The meta-office

We are currently in the middle of the most dramatic shift in working culture the world has ever seen, accelerated of course, by the pandemic.

Whilst we all frantically created NFT apes and avatars to replace our previous existence in the office, metaverse concepts / Web3 startups just sneezed and VC's opened their wallets.

Video conferencing startup Hopin raised $450mn at an eye-watering $7.75bnn valuation. The company has subsequently laid off 30% of its staff and is trading at a 40% discount in the private secondary market.

Alongside this, Meta got ripped apart in the media for the big reveal of their ￡8.5bn investment in Web3 projects that fell dramatically short of the promise of replacing that in-office water cooler moment.

Now we have passed the peak of exaggerated expectations, it feels like we are comfortably sitting in the path of enlightenment phase.

The big question is, what does the plateau of productivity mean for global office culture and what are the big opportunities to support this transition?

For me the thing that ultimately holds this utopic transition back (ignoring screaming kids and the dirty washing basket that stares at you all day) is the power of human interaction.

Enough pontificating, who will the winners be?

Here's two from me:

Casual Dining

The resurgence of casual dining is picking up pace and it's really exciting to see.

Amazing city locations are still going pandemic prices to the right companies, luring commitment and accelerating the transition. On top of this, the people spending time in the city are using it to really connect with employees over coffee, lunch or a drink after work.

A great example of this is WatchHouse coffee who are coincidentally live on Crowdcube right now ; )

I caught up with their Founder, Roland Horne for a couple of personal insights on the trends he is seeing.

"The resurgence in casual dining has been really beneficial to our trading post-pandemic as people return to work and we struck some fantastic deals with progressive landlords to springboard out of Covid. This saw us open four new Houses in 2021/2."

"In the last 12 months we have, opened four new Houses, recorded 88% like-for-like revenue growth FY21-22, sold over 1 million coffees and roasted 26 tonnes of coffee at our Maltby Street Roastery - an increase of 234% on the previous year."

If you want to check out the WatchHouse pitch you can do so here.

Please invest aware. Your capital is at risk.

Office fit-out companies

Co-working makes a lot of sense on paper but why do you need to travel to the city to sit at a desk on video calls?

The future of a company office needs to provide a deeper level of connection to staff and offer an experience that they can’t get by sitting on zoom in their boxers at home.

Codi just raised $16m from a16z to prove this exact point.

The UK equivalent is called Kitt Offices, backed by Hoxton and led by the fantastic Steve Coulson & Lucy Minton. Ex-Just Park leadership (Crowdcube alumni) and certainly ones to watch.

Driving a deeper identity with staff and making the search, fit out and management a one-click solution for companies sounds pretty bang on to me.

Any comments are welcome and if you want to connect to the guys at Kitt - drop me a note.

Cheers, all - see you next time!

JK