I was thinking the same thing, @bramk! I know several founders with extra desk space that might be open to this. It's also fun to have new faces in the office.
@bswen I can tell you from experience at PivotDesk that it's all about supply. Demand is fairly easy to capture because when someone is looking for space they are actively searching. The supply is something that has to be curated and people need to be convinced why they should share their space - they aren't usually going to actively search for it.
i'm curious how you came to the half day for $5 as a minimum. are you setting prices across the board or letting those with excess space choose their price?
@fletchrichman
Hello,
Yes, we've figured out that supply will be the bottleneck. We think we're going to have a leg up on competitors in this regard, however, by building a true peer-to-peer marketplace. By opening up home offices, recording studios, photo studios, hobby rooms and the like we believe we can build a different supply than the others in this space, like PivotDesk, which we very much respect, who are focused on corporate office space. While we think that space is definitely lucrative, we're going to try for a true peer-to-peer play. We also think SpareChair will be a clever offline networking tool as you can find specific people to work with, not just workspaces.
We will let hosts set the price for their space with a minimum of $5 per session, however long that session be, full day, half day, a couple hours. We set a minimum because we believe that coworking is valuable and by formalizing the transaction we are able to provide basic trust and safety features (and eventually insurance) in the marketplace. We also see SpareChair really opening up more coworking options for remote workers and business travelers beyond coworking spaces.
We'll be launching an invite only beta very soon, if you're interested we'd love to have you try it out and hear what you think. Request an invite at http://sparechair.me.
Thanks for your thoughts and questions!
Brady
Hey all. Thanks for adding SpareChair to Product Hunt. We'll be launching the web app soon. We're focused on both helping you find cool, productive workspaces and interesting people to work with. The number of Americans working remotely will grow by an order of magnitude over the next five years from about 3 million to 30 million. Working remotely has a lot of advantages but sometimes big disadvantages including loneliness, professional isolation and accountability that can't be remedied with virtual connectivity and distractions at home and the cafe. We're here to help solve these problems. Would love to answer any questions and thanks again!
Brady
Cofounder, CTO SpareChair
Product Hunt
Halp
Swan Bitcoin
hiring tool
Table 2 Site
hiring tool
Swan Bitcoin
Swan Bitcoin
Startup Stash