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Startups For The Modern Workplace

The share of new patent applications in America connected to remote-working technologies more than doubled between January and September 2020.

The pitches below are from startups that aim to improve the modern workplace and are inexplicably struggling to raise capital.

Offices are being rejigged to allow more room for collaborative working.

Workers often need to make reservations to secure a spot.

Towels on Deckchairs is a German startup that uses algorithms and manual workers to claim and hold the best desks.

Our high-frequency bots can book slots as soon as reservation systems open; in offices that operate a finders-keepers system, our gig workers will physically occupy space for our customers.

Bottled Boss produces a line of fragrances designed to help harder-hearted managers display their more human side.

Class Pet takes the same contact-tracing technology used to monitor whether people have been exposed to covid-sufferers and applies it to the problem of proximity bias in the office.

By tracking how often people are physically close to each other, Class Pet can alert firms to whether bosses are giving too much face time to specific people in the office.

Employees are under scrutiny as never before, both in the office and at home.

The degree of surveillance is becoming more transparent: a law goes into force in New York state next month requiring employers to tell workers how they monitor their activities.

Chaff is a new startup that gives employees a range of options to fight back.

Chaff's customers can alter web-camera feeds to show pre-recorded looped footage of them working furiously.

Proprietary software will move cursors at random intervals in order to show that employees have not fallen asleep.

Video Vici improves the experience that people have on video calls.

We have developed a set of features that work on all the main conferencing platforms, and include the following: time-on-mic countdown clocks, to limit the amount of time that any one person spends blathering; a ticker showing how many people are not paying any attention to you at any one time; and nostril filters to help with unfortunate camera angles.

From Serene and Focusmate to Todoist and Evernote, a bewildering array of productivity apps promises to make workers more efficient.

Cull takes a new approach to this problem, by ruthlessly prioritising the things you need to do.

We use artificial intelligence to work out which colleagues are above you in the organisation, or soon might be.

Messages from these people are pulled into your inboxes and notifications, and ranked in order of seniority.

Communication from other people is automatically deleted before you even see it.

The commute into the office wastes time that could be spent a) more productively or b) snoring.

The same logic applies to the time people spend getting ready to work from home.

That is why we founded Bedesk, maker of a revolutionary piece of furniture that allows you to sleep and work in one location.

Modelled on hospital beds, Bedesks can automatically adjust their angle of recline and feature a foldable work surface with multiple charger points.

Millions of middle-aged workers are about to make some seriously embarrassing choices.

If any of these investment opportunities appeals to you, please just send a blank cheque to The Economist and we will make sure it gets to the right people.