Sarah Hostyk never wants you to miss leg day again — so she’s raising money to turn your gym into your office.
The local entrepreneur has launched WorkStrive, a Rockville startup that transforms gyms and fitness studios into coworking spaces during off-peak hours, to drive foot traffic to those underutilized spots. And she’s looking to raise a $500,000 to $1 million seed round this fall to expand beyond its initial four locations and hire the team to do it.
Here’s how it works: Through a two-sided online marketplace (think Airbnb), a person can buy a $36 pass to both spend the day getting work done at an athletic center or studio — converted into a furnished open office — and take a class or exercise there for an hour. For the gyms and studios, it means another revenue stream (they get a portion of each pass purchase), and for the target customer base, which for now largely comprises millennials in urban centers, it means saving cash on otherwise separate coworking and fitness costs, Hostyk said.
Coworking day passes in D.C. can range from roughly $30 to $50, monthly gym memberships can sit around $50 and exceed $100, and single yoga or spin class passes hover around $25. The WorkStrive differentiator, Hostyk said, is that it wraps remote working and fitness into one package for a smaller expense.
It also forms a community for people who could otherwise feel isolated and lonely, following market research interviews Hostyk conducted with remote workers, she said. “What happens organically at my places that doesn’t happen in other situations is, if you’re going to be working next to someone and working out next to someone, it creates something to talk about.”
But WorkStrive is hardly the only game in town. Greater Washington has seen an explosive coworking boom in recent years, from the giants like WeWork, niche providers like The Wing, international players from Amsterdam and Israel and new market entrants, not to mention the maker spaces and innovation labs that adopt coworking setups. It’s a saturated market, with new concepts for everything from female startup founders to doctors with independent practices to working parents with young kids. Coworking companies are also breaking into fitness nationally: WeWork, for instance, is jumping into the gym business.
While the brick-and-mortar structure continues to proliferate the region, and hotel lobbies and restaurants turn into coworking spaces by day, the fitness angle makes WorkStrive different, Hostyk said. “Both the economics and the environment makes what I’m doing unique, and therefore will allow me to compete well with these other places.”
Gyms that join WorkStrive’s platform partner with Hostyk to set up tables and chairs each day in separated spaces that otherwise wouldn’t be heavily used — so no, people won’t be lifting weights and doing lunges next to others taking calls and working on laptops. For now, the company has four sites: Mint D.C. in Dupont Circle, two Yoga Heights locations in Petworth and Takoma, and Bikram Yoga in Riverdale Park, Maryland. The startup’s founder and CEO is shooting to have four additional locations on board by the fall and more by the winter, she said, declining to reveal specifics because she’s working on contracts now. Ultimately she sees the WorkStrive model expanding beyond the region, but that’s down the road, she said.
The seed round marks Hostyk’s first stab at securing investor dollars to grow the company; up to this point, she’s bootstrapped the business with her life’s savings, she said. She’s also starting to generate revenue, which comes from the passes customers buy, and plans to roll out monthly passes eventually. Hostyk declined to disclose revenue details because “it’s only been a few days,” she said. The new funding would secure a sales team and allow her to add more studios and gyms to the marketplace.
“That’s key, because I’m really looking to bring on many businesses and scale and grow quickly,” she said of the seed round. “The dream is to make this be something that is everywhere.”
Metro-area locations
| Rank | Prior Rank | Company |
|---|---|---|
1 | 1 | Regus |
2 | 3 | WeWork |
3 | 2 | Carr Workplaces |
