This Space Works
Startup helps businesses cash in on extra space
KITCHENER — This Space Works finished a six-month long program in a Communitech accelerator with sharply increased revenues, negotiations with possible investors and detailed plans for expansion.
Lise Snelgrove, co-founder and chief executive officer of the business, is among the first cohort of entrepreneurs in Fierce Founders — an accelerator for startups founded or led by women. When she heard about the program, she applied right away and commuted from her Toronto home after she was accepted. “We were thrilled,” said Snelgrove. This Space Works finds property owners with empty rooms they want to rent out, photographs the space and lists that inventory on its website. Businesses that need a room for a few hours or a few days can browse what’s available, and book the space online.
Revenues for the startup doubled during the program, said Snelgrove. “And that’s on a bootstrap budget,” she said.
This Space Works rents out meeting rooms in Waterloo, Ottawa, Toronto, Richmond Hill, Etobicoke, Oakville and Mississauga. It will soon have space in Vancouver.
“We are going to expand across Canada this year, and expand into the U.S.,” said Snelgrove.
The startup has two full-time employees in addition to Snelgrove, two photographers who document all of the rooms and space available, and a website developer.
A few years ago, Snelgrove was working as a marketing director for Rogers Communications. Most of her team lived in Toronto’s west end. They all drove into the city core every morning in their own cars for meetings, before scattering across the city again to meet with clients.
“It just seemed like a flawed setup to me,” said Snelgrove.
She thought it would be better to have team members meet once or twice a week for a few hours to share ideas and talk about their clients. But coffee shops and restaurants are not places for confidential conversations about clients.
Snelgrove and her team were selling mobile solutions to corporate customers. She believed they should have been living what they were selling.
“But the issue of space was always our problem,” said Snelgrove. “So that’s how I started the idea, but I didn’t have the solution for it.”
While taking a course at the Ontario College of Art and Design on digital innovation and physical space, Snelgrove met Janice McDonald, who would become her partner in This Space Works. They started talking.
Snelgrove told McDonald about her idea for renting out temporary meeting rooms where teams could meet and then quickly disperse. McDonald told Snelgrove about a conference she had just attended in San Francisco where one of the founders of Zipcar talked about excess capacity.
Car sharing, ride sharing and Airbnb are all based on the same principle — renting out excess capacity for short rides or for short
stays. Snelgrove and McDonald started researching and found a lot of people interested in renting out empty meeting rooms.
Snelgrove left Rogers in 2013 to pursue the startup full-time. This Space Works made its first sale in January 2014. It was slow going at first, but Snelgrove now views that as a blessing. The startup was able to build up its inventory of available spaces in several cities.
By the end of 2014, business was taking off.
“In 2015, we tripled our revenue, then we doubled it again in 2016,” said Snelgrove.
During all this time, Snelgrove was driving to the Communitech Hub in the Tannery building in downtown Kitchener for events, conferences and seminars. That’s how she heard about Fierce Founders. She finishes the program at the end of this month.
The program allowed the startup to fast-track its growth, said Snelgrove.
“It has access to people and contact and networks that will open doors so quickly for you,” she said. “It’s been fantastic for us.”
Someone at Communitech heard Snelgrove talking about her search for an accountant with expertise in startups, the digital economy and who provided services online. Within minutes, she received an email about who she needed to call, and she quickly found herself chatting to her new accountant.
“They are exactly what I was looking for,” said Snelgrove. “I don’t know how I would have found them, I had been looking for so long.”
After an interview, Snelgrove quickly leaves the Tannery building. She is headed for a meeting with investors. Right behind her is the second cohort of startup founders waiting for the Fierce Founders program to begin, all of them hoping for increased revenues, expansion and talks with investors.