The anti-Adam Neumann of the co-working industry

Neumann, the charismatic billionaire founder of WeWork, grilled his buttoned-up, awkward seatmate about the success of his rival firm, Industrious, while the two chief executives sipped Bloody Marys.

That was episode five of “WeCrashed," the Apple TV+ miniseries drama depicting WeWork’s theatrical fall.

In real life, Hodari isn’t exactly as he was portrayed in the show. But in many ways, he is indeed something of an anti-Adam Neumann. Where Neumann is famous for his larger than life personality, brash risk-taking and grand ambitions—he briefly turned WeWork into an everything company with a mission statement to “elevate the world’s consciousness"—Hodari has been content to work on a variety of different jobs, often out of the public eye.

“I kind of liked being played as the nerdy, serious foil," Hodari said of his miniseries face-off with Neumann.

His career path has included stops as a reporter for the Times of India, an attorney at the white-shoe law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, and a founder of an experimental university in Rwanda.

The Industrious CEO has also taken a very different approach to his current business, shared office space. WeWork grew rapidly by signing long-term office leases and renting out that workspace on a short-term basis. Under Neumann’s leadership, the company expanded to more than 30 countries and was once valued at $47 billion.

But that strategy floundered during the pandemic after Neumann left, when tenants declined to renew their leases, leaving WeWork on the hook to pay its landlords with much less revenue coming in.

Industrious, by contrast, uses a management-agreement model, where it shares profits with a landlord. This approach limits the firm’s upside when demand is hot, but it significantly reduces the downside when fewer people want space.

That slower but steadier approach shows promise as a new industry standard. Even WeWork is working toward management agreements with “dozens of landlords," the company said in February.

Management agreements could also be a good option for landlords stuck with a glut of office space in the absence of traditional long-term tenants, said Scott Homa, who oversees flex workspace research for real-estate firm JLL.

Industrious says it manages more than 200 locations, and—in a symbolic move—it recently acquired WeWork’s former Midtown Manhattan headquarters.

Now, Industrious is raising larger dollar figures and picking up smaller companies. The commercial real-estate firm CBRE has invested $330 million in the firm since 2020. Earlier this year, Industrious’s subsidiary Breather merged with co-working startup Deskpass, with Industrious taking a 40% stake.

Co-working as an industry has come a long way since Covid-19. These days, companies aren’t sure how much space they want even in the medium term. That renewed a need for the flex-office industry to meet, and Hodari is in the middle of it.

Since 2019, his firm has picked up 130 new locations and nearly tripled its revenue, a spokesman said. Hodari said he is hoping for an initial public offering in the next two years.

Now 42 years old, Hodari studied political science and anthropology at Columbia University. He applied to graduate school, hoping to become an anthropology professor. Hodari changed his mind after meeting a group of grad students stressed about their job prospects.

“After a few drinks, people were, like, ‘This is absolutely miserable,’" he recalled.

Instead, Hodari pivoted to law school and a corporate-law job. Then he worked for a hedge fund, but became disillusioned with the culture. He said a colleague made a joke about the Fukushima reactor melting down so Japanese stock prices would fall, which made him eager to leave an industry in which he didn’t feel he belonged.

He then went to Rwanda to lead an education nonprofit, where he co-founded an experimental, hybrid university. What began as a college-scholarship program for orphans of the Rwandan genocide then became, under Hodari, an accredited school.

Hodari’s experience in Rwanda and learning the local language, he said, was “particularly humbling."

One evening, at a live music bar in the Nyamirambo neighborhood of the capital Kigali, he tried to tell an employee that he wished he could play guitar in another life. As the employee understood, he wanted to play guitar for the crowd that evening—and his team didn’t take no for an answer.

“So I had to get up on stage and just do my best," he said. “It was a disaster, but everyone was sweet about it."

Hodari had a meeting scheduled with the IKEA Foundation, the nonprofit’s main donor, in a co-working space in New York City. He moved it to a cafe last minute because the location was too loud. That helped inspire him to launch a co-working space in Chicago.

Avoiding traditional venture capital until the company had opened seven buildings let Industrious sidestep what Hodari described as “perverse incentives" that face early companies: Venture capitalists expect their firms to make extremely large returns or go bankrupt, with little room in between.

“I think of myself as relatively comfortable with risk, but try to be rational about how much risk a business should take," he said. “And we grew up in an era where, I think, most growth businesses were irrational about it."