Ask any founders or CEO how they feel about the process of searching for office space for their companies, and the majority of them will shake their heads. Some may even lash out. There is a prevailing sense that searching for office space is, if not horrible, at least somewhat broken. Part of the reason for this is that the industry itself, writ large, remains offline. If you want to find great space, you have to go to a broker. Brokers have long horded their “proprietary data” keeping it offline as a result, but visit a handful of them and there’s a good chance you’ll find some overlap in their listings result.
Deciding to create a solution, Jason Freedman co-founded 42Floors, which launched in May afterafter graduating from Y Combinator’s Winter 2012 class. Simply put, 42Floors aims to make the process of renting office space and commercial real estate easier by aggregating listings data from landlords and sellers, adding photography and then allowing users to search by indexing rentals, coworking spaces, sublets and executive suites.
