InnerSpace: A year in review and looking ahead into 2023

A look back at a big year at InnerSpace as we move full speed ahead into 2023

It’s been a whirlwind year at InnerSpace! We caught up with James Wu, CEO of InnerSpace and Sameer Hasan, VP of Operations to chat about the last year, the massive changes to work, and what 2023 holds for the organization.

It’s been a big year as we’ve come through a year that’s meant massive changes for the way many organizations use office space. How would you summarize the year? 

James: A crazy, wild ride. We kicked off the year finalizing a huge partnership with Arista networks, added several world class name plates to our customer list, and won our first deals in Europe and India. After a 9-month RFP process, we were finally awarded our largest contract to date (by far), and quickly had to figure out how to navigate a massive construction project involving dozens and dozens of different stakeholders. While all of this was going on, we raised a $10M Series A during one of the toughest environments to raise capital in recent years, all while working toward securing our ISO27001 certification to ensure we meet international standards around information security. We'll close the year having quadrupled our revenue over '21, with the goal of doing again in '23. I’m proud of all we’ve accomplished, and how our work in 2022 will set us up to hit the ground running in 2023.

Sameer: I’d call it extremely eventful. I think as our organization grows, we’ll look back on this year as an inflection point when we transitioned from start-up to scale-up.

Where was most of your time and energy spent? 

James: Fundraising. It's a full-time job, but I don't always have the luxury of focus in my role, as I get pulled in all directions whenever things go sideways, as founder and CEO.

Sameer: While I used to spend most of my time product-building, it's been wild to spend a lot of this year company-building, implementing systems and playbooks that prepare us to scale. Turns out, designing a company is not unlike designing a product, and it's been interesting seeing the parallels.

Were the goals you set for 2022 reached? Or did you find more important opportunities this year? 

James: We stayed focused on the goals we set at the beginning of the year, and we didn't achieve all of them. But we achieved the most important of them and moved InnerSpace forward, and that has set us up for 2023.

Sameer: I think we did quite well, considering the shifting commercial real estate landscape. We hit most of our tremendously aggressive goals and made big dents in the ones we didn't quite get over the line. It's so refreshing to be part of a team that sets its sights on the heights, gravitating to the hard things instead of shying away from them.

What will a successful 2023 look like for you?

James: We have again set ourselves some lofty and aggressive goals. We want to 4x our revenue again. We want to capitalize on the investment we've made in partner channels and finally see significant deals coming through them. We want to make it even easier for customers to choose InnerSpace, and release a self-serve, entry level product that customers can purchase and deploy on their own. And we want to grow up a little - we need a little more formality in our processes, a little more sanity in our daily lives, a little more control over our cloud costs as we pay off some technical debt that is the inevitable cost of rapid growth and moving fast.

Sameer: I’d like to see us emerging as the leading company in this nascent space, with exceptional growth. We have some goals from 2022 that we haven’t met yet; we’ll continue hammering away on those. We’re also taking market feedback we received and working to diversify our options for clients. 2023 will be a big year for us internally as well; we’ll start to shape the company culture in a more significant way. We’ve set challenging goals and will continue what we’d started; growing our market share and providing our clients with innovative ways to support their teams with the best spaces in whatever their industries might be. It certainly won't be a picnic, but I think that suits our team just fine.

Thanks James and Sameer for your tremendous leadership, guidance, and support in 2022. We’re looking forward to a whirlwind year of growth, opportunities, learning, and continuing to revolutionize workplaces in 2023!