How did the worklib project come about, and with what ambition?
Charles Vestur - Worklib was created in June 2021. And very early on, we received investment from the Accorwhich is a minority shareholder. The Accor group was keen to develop workspaces in its hotels, as is the case with Wojo. Having missed out on the Booking or AirbnbAt the same time, there was a determination not to miss this turning point, as there was also bound to be room for a flexible space distribution platform. Hence their investment in the worklib project, with the aim of setting up the future world leader in workspace reservation. Like Booking or Airbnb on accommodation.
So you're already aiming for world leadership?
Charles Vestur - Yes, absolutely. That's our ambition, and we're giving ourselves the means to achieve it. We already have a strong presence in Europe. We can manage bookings anywhere in the world thanks to our platform. Of course, we still have a much greater density of spaces in France. Today, worklib is 20,000 workspaces, including 6,000 in France. But we are gradually beginning to have a global offering, which we are able to expand according to the needs expressed by our customers.
What are your objectives in terms of product offering?
Charles Vestur - The aim is toreach the 50,000 mark at the end of the year, with a particular focus on international business, as our coverage of the French market already reaches 96 % of the territory.
How would you describe the current state of the market in which you are positioned?
Charles Vestur - We feel there's an opportunity in Europe because there aren't really any established players. Competition will be stronger in the UK and the US, which are more mature markets, and therefore also targets for us. In France, we are relatively alone, and the market still needs to mature.
Apart from the investment, what else does the Accor group offer you?
Charles Vestur - Accor is working with us on a number of levels. Obviously, it's been a customer since the very beginning of worklib, or almost. There's also the sourcing of workspaces: we have privileged API access with WojoWe work very well with Wojo, and we work well with them. We work very well with Wojo, and we have a good working relationship with them, while remaining agnostic, I would like to make that clear. It was a strong premise from the outset: worklib's aim is to become a world-leading platform, which in no way favours the Accor or Wojo networks.
Who are your contacts within the company?
Charles Vestur - The difficulty is that this affects the HR and property functions, which have historically been very far apart. With teleworking and the development of hybrid working, the two have found themselves having to communicate, but not always in the best possible way. To make real progress, we need to get everyone around the table. Allowing employees to telework for two days is an HR issue, but it also has a very real impact on real estate and the amount of office space needed. We try to help companies think about these issues. It's a question of understanding how more flexible workspaces can be both a a lever for employee commitmentand form an integral part of a property strategy to make savings.
What is the point of coworking operators using an intermediary like worklib?
Charles Vestur - From a business flow point of view, these operators need not only to have their own sales force, of course, but also to rely on intermediaries like us to generate business.
Worklib's activity is not limited to coworking spaces...
Charles Vestur - There are two types of workspace reservation. The first concerns third-party spaces, outside the office: coworking spaces, hotels, and a whole variety of places that we could address in the future, such as flats or restaurants. Obviously, we started with coworking spaces because it's their job to host teleworkers. So it was also simpler for us from an operational security point of view. But our ambition is really to go beyond coworking spaces to offer the widest possible range of services to our users, to meet the widest possible spectrum of uses. Alongside this typology of third-party spaces, since reserving a meeting room whether in a third-party space or in the office is all the same, we are offering organisations the opportunity to bring together in a single application all the workspaces available to their employees, and therefore to model the office spaces in our application too. This also provides statistics on the rate of use of spaces, by type, by team, etc.
Do you plan to open your own spaces in the future?
Charles Vestur - No, we don't. In the same way that Booking, to my knowledge, does not have its own hotel.
What is your roadmap as the new CEO?
Charles Vestur - Our first topic is positioning, covering more and more uses associated with flexible working spaces. Until now, we've been dealing with 3 types of space: the open space, the private office and the meeting room, with fairly standard uses, which were an obvious starting point for us. We've started to successfully develop a slightly more 'event-based' use: spending a day together as a team in a coworking space or hotel, to create a sense of cohesion. This involves adding a bit of service, particularly catering, which we are capable of doing. The range of uses is quite infinite.
Coworking is a very broad term. Are there any minimum service commitments guaranteed in the spaces listed by worklib?
Charles Vestur - We have some minimum quality criteria, if only in terms of photos, with manual control. But our aim is also to be able to offer a wide variety of spaces. Sometimes a professional on the move doesn't necessarily need a very high quality space, he's looking for proximity above all. So we try not to be too restrictive. But we do offer a fairly advanced filtering capability to find the right spaces for the right use. For example, we can opt for natural light, or specific equipment such as an overhead projector...
Is there a user feedback and rating system?
Charles Vestur - We are collecting this feedback, but we are not yet posting it on the platform. We may have to do so in the future.
What about the events dimension you mentioned? Is this a priority development area for worklib?
Charles Vestur - We make a real distinction between large and small events. Often, there is a budget threshold below which managers are directly responsible. For small team events, the itinerary is 100% digitalisable: it's a space and a bit of service. Above a certain threshold, there will be a dedicated events team responsible for organising the event, because the process becomes very manual. This is less our intention, even though we have someone in-house who can handle complex requests. Some customers have clearly identified us as their single point of contact, and we like to be able to respond to their requests in order to nurture our relationship with them. But we don't have a proactive strategy in this area. Our strategy really revolves around the platform and everything we can digitise.
How do you see the relationship with the office and the balance with teleworking in this post-Covid world?
Charles Vestur - There was a kind of pendulum swing: after making a very strong commitment to the teleworking With the health crisis, companies want to tighten the screws, in different proportions between the United States and France, because the Americans had gone really far in teleworking, and now some companies are taking very radical positions. Full remote" employees have been forced to return to the office three days a week. Of course, this is a game-changer, especially for those who have moved house. But from our point of view, we really need to strike a balance between the office, home and third places. Not least because they all serve different purposes. That's what our platform is all about: offer all the workspaces in an organisation to be able to direct employees to the right space according to use. Of course, the worklib project was also inspired by this post-crisis dynamic: we can see that there is complexity, and specialists are needed to manage it. Finally, from our point of view, it's encouraging to see that companies don't really know what they want to do, and that we can help them. In addition to the technological solution that is our core business, we are also thinking about taking this support a step further.
