Adam Neumann bought a Hamptons magazine

This guy's perseverance is incredible.

Goooood morning.

NEWS:

• A reader tipped me off to this today: Apparently Adam Neumann is acquiring Montauk-based Whalebone Magazine for his new startup Flow. The magazine also announced today that they’re rebranding as “The Flow Trip.” Flow first made headlines in 2022, when Andreessen Horowitz invested a reported $350mm into the company. The deal valued Flow at $1B. In the magazine’s announcement, they write “Moving forward Whalebone Magazine will be called The Flow Trip, but thankfully for us, it’s largely the same team, same dog, but with a new name and focus on the good things that align with our new partners at Flow.” This is actually a very unusual use of VC money! In theory you’re supposed to use VC money to scale your original idea or something close to it. If the VC’s or their LP’s wanted to put their money into microcap PE, they would have done that. Say what you want about Neumann, that man can fundraise.

• Ignacio Mattos, the chef behind Estela and Altro Paradiso and Lodi, is having a messy week. I feel like this is the 10th time I’m writing about Lodi’s labor practices. The National Labor Relations Board has issued a complaint against Mattos’s restaurant group, saying that it engaged in illegal practices to dissuade workers from forming a union at Lodi, in Rockefeller Center. “The 24 allegations, some involving Mr. Mattos himself, include surveilling workers’ communications, telling employees that the restaurant would close if a union were formed and warning undocumented workers that their immigration status would be affected if they unionized.”

• Brooklyn’s Gus’s Chop House will now just be Gus’s. This is a story about marketing, and knowing your customer base (families in Cobble Hill who probably want salads and pasta, not a steakhouse).