The pandemic reduced office use nationwide by 50%, and tenants have been left to deal with highly inflexible, long term lease agreements that don’t fit today’s office use patterns.

The traditional brokerage model works great for big spaces and long terms. But when you want to talk smaller units, short term lengths, shared and common areas, you’re out of luck. 

Tandem is an AI-enabled office leasing platform. We’re using technology to unlock flexible, month-to-month agreements in quality, ready-to-go spaces.   Our AI co-pilot enables a white-glove-quality B2B office search experience, with a fraction of the human labor typically required.

Today we’re serving two primary markets — NY & SF, with hundreds of active Hosts in each.  We’ve helped match more than 100 companies and have seen double-digit month-over-month growth.
Marketplace to help companies lease and share office space
Title: Tandem: Marketplace to help companies lease and share office space | Y Combinator

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### Marketplace to help companies lease and share office space

The pandemic reduced office use nationwide by 50%, and tenants have been left to deal with highly inflexible, long term lease agreements that don’t fit today’s office use patterns. The traditional brokerage model works great for big spaces and long terms. But when you want to talk smaller units, short term lengths, shared and common areas, you’re out of luck. Tandem is an AI-enabled office leasing platform. We’re using technology to unlock flexible, month-to-month agreements in quality, ready-to-go spaces. Our AI co-pilot enables a white-glove-quality B2B office search experience, with a fraction of the human labor typically required. Today we’re serving two primary markets — NY & SF, with hundreds of active Hosts in each. We’ve helped match more than 100 companies and have seen double-digit month-over-month growth.



Tandem

Founded:2023

Team Size:9

Location:San Francisco

### Active Founders

### Rafi Sands, Founder

Rafi is Co-Founder & CEO of Tandem. Rafi is an 18-time marathon runner, Guinness World Record Holder, Oaklandian, and former management consultant (one of these things is less exciting than the others…). He spent two years at Stanford researching the future of the office market after COVID under Professor Nick Bloom. Read his blog at rafisands.substack.com



### Kristen Gallogly, Founder

With a passion for efficiency, helping, and creating value, Kristen merges 8 years of experience advising companies in the commercial real estate world with an art of the possible mindset to change how companies lease and access office space.



### Brendan Suh, Founder

Brendan is Co-Founder & Head of Marketing at Tandem. After 3 years of management consulting at Bain, Brendan led marketing at a DTC startup and scaled them from $6 to $10M ARR. He also bootstrapped an e-commerce business prior to building Tandem.



### Company Launches

[### Tandem - Marketplace for flexible office leasing](

**_tl;dr:_** _Tandem is a marketplace that uses AI to make the office leasing process less tedious. Whereas a typical office search takes 3-6 months, Tandem’s platform gets it done in 14 days or less. Since launching in NYC & SF earlier this year, **the team has helped \>100 companies find off-market space, paying out \>$1M in rent through its platform.**_

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Hey everyone, we’re building [Tandem]( a marketplace to help companies flexibly lease office space.

### ❌ The Problem

Renting an office is expensive and hard.

Here’s how the traditional process works: hire a broker, tour options for months, hire a lawyer to review a lease, sign for a 1-5 year minimum term, hire another broker to sublease the space when you outgrow it, repeat.

COVID has left US offices half as full as they were in 2019 and resulted in landlords sitting on $500B+ in losses. This means tons of excess space that both landlords and companies are paying for, but because the traditional process is so tedious, they have no way of offering it flexibly - the way tenants these days want it.

### 🔍 The Solution

**Tandem is a new type of office marketplace that uses AI-powered workflows to help companies list, discover, and pay for new office space.**  
Lower transaction costs mean shorter lease terms — Tandem customers can trade spaces, upsize or downsize, with as little as 30 days notice.

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To provide access to unique supply, Tandem helps top companies rent out office space in iconic buildings (e.g., the World Trade Center), almost like a long-term Airbnb for a business.

Hosts can list their excess space on our marketplace, and our platform will coordinate tours with prospective teams, manage legal, and process rent payments. Companies looking for space can browse off-market options, meet interesting Hosts, pay rent through our platform, and maintain flexible month-to-month contracts.

We have 200+ offices across New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, with more than 100 companies actively sharing. Here’s a sample of our community’s favorite spaces, MTV cribs-style:

🗺️ **World Trade Center (FiDi, NYC)**



🗺️ **Spring Street (SoHo, NYC)**



🗺️ **Bryant Street (Mission Bay, SF)**



### 🙏🏼 Asks

*   If your company / a company you know has **excess office space,** we’d love to help you earn money for that space!
*   If you’re **looking for an office**, let us know, and we’ll help you find a new home!

Thanks for reading!

The Tandem Team


