| 
Chase Garbarino
Title: CEO, Hq0
Age: 33
Industry experience: 13 years
The growth of mobile tech for commercial real estate and demand for communal amenities prompted Boston-based HqO to adopt a new business model this spring. It’s lined up landlords including Innovation and Design Building owner Jamestown to offer its mobile app to tenants and their employees, giving them up-to-date information on special events and shuttle bus arrivals, and a direct line of communication to building managers.
HqO’s founder, Chase Garbarino, previously co-founded the BostInno website. HqO (which is short for Headquarters Optimized) launched in 2015 and received $4 million in funding last year led by Accomplice. The company, based in the Leather District, has 19 employees and is hiring sales, marketing, engineering and product managers.
Q: Why did it make sense to focus on commercial real estate building services and amenities?
A: We had built a B2B online marketplace (called VentureApp) and we had built a number of community features to connect people in business communities. We built the software and started talking to anybody we knew about how they would apply it. But there’s nothing more localized than what’s in your building. It seemed like a natural fit for commercial real estate landlords. It seemed like there was a better way to connect the business community.
Landlords are in heated competition around amenities and culture-building within their properties, and this software helps facilitate the amenities that landlords need to compete. I had been talking to friends at WeWork and they said they had this tenant-facing software that’s important to their business. That was one of the conversations that started us down the discovery path.
Q: How many clients do you have?
A: Our first client was Jamestown and since then we’ve added Boylston Properties at LINX in Watertown, Bulfinch Properties at its Hillsite office building in Needham and National Development’s The District in Burlington.
Q: What are HqO’s top functions?
A: Amenity integration and communications. People are able to message with property managers and tenants are able to post content. You can share an event post if you’re having a cocktail party or a speaker coming in. Reebok is a great example. They do so much for the property at the IDB with their gym and their retail store, so they’re doing classes every week, and outdoor fitness every month. America’s Test Kitchen shares a lot of content around food, which people love.
Q: How does the business model work?
A: It’s a software as a service model. Landlords pay a fee of 5 cents per square foot annually, depending upon the number of features.
Q: Where is the geographic growth potential?
A: Right now we’re just in Greater Boston, but we’ll be expanding in Q3 with a couple of clients that we’ve yet to announce.
Q: What other data can you provide to landlords?
A: We have the ability to connect with beacons, so if you have Internet of Things-connected sensors in the property, we can track anonymized data of foot traffic. But probably more applicable is amenities: how many people are interested and engaging in fitness or retail or food vendors, how many companies and tenants are engaging with one another.
Q: What’s the target audience for the neighborhood guides feature?
A: We’re continually launching neighborhood guides. The first were launched in March for the Seaport and Downtown Crossing. We just recently launched Needham and Watertown. Those are resources for tenants as well as a resource for local retailers to list themselves and be found by the tenant audience.
Garbarino’s Five Favorite Current Celtics Players:
- Jaylen Brown
- Marcus Smart
- Jayson Tatum
- Marcus Morris
- Terry Rozier
