[imagesource: Jackal Pan / Getty Images]

Adam Neumann – the name rings a bell, but you just can’t place him, right?

Here’s a little refresher…

Neumann headed up WeWork, the company that went from being the darling of the venture capital world, with a market value around $47 billion, to unravelling and requiring a bailout in a matter of years.

That link above has a lovely little video that explains how that came to be, but if podcasts are more your thing, the first season of Foundering focuses on the rise and fall of WeWork.

Neumann left WeWork last year (was pushed out, really), but despite those challenges, is still worth an estimated $750 million.

Now he’s back dabbling in a somewhat related field – the future of residential living – explains Bloomberg:

[He has] invested $30 million in Alfred Club Inc., a startup that provides apartment buildings with services such as concierge-like staff and software to manage maintenance requests and other paperwork…

Image: Hello Alfred Press Kit

The investment in residential apartments is a throwback to a Neumann pet project at WeWork. He led an expansion beyond office rentals to community-minded residences called WeLive. The venture never expanded beyond two buildings, in New York City and near Washington, D.C., but it was touted as part of a grander vision for WeWork, to expand beyond the office and into other parts of life—the same rationale for its now-shuttered private elementary school WeGrow…

Alfred operates in more than 100,000 apartments and is now backed by close to $100 million in total funding. It’s a sizable sum, though far from the billions Neumann raised for WeWork.

The company is also referred to as Hello Alfred.

If you want some super tech-speak lingo, here’s Alfred’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Marcela Sapone, with some buzzwords cobbled together:

[Sapone] said Alfred “is the operating system for what we think are next-generation buildings that are looking at themselves as a true home rather than a sterile apartment building.”

It’s not a house, it’s a home.

They owe royalties to The Castle for that one.

[source:bloomberg]