Office Space Flexibility
Plus 5 financings, 1 piece of news, 8 good reads, and a podcast.
As you’ll see below in Dror Poleg’s post and Tushar Agarwal’s podcast episode, some very intelligent people are sharing thoughts on what the future of office space looks like. (Pretty much every day a new article pops up on the topic.)
As with any topic, we all bring our own biases into the issue.
I’m sure if you looked hard enough, you would find comments from people at Zoom and Google Hangouts that talk about how we never need office space again. On the other side, office landlords play up the value of direct interaction and serendipity/intimacy of repeated in-person work relationships.
So what is the unbiased, nuanced view of what work looks like post-COVID?
The answer, as with all things, probably lies somewhere in the middle.
The “no one should ever go back in the office” crowd are probably too extreme, but so are the “you’ll never be fully productive without the entire workforce in the same place repeatedly” crowd.
My bet is that most if us have found hacks and tricks to make ourselves productive and effective working remotely. Most of us are learning what I realized 7 years ago when I started my first company - being effective working remotely is a skill. Skills can be learned and improved.
If you want to be good at working remotely, you can be. Especially with all the tech that facilitates it.
But I also assume that most of us realize there is deep value to in-person connection and the sheer quantity of shared time. (I would argue that a healthy view probably involves running back “toward” in-person relationships rather than running “away” from the difficulties of working from home, but I digress.)
So where does this all shake out?
Not to be evasive, but it depends.
I assume each company, and hopefully each worker herself, is examining the tradeoffs between in-person and remote productivity. I hope she is examining the TRUE cost of the time she spends in the car/subway/bus on the way to and from work and to and from lunch.
Any my suspicion is that what ensues is a move toward workplace flexibility.
I think your typical knowledge worker will want to have more autonomy on how and where and when she puts in her most productive hours. (That even seems like the most psychologically healthy approach, to digress again.)
What does that mean for office owners and office tech?
We’ll see . . .
I’ll share one theory next week.
On to this week’s deals and data:
Fundings:
Our friends at OpenPath, an LA-based secure access startup, raised $36M led by Greycroft.
K4Connect, a Raleigh-based smart home platform for senior living, finished a $21M B round with participation from Forte Ventures.
Social Construct, a SF-based startup focused on construction design of lego-like floor plan components, raised $17M led by Floodgate.
Beekeeper, a hotel communications platform, raised a $10M Series B extension led by Energize Ventures and our friends at Thayer.
Orbital Witness, a British property diligence startup, raised $4.1M from Local Globe and Outward VC.
News:
I’m curious to see what becomes of this Microsoft and Samsung smart building partnership.
Funds:
Paid subscribers only.
Read:
I love this collection of 34 of the best interview questions to recruit remote workers by NfX.
I agree with what Dror Poleg says: “Most of us are not going to spend the next decade working from home or backpacking across the globe. But we will have more geographical choice than ever before. And it will be easier than ever to exercise that choice.’’
If you don’t already, make sure you subscribe to Joe Aamidor’s Smart Buildings newsletter and check out this month’s edition.
As we discussed last week, AirBnB is charging back and going public (maybe)!
The new era of shopper tracking for retailers, according to Forbes.
Check out Goodwin’s article on the post-COVID office.
Always interesting to see what Vegas is doing to keep their casinos and hotels safe (and how people ignore it).
Listen:
Tushar Agarwal thinks the office is dead.
Also:
(Note to self: RSVP “no” to that test tube eating contest next week. (ht StrictlyVC))
Thanks for reading!
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