Missed our Hot Seats session with 3 booking aggregators?

Last week, I hosted a new kind of panel at Global Workspace Association 's 2024 conference in Phoenix, Arizona.

(Yes, Phoenix is hot. No, I didn't record myself frying an egg on the pavement. Next time?)

In it, I posed some of your ?? burning questions to the following panelists:

• Elba Elizondo Bortoni from Alliance Virtual Offices
• Caroline Hecht from Preferred Office Network
• Ben Wright from The Instant Group

??? We discussed:

• Are aggregators in the business of ad arbitrage or driving net new demand? (Q via Katharine Chestnut )

• How to balance multiple options and product types without overwhelming leads? (Q via Michael Dubicki )

• How important are automated bookings today? And what about in 5 years? (Q via Caleb Parker )

• Are platforms incentivized to fill spaces listed with them, or are they just looking to fill maps with markers for enterprise contract sales? (Q via Jerome Chang )

But their involvement started long before we got mic'd up and took the stage.

Before any panelist could take the stage, they dug into their data and shared their numbers.

Numbers that had never EVER been shared outside the firm, let alone on stage, before.

?? The data we explored:

• The total aggregate number of US Dollars put right into operators' pockets this year.
• Where that revenue was going geographically.
• The marketing channels and campaigns revenue was coming from.
• The kinds of flex products are being bought via each aggregator.
• The split between manual processes and automated bookings.
• And the major client sizes per platform, by revenue.

?? Missed the panel?

(Or want a copy of the data deck?)

We're summarizing the excellent answers (and the fantastic audience Q&A), and we will be sharing those notes and the full slide deck in a future newsletter.

This will land first via the official email version.

So, hop over here and register for that (for free).

P.S. The email version is my favorite (and longest-running) version of ThisWeekInCoworking.

I think you'll love it. Over 1000+ industry leaders do, some since 2020.

?? Register for free here.

?? A quick list of thanks:

• All three panelists and their teams for being so open with your insights and data sets.
• Everyone in the room, who were not only engaged with us on stage but stayed in the room asking more and more questions - foregoing an earlier lunch for more insights and data.
• Kim Lee and the content team for asking me to lead this.
• Giovanni Palavicini , Cid Rhomberg , and the board for approving the idea.
• Megan Brown and Miranda Stewart for organizing the fantastic event and helping make it possible to host a different kind of panel.
• The team at Syncaroo , led by Robert Kropp , that just kept building and deploying great integrations (both with aggregators and across flex space tech stacks) so I could sneak away and lead this.
• Mike LaRosa , who dived in to help coordinate ThisWeekInCoworking's content and coverage at/around the conference. (Watch out for those bits of content. cc Sofia Stolberg , Annie Draper , Rubin Beckner , Blaize Randell , Miriam Darby . Y'all are awesome!)
• Everyone who shared at the conference, on stage, in the corridors, over lunch/drinks/demos.
• And certainly most importantly, thanks to Liza Busygina who through superhuman powers made the logistics work for me to you know... "just hop across the country quickly"... to deliver what I believe to be precedent-setting data sets for improving the transparency around lead- and sales-platforms across the flex space industry.

?? Want to get involved?

• Aggregators - we're still open to putting together an independent report, if you're willing to share your numbers, ping me a DM or email.
• Events - want a Hot Seats session at your event, on any flex space topic, featuring key people of influence not usually seen/heard on stage? Hit me up.

?? TL;DR (too long; didn't read):

We did a panel filled, that shared brand new data sets from 3 very different aggregators.

Want the deck, data, and insights that were shared on the panel?

?? Subscribe to TWIC emails for free here.