‘Airbnb for office spaces’ FlySpaces takes off in Singapore with $500k seed funding

Paco Sandejas, CEO of Narra Ventures; Mario Berta, founder and CEO of FlySpaces; and John Orrock, CEO of Future Now Ventures.

FlySpaces, which bills itself as an Airbnb for office and retail spaces, tells Tech in Asia today it received a capital injection of US$500,000 from a group of investors, including Future Now Ventures, COENT Venture Partner, and Narra Ventures.

Aside from the three investors, prominent European entrepreneurs Michael Brehm and Thomas Baum, who have been early backers of ecommerce sites like Ensogo, Dealguru, and Foodrunner, contributed some of the seed cash. Plus, one of Germany’s leading real estate broker and service companies, Rubina Real Estate, also took part.

“We’ve taken off,” says FlySpaces founder and CEO Mario Berta. “With this capital, our aim is to conquer Southeast Asia, and we’re moving even faster than we thought.”

The company launched in the Philippine market last October, then went live in Singapore in December after having acquired a good number of merchants in the Lion City.

“Singapore was a logical step for our Southeast Asia expansion. There are no better markets to prove a real estate-sharing economy concept than this island country. With office rents among the world’s highest and signs of slowing growth, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) will need flexibility more than ever,” Mario explains.

Our aim is to conquer Southeast Asia.

“Singaporean players welcomed our arrival into their market very well. In a couple of weeks, we have managed to onboard among the city-state’s biggest co-working and serviced office operators such as JustCo, The Co, Work Central, and Executive Center, and we will also start working on regular companies that simply have extra office spaces and want to sublet to subsidize their crazy rents,” he adds.

FlySpaces offers offices, meeting rooms, and commercial spaces that businesses and entrepreneurs can lease for short periods or whenever they need them.

The concept isn’t new. In the US, several startups like Liquidspace and Storefront are dealing with work and retail spaces. There’s also Breather, which lets users stay in quiet rooms, work in peace or just breath and chill out, as the name implies. But Flyspaces claims to be the first to bring this concept to Southeast Asia, where huge demand for real estate has made the market very “pro-landlord.”

Flexible options

Mario, who spent more than six years in the region, three of them working as an executive at Rocket Internet, says landlords cherry-pick among possible tenants, offering costly contracts with little flexibility in terms of duration.

He also points out how most of the region’s wealth is coming from real estate-related business and how conglomerates have been thriving in an oligopolistic environment in each of their respective markets by owning 80 percent to 90 percent of the office and real estate assets.

“I am happy for the big real estate guys who, in the last decade, became iconic brands in the region, but now it’s time to give back to entrepreneurs, SMEs, and corporations that had fostered their growth. An asset optimization model for office and retail is inevitable in this part of the world,” he says.

Mario adds that startup team has not decided yet on which city to go to next, but progress in Singapore “will be a key decision-making factor.”