Confined to their respective homes, Rafael Castilla and Oriol Torremadé saw how the covid pandemic became “the first large-scale teleworking experience,” in Castilla’s words. “We analyzed the market and concluded that the employees were very satisfied with the change because it saves them time and money,” continues the entrepreneur.
Hence the idea of creating a company so that “anyone can work from anywhere in an efficient, easy, comfortable and affordable way”, explains Castilla, who was forced by the new virus to return from his Erasmus in Business Administration and Management in London. Torremadé, meanwhile, had experience in a real estate start-up.
Tribuapp was born in Barcelona in the midst of a pandemic. “We started developing the idea in May 2020 and in December we already closed our first agreement. At the beginning, we opened and closed the offices ourselves, assembled the furniture…”, recalls the co-founder. They currently manage some 25 coworking spaces between Barcelona and Madrid, with an occupancy rate of over 90%. This year they plan to reach 250 offices and expand to Malaga and Valencia this summer and to Seville, Bilbao and Palma at the end of the year. If the expansion plan is fulfilled, they would serve some 4,000 users. At the moment, they are not considering taking the leap outside the country, a decision that they say they will begin studying in 2023, with their sights set first on the European Union and, later, on Latin America.
Recently, Tribuapp has also begun to manage those office spaces that have become empty with the implementation of teleworking. With this new line of business “we help companies to create additional income by renting their empty workspaces to freelancers or teams and we avoid the need to look for another office adapted to their new reality,” says the entrepreneur. From the point of view of the emerging company, it is also a formula to expand its offer of spaces and fulfill its vision that anyone can work within a ten-minute walk of where they are.
Tribuapp grows in spaces and also in staff. Currently, the start-up is made up of a team of ten people, but they plan to be 16 this summer and more than 20 by the end of the year. To date, the start-up has involved an investment of 340,000 euros, between private capital and an Enisa loan.
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