Tally Workspace:
 The two tech girls that forayed into Flex

“I am not sure there was a lightbulb moment, more of a dimmer switch”, Jules Robertson illuminates the initiative behind co-founding Tally Workspace, with Bristol university bestie turned business partner Laura Beales. Amidst the all too tumultuous global pandemic, the concept for Tally Workspace gradually dawned.

Whilst WFH regulations left Jules desperate to find a desk for her daily grind (at the fintech company Solo), Laura (Head of Finance at marketplace Florence) grew aggravated with managing the increasing costs of vacant office space coupled with rising staff redundancies. “We had a realisation that the workspace people will need and how they use those spaces was going to change drastically after Covid. There must be an opportunity. We then got to work!”

After interviewing 1000+ start-ups to ascertain their thoughts on the seismic shift in work culture, Jules and Laura discerned a burgeoning opportunity to redefine the workspace landscape. “We started with a marketplace for desk and meeting room spaces, to enable teams to book ad hoc workspace without having a sunk monthly cost. To do so we partnered with thousands of workspace operators throughout the country”, Jules explains. The platform, tailored for teams, boasted seamless Slack integrations, team-centric functionality, budgetary parameters and regulations. As the demand for full time, private offices amplified over time, they generated a marketplace to enable start-up and scaleup teams to easily discover and compare full time offices. 

Despite both founders being prone to the ‘start-up bug’, the launch of Tally Workspace was not devoid of new challenges and findings. “We built our first product on Squarespace and there was a lot of ‘smoke and mirrors’ whilst we tested the demand/usage”, Jules says. The duo then applied for and successfully acquired an Innovate UK grant which enabled them to build the v.1 version of their technology platform. “We both had full-time jobs at the time and were taking on extra consultancy work to fund the development of the Tally platform. We learnt that it is important to get feedback asap and to ‘just do it’ - there is normally nothing stopping you but yourself. We also learnt a lot about workspace!”, Laura added.

Indeed, the occupational shift from Tech to Flex, meant entering and learning a totally different market – one that was swift and ever-changing. “The first challenge was the changing market, all markets evolve but the market for workspace during and after Covid has been very fast changing. The second challenge was understanding the world of workspace. No wonder it is hard for teams to find, compare and get the best workspace for their team - it is a consuming world out there. Learning about operators, agents, brokers, landlords!" Jules admits.

And yet, armed with a combined wealth of start-up experience spanning over 15 years, the co-founders forayed into the competitive landscape and took up a unique market position. "It was not hard to carve out our niche as we were our niche”, the co-founders affirm. With each milestone, Tally Workspace has solidified its position within the start-up and scaleup ecosystem, attuned to the evolving needs of a specific clientele. “We focused from day one on specialising in helping start-up and scaleup companies find the best workspace. Our product development and the services we provide have been guided by their changing needs.”