Client Spotlight

Eugene Lee, Knotel

By Yardi Blog Staff on Feb 8, 2019 in People

As a custom office space provider, Yardi client Knotel has more than 100 locations in New York, San Francisco, London, Berlin and Sao Paulo in Brazil. In December, Knotel expanded its New York City presence with four new office leases totaling 78,780 square feet. The largest lease inked was a 51,000-square-foot space at Rosen family’s 27 W. 23rd St., which encompasses the entire second and third floors of the building. Knotel was represented by Elie Reiss of Skylight Leasing and the landlord was represented by Danny Breiman of Olmstead.

Eugene Lee, Knotel’s global head of real estate and business development, oversees sourcing and negotiation of management partnerships, leases and purchases, as well as global market expansion, corporate development and enterprise business development. Prior to working for Knotel, Lee served as a senior advisor for economic development in Mayor Bloomberg’s administration, was chief of staff & senior advisor for the U.S. Department of Commerce in D.C., and worked at Knewton, an adaptive learning tech provider.

What led you to Knotel?

Lee: The opportunity to help build a company and product that solved a huge problem. When I worked at City Hall during the Bloomberg administration, we constantly heard from emerging companies and entrepreneurs about the pain and expense of finding office space. While we couldn’t easily address the issue then from a policy perspective, Knotel is the solution that will change how all companies consume office space.

This interview originally appeared in Commercial Property Executive, a Yardi publication. Read the rest of the conversation with CPE’s Keith Loria here.