Mediaboss Marketing

How Jason Freedman and 42Floors cooked up a killer business idea that could turn commercial real estate on its head.

David H. Freedman

Creating Serendipity: Jason Freedman (left) and David Woodworth head to yet another meeting in New York City. Freedman believes that if you have a compelling story and tell it enough times, good things will happen.

David H. Freedman

Home Base 42Floor's co-founders (from left) Ben Ehmke, David Woodworth, Jason Freedman, and Jon and James Bracy live and work in a four-bedroom house as they prepare to launch.

Jason Freedman hunches his shoulders against New York City's December chill and walks faster, nudged both by the cold and by being late. He and David Woodworth, co-founders of an Internet company called 42Floors, both stand out a bit with their buoyant, vulnerable Californianess as they swim against the trudging, elbowing crowds.

Focused on the iPhone he clutches a foot in front of his face for navigational purposes, oblivious to how dorky and unsafe this seems on these streets, Freedman races on to the next stop in a two-day string of meetings, Woodworth trailing a few feet behind.

Freedman and Woodworth are several months into the creation of 42Floors, which aims to make finding office space as easy as searching for plane tickets. They're here in New York to...well, it's not entirely clear why they're here. For sure, they hope large New York real estate companies will eventually agree to share office-space listings with their start-up, though it's too early to ask for that sort of commitment. Mainly, they're here to share their plans for 42Floors and get feedback, given that New York will be an early market for them. But they also want to open doors to possible, as yet unspecified alliances or just somehow make something good happen, whatever that might be. If nothing else, Freedman hopes the meetings will generate leads for more meetings. "If they can't help me, maybe they play golf with someone who does," he says.

Freedman believes that start-ups need a certain amount of serendipity to succeed and that this serendipity comes to those who go out and take meetings. "Serendipity is a function of how compelling your story is and how many times you repeat it to people," he says.

Link:
Disruption Comes (Finally!) to Commercial Real Estate