Why We Created FlowSpace

Our start-up journey creating FlowSpace at Antler over the last four months easily feels like it could have been four years.

After a crazy year, relocating to London from Stockholm in the winter, losing my previous business with the arrival of Covid, and spending summer being 100% focused on trying to be a good first-time dad — plunging into the start-up world might have seemed a little unhinged to many.

As I took this step I knew the challenge would be bigger than ever before. Embarking on this journey with little to no sleep (first-time dad, remember!) felt like some sort of business start-up special forces selection!

Yet the drive to build a company of the future in this historically critical time was always steering me (as I staggered towards the coffee pot for the seventh time). As Magnus Grimeland shared in our kick-off speech in words that resonated very closely with me, it’s the duty of today’s entrepreneurs to reimagine the future and build tomorrow’s companies that make a better world.

I’ll endeavour to share the story of why we created FlowSpace and what we are driving towards. Please bear with me as I’m new to this…

FOUNDING THOUGHTS

Many company-origin stories begin with the founder’s personal journey. Ours begins with the stories of others. As founders, we have spent our careers focused on how other people find meaning in the places they visit, their daily rituals, and the products that make them feel good. As a team, seeking to understand people’s aspirations and beliefs with day-to-day decisions and their broader life philosophies has captivated us. Many forces are at play here, but among them are some inalienable truths…

• We don’t get long to walk this earth. Our time is now. To quote my god who also goes by the name Ricky Gervais: “We are on a rock travelling around one of 100 billion stars. Our species is one of over half a billion that have ever existed. Our chances of being born are about one in 400 trillion. You’re not special, but you are fucking lucky.”
• We’ll look back on these as the good old days. We will cherish the special moments with loved ones but feel bitter about squandered time. Some of my biggest regrets are around years engaged on the wrong topic, with the wrong leaders, driven by the wrong intentions — WHY? When it was within my control to choose differently…
• We all need to feel purpose; to leave things better than we found them. Often we don’t know how to achieve this, we struggle to see any impact from our actions, or feel they are too small to matter.
• There are too many battles on too many fronts to win them all. We are trying our best to achieve our dreams, no matter how big or small. As we strive to realise them, we can often miss open goals for progress on a societal level. We’re very good at getting stuck in the thick of thin things.
• Our achievements will be empty if we don’t build them and share them with others. If we don’t realise that the journey IS the prize.
• Our psychological “flow” state is where we are happiest. As author Steven Kotler puts it: “Flow is more than an optimal state of consciousness where we feel and perform at our best — it also appears to be the only practical answer to the question: what makes life worth living?”

Knowing these truths, what can we build that makes a positive difference to our collective progress? What’s actually important? What’s a good use of our time? So we can look at ourselves at journey’s end and say we’ve spent our time well. If the practical answer to what makes life worth living is flow….then how do we help people find it?

These are the questions that demand our focus.

WHY NOW?

A lot of the best business movements have been about timing. Timing has guided us on the process of creating FlowSpace.

They say there are decades when nothing happens and weeks where decades happen. In late March 2020, our world was plunged into momentous change. Suddenly, the average worker found themselves working from home, an experience previously known to only one in fifty. Covid-19 rapidly transformed our relationship with work across 2020 and has continued to at pace into 2021.

The world of business woke up to understand that shoulder-to-shoulder commuting and crowded offices were ideas of the past; that flexible, remote working could be not just viable but desirable for all parties, offering huge potential for a better lifestyle.

Yet such a change still needs many improvements to ensure it works consistently for all.

We are in an era of the great re-imagining of how we think about work. Remote work is one of the biggest shifts that will take place in our lifetime and in workplace history. Nothing has more potential than this to significantly enhance personal well-being in the next few decades. We’ve been afforded a rare and unique opportunity.

Together we can change the direction of work and — to coin a phrase and give it new positive meaning — “take back control” as we reclaim our lives from a previously over-extended version of work.

FlowSpace will pioneer the future of work by enabling a new, local workday.

Let’s truly build back better. Together.

Harry

(first-time dad to Freja!)…and co-founder of FlowSpace

Harry Wilson is a Co-Founder & CEO at FlowSpace, our portfolio company from London.

Read more founder stories here.