COMPANY: Share Your Office
ELEVATOR PITCH
Share Your Office gives companies a place to list their spare office space, making it easy for startups, freelancers, and small businesses to rent workspace at a moment’s notice.
PRODUCT/SERVICE DESCRIPTION
Share Your Office solves a problem that every entrepreneur has faced: Renting an office. Most office leases are for at least a full year, usually in the three-to-ten year range. Startups don’t know how much their business will grow in the meantime, so signing a long-term commercial lease means betting on the scale of your success before it’s feasible to do so.
With Share Your Office, startups with unused rooms or desks in their office can monetize their extra space without resorting to weeding through Craigslist inquiries. At the same time, both early-stage startups and independent freelancers often struggle with finding short-term leases that won’t break the bank. Share Your Office expands their options beyond coworking spaces to include anything from a desk in a startup’s room to a private office in a business center.
One benefit Share Your Office provides to customers on both ends is trust. We work personally with the people behind each of our office listings, so we know they’re legit. Our platform is 100 percent free for renters, so it’s a more reliable, user-friendly alternative to incumbent listing platforms. Time spent on office hunting is time spent away from your business, so it’s crucial that our users get through the process as painlessly as possible.
DIFFERENTIATORS VS. THE COMPETITION
Our company is based in France, and we have a strong presence in international communities. You can find Share Your Office listings in Canada, the UK, and Australia, in addition to all across the U.S.
Within the United States, we’re unique because it’s free to both list office space and rent through us–we only charge a commission to the lister when the deal is closed. We share the same motives as our users until the space is filled, just like a real estate broker.
We also pride ourselves in the personal relationships we’ve made with the spaces that list with us, from individual offices to coworking spaces. We’re running an interview series with coworking spaces on our blog, and we’ve offered our contacts the opportunity to be featured in the press through our content marketing projects. Our users are more than just one-time customers; they’re partners with a lasting relationship.
FOUNDER’S STORY
Our story began when our CEO, Clement Alteresco, moved to San Francisco with the Parisian incubator Fabernovel to found one of the city’s first coworking spaces: Parisoma. In his four years in the city, he was inspired by the convenience and popularity of coworking spaces, culminating in the core idea behind Share Your Office. Returning to his home country, he founded Bureaux a Partager, the French version of the company. Finally, Share Your Office was relaunched in September 2014, ready to take on the American office sharing market.
HEADQUARTERS: San Francisco
WEBSITE: shareyouroffice.com
INVESTORS: Bootstrapped
YEAR FOUNDED: 2014
TWITTER: @ShareYourOffice
FACEBOOK: facebook.com/ShareYourOffice
LINKEDIN: linkedin.com/company/share-your-office
