LiquidSpace Raises $14 Million In Additional Funding
Surpasses 1 million transactions, introduces curated collections of workspaces
Oct 30, 2014, 10:52 ET
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 30, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- LiquidSpace, the largest real-time marketplace for professional meeting and workspace, announced today it has raised $14 million in Series C financing. The round was led by Roth Capital with participation from Shasta Ventures, Black Diamond Ventures and Lucas Venture Group as well as strategic investors in the commercial real estate sector including Avison Young, GPT Group and Steelcase.
LiquidSpace will use the influx of capital to extend its product capabilities and aggressively scale on its success. The company, which recently surpassed its 1 millionth transaction, has brought the sharing economy to the commercial real estate industry. It enables individuals and companies to instantly find and book meeting and office space, by the hour, day, or longer, across the U.S., Canada and Australia. More than 5,500 workspaces in 600 cities are available on-demand through the LiquidSpace platform. In the coming months, LiquidSpace will expand the range of space offerings available through its marketplace to support additional business use cases, and will also extend its booking options beyond hourly and daily reservations, to support longer duration needs.
"More and more work happens on the go, while most desks and commercial office buildings sit empty the majority of every day," said Mark Gilbreath, founder and CEO of LiquidSpace. "Our platform gives people instant access to the great spaces that surround us. Increasingly, individuals and companies alike are embracing the idea that work isn't a place we go, it's something we do. LiquidSpace is enabling the masses to rethink work and to reimagine their workplace. The ability to find and book work space that suits your project needs, your personality and your location preferences, and to pay only for the duration that you need, is universally appealing. Professionals today have more mobility and choice than ever before and this global trend is fueling great demand for our platform."
"LiquidSpace has built an enviable, customer-centric platform that is disrupting the traditional way office space is leased," said Mark Rose, president and CEO of Avison Young, the fastest growing commercial real estate firm and a new investor in LiquidSpace. "The enormous flexibility LiquidSpace offers to individuals and companies by bringing a real-time marketplace model to office and meeting space is shaping the future of commercial real estate. We look forward to working with LiquidSpace globally."
LiquidSpace, founded in 2010, has experienced rapid growth of its business in the past year. Its customer base has expanded in size and reach across industries and geographies. Its customers include everyone from employees at multi-national corporations like Accenture, Teva Pharmaceutical, and Postmates to small business owners and individual freelancers across the U.S., Canada and Australia. LiquidSpace for Business, introduced earlier this year, enables companies to simply provide departments, teams and groups of mobile employees with secure access to the LiquidSpace marketplace, linked to a central company-provided payment source. With LiquidSpace for Business, companies can also curate the options that their employees will see, to align with overall location, cost and brand preferences.
At the same time demand for flexible workspace has grown, the supply of workspace venues available on LiquidSpace has more than doubled in the past year. As LiquidSpace has focused on growing the supply of on-demand work space, it has continued to introduce new types of spaces to its marketplace. Hotels meeting rooms, conference centers, legal deposition rooms and corporate training facilities are now as easily accessible on-demand as coworking spaces and private offices. In fact, the supply of hotel workspaces available through LiquidSpace has grown by 1060% in the past year.
This week LiquidSpace introduced a redesigned website that introduces curated collections of workspaces. The collections allow customers to quickly find spaces that are best suited to specific business activities such as sales meetings, interviews, strategy offsites, customer trainings, quiet work, legal depositions, swing space, Board meetings, and more. Visit http://www.liquidspace.com to view the curated collections.
The LiquidSpace team continues to deepen its bench, with experienced hires coming from companies across the real estate, business travel and marketplace industries including Regus, Marriott and OpenTable. Chuck Drake has joined the leadership team as VP of Marketing to oversee the company's global branding, marketing and merchandising efforts. Chuck joins LiquidSpace from Groupon and brings extensive marketing leadership experience at high-growth start-ups and category-dominant public companies like Groupon, FiServ and Oracle.
About LiquidSpace
Founded in 2010, LiquidSpace is the largest real-time marketplace for professional meeting and office spaces. The platform uses marketplace technology to dynamically match individual mobile workers and companies with professional work and meeting spaces that meet their needs – in real-time via web or mobile app. Through LiquidSpace, workers can find professional venues to meet and work, real estate owners can drive the utilization of their properties and enterprises can manage and measure the economic efficiency of their asset portfolios. LiquidSpace offers more than 5,500 vetted, reviewed workspaces in over 600 cities across the U.S., Canada and Australia. LiquidSpace is backed by leading investors and partners including Greylock Partners, Floodgate Fund, Shasta Ventures, Roth Capital, Black Diamond Ventures, Lucas Venture Group, Steelcase, CBRE and Avison Young.
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