32. KONTOR

Founders: Luke Appleby & James Townsend
Founded: October 2014
Website: www.kontor.space

Luke Appleby and James Townsend first struck upon the idea for Kontor whilst sharing a taxi home after work.

Working as chartered surveyors in commercial property for real estate consultancy CBRE, the pair realised they had discovered the same gap in the market to offer property services to the tech, media and creative sectors – particularly the growing numbers of start-ups and small businesses.

In October 2014, they launched Kontor; a service that provides real estate acquisition advice to help clients find spaces that “maximise their creative and business potential”, fuel productivity, attract talent and have the flexibility that growing businesses need.

With a lean team of seven staff, Kontor curates what it sees as the “coolest workspaces”, offering flexible and traditional lease options and taking a fee from the landlord. To date, the business has secured over 1,000,000 square feet of space for clients and tripled its turnover – smashing its five-year target by three whole years.

Amongst its illustrious list of clients are WeWork, PROPERCORN, MarketInvoice, Blaze, 500 StartUps, Jaguar Land Rover, Virgin Media and Techstars.

The second half of 2017 will see Kontor work on the development of new services including the launch a new arm of the business that works directly with landlords, helping them to find tenants for their spaces.

The service is currently only available in London, but Appleby and Townsend aren’t stopping there: in the near future they intend to expand across Europe’s major cities and beyond…