WeWork’s CFO with getting a 5G cellular antenna moved away from her home.

Hodari is less ‘quirky’, but no less interesting. He’s a night owl, often working from his bed until 2 am and then sleeping until 10. He goes bass fishing in Prospect Park and runs his own bar trivia with friends at a shuffleboard club.

In terms of business habits, Hodari is more conventional. He says “the most powerful tool you can have as an entrepreneur is a keen, curious appetite for listening.” He’s had a list of startup ideas since his early 20s.

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