Flexspace, a startup providing corporate solutions for hybrid-remote companies to provide and manage flexible workspaces, today announced closing a $6 million seed round led by M13, according to a press release shared with FinLedger.
The company says it will use the capital to expand its network of operators throughout the U.S., to develop its product with tech integrations and to increase its team size. The round also included participation from R-Squared Ventures, who led the company’s pre-seed round, Magenta Venture Partners, and former and current executives from Uber and WeWork.
Founded in 2020 by Eyal Lasker and Justin Law, previous senior growth product and software engineers at WeWork, the company aims to address the growing need of scaling startups and established companies for easy access to collaborative workspaces.
“We always believed that the future of work will be distributed and remote. We just couldn’t imagine how fast is going to happen for us and for Flexspace. For the business looking now at the changing behavior of the workforce, and accelerating demand, right. We didn’t really anticipate that it will just ramp up so quickly,” Lasker told FinLedger.
“But you see that demand now from both sides, supply and demand. If we talk about property, there’s like a really mind shift now going on with landlords and operators. This is available and makes it very easy for the demand that is on the lookout now, for those spaces to transact with on-demand meeting rooms,” he said.
The company accomplishes this through its platform, that aims to reduce all friction with the process and provides infrastructure to search, price, book and process services in real time. This infrastructure enables users to book through existing tech stacks, Google Calendar and via participating partner portals.
Flexspace say this enables real estate owners and operators to be discovered so they can monetize unused inventory, and provides companies access to off-site workspace that gives employees freedom to choose when and where they meet up with teams or book space for solo work outside their home offices.
The company also noted its bookings have more than doubled in the first quarter of 2022, and that it has seen monthly transaction volume grow 40% month-over-month since the beginning of the year.
It also says that operators currently include WeWork, Mindspace, TheYard, Nomadworks, TheMalin and Werqwise, and plans to use the fresh capital to expand to metropolitan areas throughout the U.S.
Lasker added that it is important to match supply and demand, which means making it easier for real estate owners to actually list their inventory so that it can be used.
“We put a lot of focus on an integrated experience, in real-time and on demand, to make it very easy on both sides to remove all of that friction. When you think about real estate you think about these static, long leases. One thing that is important to realize is that the consumer expectations have completely changed right? Today, everything is on demand,” Lasker said, adding that removing friction is the at the forefront of the product and marketplace.
Flexspace also says that its platform provides unique insights into user behavior, specifically for locations but also industry-wide for trends across operators. It says key insights include: collaborative spaces are typically booked 4.5 days in advance with 31% of all bookings occurring mid-week. It also said that Wednesdays are the most popular weekday for hybrid-remote workers to hold in-person meetings, and found that Tuesdays are the preferred day for solo work with 70% of all single office bookings taking place early in the week.
“There is a paradigm shift – the open-office plan cramming more workers into smaller spaces to stimulate serendipitous collaboration is over. Ultimately, people want flexibility and autonomy but will still need to maintain the ability to easily connect when needed. Flexspace fulfills that need,” said M13 Managing Partner Karl Alomar, who was appointed to Flexpsace’s Board of Directors as part of the funding.
In other recent proptech news, blockchain-based real estate platform Parcl raised $7.5 million to enable collaboration between software and real estate firms. Alternative investment firm GreenPoint Partners also announced closing a $134 million inaugural real estate tech fund.