Life flung a bunch of lemons at us
My partner, Gabe, and I were at the kitchen table eating brunch in the summer of 2020, trying to figure out what to do next. See, prior to the pandemic, we’d been renting out our downstairs studio apartment on various vacation rental platforms and it had been doing well. So well, in fact, that the income was covering a significant part of our mortgage. And then boom — COVID. Everything shut down, including short-term rentals.
Munching on our scrambled eggs, we wondered whether there was a safer way to get back to hosting. The biggest thing standing in the way? Laundry. I mean, washing a stranger’s linens during a pandemic? Yikes!
And then it occurred to me: What if we put a desk in the apartment, upgraded our WiFi, and made it available for working professionals to use as an escape from their WFH distractions? If we rented it out to them by the day instead of overnight, there’d be no need for laundry. It felt like we were on to something.
We started getting excited. No laundry also means less work. Plus having people there just from 9 to 5 could mean less wear and tear. And having working professionals in the space instead of random travelers on vacation… it just seemed like less risk overall.
Three friends
So I texted my friend Brian. And then iLan. Both of them are software developers, creative thinkers, and all-around great guys. They loved the idea and recognized that with the world shifting towards remote work for the long term, the timing of it couldn’t be better. Could this become a global platform? We started dreaming.
And then we started building. We talked to hundreds of hosts, working professionals, employers, lawyers, real estate experts, people in security, people in HR… we needed as much feedback as we could possibly get. We wanted to build this platform based on what the community wanted, not just what we thought people should want.
A pivot here, another there…
And I’m so glad we did that because some of our initial assumptions were incomplete. See, as soon as companies around the world started announcing permanent remote work policies for their teams, we doubled down on our conversations with them. We learned that what companies care about most is in-person collaboration. Meanwhile, their employees care most about flexibility and work-life balance. And when companies consider WFH vs the traditional office as their only two options, it’s hard to satisfy both sets of needs.
We realized that our real opportunity was to provide conveniently located collaborative spaces that people actually wanted to go to. If a working professional could walk five minutes down the street to a small, private space and meet up with a few trusted colleagues, they’d get to have the flexibility, time savings, and work-life separation they craved while also enjoying some in-person collaboration time. Win-win.
Inventing a new way to work
We’re not just an office space provider. We’re not just another online marketplace. We’re shaping an entirely new way of working. Instead of being limited by the two prevailing options — the traditional office vs WFH — what if every company had distributed workspaces in whatever neighborhoods their employees live? What if there were a sharing economy for residential office and meeting space?
Well, now there is.
When people are fulfilled at work, it can have a positive trickle effect into all kinds of other aspects of life. I know this first hand. And I’m excited to be building something that helps facilitate that for others too.
Thank you for joining us on this journey,
–Amina