The story behind the story — Bright Spaces is about people, patience, and wild dreams
By: Bogdan Nicoară
Tags: Startup Story, Startup, Leadership, Lessons Learned, Year In Review

Our first photo shooting

Twelve years after founding 4ideas (which later became Bright Agency and Symbolic), in April 2019, I decided to stop what I did for more than a decade and to launch, together with my partner, Andrei, Bright Spaces, a new startup in a totally unknown area for us at that time: Commercial Real Estate.

1.5 years later and at the end of a rollercoaster ride, here I am, happy to see that all of the team members have grown immensely and that Bright Spaces is going strong on its way to joining the global stage of real-estate tech solutions.

I think that now is a good time for me to take a moment and share some thoughts on what brought us here and on what I’ve learned this year.

Bright Spaces' initial team in our first office in Impact Hub Timpuri Noi

Looking back, it becomes more and more clear to me that there’s something about the thrill of new beginnings and finding better solutions for existing problems that make me feel alive, professionally. Probably this is why I’ve been an entrepreneur almost all of my life and surely this is why I took a leap of faith and started this new adventure.

Idea validation

Our story starts back in April 2019, when the concept behind Bright Spaces won the Real Estate Hackathon organized by Proptech Romania. We had a quick validation and this gave us the courage to start, even though today we’ve reached a completely different shape of our initial proposal.

Our office for 48 hours during Skanska Hackathon

I like to think that we seized a great opportunity to disrupt an industry, but at the beginning, there wasn’t much novelty in what we wanted to do — the need for digitization in real estate existed and many key players felt the need for a change, especially in remote visualization.

3D web view of a floor with fit-out proposals

What we learned was that there were many more specific needs that had to be verbalized, new features to be implemented and a more revolutionary approach to be adopted. And this was even before the pandemic. When Covid arrived, it forced a lot of businesses to migrate online — real estate included, and embrace tech solutions faster.

3D generated tour of the office

The right ingredients

Soon after the hackathon, we focused solely on this new initiative. Our team of 5 members had close to no experience in real estate, but a lot of knowledge in software development and a huge craving to learn new things. We built our pitch deck and started participating at all industry-related events, investor-matchmaking sessions, and discovery calls with potential clients and partners.

Even though Bright Spaces came after 12 years of experience in an agency where we’ve learned a lot, when we sold the company to Zitec in 2019, we decided we wanted a fresh start. We assumed we knew nothing about building a prop-tech startup and we started asking questions both about the industry and about the startup process.

Discovery & support

We knew we needed support and we asked for it. We had over 100 discovery meetings and calls with tenants, developers, brokers, consultants, suppliers and we paid attention to what they had in common in terms of needs. More than that, Ciprian Pașca, Co-Founder & President of Proptech Romania joined as a trustworthy mentor and advisor right from the beginning.

We wanted to build a product fit to the dynamic office industry, that has recently become a buyer’s market, and to bring to the table a solution that had the potential to become global. It was vital for us to support landlords in their need for more standardized reports and offerings, brokers in their relationships with the tenants and developers, and tenants in their requirements of making faster, well-informed leasing decisions.

First funding round

All these meetings and open listening put us on what could be considered a fast-track in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Soon enough, we had the luck to find the right investors who believed in our idea and supported us in securing our pre-seed round of 185.000 EUR in November 2019. Sparking Capital, Growceanu, and Ilinca Paun not only invested in Bright Spaces while we only had a PDF and a mockup but also brought their knowledge to the table and are constantly challenging us and helping us become better.

We managed to attract “smart money” and this is what we will do in the next rounds. Our pre-seed round resembled a series A, in terms of the process. We learned a lot and I feel that thanks to our partners, we are now prepared to scale sustainably. This is, for us, the role we would like our investors to play: take us one step ahead, push us and work together with us so that we can find a common ground that works best for everyone.

This kind of mature partnership is still in its early stages in Romania. But things started to evolve in the Romanian Startup and VC ecosystem and we are slowly moving from a control-based relationship to one where equality, humbleness, and sustainability move things forward. Especially when attracting money becomes easier, I think choosing the most suited investors for you and not accepting the first money that is offered becomes essential for the survival of your business.

In November 2019, we won 1st place in Leasing and 3rd place Main Event at the Proptech hackathon organized by Skanska Romania and Proptech Romania, two partners that also believed in our idea and supported us.

Pi Labs Accelerator

When the pandemic hit, we had just found out we were one of the 5 startups selected to join Pi Labs’ 8th cohort. We were prepared to move to London for a few months for the accelerator, but we had to come back and go through this experience completely online. Their seamless organization was amazing, enabling us to learn from some of the best professionals in real estate and to build an exceptional network of specialists that shaped what Bright Spaces is today.

Clients

In August, Skanska became our first client, offering us invaluable insights on how the solution should be fine-tuned in order to answer the requests of a big corporation and international player. Thus, we proved that digitalization isn’t an attribute only of big companies anymore, as Skanska trusted a startup to join them on a common journey of forever changing the real estate industry through cutting edge technology.

Our first Press Conference together with Anne & Roxana from Skanska

Other clients followed and honored us with their trust. One United decided to showcase their entire portfolio using Bright Spaces, Vox Technology Park became our first out-of-Bucharest client and Moorland Property Solutions Ltd. became our first client in the UK. Recently, we also signed with Impact Hub Bucharest and we will soon announce another big Romanian developer, making us overachieve our goals for this year.

I think that what brought us here is a balanced mix between a good idea at the right time and a great team.

Yes, digitizing the real estate industry and focusing on a niche such as A-class buildings and co-working or serviced spaces has a big potential, especially given the current context. But this isn’t anything new. As a matter of fact, I am convinced that a startup should be 95% innovative (to optimize existing processes) and only 5% inventive (build something completely new).

Team

A strong, resilient, and agile team, can make the difference. And I am lucky enough to have a team who believes in this idea as strongly as I do. Honestly, I see us growing every day and I think that if everyone continues to be just 1% better compared to the previous day, we can expect growth by an order of magnitude.

This growth, for us, can mean anything. We had an exercise within the team, where we all talked about our wildest ambitions and they ranged from providing the Bright Spaces solution on Mars :) (improbable at the moment, but not completely utopic), to building a vocal activated software that suggests the best locations for a tenant based on its requirements and fit-out necessities, to being a full-service solution dedicated to all real estate segments.

Mentors & Advisors

This is not our focus for now, though. Being immersed in what we are doing now is extremely significant, as burning too many steps could bring us down. And we enjoy the process. This is something I’ve learned from various mentors and people I appreciate: "celebrate small wins", to paraphrase Sergiu Neguț, who gave me some great insights about startups and funding. I would love to mention a few of my mentors this year: Ciprian Pașca, Cristian Negruțiu, Vlad Panait, Vlad Sarca, Adrian Erimescu, Ciprian Man, Val Mureșan, Șerban Ripan, Ilinca Păun, Ana-Maria Andronic, Dragoș Nicolaescu, Felix Pătrășcanu, Faisal Butt, Barrie Heptonstall, Paul Clark, Sean Curtis, Paul Unger.

I need a lot of people that are way smarter than me in order to create a global solution and I am not ashamed to admit it!

I think it is safe to say we do enjoy it. Looking at the team and seeing their development gives me the confidence that it’s possible to have those big dreams and many more. At some point, I would like to get involved in improving other systems as well, such as the educational one.

Now that this year is close to an end, I feel very grateful for the valuable lessons I’ve learned and for the inspirational people I’ve met. They all played a great role in our evolution and in my understanding that patience and kindness can make a business successful, cancel stereotypes, or tame fears. One example I’ve met is Felix Patrascanu, co-founder of FAN Courier, one of the biggest Romanian companies, whom I admire greatly for his well-balanced perception over life, power, and the responsibility it brings with it.

Signing big clients like ours isn’t either easy or fast. It takes time and during the process, you learn to appreciate every step, every person, and acknowledge opportunities, mistakes, and challenges as they happen. There isn’t any single day I wished I would have done things differently and even in the current context, 2020 was a good year for us at Bright Spaces.

Andrei & Me at our 2020 office Christmas Party

Being surrounded by great people — family, friends, team members, partners, mentors, investors makes me look forward to 2021 and beyond, when Bright Spaces will be the end-to-end complete leasing solution for any global player.