Find available Wi-FI with TouchdownSpace’s new app for iPhone. (Screenshot of app)
From Nick Barron. Follow him on Twitter @nbarron; email him at nick[AT]borderstan.com.
As remote working is under assault by companies like Yahoo and Best Buy, a DC-based company is making it easier for mobile workers to find locations with Wi-Fi.
A new feature to TouchdownSpace’s iPhone app allows anyone to locate more than 2,000 Wi-Fi hotspots in the DC area.
Wi-Fi location is the latest addition to TouchdownSpace’s app, which already made on-demand office space available to mobile workers from an inventory of 240 professional workspaces.
Any user who needs an office for as little as an hour or as much as a day, can use TouchdownSpace’s app to book a space. The startup makes available to users real estate companies’ unused inventory.
In other words, TouchdownSpace is the latest in a number of companies in the collaborative consumption space. Others include Airbnb, Zipcar and Uber.
TouchdownSpace’s goal of helping mobile workers flies in direct contradiction to moves made over the past month by Best Buy and Yahoo, companies who are ending their remote working programs.
Those moves have ignited a war between those who see value in working remotely, and those who believe remote working diminishes an organization’s productivity and value.
While TouchdownSpace CEO Caleb Parker thinks Yahoo and Best Buy are missing the mark in making their decisions, he’s seizing the opportunity.
“I’m personally inviting any Yahoo employee to work from any of our locations for free,” Parker said. “I’m serious. It started out as a joke in one of our internal meetings, but I’m dead serious. Reach out, we’ll get you hooked up.”
Whether or not any Yahoo employees take Parker up on his offer, there are increasing numbers of mobile workers nationwide.
According to the Mobile Work Exchange, more than 135,000 people pledged to work from home during Telework Week in the first week of March. Doing so reportedly saved these workers $12.2 million, and prevented 7,842 tons of pollutants from entering the atmosphere.
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From Nick Barron. Follow him on Twitter @nbarron; email him at nick[AT]borderstan.com.
On a weekday stop into any DC coffee shop offering free WiFi and you’ll see the laptop armies: Folks using technology to do their jobs without being in an office.
A screenshot of the Touchdown app. (Nick Barron)
Now DC-based TouchdownSpace aims to make it easier for the laptop armies to find a base when they need it.
The company provides access to on-demand office space through their website and mobile application (iPhone and Android), allowing you to see on a map offices you can rent by the day or hour. Each listing comes with photos of the space, ratings and reviews, a schedule showing you when it’s free to book — and lets you book the space.
TouchdownSpace also offers a concierge booking service, called White Glove Booking, which allows you to tell the company what you need, when and where you need it, and they handle scheduling and booking for you.
The company’s goal is to meet what TouchdownSpace CEO Caleb Parker sees as a need for smaller businesses to lower costs typically associated with having an office.
“We believe the entrepreneur and SMB are the key to economic growth, and want to help them break free from expensive leases so they can invest in growing their companies,” Parker said.
TouchdownSpace only works with companies who offer flexible renting options, and who have staff to manage and clean office space. In other words, TouchdownSpace isn’t offering up a law firm’s extra office for you to rent.
The company got its start when Parker and TouchdownSpace’s COO Svet Voloshin were running another company called Executive Space Solutions. Their customers kept asking for temporary office space.
“Our name (TouchdownSpace) actually came from our customers, who said, ‘We need a place where we can touchdown between meetings,’ ” Parker said.
Given recent trends, the need for lower cost, on-demand office space is likely to go up.
For example, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study a few years ago predicted freelance positions will make up at least half of new jobs created as America climbs out of recession.
Today TouchdownSpace is only operating in DC, but expects to be in New York City, Boston, Atlanta, Chicago and San Diego by the end of March.
And in a few weeks Parker says his company will add to their map of places you can book WiFi hotspots throughout the DC Metro area. These spots will not be bookable, but could be anything from a coffee shop to a library.
TouchdownSpace will rely on users to populate the map. Further down the road users will be able to rate and review the various hotspots.
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