Name : Frank Zorn
Linkedin : linkedin frank zorn
Company : Knotel
Job title : Head of European Expansion of Knotel
Website : https://www.knotel.com/
Can you give us a brief description about Knotel
Knotel is the world’s leading flexible workspace provider that matches, tailors and manages space for customers. Knotel caters to established and growing companies, giving them the freedom to focus on their business, culture and people. With almost 470,000 square meters across 200+ locations in 15 cities worldwide, Knotel is transforming commercial real estate and moving companies forward.
Knotel was founded in 2016 to give businesses the flexibility and speed to scale on their own terms. All Knotel spaces are tailored to the needs of each individual company by an in-house team of architects, interior designers, and workplace strategists.
What does your job involve?
As Head of European Expansion I’m responsible for accelerating Knotel’s European footprint. The demand for flexible workspace solutions is enormous and will continue to grow in the coming years. Together with my team, we look at the European metropolises and evaluate which dense office markets have a true demand for our platform. In a second step, we take a closer look on-site and search for suitable areas and potential customers before we open a new space. I also keep in touch with customers, owners and brokers in our markets to keep Knotel, and flex in general, top of mind as an asset to their real estate portfolio.
Which services does Knotel offer?
Knotel offers private, full-floor workspaces that are tailored to each individual company’s business needs and brand, all on flexible terms, for established global enterprise companies and high-growth start-ups.
What does Knotel have, what other companies do not have?
In contrast to other market participants, Knotel employes a demand-first strategy and matches space with customer needs. This allows the company to grow sustainably and with high cash-efficiency. Furthermore, Knotel doesn’t cater to freelancers or provide any coworking spaces. Instead, the company matches and tailors full-floor workspaces to meet the needs of global players.
What are the latest trends in your industry? And which trends do you closely monitor in your industry?
Space-As-A-Service will become more and more popular. Employees are usually the most important, but also the largest cost factor of companies. For a long time now, companies have therefore been trying to make the workforce more variable and flexible, for example by using freelancers or purchased experts. This trend is now also continuing in commercial and private real estate – usually the second largest cost factor for a company: More flexible and, if necessary, short-term rental contracts and less long-term commitment to fixed premises will become increasingly common.
Furthermore, anthropologists and workplace strategists will be increasingly involved In the working space of the future. Companies and owners will more and more try to design the rooms in such a way that utility and function are intelligently combined.
In this context, offices are also becoming “intelligent” as space and resource consumption is monitored and optimized to achieve higher performance. For example, light, volume, temperature and humidity are automatically optimised to create a better working atmosphere.
Who are your clients and do you already have new clients for 2020?
Knotel leases over 200 flexible workspaces worldwide to growing and established companies, including Twilio, Rolex, Epic Games, Lucidchart and more. For 2020, we have great plans for Europe which I unfortunately can’t talk about yet.
What are your ambitions?
Most companies prefer to have their own spaces where they can build their own culture. They do not want to be part of another culture or community that someone else is building.
Therefore, Knotel already has over 85 locations in Europe, which makes us one of the market leaders on the continent. We want to continue strategically growing our footprint in all the major cities where the office market is most in the coming years.
What is the latest news?
In December, Knotel officially launched its service in the Netherlands with the opening of three spaces in the heart of Amsterdam with a total surface area of 5,000 square meters. Almost all the locations are already occupied by our main target group: fast-growing startups and large companies such as payment provider Mollie.
