Liquidspace, a San Mateo co-working platform, won a federal contract worth up to $10 million in the first year, putting the company on a path to grow “dramatically” in the next five years.
The company was one of five providers selected last week by the General Services Administration, a federal agency that manages office space and other administrative duties. WeWork, Novel Coworking, DeskPass and The Yard Operating Co. also were selected.
Federal agencies will be able to access the companies' services to provide flexible office space for government workers. The contracts have four one-year renewal options.
“For them to choose us among only four others has enormous implications,” Liquidspace CEO Mark Gilbreath told me, citing the size of the federal workforce.
“We think the future has caught up with us now — we’re no longer just yelling against the wall of the traditional real estate world,” he said. “There are tailwinds behind this moment, which is quite exciting.”
Liquidspace is one of two providers selected by the GSA that does not actually own or operate real estate. It operates a platform that allows property owners and tenants to list office space available for lease by the month, day and even the hour. The company collects a portion of revenue earned when space on its platform is leased.
“This is a powerful inducement for space providers to list their space on our platform,” he said.
Gilbreath, who founded the company in 2011, said the platform currently has more than 50,000 spaces listed by around 5,000 unique users in over 2,600 markets nationally. Many of the platform’s space providers are small commercial landlords, he said, and they will now see a share of the contract awarded to Liquidspace.
The company's connection to the small business community is one of two major factors that led to the its selection, Gilbreath said. The other, he says, is its geographic reach: It has spaces available for lease not just in major markets, but in secondary, tertiary and rural markets.
“That’s a superpower for the GSA, to be able to serve their agencies and employees wherever they reside — not only in shiny markets like New York City and D.C.,” he said.
Liquidspace has 50-plus employees, though he declined to disclose the exact count or the company's revenue or valuation.
At the end of last year the company launched Liquidspace Enterprise, a platform for large corporate users interested in using its marketplace in a more systemic fashion. He declined to name specific users, but said the company had signed on household-name technology, social media, insurance and pharmaceutical companies. And the stream of interest has only strengthened as major employers like Twitter have embraced flexible work models for their employees.
The GSA began soliciting applications from coworking space providers in late 2019, part of an effort to reduce tens of billions of dollars in lease costs annually. Liquidspace was one of 28 applicants that responded to the agency’s request for proposal.
