London: August 23 2021 

HotPatch closes a six figure seed round for $150k and has barely even got going. 

Work is changing. And HotPatch is leading the way in its transformation. Space is being wasted, and we’re all losing out because of it. 

If you really want to rub this startup up the wrong way, show them an underused, empty space. Worse yet, show them a professional trying to find it. 

With a beautifully crafted platform already turning heads, HotPatch looks set to shake things up for the foreseeable future. The team is already plotting its next fundraise, in what looks set to be one of the most hotly anticipated funding rounds of 2021. 

Founded in late 2019, HotPatch is in pursuit of making the space you need, easily accessible – and helping business owners make money from it at the same time.

For landlords and owners of space, this means being able to list rentable space with HotPatch in just a few minutes. Be it a salon chair, a yoga studio, or even a beautifully curated back garden. 

For professionals, HotPatch is taking the fuss out of finding your next workspace, regardless of profession. Whether it’s a desk for a day or a studio for an hour; whatever space is needed to get the job done, HotPatch wants to remove the trouble of finding it.

Formally ‘launching’ in March 2020, (when better to launch a space sharing platform than on day one of a global pandemic, right?) lockdowns and stay at home orders have done little to deter this ambitious team, who have gone from strength to strength in setting the foundations for a platform that is set to make a dramatic impact in how flexible we can be with how we work. 

With almost 300 individual spaces or ‘Patches’ as they are known, already available to book in just a few clicks, HotPatch has enjoyed a period of blistering growth in 2021, and in the words of CEO Yas Alimam: 

“It’s been such an exciting time, we have barely had the chance to breathe. What’s even more exciting is we are literally just getting off the ground and although we have almost 300 Patches available with one hell of a community behind us, we haven’t even started to demonstrate the wider impact of our product yet”.

For a company in its early stages, this has not stopped HotPatch from thinking big and doing bigger. Fancy booking an entire karaoke bar, a 50,000 square foot warehouse, a floating recording studio for a couple of hours? Sounds strange doesn’t it? Not to HotPatch. When they say they are serious about making access to space possible, they mean it. 

Boasting a customer list that already includes the likes of PUMA, HotPatch has quickly been able to demonstrate the value that space on demand has in the creative industry, regardless of the size of the player. Notable users have also included Love Island star and fitness influencer Gabby Dawn Allen, who made excellent use of HotPatch space for her latest set of online fitness videos, and wasted no time in telling the world about how impressed she was with the platform. 

Earlier this year, Yas was invited as the VIP special guest speaker at ‘Black Business in London’ conference, encouraging other young black founders to speak about what makes them passionate about what they do and how to capitalise on this. Here Yas was able to emphasise that working hard to remove barriers to space is at the centre of the HotPatch mission. Success stories include the likes of Maktub Theatre Group and female-lead creative community ModelMe. Space should have been the last thing on their agenda, not the first. These communities have been able to rely on HotPatch to take the pain out of finding space, and allow them to focus on what they do best. 

“Seeing somebody who is literally priced out of their passion because of access to space simply doesn’t work for us. The space is there, and now finding it is no longer a problem. In reality, what we are doing is simple. We want people to focus on their work, not be worried about where they’ll work” continues Yas 

Equally, for owners of space, HotPatch wants to open up to the possibilities that a ‘Patch’ can create. “Your side-room can become your side-hustle”. Your empty property can be someone’s whole studio. One person’s wasted space is another person’s perfect Patch. 

Yas clearly has one objective in mind when it comes to how we will think about space in the future:

“We hear all of these silly corporate buzzwords flying around like ‘access’ and ‘immediacy’. So why is space so inaccessible? If groceries, taxis and takeaways can appear at your door in 10 minutes, why can’t we make finding space just as easy?”

Studios, salons and co-works are literally already all around you – Yas says he likes to count them, whenever he’s on the move as a reminder of how big HotPatch’s impact will be. You are probably even passing places you want to be working on the way to the station, you just don’t know it yet. If it’s not a Patch now, HotPatch is certainly working to change that.  

Having done away with tomb-sized contracts and ludicrous commutes; HotPatch is all about you. It’s about you coming and going as you need. It’s about finding space that works for you. 

Put simply, it’s about Making Space Work For You.