WeWork, the co-working space headquartered in New York and valued north of $5 billion, has today announced its second acquisition. The company will be acquiring Welkio, a digital sign-in system for guests at an office, which was actually built at a Hathway hackathon.
Welkio was founded by two Hathway employees — Hathway is a WeWork member. After the Hackathon, Hathway employees Florent Ferere and DJ Tarazona (founders of Welkio) found that the product was actually quite viable in the market and, with Hathway’s blessing, spun out the company.
The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. However, DJ and Florent will join the WeWork crew, while Hathway remains its own business.
Welkio uses an iPad to do all the usual sign-in stuff that a receptionist would do when a guest enters an office building. It takes down your first and last name, phone number, and the company you work for, along with taking a pic and taking down the name of the person you’re visiting.
As soon as you sign in, a text is sent to the person you’re seeing telling them to pick you up in the lobby.
With more than 88 WeWork locations across 22 cities, not to mention thousands of different members across various companies, a sign-in system like this makes sense for WeWork as it continues to expand.
WeWork has been building toward adding more of a software layer to its physical, real estate-based business. The company’s first acquisition was a building information modeling firm called Case, which was meant to help WeWork expand to new locations with faster and more efficient information around remodeling those new locations.
But the software buildout isn’t just about WeWork, but also about its members. The Welkio acquisition is just the beginning of a move toward more efficient software to help power the various companies and locations that WeWork operates.
You can learn more about WeWork here.
