The HubLife Experience: Navigating Workspaces in Bucharest

Autor: Elena Vrabie

Have you ever felt trapped working from home, like a little mouse in a spinning wheel, feeling the four walls looming in? Did you ever envision recreating that high school ambiance when you chose who you wanted to rub elbows with? That's how I envision the future of work.??

When the pandemic hit, my working habits didn’t change. I was a communication freelancer working remotely, usually from home. When restrictions were lifted, I didn’t crave meeting people or working outside of my comfort zone. But then 2022 came and I was feeling reminiscent of venting sessions on the office balcony, shared lunches, and bugging co-workers with a tap on their shoulder.?

Remote-first Real Estate

Today, the real estate market and the remote work lifestyle are colliding. Companies are renting empty spaces, while employees are not ready to give back their flexible schedules. So, what if there’s a solution to meet everybody in the middle??

With over 90% of workers wanting to work remotely part of the time, and over 4K hubs in Europe alone, instead of renting spaces that will be occupied 2-3 days per week, companies can reduce the fixed costs of supporting a workplace environment by investing in dynamic alternatives - renting meeting rooms and hot desks in hubs.?

With the global flexible workspace market size projected to reach over $200B by 2030 , it’s reason enough for a dozen CEE startups to have been built in the past years to support us to work from anywhere. YAROOMS - Dragos Badea , Pluria - Andrei Cretu , OfficeRnD - Miroslav Miroslavov , Cowork7/24 - Serkan Kurtulus , and Native Teams - Jack Thorogood , are only but a few.?

"Working remotely and async-first with my team allows me to get more quality time with my family, break a sweat, and start the day off in a very good mood." - Andrei Cretu, co-founder and CEO of Pluria

#HubLife Tomorrow?

At The Recursive, we are a regional team that mostly works remotely. So, my local colleague and I started dipping our toes into #HubLife? (?? that’s our special tag for setting up working dates) at the end of last year. We chose Commons Unirii as it’s central, easy to access, and it’s used by many tech professionals.?

We wanted to socialize one or two times per week to catch up and meet digital nomads physically. As an introvert who gets distracted quite easily and can go for self-isolation with no problems, I need to get out of my comfort zone to grow.

Click, click, book

2023 came and I was talking to people about wanting more of a dynamic option when it comes to Bucharest hubs. “I want something fast and easy, you know? That can give me access to more hubs, and meet new people.” I was telling them. “Well, why don’t you try Pluria?” they shared. And Pluria we tried.?

I first heard of Pluria back in 2021 as a Romanian proptech startup . Then I dived more into their solution when I discovered it was co-founded by a woman - Gabriela Draghia . A year later, I found out that the CEO, Andrei Cretu - one of the “smilingest” (Is this a word? It should. ??) local entrepreneurs, was behind the 7Card project and lives in sunny Spain .

Pluria Review: Flexible Workspaces For Teams

??? This brings us to this year when Pluria raised almost 2M euros to scale their solution in Europe and LATAM. The flexible workspaces for teams tool is available in Romania, Bulgaria, Spain, Colombia, Portugal, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, and Ecuador.?

In Romania, some of the hubs available through the mobile app, which is available both for iOS as well as Android, to book a hot space or a meeting room are aSpace, Mindspace , Smart Hub Bucharest, Commons, V7 Startup Studio , Impact Hub Bucharest , and Hotspot , among others.?

Here is my experience in the past months:

→ ?? The Pluria team set up the account for four of us so we could use it in different countries and cities.

→ We got a team series of entries to their network of hubs, so it’s not limited to a certain number of entries per user, which refreshes every month.

→ You go to the app, search for a hub (we mostly went to V7 Startup Studio this time around), book a hot desk or a meeting room if necessary, set a day and hour and that’s it. I joked that I could do it all in under a minute.

→ ?? You check in when you get to the hub, and you check out when you leave. You also receive this information via email if you need it too.

→ If you have a special space you would like to work in and it’s not on the app, you can recommend it to the team and they can pitch the owner.?

→ ?? As an area to be improved, I know a selection of hubs or spaces (there are also cafes, restaurants, and hotels available on the app) offer breakfast or lunch, and drinks for free or at a special price, but I couldn’t find my way around using this inside the app. My challenge was checking out of a hub and checking into one of these locations when I had one check-in available per day.

→ ? BONUS: I have also heard that this summer the team is preparing some new features, like seeing where your co-workers are so you can join them or book something as a group, and bring guests with you.

--> This article is brought to you with the support of Pluria. <--