Wilson Sonsini Advises Hospitality Start-Up Sonder in $170 Million Series E

On June 24, 2020, San Francisco hospitality start-up Sonder announced it has raised $170 million in a Series E round of funding, led by Fidelity, WestCap, and Inovia Capital, bringing the short-term apartment rental company's valuation to $1.3 billion. Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati advised Sonder in the transaction.

Though COVID-19 has pushed traditional hotel occupancy rates below 20 percent, shrunk airline demand by 95 percent, and all but eliminated business travel, Sonder seems to have broken out of the hospitality slump. "It's pretty extraordinary given the situation," says Sonder co-founder and CEO Francis Davidson. "We pivoted our strategy toward temporary housing, took measures to get to a good financial place and a position to bounce back rapidly on the upswing.”

Sonder leases and renovates apartments in trendy city neighborhoods, and rents them to customers through Airbnb, Expedia, and its own site. Today its 1,000 employees manage more than 12,000 rooms across 28 cities and six countries.

The Wilson Sonsini team that advised Sonder in the transaction includes:

Corporate
Mark Baudler
Christina Poulsen
Jonathan Chan
Mike Lin
Ashley Yueh
Marianne Stark-Bradley

Delaware
Amy Simmerman
Jason Schoenberg

Regulatory
Stephen Heifetz
Jonathan Davey

Tax
Myra Sutanto Shen

For more information, see Forbes' coverage of Sonder, or the company's blog post.