PROXIMITY SPACE.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: TECH STARTUP

WHERE: MONTROSE

WEB: PROXIMITY.SPACE

FOUNDED: 2015

>> Initial Light Bulb

CEO Josh Freed co-founded Proximity, a coworking space in Montrose, followed by locations in Grand Junction and Ridgway.

"It gave us a perspective on how shaky the foundations were for coworking," says Freed, noting that most spaces use a hodgepodge of software to handle billing and other logistics. "The amount of digital duct tape in the industry is what we're trying to correct."

In early 2016, Freed and company began developing a single platform for in-house use. "That led to a few other spaces showing up at our door," he says.

Proximity rolled out a beta version of the platform to 15 coworking spaces, then retooled everything in accordance with the resulting feedback and officially went to market in spring 2017. More than 170 coworking spaces with 50,000-plus members are now customers.

>> In a Nutshell:

Freed says Proximity Space handles the three big issues for coworking spaces: "membership management, door access and billing."

But the business model prioritizes each coworking space's members. "Their membership follows them around like a Linkedln profile does," Freed says. "It's essentially built around the idea it's the members' platform, not necessarily the managers'," he adds. "We help members connect to each other."

Members also get three-day passes to other spaces that use Proximity's platform. "In any other business model, you would see competition red flags go up," Freed says. "This isn't competition, this is community."

Before Proximity, "Everything was very, very clunky," says Aaron Landau, founder of EV03 Workspace in Frisco, an early adopter of the platform. Before EV03 replaced Quickbooks, Shopify, Roomzilla and other products with Proximity, he would "have to open five different apps to make any changes."

That's all changed. "I think there's a lot of value just having it under one umbrella," says Landau, giving Proximity's...