I have been working for a growing workspace & private offices booking platform. My reflections. [I will not promote!]
Hey there!
Three months ago, I joined a small team building a workspace booking platform (Wezoo) as a sales associate. It is probably safe to say that before, I hadn't known anything about the short-term office / meeting rooms + long-stay office market. I wanted to ask you all about some tips for progression, notes from more experienced people in the field, and maybe some general takeaways for me to be better at my job.
To me, it seemed like a hipster version of real estate that would still rely on slow and formal direct inquiries. Turns out the market is very hungry for solutions comparable to the hotel / tourism sector – think Airbnb and Booking com, but the properties in question are offices. The supply has met the growing demand for tourism much earlier than it was for offices, which is quite fair, but realising how similar these two types of products are for me was quite eye-opening. So I wanted to share what I struggled with (and still do) while working with an early-stage company that's trying to build a two-sided booking platform from scratch for office bookings.
The first problem was the cold start, of course. I work at the supply side, so I have to help onboard venue operators who wish to see demand before committing to anything, and customers who want to see what you’re offering before booking. Chicken and egg. I got through by doing the regular Apollo emailing to the operators, follow-ups, a lot of research and analysis, but what really helped was the product, not the marketplace as its exterior. Operationally, our USP remains automation by mirroring the API of operators’ booking systems, so we just list them and make offices bookable for customers. But still, that proves to be not enough to be appealing to everybody because of the strong tech-reliant aspect, which essentially is our main “better” point that many smaller operators get confused by.
I guess my team changes your relationship with work. There's no hiding. If I don't onboard venues, we don't have supply. If the product team doesn't nail the integration, the rooms don't show up. If support doesn't handle an issue quickly, we lose trust in an operator we spent weeks courting. Everyone's work is visible and consequential. It's the most accountable I've ever felt in a job, and honestly, I love it.
The EU-to-US expansion has been a lesson in humility. We started in Europe: the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and several other markets. Now we're expanding into the US. The assumption was "it's the same product, just a bigger market." It's not. Different operator expectations, different booking behaviours, different competitive landscape. We're learning a lot, fast.
I don't have a tidy takeaway here. I'm still in the middle of it. But if anyone else is working on a marketplace or a B2B platform with a physical-world component, I'd love to hear from you what would help me progress further, maybe there is something I am missing out.
Thank you! <3