Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, Dan was happily working from a coworking space in London that had a strong sense of community. Even though he was a one-man-consulting firm at the time, he ended up building a sort of team by working with and alongside the people around him.
Then, lockdown happened. Like many city-dwellers, Dan moved out into the countryside and realised that he was really missing the coworking space — and that there was nothing like that around him in the suburbs.
Creating a city-style coworking space out there wouldn’t have been possible, unless you were a huge WeWork-style conglomerate. Instead, Dan wanted to create something where people could do the community building themselves.
Both Dan and Simon had previously worked at mapping and location intelligence firm HERE Technologies, and together wondered how they could create an application that brings teams together for coworking — so that they could experience that sense of community and culture that working alongside each other in real life brings.
Simon had actually faced a related problem in his own city, where he and his friends would argue over where to meet because they all lived in different areas. He hacked together a simple app that, based on different people’s locations, suggested a place that was the most convenient for them all to meet up.
It was the lightbulb moment: why not use this approach to do the same for remote teammates? That idea became workpin.