With Flowcarbon, can Adam Neumann turn over a new leaf?

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Hello reader,

I wasn’t familiar with the startup world when the WeWork fiasco happened, but reading about it afterward made my blood boil. While co-founder Adam Neumann walked away with a little more than a billion dollars, the company’s valuation plunged from US$47 billion to US$9 billion in 2019, which led to thousands losing their jobs.

Now, Neumann and his wife, Rebekah, are back with another startup. They’ve invested in and founded a crypto carbon credit firm known as Flowcarbon. Yes, you heard it right: the relatively lawless, decentralized land of crypto and a founder with a troubled history – what could possibly go wrong?

Today we look at:

• Whether Adam Neumann’s Flowcarbon might follow in the footsteps of WeWork.
• A spacetech firm looking to raise US$5 million.
• Other newsy highlights such as an Indian edtech firm laying off more than 300 employees and a crypto lender’s huge potential losses.

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Premium summary

Guess who’s back

There’s a famous verse in Eminem’s song “Without Me” that goes: “Guess who’s back, back again. Shady’s back, tell a friend.” Eminem often uses “Slim Shady” as his alter ego in his songs, but I’d say that Neumann would probably fit the literal meaning of “shady” here.

• Who even came up with this name? Flowcarbon’s first product is the Goddess Nature Token, which is a bundle of individual ERC-20 tokens called GCO2. Each GCO2 token is created from an actual carbon credit that has been tokenized.

• Smoke and mirrors: A product does not a solution make. According to some experts, on-chain carbon credits may be attached to low-quality, long-dormant projects that don’t actually address environmental issues. Some of them may only be a “feel-good measure,” said William Collins, the director of Berkeley Lab’s Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division and the Carbon Negative Initiative.

• Possible good signs: That said, not everything about Flowcarbon is cause for skepticism. According to the firm, it will only accept carbon credits that are no more than five years old. This means that it will only pick up credits that are created with better standards and governance. These credits are also verified by Verra, the largest carbon offset registry in the world.

Read more: Adam Neumann’s Flowcarbon: Another WeWork in the making?

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Startup spotlight

Extra money for an extraterrestrial firm?

Say “Aliena” fast five times. The Singapore-based spacetech firm is looking to raise US$5 million in a series A round and is currently in talks with new and existing investors. The firm’s co-founder and CEO, Mark Lim, expects to close the round by the third or fourth quarter of this year.

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