Knotel
Proptech/flexible officeUSA
New to Unitard
💀 Dead / Bankrupt
Peak $1.6 BillionToday
~-96%
from peak
- 🦄Became a unicorn2018
- 📈Peak valuation$1.6 Billion ’20
- 💔Became a UnitardJan 2021
- 💸Last valuationWiped out
🔥 Raised & burned
$560M
Total raised
$338K/day
Burned · 4.5y alive
Funding: TechCrunch/Crunchbase
Current status
Bankruptcy (Jan 2021); assets to Newmark ~$70M
The rise & fall
7 moments · 2016–2021The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.
2016
2016
Founded as "headquarters as a service"
Amol Sarva and Edward Shenderovich pitch flexible, customized offices — a nimbler rival to WeWork.
TechCrunch
2018
2018
Joins the unicorn club
Rapid-fire fundraising values the WeWork rival around $1B.
TechCrunch
2020
2020
The peak: $1.6B$1.6B
Hits $1.6B in early 2020 — with the model already straining before anyone had heard of COVID-19.
TechCrunch
2020
2020
Offices empty overnight
Lockdowns erase demand for office space, and roughly half the global workforce is cut.
TechCrunch
2019–20
From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2019–20
Employees flagged the cracks before COVID did: Glassdoor reviews from 2019-2020 described a cash crunch that left vendors and construction contractors unpaid for a year, and the April 2020 round that cut roughly half the global workforce — one several reviewers said arrived after leadership had assured them their jobs were safe.
Jan 2021
Jan 2021
Chapter 11 — joins the Unitard Club 💔
Files in January 2021, less than a year after touching $1.6B.
Court filing
2021
2021
Newmark picks up the pieces for ~$70M
The brokerage buys the assets for about $70M — roughly an eighth of the $560M Knotel raised.
SEC filing
$1.54Bof peak value erased · 5 years
💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.
How it happened
Knotel offered flexible, customized office space as a nimbler rival to WeWork, hitting a $1.6B valuation in early 2020. The model was already strained before COVID-19 emptied offices and erased demand, and it filed for bankruptcy in January 2021, with brokerage Newmark acquiring the assets for a reported ~$70M.
Source: Newmark acquisition filing
Where they went
- Amol SarvaCo-Founder & CEOManaging Partner at LifeX Ventures
- Edward Shenderovichco-founderCo-founder and CEO at Roebling
Current roles as self-reported on LinkedIn, retrieved 2026-08-19. See our methodology.
