A 650-square-foot Breather private workspace on Boylston Street in Boston rents for $40 per hour.
Startup culture rewrote the rules of commercial real estate with the emergence of communal offices that rent desks by the month, week or day.
Now comes Breather, an app-based purveyor of low-commitment private workspaces that can be booked minutes in advance and used for as little as half an hour at a time. Breather launched locally this month with three offices in Boston’s Back Bay and two in Cambridge. It has over 70 locations in five North American cities.
The business model, co-founder and CEO Julien Smith said, is well-suited to freelancers and business travelers who otherwise would conduct their business at home or in crowded public spaces.
“With the percentage of [people who] are taking Skype calls in Starbucks, there’s got to be a better way is how I think of it,” said Smith, a best-selling technology writer.
Backed by a pair of venture capital investments totaling $7.5 million, Breather partners with host properties through various arrangements. It leases vacant office spaces, or works out revenue-sharing agreements with landlords, hotel business centers or office tenants with space to spare.
Landlords can expect to make up to $200 per foot monthly through the arrangement, Smith said. Breather makes a profit by reselling the space in fractional segments. User fees range from $25 to $40 per hour at the Boston and Cambridge locations.
A sun-filled second-floor office at 715 Boylston St. is one of the local spaces to take a Breather. Rated for occupancy for up to 17 people, the 650-square-foot room contains a conference table, sofa, whiteboard and, like all Breather hotspots, free wifi. Users reserve the space by signing in on the Breather web page or mobile app, and receive a code to access the room’s keypad.
Acknowledging the potential for abuse, Breather’s terms of service forbid prostitution and drug use. The service primarily targets business travelers looking for a quiet private workspace, or local startups and freelancers, Smith said. But he is reluctant to pigeonhole the typical client. Mothers have used Breather spaces to breast-feed infants, and some actors and musicians use them as rehearsal spaces, he said.
“For us, it’s an on-demand solution for charging your phone, or getting an article done or even taking a nap,” he said. “It’s a room with four walls and a door, but we don’t think about it like we need to monitor what is going on. We really prefer that users have privacy.”
Hours vary depending on location, with some open as late as 10 p.m. seven nights a week. Smith selected dense, walkable cities like Boston and New York for the first-stage rollout. Expansion into Chicago, Portland, Ore., Seattle and Washington, D.C. is planned in 2016.
Shared Office Models Expand, Evolve
Established co-working networks founded in recent years continue to expand and evolve in Greater Boston, reflecting the continuing demand for temporary workspaces for untethered digital workers.
WorkBar lets users reserve space at its hubs at 711 Atlantic Ave. in Boston and 45 Prospect St. in Cambridge, along with hosted co-working space at 30 companies throughout eastern Massachusetts.
Alternatively through its OuterSpaces program, WorkBar allows startups to reserve dedicated desks at 24 Greater Boston companies that have unused office space. OuterSpace users also get access to the 30 co-working spaces.
“What we’re shooting for with the network is providing a real urban base with tons of events, and we have spaces that are convenient to people wherever they live,” said Devin Cole, Workbar’s director of special programming and outreach.
Pivotdesk, an online listing service, has an inventory of approximately 60 properties in eastern Massachusetts where startups can rent unused desks in private offices on a monthly basis.
“The core model is to help companies that can’t commit to office space, but also companies that have excess space, have taken a long-term lease and can’t fill it right now,” said David Miller, Pivotdesk general manager for the Boston region.
Pivotdesk collects a monthly licensing fee from each transaction, which averages six to 12 desks. The typical client stays 12 months.
Miller sees similarities between Breather’s model in that both companies fill underutilized office space, even if they serve two distinct markets.
“They’re tailored to people with different needs. A Breather is not a place that someone can run a 10-person company,” he said.
