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Although companies and startups are already requiring their employees to return to offices, the job market is not like what it was before 2020. Employees are scattered around the world, some work from a permanent office, some from home and some in work complexes. In short, it’s quite a headache to keep track of employees and expenses. So this is exactly what Gable, the new startup of Israeli Microsoft veterans, wants to solve.
In which office are the other colleagues?
Gable is developing a platform that allows employees in organizations to go to work in more than 2,000 workplaces around the world in a Booking-like interface – from a desk, to a meeting room and also an office for a day. But in addition to the booking system, employees can also see which of their colleagues have reserved space at the company’s offices or other premises available on the Marketplace, allowing team members to work together. Among the brands of the work complexes that operate on the platform you will find ventureX, Studio by Tishman Speyer, Bond Collective, and also Mindspace. According to the company, most of the complexes in the system are available in the United States. Gable operates in a SaaS format where it charges $10 for each user of the platform, in addition to a commission from ordering workspaces.
Image: Gable
On the other hand, Gable also has a system designed for the organization itself, where it can establish different rules for work such as a budget for each and every one, which employees can book places and how often, what types of premises can be booked and in which locations, and more. Gable’s system also allows for the management of the company’s existing premises, if it has its own offices, and this is in addition to the possibility of connecting to the other premises in the Marketplace.
Some of you may feel that this story is reminiscent of the early years of WeWork, but in a conversation with Geektime, Lisa Mash Levin, CEO and co-founder of the company, explains that Gable’s big advantage in making sure she doesn’t find herself in the same trouble as WeWork lies in the fact that she doesn’t own In her own real estate: “Today we have more than three times the amount of spaces of WeWork. Since we are not limited by real estate and do not own the properties, we can easily grow with our customers and their employees and thus give them a truly global response to all their employees. Our companies grow and the amount of spaces available to them grows with them. We see WeWork and the workspaces as a supplier in our marketplace for employees who want to book a place. On the contrary, we allow those workspaces to have access to companies and employees who would not necessarily use their spaces without Gable.” According to her, companies that work with Gable report that they manage to save about 50% of their real estate budgets.
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We couldn’t help but be intrigued and asked Mash Levin to take a look at the system’s analytics to understand what the office world of 2023 will look like, and according to her, employees come to the office twice a week on average. “We see that 50% of employees leave home to work with other people, and the second most common reason is to increase their productivity,” she said.
16 million dollars in his pocket
Today, Gable announces the completion of a $4 million seed fundraising round with the participation of Ulu Ventures and Foundation Capital and a $12 million A round led by SemperVirens and Foundation Capital, Tishman Speyer Ventures and the investors from the seed round participated in the round. Gable was founded in 2020 by Lisa Mash Levin (CEO) and Amri Habib (CTO), after the two worked together in senior roles in Microsoft’s local team. Today the company employs about 16 people, 7 of them in Israel, and it plans to expand its research and development center located in Israel.