DeskHoppa service lets you rent out spare desk space

New space-as-a-service start-up DeskHoppa is using AI to help connect those looking for short term use of an office or desk with available co-working spaces.

In today's tech world, work is becoming increasingly remote-capable and travel to meet clients and business contacts can see people away from their offices for a large propprtion of their time. Working from a coffee shop is always a viable option but comes with its own set of limitations and problems, from noise and slow internet to a lack of privacy and office tools.

Start-up DeskHoppa is aiming to help with this problem by connecting remote workers looking for desk space to available desk space for rent. Desks can be rented by the hour, or booked for a full day, week, or month depending on what options the co-working space supports.

Though I found that there were no desks for rent in Belfast on a search, the service's automated twitter account had reported that people in Belfast are frequently searching for space. Local co-working spaces could use the service to turn those empty apaces in their offices into additional revenue.

This isn't the first website to offer desk space using an Airbnb style model, and some others already have co-working spaces in Northern Ireland listed, but most advertise only monthly rents. DeskHoppa iis keen to push shorter term hourly agreements and is also experimenting with a machine learning based approach to matching people up. Guests and desk hosts can rank a number of aspects on their profiles to hopefully get more compatible matches.

“Time is the most valuable resource to our customers and our desk hosts. Guests have a good idea of the kind of space they want and desk hosts similarly know what kind of guest they wish to have in their office environment. Any form of machine learning that can increase the probability of a positive experience is good for everyone, that’s our aim.”, said DeskHoppa founder Jason Bell.

Source: Written based on press release