Office Of The Future: ROOM Raises $12.5M Series A To Expand Product Line

If most of us ever go back to a “real” office, New York-based startup ROOM will be ready.

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Over the next few months, the modular office architect company, boosted by a $12.5 million Series A round of funding, will unveil three new architectural tools to help clients design adaptability and flexibility.

Morten Meisner-Jensen and Brian Chen founded the company in 2018 with one product, the sound-proof phone booth. Over the past two years, the company gained $30 million in revenue and more than 3,000 customers, Chen said in an interview.

Although the company had success with the phone booth, it was never ROOM’s vision to only have one product, but to innovate within the modern workplace. This vision included launching new products that featured occupancy sensors to track real-time availability and utilization patterns over time so companies can analyze office use.

“When it comes to the innovation required to help companies return to the office, we felt we needed to double down and make sure we had a portfolio of products to meet the needs of the office,” Chen said.

The new round of funding was led by Slow Ventures, with participation from SJF Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, FJ Labs, Bjarke Ingels and other angel investors. This gives ROOM $14.5 million in total funding since its inception. The company raised its seed round in 2018, also led by Slow Ventures.

As part of the investment, Dave Kirkpatrick from SJF Ventures joined the company’s board of directors, while Ingels was named to ROOM’s advisory board.

Meanwhile, ROOM expanded into Europe at the end of 2019, and now has showrooms in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Copenhagen, Berlin, Paris and London.

It also ramped up hiring, adding several people to beef up its sales engine, Chen said. The company currently has nearly 60 employees.

“This allows us to be a global company and to provide tools for companies with multiple offices all over the world,” he added. “We expect those soul-searching offices to be catalysts for how they will build out and use their offices. Options that seemed impossible six months ago are very much possible now.”

Feature photo of Morten Meisner-Jensen and Brian Chen, and modular office photo courtesy of ROOM.
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