Valve, the global industry system for flexible workspaces, announces a $4.5M seed funding round led by Project A with participation from Discovery Ventures. Valve provides turnkey sales, marketing and distribution solutions for commercial real estate professionals, online booking platforms and flexible workspace operators to transact across a global network of workspaces seamlessly.
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The funding will expand Valve's reach across North America and EMEA, accelerating the $4.2B of flexible workspace contract value processed by Valve's interconnected partners.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the transition towards turnkey, flexible workspaces. While the number of players in the flexible workspace sector is on the rise, both sides face challenges: Operators struggle to lease space efficiently, and brokerages lack streamlined digital access to inventory, data and content.
Setting a new industry standard, Valve aims to fill the gap in this highly fragmented market to enable both parties to transact more efficiently.
"Valve makes it easy for companies building flexible workspace businesses - whether you are a landlord, operator, brokerage, application or tech entrepreneur," said Nick Roveta, CEO at Valve. "Valve's unified system meets a logical need for all industry players in the flexible workspace ecosystem to have one place to streamline how they partner and grow revenues together."
Through Valve's technology, landlords and operators on the supply side can power up their sales teams with best in class sales tooling as well as distribute content and receive bookings from traditional brokerages, listing sites, and on-demand apps via a centralised inventory and distribution management platform. Operators can connect their data into Valve's global industry system to reach over 2,000 advisors, partners and online booking platforms transacting in the flexible workspace.
On the demand side, brokers, booking platforms and portals gain access to market intelligence, real-time flexible workspace inventory, and an end-to-end booking API to integrate with their proprietary products and solutions. Valve's global industry system provides the source-of-truth via specialist tooling and APIs to over 10,000 flexible workspace buildings globally.
The flexible workspace rental market is the fastest growing segment of commercial real estate, valued at $30B and expected to hit $300B by 2030. Valve already operates across 10,000+ buildings in 250+ cities for 170+ customers.
"Valve is building the infrastructure layer of the fast-growing flex workspace market, and it's a perfect time to capitalize," said Anton Waitz, General Partner at Project A. "The team combines the right mindset, speed and passion for executing Valve's mission and building a company that will help the entire industry thrive."
"Valve's data and technology solution enable JLL to attract more occupiers to our market leading services, access co-working and flexible inventory, and efficiently process flexible workspace," said Tom Pilkington, Head of Online Markets UK, JLL.
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