Pay it Forward: "I Don’t Make Many Decisions Alone Anymore"
"Surround yourself with the right people when making decisions," says Christophe Garnier, CEO and co-founder of Upflex.
Christophe Garnier, Upflex, New York
Job Title: CEO and co-founder
Area of expertise or focus: Hybrid work, the future of work, building sustainable businesses, mobile tech, and e-commerce, PropTech, enterprise workspace solutions, future-proof workspace strategies, the future office.
What has been the biggest challenge in your particular role and how have you overcome those obstacles/? We’re in the business of helping companies cut real estate costs — not people; talent is every company’s most valuable asset. But supporting your talent and helping them grow and thrive in a remote-first environment is a specialized skill set that takes work to develop. For me, the biggest challenge has been mastering the human aspect of building and managing a fast-growing, global team in a remote-first workplace: finding the right people and working together, especially as we’re working on a disruptive concept in a complex industry. Identifying and hiring the right people for this strong, diverse team is a challenge in itself — and then, you must figure out the right way to align. Everyone has different ideas, and figuring out how to collate and sync all of that valuable input, and make sure all voices are heard, takes a lot of ingredients.
You can’t have a global company without building a global team. So far, we have employees in 16 different countries. The downside of this is that our teams in New York don’t often get a chance to meet or spend in-person time with our team members in Lisbon or Warsaw. In today’s hybrid or remote-first workplaces, many people work in silos. Collaboration is perfectly possible, but you have to be conscious about making space for it. I recently implemented three-way coffee meetings at Upflex, where I meet with two employees at a time for 45 minutes just to catch up. It’s a chance for me to get to really know everyone at the company. My co-founder is doing the same. We’ll be carrying out these meetings throughout 2023 — it’s a time commitment for all of us — but we’re really excited about it. We’ll also get this rolling throughout the entire company so everyone can meet each other.
What about your role at the company are you most happy with? At Upflex, we’ve opened doors for people who work outside of tier-one workforce markets. We have employees who live in Vietnam, India, and other regions in APAC where good, interesting, creative, remote opportunities with competitive benefits for U.S.-based global tech companies tend to be limited.
In addition to the incredible team we’ve built locally and globally, we’re building a sustainable company. Forty percent of the world’s carbon emissions come from commercial real estate. By enabling and powering the use of existing shared workspaces for flexible work — making it more sustainable and easier to manage using lots of different existing spaces as “the office” — this underutilized, high-quality office space comes into play, which boosts not only cost efficiency but energy efficiency. And when employees can choose workplaces closer to where they live, this reduces commutes — and with that, carbon emissions. Furthermore, we are working on additional ways to reach carbon neutrality, including our partnership with the nonprofit Trees for the Future. So far, we’ve planted tens of thousands of trees.
What is the best piece of advice you have received that has helped you succeed in your industry? Surround yourself with the right people when making decisions. I don’t make many decisions alone anymore; I turn to my advisors and mentors for advice. I collaborate with them because they have different background knowledge and experiences that help me see things from different perspectives. That’s not something I thought about when I started, but now I do it all the time for all aspects of the business, including any pressing issues, the position of the company, and market direction.
Would you advise any younger person to begin a career in CRE? Yes, I absolutely think CRE is a world of career opportunities for young people. It’s an exciting space, especially now that it’s being disrupted and completely reimagined through tech.
How does this advice differ from what you may have received when you were starting out? The old ways of doing business that tended to shut people out and limit opportunities for diversity — racial diversity, gender diversity, economic diversity, diversity of thought — are falling by the wayside as proptech makes new levels of transparency and data-driven decisions possible. Still, much more can be done to meet the fast-evolving demands of this industry’s stakeholders. There is so much potential for technology to improve the way business gets done, buildings get built, and cities function — and we need young people — and fresh perspectives — to make it happen.
Please share with us the best lessons learned or a surprising component of your unique journey. I don’t think I would have had the same journey today if I didn’t decide to leave Europe 23 years ago. Coming to the U.S. to work in Silicon Valley at a pivotal time jump-started my career in tech and commercial real estate; I hope this inspires other immigrants thinking about starting their entrepreneurial journey and shows them what’s possible.
Furthermore, traveling has also played a surprising role in my career. Traveling to various places, such as New York and London, and working in several markets sparked my interest in so many different aspects of this industry that I wouldn’t have had the appetite to dig into if I didn’t have that travel experience.
In your opinion, what takeaways did we learn from the COVID-19 crisis? Flexible work is the future of work. It took a pandemic for many people to realize and accept that work can be done productively and efficiently in places other than their offices.
COVID also gave us a better look at the carbon emissions impact of everyone commuting to work in sprawling HQs. Workplace location flexibility is not only proving to be better for people and their work-life balance — it’s better for the planet.
How would you use to describe your work mindset? 1) Travel as much as possible; it can inspire you in more ways than you think. 2) While there are plenty of things you can’t control, you can control your attitude and your willingness to take chances. 3) You can’t meet your full potential if you’re running on empty. Give yourself time to reset — it’s part of the job.
