Spacious, the London property tech startup founded by Entrepreneur First alumni Tushar Agarwal and Tom Watson, together with ex-advisor to the British Prime Minister Rohan Silva, has closed £500,000 in seed funding. The round was led by Spire Ventures, the VC fund set up by Faisal Butt and ex-Dragon James Caan, while Spacious says the additional capital — its first external fundraise, not including involvement in the Entrepreneur First programme — will be used to boost engineering talent and further build out its platform.
Attempting to help solve the shortage and sometimes spiralling cost of office space for young companies in London, Spacious connects startups and other small businesses with those who have space to rent out, such as professional landlords offering co-working spaces and serviced offices, as well as other burgeoning companies with spare space to share.
In some regards, it can be considered simply as a classic online marketplace play, matching high demand with untapped capacity, with the least friction possible. However, it’s the company’s emphasis on understanding the specific needs of startups that makes it stand out from other property marketplaces.
Specifically, Spacious’ platform lets startups browse available space by criteria that matters most to them, including things like nearby coffee shops and lunch spots, WiFi, meeting rooms, and — crucially — what other startups are housed in the same space. Equally important is that most contracts will be offered on a rolling monthly basis, requiring one month’s notice.
In addition, as well as doing the matching, the startup offers online contracts and payment, as well as making it free to list space. It only makes money if a successful match and lease is made, taking 10 percent of the monthly rent for up to 12 months. Interestingly, despite today’s funding round, the startup has been revenue positive more or less from the get-go, so the fresh capital is really about stepping on the gas now that its model has been proven.
A host of other investors also participated in Spacious’ seed round, including Seedcamp, Brett Akker (Co-founder of Streetcar and Lovespace), Ivan Mazour (Founder of ecommerce intelligence platform Ometria), Guy Westlake (Founder of Lavanda and ex-Head of Marketing at Shutl), Jackson Hull (CTO of OneFineStay), Sheraz Dar (former Marketing Director of Prime Location and FindaProperty), Jonathan Galore (co-founder of Wealthfront.com and CTO at Wonga.com), Andreas Pouros (Co-founder of digital marketing firm Greenlight), and Roualeyn Cumming-Bruce (a former Chairman of Capital Markets at Jones Lang LaSalle London).