Congratulations on the launch!

> If you’re one of the 3 of 4 people who wants to work flexibly post-pandemic, or if you manage a workplace, we’d love to hear from you.

One of those is Andy Jassy, CEO-elect at Amazon, who is on-record that Amazon is likely to switch to a hybrid model where folks would may be reserve desks when they intend to be in-office but mostly work remotely otherwise.

Absolutely a huge market.

> Worksphere is $6 per active employee/month, and our clients only pay for employees that come to the office.

Curious: What merited, if I may, the current model? Did you also happen to consider charging for something like total office-desks in management (that scales nicely and makes for a predictable cost accounting)?

Thanks.

[0] https://youtu.be/izbg7CpoSqg?t=2079

Thanks for sharing the Andy Jassy video. In most companies with office workers, the hybrid model as a better way of working is becoming the mainstream view. We hope we can help simplify the experience.

The per active employee pricing model was driven by the level of uncertainty from companies on how many employees will use the office on a regular basis. For some of our clients who have opened their offices only 10-20% of their employees are using it. Customers would prefer not to pay for all their desks when only a small fraction are actually being used.

Good points on the cost accounting and predictability of costs. We haven't gotten pushback on that so far. But we'll keep an eye out.

I wonder how having to hotdesk affects people wanting to work in an office. I prefer going in to working at home, but having to worry about whether there is a desk for me there and having to bring my desk toys (or important things, like mice) in every day might become grating after a while. If I could book a desk for multiple days and get penalized if I didn't use it, that would probably work fine. (Or even lose the reservation if I don't sit down by 9 am or something)

Booking a desk for multiple days is definitely something we've been thinking about, and we built it into the product for the same reasons you're saying.

Our workspaces are pretty personal. If you come into work, the chair is at the wrong height, monitors wrong, and you don't have what you need, it doesn't work.

But if you know you can have the same desk for the next 2 weeks on the days you want to come in, it can work. Losing the reservation or a penalty could be an interesting addition too -- we'll keep it in mind.

Dedicated lockable rolling carts work well in this situation. My external keyboard, mouse and miscellany roll around to whatever desk is available.

That’s a great idea. I’ve also seen a less secure “cubby” model where people just have trays.

There is little worse than hoteling desks. One of the reasons our current facilities is a ghost town is nobody wants to use a hot swapped desk. Sure, we have an aggressive cleaning staff... but nobody wants to reuse a mouse/keyboard right now. There is a distinct lack of private space and storage and most don't want random hands on their space. I doubt we have more than 20 people in a facility that can house thousands right now - all with hot swapped desks. (The few that do show up have offices) We 'optimized' the space in a cattle car open space... and nobody wants it that actually works in that cost effective space. Shocker.

Thanks for that perspective, I know the “ick” factor is at an all-time high right now about shared surfaces, but I’m not sure that will last forever. We’ve seen a variety of models across our client base. For people coming in frequently or with specific desk set ups, hot desking may not be the answer. For those wanting an easy set up 1-2 days a week while they attend in person meetings, it might be. Our software supports both dedicated desk setups and flexible desks for that reason. There is likely not a one-size-fits-all for every organization, role, or individual.

I’m curious - was your office hotelling pre-pandemic or is this a new model?

Pre-pandemic.

Hello, Interesting idea and decent execution, congratulations on the launch (A slack bot would also be an interesting add on). But to be honest, I am flabbergasted by pricing model. My current assumption is that it is mainly just a scheduling software, so does it provide the same value as Gmail enterprise ( considering nearly same pricing ) ?

Different use cases. If Worksphere has researched the regulations and guidance around returning to in-office work then this could be a great value.

Half of the value might be "if you use this solution then you are compliant" with the other half coming from the actual tooling to orchestrate "you can work in office today but you can't because you came in yesterday and other people need to have meetings".

I'm not familiar with competitors in the space but my gut reaction to the pricing is that most companies will see $6/mo of value from streamlining an employee's return to the office.

If they can promise compliance, this is worth $200/desk/month easy.

I don’t think they can realistically promise that, though...

We've been paying particular attention to California, since minimum workplace contact tracing standards and workplace COVID exposure notification were signed into law with AB-685 and SB-1159.

The other part is getting people to do all the things needed. Mostly that's making it easy to do, which is where this kind of put-it-on autopilot approach to set an office schedule helps, and making it really easy to go into the office for a day.

It's not machine learning and sensors to make sure people are wearing a mask and staying 6 feet apart, but it does meet the bar for most companies.

Or maybe a better question might be, how does one arrive at the pricing model for a product like this ?

We looked at traditional workplace management software products like iOffice and SpaceIQ. They tend to be a lot more expensive. We also looked at adjacent services like scheduling software for hourly workers and meeting room booking software. So far we feel good about this pricing. But we're still early and may adapt based on customer feedback.

Ok, but SpaceIQ also provides IOT integrations, way finder and some other features. But I understood the direction. Thank you for the comments and best of luck !

Great idea on the slack bot. Would you prefer using a slack bot instead of an app for scheduling?

We only charge for active employees who are scheduled in office (excludes remote employees). Customers have responded positively to this pricing model so far. But we are still learning.

The audience for this tool is used to paying bills with commas in them without flinching. It’s not an office catering case where people have a firm anchor to some high-single digit price that includes the food. The office drinks bill might have a comma in it, but the water and electric bills almost surely do.

My gut is people are responding positively because they see it as so insanely underpriced as to be not worth worrying about.

For one thing, no one who sees $6 of value won’t see $10 of value, so you could raise prices 67% right there. (Maybe there’s an odd person who sees $5 and is willing to pay $6.) You might even find more takers at $100-200/desk/month than $6/user/mo. It’s easy for them to budget; it solves a problem they have; you might look more credible or easier for the office manager/harried HR person who doesn’t care if they pay $120/mo for 20 users or $400/mo for 4 desks. Those numbers are “the same” for office managers.

Look up patio11’s general advice (tl;dr: charge more) and take it to heart. Best.

Thanks we'll definitely take a look. The range of prices on solutions in this space is incredibly wide.

There's simple things for crazy cheap, complicated things with giant price tags, all intertwined in a brand new land-grab to get adoption.

The founder of Superhuman.com recently introduced us to the Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter, and recommended we also check out the book 'Monetizing Innovation' -- more to learn!

Yes certainly! A slack bot would certainly help in ease of use among team members.

I'm just finishing at Slack app to reserve his place at the office. It will be available in a few days ;)

I feel like so many companies are moving to the hybrid or fully-remote model. If companies can have a successful remote-first culture (transparency, documentation, no secret water-cooler chats in person, pseudo water-cooler chats over chat + video), the the hybrid model is a no brainer.

I feel like I've heard about Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Salesforce embracing remote work. And Stripe, Gitlab, Automattic, and many others had already embraced remote work.

Worksphere is definitely on the upswing of a sea change.

I think the minute you have hybrid, the water-cooler chats return. You can call them “secret” or you can call them “casual and opportunistic”, but they’re going to happen and they’re sometimes going to spawn a good idea.

Then you might force people to memorialize that idea in some form, but you can’t/shouldn’t/can’t stop people from chatting in the break areas and, especially at the start of hybrid, it’s going to be very fertile ground that your company should encourage and foster (and maybe channel) rather than taking steps to discourage. “Sorry Pat, you know the rules; we’re not allowed to speak except on slack.”

Thanks! We agree, there's upsides for both companies and employees to adopting hybrid and remote models. Remote is great for some, but we know it doesn't work for every company/culture or role. Transparency and being intentional about this shift absolutely needs to be a part of the conversation to avoid any downside.

Literally no-one I know wants to hotdesk. It's the proletarian option for junior staff; it's a very clear form of cost-cutting.

A fair few people I know do want to visit the office 3 of 5 days, sure.

Reading this sort of thing is just bizarre. It's like that special brand of American "fake smile".

Open offices cut costs too. Are they better?

"Everything is fine".

Good idea, congrats! Have you considered building a platform for remote workers connected to these features? I mean, offices could rent out their spare desks for other people not in their organization, and remote workers could book them for a limited time.

Not the same use case, but I think it's not far from what you offer.

I was looking at the recent crop of products like the Comfy app, and Envoy's addition of safety features. How big of an issue is this for companies, really? What's your size, rate of growth at this stage? I've seen the basic requirements for legal compliance effectively solved with regular surveys & spreadsheets.

Thanks for asking! There are definitely a lot of products converging on this space. To address the safety features specifically our clients have found using surveys/spreadsheets don't scale past 15-20 employees coming into office, especially for busy workplace management teams. With regulations like AB 685 the reporting requirement is a 24-hour window, so if you're trying to contact trace hundreds of employees over a couple weeks, or tracking your occupancy data, this could take hours out of someone's day. Not to mention having to constantly remind and send out manual notifications for employees to take their surveys. With our system this is automated and you can have a report in seconds. Longer term we feel the hybrid work features like desk booking and office usage data offer real value. This is hard to accomplish without scheduling tools.

"75% of office employees report that they want a hybrid in-office and remote schedule"

massive, massive citation needed here

This was from a survey by The Adecco Group, where they asked 8000 people from eight countries, but we've seen similar stats across several surveys.

Love the user name, BTW. :-)

If you're curious, source is here: https://www.adeccogroup.com/future-of-work/latest-insights/w...