Ourspace Raises Euro 2.5 million to Improve Team Design

Ourspace is on a mission to tackle team design, helping leaders keep employees happy and optimise efficiency. The startup has raised Euro 2.5 million to launch and is led by three European entrepreneurs who have been behind some of Europe’s most exciting tech companies.

FREMONT, CA:The second-highest turnover rates across all industries are found in the IT sector. Finding and keeping the appropriate personnel is a struggle for any business leader. However, today's fiercely competitive labour market has higher stakes than ever.

Leaders are left with a constantly changing conundrum–how to establish and rebuild teams without losing momentum and efficiency as personnel come and go, company procedures go digital, and team members search for greater support. Ourspace, a new software business founded by three industry veterans in Europe's innovation scene, aims to provide the missing piece.

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The company was founded by Megan Murphy, a former vice president of products at Hotjar, Stephanie Bowker, a former vice president of marketing at Spendesk, and Mark Allen, a former senior engineering manager at Glovo. Its mission is to give leaders the tools they need to proactively align and restructure their teams at scale while also designing them with a focus on people-centricity and business outcomes.

Megan Murphy, co-founder, and CEO of the company, said that tech executives confront a significant problem. They have excellent individuals on their teams, but how to distribute them and keep them engaged and aligned is currently a manual, biased, and expensive decision process.

In addition to announcing a Euro 2.5 million pre-seed fundraising round, Ourspace also revealed its aspirations to launch and revolutionise team design.

Leading venture capital firms Connect Ventures and Seedcamp, as well as well-known angel investors, including the creators of Maze, Grabyo, and Skew by Coinbase, led the fundraising.

Felix Martinez, an investor at Seedcamp: People-problem fit is just as crucial as product-market fit. Teams are crucial to a company's success, and they've seen instances where businesses failed because they couldn't find the best people-problem fit. Ourspace is not only addressing the issue with the appropriate product, but they also have the appropriate individuals addressing the issue. They are overjoyed to support Megan, Steph, and Mark.

Ourspace has a pan-European remote staff in Paris, London, Munich, and Barcelona. The team's main hub is in Barcelona, where two of the three founders currently reside.

Cross-functional Team Design:Ourspace approaches team design from all angles. Its SaaS solution makes it easier to construct cross-functional teams by putting people, projects, and priorities in one convenient location. Ourspace empowers tech leaders to make better choices regarding how to arrange the people they have and the ones they need, regardless of whether a firm is scaling up or down, making a strategic pivot, or simply getting their organisation in shape.

The founders created the idea after they realised they lacked the same tool, one that could create ideal teams that are people-centric, supportive, and provide excellent business results.The 'OMG managing my people, product, and tech stack puzzle' is a nightmare' was the most common theme in my meetings with more than 60 tech leaders. From startups to scaleups, CPOs, Heads of Engineering, and Growth leaders currently tape together at least three separate sources of documentation that are frequently outdated and out of sync with the HR team. As a result, managers can choose between forgoing team decisions supported by data or devoting hours each week to maintaining this crucial data.

With intelligent permissions and views, the Ourspace platform seeks to provide IT leaders with a data-rich canvas to graphically brainstorm and analyse the pros and cons of rearranging individuals, teams, and ownership zones. Teams are said to operate more productively and joyfully as a result.

With the aid of the software, leaders can create teams based on the characteristics and abilities of specific employees, restructure teams when a product or strategy changes, easily fill in for employees who are out of the office or on leave and more closely align team objectives and accountability.

Ultimately, they're not only looking to assist leaders in filling seats, says Stephanie Bowker, co-founder, and CMO, but to empower them to proactively, consciously, and inclusively develop teams that reflect the diverse people they serve.

The platform additionally offers the entire organisation a simple-to-navigate source of truth with visibility into each team's objectives, goals, reporting structures, and working methods.

At Stuart, organisations encounter the issue of operating in silos when tying squads to projects and dividing team ownership, according to Dave Thomson, VP of Product. Managers can co-create staffing scenarios with their colleagues on Ourspace in a secure environment while keeping company objectives, contextual skills, and interests in mind.

Currently, the product, engineering, and growth leaders at Spendesk and Stuart are among the early users of the Ourspace platform, which is available through the waitlist.

They are developing products to mirror our customers' principles and values, with openness and cooperation built in as defaults, says Mark Allen, co-founder and CTO.

The timing of Ourspace couldn't be better, according to Pietro Bezza, co-founder and managing partner of Connect Ventures. As more businesses undergo digital revolutions and remote staff becomes the norm, this problem area will continue to expand tremendously over the years. With more context, data, and openness in the organisational design process, Ourspace offers leaders a once-in-a-lifetime chance to take advantage of the people-tech sector. They do work with Megan, Stephanie, and Mark to reimagine the role of teams, we are incredibly thrilled.

 

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