THE vaunted Financial Times profiled Long Island City resident and unicorn founder Amol Sarva last week, checking in to see how he was doing post WeWork debacle. “Quite well tyvm, we’re nothing like WeWork” to sum it up. Followed by some bullet points as to why his company Knotel is not, a short paragraph as to how the idea for the company came about, some personal history and a few not-so-outlandish founder quirks. Oh, and a lot of schadenfreude including his wearing a sweatshirt with the words “Grave Dancer” on it.
[Read more…] about The Grave Dancer of LIC & Rincon MelaniaAmol Sarva
Long Island City Claims Its First Unicorn
You may have missed the news earlier in the week, as the anointment of tech unicorns is becoming as ubiquitous as …becoming an actual billionaire. Or more likely, you may not have made the LIC connection. Don’t worry, no one else did, and that’s what we’re here for! Over a decade of experience plumbing the depths of Long Island City, archiving it all and then cross-referencing when appropriate. Quite simply no one else can do what we do for LIC.
Oh yes, that unicorn. It’s called Knotel and it was co-founded in 2016 by Amol Sarva, who’s also the CEO and frontman. Knotel is a workspace provider similar in nature to WeWork, and this week it was announced the company received an additional $400 million in financing at a valuation well over a billion dollars1, the hurdle for unicorn status.
[Read more…] about Long Island City Claims Its First Unicorn- more specifically, the company received $400 mil in cash in return for a stake of between 15% and 30%. So for example if it were a 30% stake the other 70% would be worth $933 million putting the total 100% (70% + 30% or $933 mil + 400 mil) at $1.33 billion; if it were $400 mil for a 15% stake then $2.66 bil!?!?! [↩]