HqO’s tenant experience app is used by big commercial landlords including Blackstone’s EQ Office, Jamestown, DivcoWest and National Development. Photo courtesy of HqO.

Today, I find myself repeating a certain phrase when I speak to commercial property owners, investors, journalists, or anyone interested in what the future of commercial real estate will look like. I tell them – every business is now an experience business. 

Take a second and try to name an industry that’s not feeling this transformation. From retail, to healthcare, to banking and beyond, companies are investing in new digital experiences aimed at maximizing value for people in real life.  

Interestingly, while most are now competing on the battleground of customer experience, there are very few industries, like real estate, that have the potential to impact people’s happiness and productivity around the clock. That’s why at HqO we set out to build a platform that would activate spaces in a meaningful way by delivering seamless, tech-enabled property experiences.  

Big Players Care About TeX 

Today, a little over two years after launching our software, HqO has firmly established itself as a leading Tenant Experience (TeX) platform in the commercial real estate space. In that time, we’ve raced ahead by powering 72 million square feet of office space for customers. And in December 2019, we announced $34.35 million in series B financing.  

This round, led by Insight Partners with participation from previous investors including Accomplice, Navitas Capital, Pritzker Group Venture Capital and JLL Spark, made HqO the best funded company in the tenant experience (TeX) space with a total of $53 million of venture capital funding. This early traction has allowed us to expand operations across the U.S. and in Europe. Beyond our Boston headquarters, we’ve opened offices in New York City, Dallas, London and Paris to serve our customers well and to fuel our growth. 

For consumers, tenant experience technology has been long overdue. Luckily, for building occupants, the transition to TeX is being led by some of the largest and most innovative owners of commercial real estate. To date, the HqO platform has been deployed by some of the industry’s largest office landlords, including Blackstone’s EQ Office, Jamestown, DivcoWest and National Development. HqO’s technology is currently used in properties in more than a dozen markets in the United States and United Kingdom, including the 4.6 million-square-foot Willis Tower in Chicago, the second-tallest building in North America.  

And when it comes to landlords, we’ve seen them accelerate the adoption rate of TeX software across many of the world’s largest portfolios. That adoption is being driven by early results and the promise that tenant experience software has to differentiate and improve the leasing process, increase tenant retention and improve operating efficiencies through actionable data intelligence.  

A Need for Certification and Standardization 

The most progressive owners and operators now demand this data in order to differentiate and stand out. It’s been reported that in 2019 alone, $35 billion was spent on commercial property remodeling and amenitization. However, top owners are no longer content to continue to spend without truly knowing which amenities and value-added services are most important to tenants, and without knowing which investments ultimately drive leasing and improve retention.  

It’s time to harness the power of tenant experience data. To that end, we’re focusing our time and resources in order to: 

• Create an interoperable platform where all building experience technologies can connect, in which experience data can be centralized, and where landlords can source the data they need to reshape the future of their portfolios and their business.   
• Blaze a trail for enterprise success by creating education and certification materials to help landlords transform into tech-enabled and data-driven property owners. 
• Standardize data across the industry in collaboration with landlords and lead the way in terms of data security and to eliminate risk for the enterprise and help protect consumer data privacy. 
• Shine a light on the truth. To put it bluntly, there is too much vaporware in the space and too many consultants providing poor advice on TeX strategy and technology.  

Chase Garbarino

I believe a focus on those pillars show our passion for partnering with landlords and our vision to create the future of built world experiences. As an industry, it’s time to elevate the conversation around tenant experience from a conversation about a simple building app that can service a building, to a true platform that connects people to great experience and unifies portfolios across the built world – that’s the future of our business. 

Chase Garbarino is CEO of Boston-based HqO.