Knotel

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. Employees said the cracks predated the pandemic: Glassdoor reviews from 2019-2020 described a cash crunch that left vendors and construction contractors unpaid for a year, and roughly half the global workforce cut in April 2020 — a round several said arrived after leadership had assured them their jobs were safe.

Employee accounts paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗. See our methodology.