Investing in GroWrk
The following excerpt is from Allied’s original deal memo to investors. To review investment opportunities in full, please consider joining the syndicate at Allied.vc/join
The pandemic has accelerated the adoption of remote work, and we believe this hybrid work model will remain the new normal. However, while there has been a surge in communication and collaboration tools for remote teams, one of the most costly pain points has gone primarily overlooked: IT equipment management.
For example, assume you’ve applied for a job at Microsoft. After HR completes the interview process and you’ve accepted the employment offer, the IT department is notified that you’ll be starting in two weeks and is given a list of equipment that needs to be delivered to your home by that date (i.e. laptop, keyboard, mouse, phone, printer, microphone, webcam for Zoom calls, etc.).
Unfortunately, with remote workers now located around the globe, it’s no longer as simple as driving into the office to pick up your company laptop. Instead, IT departments are faced with the logistical nightmare of becoming more like an Amazon fulfillment centre. As a result, they struggle with increased logistical complexities resulting in massive cost increases, shipping delays, and extended downtime for new hires to get up and running.
In fact, the average cost of IT equipment and support services is currently more than $2.7k per year per employee among US companies; and with 73% of all departments expected to have remote workers by 2028, these costs and challenges will only continue to compound (source: Global Workplace Analytics).
Enter GroWrk
The GroWrk platform provides automated equipment management for distributed teams, enabling companies to hire from anywhere in the world and have new remote workers set up and running within days of receiving an employment offer.
Through a monthly SaaS subscription per employee, IT departments can set up a new hire within minutes, order and ship IT equipment, and manage the equipment throughout the entire employee lifecycle.
How it works:
Once a new remote worker is hired, the IT manager logs into the GroWrk dashboard and orders the necessary equipment (i.e. laptop, monitors, keyboard, etc.).
GroWrk’s regional equipment partner procures and ships the equipment within 3-5 business days based on the worker’s location.
The employee receives their new equipment, and the IT manager can oversee the company’s entire equipment inventory through a simple online dashboard.
By leveraging its distribution partners around the globe, GroWrk customers are not impacted by shipping delays or other logistical challenges involved with sending IT equipment from a central warehouse or head office. Currently, GroWrk enables the hiring of remote workers in more than 150 countries.
Why we are thrilled to support Carlos and the team at GroWrk
We love companies exhibiting accelerated growth within rapidly expanding, multi-billion dollar target markets.
Led by a team of previously-exited venture-backed founders with deep domain expertise, we believe GroWrk is strategically positioned to capitalize on asymmetric growth thanks to a fundamental shift in the way people work.
1) Proven Team with Deep Domain Expertise
Founder and CEO Carlos Escutia previously co-founded CasaOne, a venture-backed furniture subscription company. Carlos grew the company to $20M ARR and more than 50 employees while raising a Series B from Tier-1 VCs, including Accel and Freestyle (among others).
Prior to CasaOne, Carlos worked as an investment banker at Barclays and Wells Fargo, later becoming the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at a venture capital firm focused on renewable energy. Carlos received his MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business and has spent more than a decade building and investing in successful technology companies.
Thanks to his significant knowledge and industry expertise, Carlos has attracted a team of full-stack engineers, product managers, operations specialists, and business development executives. As a result, we believe Carlos and his team are the best people to build the GroWrk platform and will continue to capitalize on global remote-work tailwinds post-pandemic.
2) Primed Market Conditions with Growing Demand and Global Tailwinds
In less than 2 years, Covid has accelerated the adoption and acceptance of remote work by roughly a decade. By 2025, it's predicted that nearly 28% of the American workforce (i.e. 40M people) will work remotely, while an estimated 255M people globally are already working remotely (source).
Overall, the global digital workplace market is expected to reach $54.2B by 2027, expanding at a CAGR of 11.3% (source). As a result, companies around the globe are scrambling for solutions to get new and current employees up and running with effective and reliable remote offices.
Moreover, with younger generations placing a greater emphasis on the flexibility to work remotely, employers are beginning to use the option of remote work as a bargaining chip to attract & retain top talent.
Therefore, as a result of this fundamental shift in the way people want to work, we believe distributed workforces will become the new normal, and that companies will have to increasingly adopt and adapt to a remote work environment in order to remain competitive.
3) Solving a Costly & Critical Pain Point for High-Value, Large-Scale Customers
As previously highlighted, the average cost of IT equipment and support services is currently more than $2.7k per year per employee among US companies.
Historically, IT departments were set up based on large central office environments, allowing IT managers to walk around the building from desk to desk, setting up employee workstations and managing IT equipment. Moreover, if a remote employee required technical support, they could simply stop by the office.
Unfortunately, IT departments were never set up for remote work environments and now face huge logistical challenges when trying to remotely manage hundreds (if not thousands) of assets across time zones and countries.
Since the pandemic began, IT equipment has quickly become one of the largest and most costly pain points for large-scale organizations, and if remote work is here to stay (which we believe it is), we anticipate this problem will only get worse.
Therefore, as evident by GroWrk’s incredible growth velocity, the option to reduce this painful cost by more than 80% through an automated and streamlined platform subscription is a highly attractive value proposition for enterprise customers.
For these reasons, we are incredibly excited to support the GroWrk team as they continue to capture marketshare on their mission to enable smart equipment management for distributed teams.
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