When I launched DeskHoppa at the start of February the aim was clear: to enable any startup or business to rent out their desks to anyone who needed one.

Co-working spaces are great, they are allowed to use DeskHoppa too, but the monthly membership was always a barrier for me, the cost would outweigh the usage by a factor of 5 to 1. I needed something more on-demand.

Why Not Use a Cafe?

I stood in a street in Belfast and I only needed a desk for an hour, just to check in with the team I was working with at the time. When I say this to friends and founders alike the first response I get is, “You should have used a cafe”.

There are a few reasons I really don’t like working out of cafes. Firstly there’s the noise, now it’s not loud banging or crashing noise but the ambient soundscape of the daily operation of a cafe, it’s plates being stacked or a Gaggia coffee machine steaming away. It’s very difficult to conduct a call with background noise.

Laptop theft is a huge concern, it’s also a data privacy issue if you are working for a company. It also can happen very quickly as illustrated in the “Caught no Camera: Berkeley Laptop Theft” video.

Lastly, have you ever been in a crowded cafe and been drawn to a conversation in earshot? I’ve got a knack for hearing a good brainstorming session or business meeting. And like the majority of people I know I have a notebook and a pen to hand. I’m sure hundreds of startups have been beaten to market because of this.

So the question is, where you can work for an hour? How about within a business with a spare desk?

Desks By The Hour, Day, Week or Month

Many businesses, startups and co-working spaces (the host) have spare capacity and it’s costing them money. It would make sense for a host to maximise the revenue potential of the desk as a money making asset by renting it out for a period of time. That’s what DeskHoppa does, it gives the host a system to rent out desks and create incremental revenue from them.

As a visitor, DeskHoppa becomes the platform for finding somewhere to work. A network of hosts in city, a choice of locations to work from.

As a host you have full control of how many desks you list, what price you charge and what facilities are available to guests. If you want to sell day, week or month passes to guests that’s available too. DeskHoppa handles the booking, the payment and the host’s booking request process. You can review every booking or automatically accept bookings.

The benefits of offering desks to guests is that you build up a network of potential suppliers. They may be video content producers, software developers or graphic designers. For businesses who are looking to fill skill shortages within the organisation then DeskHoppa may become the first stage in building the relationship.

If you want to signup either as a guest or a host then please go to https://www.deskhoppa.com

(This post was originally posted on the DeskHoppa Blog on Medium).