NEW YORK – Offsite, the marketplace and tech-enabled services provider saving time, money, and stress for remote and hybrid companies planning team retreats, today announced it has raised $3 million to help create more connected workforces through in-person experiences.
Since launching in 2021, Offsite has planned hundreds of team retreats in over 15 countries for clients ranging from hospitals to hedge funds, focused primarily on supporting startups such as LinkSquares, Airbyte, Metabase, 15Five, mParticle, Flex, and Rattle, as well as communities like Hampton, YPO, and LifeLabs Learning, and venture capital firms such as Greylock.
Offsites and team retreats are an exploding niche in a corporate travel market expected to surpass $500 billion by 2030. Demand for venues that can host all-hands meetings, department-level meetings, executive team retreats, sales kickoffs, and other types of “offsites” continues to rise. Offsite is uniquely positioned to serve a wide range of organizers who plan company events with their mix of end-to-end service and software.
Leading investors to-date include Forum Ventures and Automattic, with significant contributions from Right Side Capital, Integral, Splash Capital, and Genius Ventures. Over 60 angel investors have also participated including co-founders and CEOs from Remote, Vendr, Convene, 15Five, Gainsight, and ChartMogul, as well as domain experts like top executives from Airbnb, HubSpot, and Pendo.
Jared Kleinert, Offsite’s Founder and CEO, was one of the first ten employees at 15Five, one of the leading employee engagement and retention platforms. Kleinert later became an award-winning author, TED speaker, and organizer of quarterly summits for New York Times bestselling authors, VC-backed startup founders, and other successful small business owners. As a result of these various experiences Kleinert found himself attending, speaking at, and facilitating offsites around the world over a decade leading up to the pandemic.
Kleinert shared, “During the pandemic, I was betting the decades-long shift to more decentralized workforces would accelerate, meaning the number of offsites planned by remote and hybrid teams in particular would grow exponentially (and the importance of those offsites would increase dramatically as a result). To-date, no one has developed a true ‘one stop shop’ experience to solve the logistical challenges of planning offsites or team retreats. After a couple years, we’ve developed a growing community of clients, partners, team members, and investors who believe in our vision for what a successful marketplace and platform could become in this space – which is both humbling and exciting!”
Offsite currently offers two main ways to plan your team retreat. Event organizers can:
- Search a curated, Airbnb-style marketplace with hundreds of offsite venues around the world or
- Purchase end-to-end retreat planning services for an affordable, per-person flat fee.
Offsite’s marketplace has pre-negotiated discounts with properties on room blocks, meeting spaces, food and beverage, and more. Through the marketplace, event organizers can consolidate weeks of venue searching into a few clicks, and save 20% or more on some of the biggest budget line items for any offsite.
Offsite’s end-to-end planning services include everything from flight-booking to venue selection, negotiating, and contracting, agenda creation, budget management, procuring travel visas, making restaurant reservations, and managing vendors such as activity providers, photographers, videographers, outside speakers and facilitators, ground transportation providers, event production staff, and more!
While the debate rages on about remote versus in-office work, it is undeniable that most companies are increasingly distributed, with ongoing needs for employees to intentionally connect for strategic planning, teambuilding, creative brainstorming, problem-solving, engaging customers, and more.
Mike Cardamone, CEO & Managing Partner at Forum Ventures, who is also joining Offsite’s Board of Directors, added, “We think hybrid and more flexible work is here to stay for many industries, which will cause a decrease in spend for office space and an increase in the need for offsites, retreats and in person get togethers for teams to collaborate. As those dollars shift, we believe Offsite is well positioned to build a very big business providing world class experiences for these companies.”
To learn more and begin planning your next team retreat, visit www.offsite.com
