When I was 13 or 14, I started a business. It was a mobile DJ business with a focus on the metro-west Boston bar mitzvah and sweet 16 circuit. There are lots of great stories and learnings I could share, but this one is about data, and it relates to the current commercial real estate landscape. 

In case you missed it earlier this week, our software is powering the new tenant experience app at Willis Tower, which is owned by Blackstone's EQ Office. Up until launch this week, our team has been working hard behind the scenes with EQ Office, customizing our tenant experience software for one of the tallest buildings in the world – a Class A office tower with 3.8 million square feet of rentable space and more than 12,000 occupants. 

Monday, March 18, 2019 - HqO, a tenant experience (TeX) platform for commercial real estate, today announced that it will launch in Chicago’s Willis Tower, owned and managed by EQ Office (EQ), a U.S. office portfolio company wholly-owned by Blackstone's real estate funds. After a comprehensive process evaluating TeX solutions on the market, EQ selected HqO to enhance one of its most iconic assets with software.

Commercial Real Estate Tech Company Kicks Off 2019 With Distribution Opportunities, Partnerships, Capital and More

Welcome to Meet HqO: a series on our blog where we get to know the team that's building our tenant experience platform for commercial real estate. I'm sitting down with our whole crew to understand and share: what gets them up in the morning, why they're jazzed about CRE technology, and what they bring to the table (and also learn) at HqO. Oh yeah, and we're hiring! Learn more about joining the team. 

This year, we've done our fair share of traveling around the country to various conferences and events, telling attendees all about the importance of tenant experience software in commercial real estate. One constant conference for us was CREtech – we followed Michael Beckerman and his team around, from Boston, to Chicago, to LA, to San Francisco, and just last week, to New York City. We enjoyed a years worth of content and panels, shook a bunch of hands, and witnessed the increase of tech momentum in commercial real estate with each event. 

Welcome to Meet HqO: a series on our blog where we get to know the team that's building our tenant experience platform for commercial real estate. I'm sitting down with our whole crew to understand and share: what gets them up in the morning, why they're jazzed about CRE technology, and what they bring to the table (and also learn) at HqO. Oh yeah, and we're hiring! Learn more about joining the team. 

Welcome to a new series on our blog where we get to know the team at HqO. I'm sitting down with our whole crew to understand and share: what gets them up in the morning, why they're jazzed about CRE technology, and what they bring to the table (and also learn) at HqO. Oh yeah, and we're hiring! Learn more about joining the team. 

Our team has officially set up shop at the ULI Fall Conference in Boston this week. We sponsored a special little area on the first floor of the Boston Convention and Expo Center directly in front of a row of meeting rooms where some of the best educational sessions are taking place.

Today, our team at HqO is excited to announce we closed $6.6M in seed financing, led by Accomplice with a tremendous group of strategic investors, included in the release below. As the leader in the tenant experience space, we aren't just building a company, but creating a new category of software. While the capital is helpful, what is most powerful about this round is the strategic advantage this consortium of investors provides us.     We are grateful to the industry leaders from JLL Spark who took a deep dive into the tenant experience landscape which played out over several months. We are also fortunate that Spark's CEOs, Mihir and Yishai, have extensive backgrounds in consumer technology, which led them to dig deep into the key user metrics of the players in the space, and ultimately determine that we are the team to back.    Big thanks to Ryan Moore and Accomplice for the continued support, Jody Gessow and Steve Novick at DivcoWest who became early believers, and Travis Putnam at Navitas for bringing a tremendous amount of value already in a short period of time.    We look forward to expanding our team and scaling our offering to continue to help landlords to create places that people love.