The Office Exchange revenue, CEO Devin Davie, team size, customer count, churn, and more in 2022.

hey folks my guest today is devin davies the founder and ceo of the office exchange after graduation from radford university in 2012 he began with an internship at thompson reuters and then he began working full-time for cgi federal in 2012 as a software developer now he's building the office exchange which is effectively airbnb for commercial real estate devin you ready to take us to the top let's do it all right so first off how do you get access to the commercial real estate are you buying it are you leasing it how do you do that so it's a great question you know the way in which we're able to get access to the various different spaces in the sierra realm is you know working with you know folks that are looking to offload some of that space you know times are changing in the way in which we leverage space and to be able to get to those individuals you have to understand where they are currently at and there's been a delta in the way in which we work right in the way in which you know folks are moving to hybrid types of models and by proxy of you know reaching out to them either you know directly or you know them finding us eventually on the platform we're able to close that gap to show folks that you know there is a future in how we're able to leverage cre kevin just to be clear how many where do you have office space today is it just in radford so the office space is actually across the nation so the platform is basically a conduit to be able to close the loop on the future of the workflow okay and how many how many individual offices do you have currently on the platform and what's the total uh square footage oh great question so we've got about 50 to 100 different listings on the platform currently and we're growing literally uh just before jumping on this podcast i was having a discussion with another person within the cre realm that's looking to onboard their spaces to the platform and the goal is to really be able to bring the cre space into the future and be able to close the loop on the future of the workforce and again uh for for cre yeah devin the vision makes sense i think my audience gets that what i'm trying to figure out here is why you're gonna be the one that wins that that's what i'm trying to dig here right so breather tried this didn't go so well it was basically an aqua hire when they sold what are you going to do differently oh that's a great question a great question so simplicity right simplicity is number one on the platform okay but devon what does that mean i use breather personally as a customer probably spent over thirty thousand dollars booking stuff it was very easy to use there was no problem with simplicity in my opinion right well you know going to the office exchange is like leveraging how you will book an airbnb it's about how you would go about uh you know easily getting uber eats or anything of that nature it's it can literally take less than 10 minutes to obtain that space you know devin i know that breather did this though like that there they were simple i could do it under 10 minutes it didn't it didn't work it didn't work they flash sold it was a great guy didn't work so what are you doing differently well we're also taking it from the perspective of everybody wins you know a lot of platforms there is a cost to be on the platform to be on the on the office exchange there is no cost to be on our platform whatsoever we take no cost for a host to be on the platform zero so to join the platform you simply are able to create a create your credentials and once your credentials are created you're able to then be able to leverage it instantaneously and posts don't pay you if hosts don't pay you to be on the platform how do you make sure when a consumer like me goes on to book space that that host is actually going to have that space for you why wouldn't they go well wouldn't it just be whoever whichever network brings me the the leaser first is who i'm going to give it to that's a that's a great query as well so what we do is we provide value to the host the hosts are just as important as the guests on our platform right when you are getting the analytics the ai the data to know how to specifically how to better price your space how to better connect to your guest and to actually have the marketing handled by the office exchange by proxy of the office exchange we're able to close that gap and close that loop and that's one of the ways in which we differentiate oh what's going on there youtube good to see you guys now imagine this you love watching these interviews with sas founders but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2807 interviews i've done manually saves you a lot of time well we've done this we've built it into the beautiful interface inside of founder path check this out i'll show you how you can access this in a second but you log in you connect your stripe account you see your valuation real time you can see what it changed over the past 88 days and even set goals for valuation this year now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a sas business so the reason you're going to see three or four different valuations inside of your frowner path dashboard this is all free by the way is because depending on who's doing the buying of your sas company you're going to get a different valuation a vc is going to pay a different valuation private equity firm is different if you're going to do a minority sale that's different and if you sell the whole business that's a different valuation you can see all those when i hover over here right so the teal is what a vc would pay yellow is what private equity and red is if you sold the whole thing outright now what's cool about this is this is not built off random data again you guys hear these interviews on youtube all these datas are built from real time valuation data points founders share with us on the show so traction 1.2 million seed round 3.7 raise they sold 22 percent of their business go in here and filter by the event maybe you only want to see companies that have sold the whole business well here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple maybe you're going out right now and you're raising your seed round well go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down what they raised what valuation they raised at and what percent that they sold there's never been a larger data set of sas valuations than what you can get now inside of founder path and we're thrilled to bring it to you all right we're going to go back to the youtube video here in a second but if you want to check this tool out if you want to jump in and sign up you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link this link founderpath.com forward slash products forward slash evaluations or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products click on get your valuation here and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl again all that valuation data live right inside the platform i hope to see you there all right let's jump back into the interview but pricing do you have great pricing optimization though you need a massive data set i mean everything you just mentioned are what companies that have scale can do airbnb can do pricing optimization because they have the largest data set they can book you because they have the larger the most amount of eyes on them their app has millions of downloads you don't have any of this yet so what's your mouse trap how are you gonna get going yeah so great great question as well you know the the the name of the game is being able to uh execute on exactly the fundamentals of the office exchange and that's providing work-life balance back to folks and in a time in which there is so much uh disruption in this this realm by being able to close the loop from a technological standpoint sorry i just i don't know what that i don't know what that means like can you can you give me real examples here instead of sort of marketing jargon so so it's being able to be tactful about how you reach out to the guest and you actually connect them with the software in and of itself being able to actually bring folks onto the platform and provide value to those hosts be it intrinsic but over time those analytics and data components will add additional value to those folks to keep them on the platform so 50 50 to 100 hosts have signed up today um i think you're getting ready to launch correct me if that's wrong but how do you have anyone that has actually booked time or space in one of those listings yet so we actually got a few folks that are in the process of going through the uh but nobody closed yet no one has actually paid and physically sat in the office that you leased them correct not as often not as yet like i said you know we are still in uh you know soft launch mode and we are launching actually at the end of this month and everything that's cool that's an obviously very exciting time so what is your plan to go find the other side of the marketplace do you have 100 listings how do you go find people to book oh that's that's a great query you know we are we are focusing on heavily on marketing and we're focusing heavily on being able to obtain the right type of uh of folks and companies that are really looking to be able to close the gap on devon devon sorry give me a real example here everything you're saying is like it's very slow and markety like tell me about a listing on your platform what's its address what city and how you're gonna go get a person in radford to book the radford office space a mile from campus so uh so essentially going into so by proxy of the platform right if we have a a space that is available okay that space will be marketed okay it's it's it's leverage we legit leverage digital marketing on the platform to actually reach out to other individuals to close the gap so devin sorry be specific can you just name name one of the listings you have committed what city is it in so we're actually we've moved our headquarters to birmingham alabama from denver and so we we've the company was founded in in denver colorado and then we moved the headquarters actually up to birmingham after rvc backing and the reason for that was to grow the ability to grow our our host on that side of the marketplace and then also to be able to uh actually obtain those guests so when you look at it from the standpoint of the office exchange will be able to devin i'm sorry my question was just can you name a location where there's a host that's committed is that denver there's hosts that are committed in denver there's things that are in new york let's use denver let's use denver okay so let's say it's someone near union union station you have an office space that's 10 foot by 10 foot how are you going to go market that 10 foot by 10 foot space in denver yeah that's a great query so you know it's showing that number one that folks on in the denver area are looking for a solution that are they're able to fulfill the needs of the space there there is so much space that is sitting out there that is under utilized and folks are not coming back to the office so the position and the in the proposal of the office exchange is to show those individuals and show those folks that we're able to close the gap on that occupancy rate where your space is sitting there empty so i'm asking for a specific example how are you going to close the gap on the office space for the 10 foot by 10 foot space next to union station in denver colorado how are you going to fill that space specifically yeah so we're going to go in we're going to make sure that the the platform is and we have the appropriate spaces that are available folks are reaching out on a daily basis to actually look for that space okay how are that's what i'm interested in how are they finding you right now great question so we uh we have we've run a few uh just linkedin ads and you know even though the the site and the platform at this this point is obfuscated we're leveraging kind of a more guerrilla type of marketing strategy to kind of reach out directly to these individuals so we're sending emails we're sending uh we're working through our network to organically reach out to folks to actually bring them on the platform okay organically reaching out to folks to bring them to to find out guests that are interested in leveraging it and that's where we're finding a lot of value until we get to the point where we are we've launched which will be of course at the end of this month and so how do you how do you plan to make money here when you launch that's a great question so you know we are like i said we it comes down to simplicity the the there's once again there's no there's no cost to be on the platform and that's a that's a win-win situation for a host to to essentially be able to go on and have no no devin sorry i i truly agree with you i agree with you sorry this is exhausting i'm just how do you make money i agree with you zero cost is fantastic you have 100 hosts on the platform but like how you gonna make money so we take a simple 9.5 fee on the guest side of the fence so when you actually complete a transaction on the platform it's just a simple 9.5 fee so once again no cost to be on the platform understood one situation but from a guest side an acquisition from their perspective uh it's built into the cost where there's simply a 9.5 service i got got it so if i'm booking as a guest that 10 foot by 10 foot space in denver colorado union station and i'm looking at for two hours 10 a.m to 12 p.m on may 20th and it's a hundred bucks per hour so i'm paying you 200 bucks you're gonna effectively make uh nine point five percent of 200 is what the platform's gonna make correct correct okay it's about 20 about 20 bucks there so and then the rest will go to the obviously owner of the of the space that's correct that's correct and do you allow people to do hour leak or can is it only half day full day so right now it's configured to you know be set up for uh for currently um by the day we have kind of by a day rate and everything but it can be configured to go down to the hour or it can be configured you know on uh you know monthly basis up to two years so you can also book a space on the platform from now until december 31st 2022 and that can be done uh you know for because that's considered a a short-term uh rental and we do we would still take that 9.5 fee from that uh rental of that space on that short shorter under understood now you raised some money to get this going you launched in 2020 i believe how much did you raise uh so we've raised just uh just under a million dollars today and it was that in 2021 so uh in 2021 we raised about a hundred and forty thousand dollars initially from friends and family through our uh initial precede round and then uh during our seed round we've uh you know raised uh uh towards our 1.5 million dollar raise that we're closing here in the next couple months okay sorry how much have you done deals how much have you closed today 140 000 in 2021 from friends and family in precede correct correct okay and you're raising right now another 1.5 million uh correct but we have to date raise uh just under a million dollars so about 950 000. so where is the other 800 000 outside of the friend and family seed round pre-seed round from our venture capitalist firm that we raised with us so when did you do that they participated in the pre-seed round or they did a seed round oh they participated in our seed route which uh is still open uh okay so you so you have a rolling so you've opened a seed round you've closed eight hundred thousand of the cedar and you're raising another eight hundred thousand on the same seed round that's correct i see it right and so what most people in the seat around are selling 10 to 20 of the business were you sort of in that same range uh that that's correct okay so if you end up closing 1.5 million you're basically saying the note you're currently raising on is about a 10 million valuation correct our evaluation is correct okay and when you did the 140 000 precede around friends and family what valuation did you choose to use then so we chose to use a five million uh evaluation at that proceed prior interesting yeah and what requires why does this model require so much capital to get going you know it's it's about ensuring that the tech is correct with a tech background and our founders being within the work uh wait are you you're one of the founders right correct i'm the founder and ceo how many founders are there there are um about three of us what do you mean about you don't know how many founders you have what do you mean about three no no there's uh there's three of us so okay there's i have a i have another founder that um she's uh taking some time off right now but she's still one of the founders but there's the three core founders there's myself uh devin davey there's my cpo robin and there is my cto uh anthony griffith that's great all right well we're rooting for you guys especially as you get closer to launch in the meantime that we're out of time so rapid fire questions here first one last book you read oh last book i read uh goodness what was it we can skip it if you don't have one we gotta move on if you come back to it we'll announce it number two is there is there a ceo you're following or studying i've always i've always followed uh elon musk and uh yeah that's good number three what's your favorite online tool for building a platform probably my favorite online tool for building a platform uh i love i like i enjoy hubspoke spot yes number four how many hours of sleep date every night i get at least six to seven hours of sleep and what's your situation married single kids uh i i have a partner okay any kids uh no kids no kids all right and how old are you devon i'm 32 about to be 33 here in august so happy happy happy early birthday uh last question here what's something you wish you knew when you were 20. oh my goodness something i wish i knew when i was 20 that uh this life goes by really quickly enjoy every single minute that you have take your time and and pursue your passions just pursue your passions and enjoy it oh and milk and honey was the last book i read milk and honey there you go guys officexchange.com launching you're surely helping renters of business renters find short-term and long-term office leases around the country 50-100 listings are already on the platform as he prepares to launch they raised about 940 000 bucks to get going most recently rolling seed around 800k closed 1.5 target at a 10 million valuation as they look to continue to scale and launch devon thanks for taking us to stop thank you so much nathan really appreciate the time and thank you for having me one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every 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