Virtual office provider Teemyco has completed an approx. €845K seed funding round. The Swedish startup has witnessed a massive spike in global demand as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to force companies to find solutions to empower remote working.
The round was led by Luminar Ventures, with participation from the early stage venture capital firm Antler, recruitment firm Gazella and a list of prominent angel investors, with the new funds to be used to launch Teemyco’s service and recruit key hires.
Currently in the midst of a beta trial with a select group of top-level companies that includes Kognity, AppJobs, Wetaca, ehealthapp and the University of Tokyo, the waiting list of users wanting to trial the technology has expanded to over 5,000 from 38 countries.
“When we founded the company 12 months ago, none of us could have predicted the explosive growth in remote working that the pandemic has initiated. Strategically we’re trying to redefine and broaden the virtual office space by enabling users to break free from being isolated in their digital office and instead encourage them to have spontaneous interactions with their colleagues”, said Teemyco’s co-founder and CEO Charlotte Ekelund.
“An office is where the magic happens, and we bring those moments of ad hoc interactions to physically distributed teams. For example, the platform’s functionality allows you to see what’s going on in the office and what projects are being worked on – pick a room to work side by side with a colleague or perhaps grab a digital coffee with them in the coffee room – or even signal when you’re busy and don’t want to be disturbed.”
While COVID-19 forced many startups to put a brake on their expansion plans, the Teemyco founders – software engineer and machine learning expert Oleg Danylenko and former Fortune500 strategist, marketer and recruitment consultant Charlotte Ekelund – were able to quickly close their oversubscribed second investment round, led by Luminar Ventures.
“We believe that the current trend with more teams working partly remote, or having a team member working from another location, is here to stay and we see Teemyco’s product filling an important gap in this trend,” said Linda Höglund, Partner at Luminar Ventures.
“We are impressed by the team and the speed at which they have further developed the product to cater for customer demand. The future office will include working from a variety of locations and the need for an online office and meeting place will remain strong, which can be seen also by the high level of request for the product coming already.”
The Teemyco team has operated entirely remotely since February. The founders were joined by their first team members in March and the international team now consists of nine people.
“The remote working trend is so much more than simply working from home or a beach – we want to give people freedom and create equal opportunities,” said Oleg Danylenko, co-founder and CTO. “We see a future where skills determine whether you can join the best companies, regardless of what country, city or family you were born in. We are very excited to be part of enabling this future and creating offices online where great things can happen without people having to share the same coffee machine.”
