Whether it’s a nail salon or a car mechanic on the premises, many startups are finding creative ways to keep employees happy. Coders have come to expect services at the office, but CEOs – and overstressed human resource officers – can’t always keep up with workers’ demands.
Los Altos Hills resident Alex Shubat aims to solve the problem by taking the fun associated with life at the Googleplex or the food at Facebook’s Menlo Park campus and expanding it via his newest venture, Espresa.
“We want to make every company an amazing place to work,” Shubat said, offering what he calls “workplace services.”
With Espresa, Shubat said, employees can be much more productive.
“They don’t have to worry about the little things like changing their oil light or doing dry cleaning,” he said.
Instead, Shubat added, workers can focus on the work they are contracted to do.
It began with an ending
The idea behind Espresa came from a tech giant. As Shubat remembers it, a colleague was blown away when Google acquired his company in 2015.
“Instead of telling me how great their development design was, he was enamored with how well they were taking care of their employees,” Shubat said.
When the idea for Espresa came up, Shubat said he got “very excited.”
“We did a lot of research and found that this was needed from a lot of companies,” he said.
With office space in Palo Alto near Renzel Trail, Espresa launched in early August.
Shubat has an electrical engineering background and, in Silicon Valley terms, is a bit of a lifer. He came from Toronto in 1985 and eventually moved to Los Altos Hills in 2004.
Shubat finds it good for business.
“A lot of the companies we’re targeting, they live in Los Altos,” he said. “We’re targeting white-collar professionals, and we can take care of all of their needs while they’re working.”
Acquired funding
The company has secured approximately $2 million in venture funding from Clear Ventures and Crosslink Capital. Shubat said that after a soft launch, Espresa has picked up 25 customers with more than 15,000 employees.
“We started the company in the Bay Area and we are targeting the Bay Area, but we aim to be a national business,” he said.
Shubat plans to expand into Austin, San Diego and Seattle in the next two years.
As CEO, he is bullish about the future of the market for what is now often seen as a Silicon Valley premium.
“The market for workplace services is $5 billion,” he said. “Companies outside of the Bay Area also want to build amazing things.”
As long as companies are looking to provide workplace services, they will need someone to run the logistics.
With Espresa, Shubat thinks that there is money in making it easy for employees to fix their cars or their cuticles without leaving the cubicle.
