That experience in the 1990s inspired me in the 2000s to explore a fundamental new way that buildings could be constructed and sold. I built a prototype office building in Boise, ID that was LEED Gold certified, and the internal architecture of the building was geared toward flexibility and scalability. On top of this adaptable building, we put a business model that was flexible as well. Instead of providing long-term leases for tenants, it was all on a membership model on a monthly basis. We called the membership model Liquid Space, back in 2008. The vision was that we would build a network of these buildings and they would satisfy the needs of large and small companies. We got occupancy in that building in November of 2008, right as the market was imploding with the financial crisis.

Eighteen months later, as the market was continuing to deteriorate, we realized that the idea of flexible space, and allowing occupiers to be able to transact space on shorter durations and having it wherever they wanted it, was a winning idea. But we also observed that from a physical space standpoint, we didn't need to go out and build new buildings. The financial crisis brought into view how much existing space there was, sitting out there unused. We decided that rather than building buildings, we would build a digital marketplace that would allow existing owners, and existing companies with space to share, to post it online and be able to transact in much shorter durations than a flexible lease. We sold that original building we had created, and launched a new company called LiquidSpace.

GlobeSt.com: Although you have moved from new construction to existing buildings and a digital platform, are there carryovers from your original conception of Liquid Space into the company as it's now constituted?

Gilbreath: Absolutely. There's a carryover in principle that individuals should be provided a choice, and that if you can create great choice for a consumer, that can be a winning proposition. The choice that we provide is a function of aggregating an incredible diversity of real estate options into one app, one marketplace. Coworking spaces, office centers, hotels, private companies, landlords directly—all of that becomes aggregated into one marketplace.

It also reflects the belief that the best space solution for an individual is going to be rather personal. Where are you today, and where do you want to be for the next six months? Will you be using the space to write the Great American Novel or to collaborate with 500 other engineers? Those considerations are powerful opportunities if you build a business around delivering choice, and that's what we've done. We've built a solution that allows an incredible diversity of supply to all be available in the pocket or desktop through our apps.

GlobeSt.com: How do you obtain the information on availabilities and convince the various space providers to participate?

Gilbreath: From day one, we've focused on building a platform that could accommodate a myriad of different types of real estate operator, all of which I would characterize as workspace-as-a-service businesses. Big operators like Marriott and Servcorp have used our platform. But we also recognized that there were massive amounts of high-quality space sitting idle, in particular within private businesses. The small but growing company that has done a traditional lease for a large amount of space but isn't yet using it all—that inventory now has found the light of day. We make it possible for private businesses to list and have a more efficient alternative to traditional subletting.

Most recently, we've begun to unlock the massive supply of space within institutional real estate owners, within landlords, and in particular targeting the structural vacancy that the traditional leasing model tends to neglect. For most large institutional owners, this can represent 5% to 10% of an entire portfolio. These space are 2,000, 5,000 square feet—the optimal size in many cases, and available for optimal durations to be matched to the needs of growing companies. Step one was to understand how each of those different constituencies—workspace-as-a-service-providers, private companies and institutional landlords—would need to engage with our platform, but then to be able to pull all of them in and effectively merchandise them as peers to the end user. The consumer that's looking for a 10-person office in New York City, or a five-person team space in Chicago, might be very interested in comparing the options that exist across those different categories.

A part of bringing that supply on board is making it extremely easy to for those entities to engage. If I'm a landlord or a private building owner, joining LiquidSpace is a self-service process. They click on “list space,” and in 30 minutes they can have a listing up and online, and become part of the option set for people that are searching for space.

PALO ALTO, CA—“As our hourly and daily workspace business has grown globally, it's become clear that longer-term small-team office space transactions need technology-driven, reimagined solutions,” Mark Gilbreath, founder and CEO of LiquidSpace, said this past October when the company introduced a new program aimed at monthly rentals. For an article reporting the new program's launch, Gilbreath told GlobeSt.com, “Millions of square feet of small, high quality office spaces sit idle, robbing owners of potential revenue and asset value growth. Now for the first time, there is a simple and cost-effective way to monetize these 500- to 5,000-square-foot spaces, by connecting directly to growing startups and corporate occupiers with satellite teams.”

Founded in 2010 and backed by an investors' group that ranges from Black Diamond Ventures to Avison Young, LiquidSpace differs from shared office space providers such as WeWork by allowing office owners to list unused space on its platforms. Renting out more traditional space on a short-term basis meets the ultimate goal of eventually making all unused office and conference space available online at any time. In the fourth and final installment of our series on Web-based office space platforms, GlobeSt.com spoke with Gilbreath recently for an overview of Liquid Space's offerings.

GlobeSt.com: Tell us how LiquidSpace came to be in its current form.

Mark Gilbreath: Prior to founding LiquidSpace, I was developing commercial real estate and had been for several years, although I'm a tech guy by trade. I was fascinated with the idea of new models for how office could be delivered on a more flexible basis to meet the needs of dynamic organizations. I had been a CEO of a Silicon Valley startup and faced with the challenge of meeting the needs of my young but high-growth company with a real estate model that was all about a long-term lease.

That experience in the 1990s inspired me in the 2000s to explore a fundamental new way that buildings could be constructed and sold. I built a prototype office building in Boise, ID that was LEED Gold certified, and the internal architecture of the building was geared toward flexibility and scalability. On top of this adaptable building, we put a business model that was flexible as well. Instead of providing long-term leases for tenants, it was all on a membership model on a monthly basis. We called the membership model Liquid Space, back in 2008. The vision was that we would build a network of these buildings and they would satisfy the needs of large and small companies. We got occupancy in that building in November of 2008, right as the market was imploding with the financial crisis.

Eighteen months later, as the market was continuing to deteriorate, we realized that the idea of flexible space, and allowing occupiers to be able to transact space on shorter durations and having it wherever they wanted it, was a winning idea. But we also observed that from a physical space standpoint, we didn't need to go out and build new buildings. The financial crisis brought into view how much existing space there was, sitting out there unused. We decided that rather than building buildings, we would build a digital marketplace that would allow existing owners, and existing companies with space to share, to post it online and be able to transact in much shorter durations than a flexible lease. We sold that original building we had created, and launched a new company called LiquidSpace.

GlobeSt.com: Although you have moved from new construction to existing buildings and a digital platform, are there carryovers from your original conception of Liquid Space into the company as it's now constituted?

Gilbreath: Absolutely. There's a carryover in principle that individuals should be provided a choice, and that if you can create great choice for a consumer, that can be a winning proposition. The choice that we provide is a function of aggregating an incredible diversity of real estate options into one app, one marketplace. Coworking spaces, office centers, hotels, private companies, landlords directly—all of that becomes aggregated into one marketplace.

It also reflects the belief that the best space solution for an individual is going to be rather personal. Where are you today, and where do you want to be for the next six months? Will you be using the space to write the Great American Novel or to collaborate with 500 other engineers? Those considerations are powerful opportunities if you build a business around delivering choice, and that's what we've done. We've built a solution that allows an incredible diversity of supply to all be available in the pocket or desktop through our apps.

GlobeSt.com: How do you obtain the information on availabilities and convince the various space providers to participate?

Gilbreath: From day one, we've focused on building a platform that could accommodate a myriad of different types of real estate operator, all of which I would characterize as workspace-as-a-service businesses. Big operators like Marriott and Servcorp have used our platform. But we also recognized that there were massive amounts of high-quality space sitting idle, in particular within private businesses. The small but growing company that has done a traditional lease for a large amount of space but isn't yet using it all—that inventory now has found the light of day. We make it possible for private businesses to list and have a more efficient alternative to traditional subletting.

Most recently, we've begun to unlock the massive supply of space within institutional real estate owners, within landlords, and in particular targeting the structural vacancy that the traditional leasing model tends to neglect. For most large institutional owners, this can represent 5% to 10% of an entire portfolio. These space are 2,000, 5,000 square feet—the optimal size in many cases, and available for optimal durations to be matched to the needs of growing companies. Step one was to understand how each of those different constituencies—workspace-as-a-service-providers, private companies and institutional landlords—would need to engage with our platform, but then to be able to pull all of them in and effectively merchandise them as peers to the end user. The consumer that's looking for a 10-person office in New York City, or a five-person team space in Chicago, might be very interested in comparing the options that exist across those different categories.

A part of bringing that supply on board is making it extremely easy to for those entities to engage. If I'm a landlord or a private building owner, joining LiquidSpace is a self-service process. They click on “list space,” and in 30 minutes they can have a listing up and online, and become part of the option set for people that are searching for space.