Proximity Space
Proximity: A platform managing workspaces and connecting people with places.
Founded
2017Proximity: A platform managing workspaces and connecting people with places.
The Proximity Platform is a workspace management system designed for coworking spaces, commercial real estate, and flex space operators. It unifies building access control, room and desk booking, member communications, and operational data into one integrated experience. The platform includes member management tools, automated billing and invoicing, CRM functionality, a custom website builder, and network-wide roaming capabilities that allow members to access participating spaces across the country.
Key add-on modules include Proximity Protect for insurance compliance tracking, credit monitoring tools for tenant screening, and white-label options for branded deployments. The platform also offers analytics dashboards, contact management, blog and content publishing tools, and workflow automation. Proximity serves over 600 coworking brands and integrates with door access hardware systems, enabling operators to manage both software and physical infrastructure through a single vendor.
The workspace management software market is experiencing rapid growth driven by the rise of hybrid and remote work models. The global coworking space market is projected to grow significantly, with operators increasingly seeking unified technology platforms that combine access control, booking, billing, and community management. Commercial real estate is also shifting toward flexible space models.
Proximity Space is positioned to capture this growing demand by serving operators of all sizes, including those in smaller cities and rural areas that larger PropTech platforms often overlook. The company's combination of software and hardware integration creates a moat against competitors who only offer software solutions. The network effect of its roaming program grows as more spaces join the platform.
Proximity Space's primary competitive advantage is its operator-led origin: the founders built the software to solve their own coworking space management challenges, creating deep firsthand understanding of customer pain points. The platform uniquely combines both software and hardware (door access systems) in one integrated solution, reducing vendor fragmentation for operators. Its rural Colorado roots have shaped a focus on serving communities outside major tech hubs, an underserved market segment.
The 2020 acquisition of SMPL added community-focused features and flexible membership options that differentiate Proximity from pure software competitors. The company also benefits from strong industry recognition, including being ranked #1 globally by Forbes in 2016. The dual software-plus-hardware approach creates higher switching costs, while the platform's network effects grow as more spaces join the roaming network, increasing value for all member operators.
Proximity Space operates in a crowded coworking management software market with established competitors including Coworks, Nexudus, OfficeRnD, and Cobot. Being based in Montrose, Colorado—a small city of roughly 20,000 people—may create challenges in talent acquisition and brand visibility compared to coastal technology competitors. The company's pivot from physical coworking operator to software platform required significant repositioning and rebuilding customer acquisition channels.
The dependency on hardware integration for door access adds operational complexity and potential supply chain risk that pure SaaS competitors avoid. Additionally, while serving rural and smaller communities is a differentiation, it also means addressing a more fragmented market with lower average revenue per customer compared to enterprise-focused competitors targeting major metropolitan commercial real estate. The company has raised relatively modest funding ($1.2M total) compared to well-funded competitors in the PropTech space.