Charlotte Ekelund and Oleg Danylenko, co-founders of Teemyco. Image: Teemyco
Swedish start-up Teemyco is creating virtual office spaces where co-workers can interact online ‘without having to share the same coffee machine’.
Today (4 September), Stockholm-based start-up Teemyco announced that it has raised $1m in a seed funding round.
The virtual-office provider’s tech is still in beta mode but saw “a massive spike” in demand during the pandemic. The platform is currently being trialled by companies including Kognity, AppJobs, eHealthapp and Wetaca, and Teemyco said there are 5,000 people on a waiting list.
Its latest funding round – the company’s second to date – was led by VC Luminar Ventures. The round was oversubscribed, involving contributions from early-stage VC firm Antler, recruitment firm Gazella and a number of angel investors. Teemyco said that the investment will help it launch its service and hire new employees.
The company was founded last year by software engineer and machine-learning expert Oleg Danylenko and strategist, marketer and recruitment consultant Charlotte Ekelund. It has since grown to a team of nine, with Danylenko as CTO and Ekelund as CEO, and has been operating remotely since February.
“When we founded the company 12 months ago, none of us could have predicted the explosive growth in remote working that the pandemic has initiated,” Ekelund said. “Strategically, we’re trying to redefine and broaden the virtual office space by enabling users to break free from being isolated in their digital office and instead encourage them to have spontaneous interactions with their colleagues.”
With Teemyco, users can see what is going on in a virtual office space that can be shared with colleagues, with the aim of reproducing office interactions in a digital environment. They can choose a room to work beside a colleague, enter a meeting room for video calls, or spend time in the virtual coffee room.
According to Danylenko, remote working “is so much more than simply working from home or a beach”.
“We see a future where skills determine whether you can join the best companies, regardless of what country, city or family you were born in,” he said. “We are very excited to be part of enabling this future and creating offices online where great things can happen without people having to share the same coffee machine.”
