On August 16, I published a blog questioning Andreeson Horowitz’s (AH) investment of $350 million into WeWork founder Adam Neumann’s new rental-apartment start-up called flow. On the face of it, the investment seemed like an extremely risky bet on a man whose failure at WeWork was epic.

We now have more details on this investment and rather than a tradition venture capital investment (high risk equity into a start-up), it turns out that AH received a stake in thousands of apartments owned by Mr. Neumann for the investment. It appears that this is a secured loan or similar type of investment that provides substantial collateral protection to AH rather than just an unsecured bet on Mr. Neumann. This information was not available in mid-August when the investment was announced.

Whether this represents a new model for venture capital in a post-ZIRP world (that is short-hand - I make no presumption we won’t see zero interest rates again) or a one-off based on the special circumstances of this investment remains to be seen, but I wanted to follow up and keep readers apprised of this new information. Hopefully Flow will be more successful than WeWork and AH will not end up becoming a landlord.