WeWork Acquires Office Management Software Team, Teem

WeWork, a co-working unicorn famous for its fundraising, odd financials, and impressive valuation has acquired Teem, a startup that helps firms organize their meeting rooms.

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Teems, formerly known as EventBoard, is a software play that places digital interfaces around offices, tied to meeting spaces, allowing employees to manage their physical spaces without shouting. The company raised $21.5 million in known funding during its life.

According to TechCrunch’s inimitable Connie Loizos, the deal was worth around $100 million in cash. Teem’s last private round– a $13.5 million Series B in August, 2016–implies that the exit was ok for the firm’s later investors, and pretty alright for its earlier capital sources. But, it wasn’t a runaway winner for anyone by the same logic.

Teem joins a laundry list of companies that WeWork has scooped up as it continues to acquire vast sums of new capital from every source imaginable.

In March, Crunchbase News made a list of what WeWork had purchased, noting how the investments felt scattered:

• Case: makers of architectural modeling software.
• Welkio: an office sign-in system for guests.
• Fieldlens: a communication platform for construction projects.
• Spacemob: a Singaporean coworking company.
• Unomy: makers of a CRM for enterprise sales.
• Flatiron School: a code bootcamp in New York City and D.C.
• Meetup: a website for recurring IRL social groups.
• Conductor: makers of SEO and marketing software.”

But while Teem is joining that group under the WeWork aegis, there may be some good sense to the deal.

Teem will join WeWork’s consulting business, “which aims to introduce WeWork as an office manager, able not just to provide millennial-chic coworking digs but also to redesign and manage existing offices,” according to Wired. Diversifying its offering beyond providing office space is one that other emerging startups in the coworking world have already moved in on.

Teem sells software. Software attached to the physical world, but software all the same. As a revenue category, software tends to outperform real estate when it comes to investor sentiment. In simpler terms, high-margin software revenue is often worth more than real estate incomes on a per-dollar basis. And if you are a unicorn whose chief public comp makes you appear vastly overvalued, you might want to add some revenue to your mix that could scoot your expected public revenue multiple north.

Ergo, Teem.

Illustration Credit: Li Anne Dias