This story is part of a series spotlighting the contributions of Black Portlanders to the regional economy. The Business Journal is profiling one Black-owned business a day through February. You can read the coverage here.
Closer Look:
Company name: Workfrom
Founded: 2016
What it does: "Workfrom is a virtual co-working platform for remote work. We help solo professionals and distributed teams get the productivity boost that comes with others working nearby."
No. of employees: 4
Web: https://workfrom.com
"We all get one shot at this journey of life, take your swings and try to create a better world tomorrow than we have today." That is the closing comment from Darren Buckner, founder of Workfrom. But it seemed like just as good a place to open this Q&A because it encapsulates the energy and passion Bruckner brings to his company and the community. Read on to learn more.
What’s the biggest challenge your business faced in 2022 and how did you address it? 2022 was our first full year of business after pivoting from a business model and product that relied almost entirely on physical locations into products that were more aligned with the suddenly mainstream remote workforce (Virtual Work Club and Virtual Cafe). Our biggest challenge was bringing our products to market and reaching a customer base that was suddenly inundated with products and services marketed as solutions to challenges that came with the shift to a largely virtual workforce. We addressed this challenge by staying close to our early customers, getting their feedback, and quickly iterating our products and services to create more and more value. We understood our offerings were in most cases more effective, but that matters little when you can’t break through the noise (and it was loud!).
What was your biggest success of 2022? Our team was able to acquire our first 50 customers post-pivot in 2022. As anyone who has built something to sell from scratch knows, getting anybody to pay for what you’ve built is no easy task.
What’s the outlook for your business in 2023? We are not yet on solid ground, but we like the trends we see and we are confident in the value we are creating for our customers. We are laser-focused on reaching new milestones in 2023, and ultimately hitting an inflection point with our offerings that put us in more control of our future successes.
What has you most worried? Like many entrepreneurs, I’m most worried that we can’t find alignment on the time and resources needed to do our best work. It’s both a fun and exhausting time to be building in our space, and we have real innovation happening at Workfrom. That said, we are in an emerging market that’s growing and changing quickly — making timing all the more important — which is something we just can’t control. We leave it all on the field.
What’s the best thing the city of Portland and/or the state of Oregon could do to support your business? Remote work is changing the landscape of life and business, whether you are a fan or not. We are fans. So should be the city of Portland and the State of Oregon. To miss the opportunity to invest in such a massive culture and economic shift would be truly shameful and bad for all our friends and family in the region. I’d like to see money invested in local companies that are enabling a more accessible, equitable, and sustainable future of remote work. The fact is our customers can be and are global by definition. The location dependencies and growth constraints many regional businesses experience don’t apply to us. That’s a great opportunity for growth that results in real dollars brought back into the local economy. What’s not to like about that? Where is the funding supporting this category of a company? Let’s not miss this chance to achieve success in what is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Any advice for other founders? Get started. Do your best to get and stay healthy in all ways. You’ll almost always need help and it’s harder than you think to find it. Care less about what someone else’s timeline looks like for you and care more about what being an entrepreneur means for yourself and your loved ones. We all get one shot at this journey of life, take your swings and try to create a better world tomorrow than we have today.
