Meet Daysk Barcelona’s Flex Space Work Solution

Barna Hub

We finally got the chance to speak with Julien Palier, co-founder and CEO of Daysk – a Barcelona startup that recently secured a €200,000 seed round led by Finaves—the IESE investment fund—and Pearson Capital.

Daysk is a website and app that offers an on-demand solution for businesses, freelancers and other professionals that need quick access to desks, meeting rooms and other workspaces. With a range of different co-working spaces, businesses centres, and hotels at their disposal, Daysk users experience flexible & convenient working.

Tell us more Julien!

140 character pitch:

Daysk is an online platform (app & web) through which professionals can find and book office space and meeting rooms easily.

CTA

TRY25.DAYSK.COM for a 25% discount on your first booking!

Down to business

Can you tell us the Daysk story?

We came to the idea in 2016. I was a freelance consultant and I needed meeting rooms on-demand, mostly in between clients visits.

Ben Gilloz, my co-founder, was working remotely for a tech start-up in Cordoba. He didn’t want to be stuck working at home all the time. He wanted flexibility, but not a full time coworking space.

We built a prototype together to test the idea of an app that aggregated desks and made booking easy. After some promising testing, we committed fully to the project and went full-time in September 2016.

What was the hardest thing about starting Daysk and how did you overcome it?

Starting the company was a natural process. We started by identifying the market needs, the opportunity, and then getting into it gradually.

It was a soft launch and we’ve been continuously iterating on our first ideas. And I feel that we’ll always be into this dynamic.
Still, I think the hardest part of the whole journey is connected to the model we’re building. Being a B2B platform, you deal with a lot of constraints. From liquidity, quality and quantity of the offer, to the structure of the demand, we have a lot of challenges to overcome in order to achieve the vision we have.

What is the future of remote work in your opinion?

We don’t think that remote work will become mainstream in the sense that everybody will work from home full-time.

Rather, we foresee that flexibility will be a core component of the way we work.  And it will be how every company will reinvent the way we work.

Professionals will have more opportunity to build their own “professional journey”. Some of us need to be in an office most of the time, others will hop from coffee shop to office to share desk, while others can handle “pure” remote work from home. There are as many combinations as there are people.

That’s how we built Daysk; a simple and unique access point for all your flex space needs for employees and company.

Barcelona Insight

What advice would you give to someone thinking about starting their own business in Barcelona?

There are two scenarios:

1) You’re working for a global audience and can work anywhere. Barcelona is a good place to be because you can connect with part of your core audience (the city is really international), while saving on costs and enjoying a really great quality of life.

Also you’re quite well connected to the rest of Europe if you need to travel abroad from time to time.

2) Your business is also local, in that case you’ll need to master Spanish really well and probably Catalan also.
If your operations are local, you’ll need to manage everything regarding taxes, the legal side on – and that means fluent Spanish.

Also consider how this might impact perception from investors when going to raise funds.

What’s the best online resource for entrepreneurs?  

Any tools that can make your business operations easier are great. From a good sales CRM to direct access to services from Glovo to Uber.

Personally I love Teleport – it allows you to compare cities and places to live, sharing information like quality of life, salary, and cost of living to help you decide where you want to live and work.

What’s your favourite neighbourhood in Barcelona and why?

I love my “barrio”, which is a small park near Güell  and not very well known. Look for Parc del Putxet. Nobody’s there and you have a great 360° view over all the city without the tourists.

Hubbub: Thanks Julien!

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