With individuals and teams transitioning to a fully remote or hybrid model working models, post-pandemic, there’s a theory that employees still desire the structure and accountability that working in an office used to provide. Not everyone likes working remotely full time, right? There’s a lack of ‘community’. Plus, sometimes it’s hard to get into state of ‘deep work’.
Born in the pandemic, FLOWN is a startup that tried to address these ‘deep work’ and ‘flow states’ by combining physical locations with other support aspects. It’s now pivoted to offering a full virtual platform to businesses that want to make the best of this new work environment.
FLOWN offers live facilitated “deep work” sessions as well as a collection of on-demand focus and “recharge” content. Members get a 30-day free trial. Thereafter, tax-deductible subscriptions are available from £15/month, with a ‘free forever’ option also available.
After closing their £1.2m Pre-seed round of funding during the first covid lockdown, FLOWN has now closed an additional £2.5m in Seed funding, led by proptech and “future of work” investors Pi Labs, as well BDMI and Venrex. In addition, January Ventures, Auxxo Ventures, and Alma Angels will participate.
FLOWN is led by serial entrepreneur Alicia Navarro with her sister, serial operator Cat Navarro. Prior to FLOWN, Alicia founded content monetization startup Skimlinks for 11 years, before it was acquired by Connexity during the first lockdown of 2020.
“We already have tons of paying customers, they attend our Flocks (live deep working sessions) on average 4 times a week,” said Navarro.
In a “flock” people will introduce themselves, like on a Zoom call, work on their own projects, have a 10 minute break, then finally check in on how they’ve done. The participants won’t necessarily work with each other at the same company.
“We invested in FLOWN because, when we imagine what the future of the office means post-covid, we see services that enable distributed teams to be efficient, creative, and engaged, irrespective of where they are working,” said Hugo Silva, investment lead at Pi Labs in a statement. “Alicia’s plan to build a media company for deep work – taking the playbook of companies like Calm and Peloton and applying it to a work space – is ahead of its time.”