Hybrid office booking platform Officely bags $2.8 million seed round

Officely, a desk booking service for hybrid offices, has raised US$2 million (A$2.8m) in seed funding.

The round was led by investor TEN13 alongside angels such as Go1 co-founder Vu Tran and Luxury Escapes co-founder Adam Schwab. The funds will be used to expand the team, and grow the product offering and feature sets.

Officely was launched in April 2021 by co-founders Max Shepherd-Cross and Rich Turnbull. It now has more than 1,500 companies using the platform, with more than 38,000 employees globally using Officely to book into their offices and collaborate with coworkers.

It’s something of a pivot for the paid after founding Y Combinator-backed HotelFlex, a hotel booking technology company sidelined by the Covid lockdowns that closed down hotel accomodation. So they reset and when from booking beds to booking desks.

With people returning to the office to work, but at a lower frequency, Shepherd-Cross said the five-day week in the office is dead.

“Employees now go into the office when they want to collaborate with colleagues, but will likely stay at home if they need to focus,” he said.

And employers have been forced to adapt to this lasting shift. COVID-19 has caused a lasting and defined change in how and where people want to work.”

Officely enables workers to book office days, facilitate bookings of meeting rooms, car parks and lock-in slots when particular teammates are in the office, as well as providing reporting for management on office usage and utility. 

Shepherd-Cross, the startup’s CEO, it’s like the Calendly for the hybrid office, making booking into the office easy within existing work tools  such as Slack, and soon, MS Teams. He said that seeing so many companies are roll out Officely in multiple offices after successful trials is proof that their model is sticky and employees love having the flexibility and picking power that it provides.

TEN13 Managing Partner, Stew Glynn said the pandemic changed the way white collar staff engage in work.

“Software tools like Officely are building at the epicentre of the global workforce market which is adjusting to a new-normal of hybrid work and forcing a review of how we all work both now and into the future,” he said.