WeWork Employees Caught Spying on Competition (nypost.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: The battle in the red-hot co-working space business is heating up. WeWork, the No. 1 player in the sector, allegedly sent two spies to infiltrate rival Knotel -- to steal info and some customers, Knotel claimed. The spies showed up at seven Knotel properties in Manhattan last month in a "systematic attempt to pilfer Knotel's proprietary information and trade secrets," according to a cease-and-desist letter the smaller company sent to WeWork. The Post has obtained a copy of the letter. The corporate espionage rookies may have pulled off the caper except, in a totally random happening, a Knotel employee recognized one of them as a friend of a friend, according to sources close to Knotel. While the pair used fake names to gain entry, according to the letter, a call to the Knotel worker's pal got the spy's real name -- and a couple of social media inquiries turned up the fact that he worked for rival WeWork, sources said. The letter to WeWork asks for a reply by Oct. 13 -- but so far Knotel hasn't heard a peep from its rival, according to CEO Amol Sarva. While inside the Knotel offices, visited Sept. 12-14, the luckless spies posed "as the founders of a fast-growing startup" and said they needed space for their six-person company, according to the letter.

Comments

Re:What is the "Red-hot co-working space business"

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a small business that's just getting started and will hopefully be expanding quickly, there are two ways to get a place to work:

1) Rent an office, and then when you hire more people you have to move to a bigger office so you're always either paying for more space than you need today or spending time moving; arrange people for all the things that are required for a usable office like cleaning, setting up a network, etc...

2) You call WeWork and say "I want offices for two people in your Boston building". You get the offices, and there are shared conference rooms that you can reserve as you need them. WeWork takes care of cleaning, the network, a cafeteria, etc (which you are paying for as part of your rent, but at least you don't have to worry about setting it up). When you expand, you tell WeWork you now need a third room, and they give you more space, so your existing people don't need to move (or only move around in the same building), and you don't need to waste your time dealing with the real estate market.

Number two is significantly more expensive in dollars, but number one is significantly more expensive in your time investment; if you are a well funded startup, you don't mind spending a lot of money, but you'd rather spend your time working on your business rather than worrying about office space. If you are a poorly funded company, or a large enough company that you are using large blocks of space and can afford to hire someone to deal with the details, #1 is the better choice, which is why the classic real estate market is in no danger of vanishing.

Re:forty spots

[GameboyRMH]

It's a trendy new way to say that they own commercial buildings and rent out space in them.