Perchspace is a website that gives businesses or smallbusinesses a way to make additional income out of spaces they have free or that they don’t use regularly. An example I can give you is cafes.
Cafes have peak hours, they’ll have off-peak hours, but the majority of the time, they’ll have free tables. These are hospitality venues, right? They’re made to make people feel relaxed and comfortable, and these spaces are just wasted.
So it’s offering to combine the hospitality industry with the co-working or shared workspace industry and give your business a side hustle. It’s giving people a very cheap and affordable option to work remotely, but also very convenient.
What inspired you to start the business?
There were a couple of personal ones. I was going to have my first kid and I really wanted to spend more time with him. Starting a business has meant losing a lot of that time as well, but I just wanted people to have more flexibility in what they do.
If I wanted to work, I didn’t want to have to come to the city centre.All these beautiful French suburbs are by the beach or something and it’s a cool place to work. You actually feel like doing some work rather than being in an office with blue lighting.
One of the biggest things is I do a bit of consultancy for small businesses and I work really closely with hospitality businesses. I used to work with them and talk about how the industry is in decline and you look at reports, you see how the industry is in decline. So it was always a concept of how do we change this?
Again, tapping back into the first one they create these beautiful environments for people to come relax and enjoy, why can’t they work here?
Perchspace allows businesses to combine with the co-working or shared workspace industry, offering an alternative source of income. Photo / Supplied
How big is the freelance/digital nomad economy?
The co-working or shared workspace industry is one that is growing crazily, and it had massive growth through lockdown, as you would imagine, and it’s kept growing. One of the fun facts that prompted me to keep going with it was that Australasia is one of the largest markets for it and one of the fastest-growing markets for it.
The plan is to take Perchspace global, that’s where we want to end up. I wanted to test it in New Zealand first because New Zealand’s big on the coffee culture, how many cafes do we have for such a small space?
One thing that’s big for me is you look at companies and they have the ability to offer flexible working. Our market isn’t them, it’s the 90% of small businesses that are in New Zealand. That’s the people we’re really targeting, not the big ones who’ve mandated you’ve got to come into office now.
What has been the response from those using the service?
Initially, I don’t think I had my pitch down to a science or that language that you need to speak, but now it’s a lot easier, so we have sites approaching us. Something we do is help them with setting up the space.
To join Perchspace there’s no subscription, there’s no start-up fees. It’s just open to use for anyone. Right now we have spaces, we do photography for them, we create reels for their socials, and we collaborate with them. So we market them a lot.
We want to be a place that encourages small businesses to talk about it and not just the space owners like cafes, but our consumers too. Explaining all that to hospitality owners has been getting a lot easier and the reaction has been really positive.
Perchspace founder Sean Foster said that Australasia is one of the largest markets for it and one of the fastest growing markets for remote working. Photo / Supplied
What has been the biggest challenge in starting the business?
I think the hardest thing has been social media because I’m not a person who’s too keen about it. I look online and there are all these beautiful people doing all these lovely videos, that’s been hard putting myself out there and doing that side of things.
The other thing is time, right? Time is finite, you know, and my first job is to be a good dad and a good husband, so I need to focus on that first. It’s been 3am wake-ups and working that then smashing up the 9 to 5 and then doing the consultancy. So a lot of juggling, but like they say it’s better to feel fulfilled at the end of the day rather than have a boring day.
What would be your advice to other budding entrepreneurs?
I’d say acquire as much knowledge as possible, but I’d say work for a company first.
Work for someone else because in all these big companies you have people with so much more knowledge. There’s so much you can learn, whether it’s how to lead a team or what to do when things get tough.
Once you know how to follow, you’ll know how to lead.
Tom Raynel is a multimedia business journalist for the Herald, covering small business and retail.
