CARRICKFERGUS-born entrepreneur Peter Johnston plans to open an office in Belfast for his start-up Lystable, creating up to 10 jobs.
The office, which will open later this year, will be based in the refurbished Ormeau Baths building - and Lystable will be its first tenant.
Johnston, whose business is based primarily in San Francisco, is one of the founding members of the Ormeau Baths collaborative workspace, which was announced last week.
Over the next three months, the interior of the 7,674 sq ft Victorian-era listed building will be transformed into a collaborative shared co-working space on a par with those found in major cities across the US and Europe.
It will have room for more than 140 desks, a private office and an event space, with an expectation there will be a mix of people using desks on a part-time and full-time basis.
The project is the brainchild of several Northern Ireland entrepreneurs, including Jon Bradford of Motive Partners and Mark Dowds, co-founder of on-demand insurance platform Trov and early investor in companies like Uber and Twilio.
Founded in London in 2014, Lystable is a freelancer collaboration app which allows managers in publishing, content marketing and video production streamline working with freelancers to assign work, track invoices and make payments simply.
The news came on the same day as Lystable announced it has raised $10 million in funding for expansion in the US, doubling the company’s valuation since June of last year.
Valar Ventures, founded by Peter Thiel, James Fitzgerald and Andrew McCormack, led the additional financing with participation from earlier investors SciFi VC, Kindred Capital and Goldcrest Capital, as well as new investors Glynn Capital and Wilmont Ventures.
The fresh round of funding brings total investment capital raised to date to $25 million.
"The additional capital will be used to continue to expand our team in the U.S. and specifically to launch a major new product later in 2017," said Johnston, Lystable founder and chief executive.
"The freelance economy is the new normal, and became that way extremely quickly," said SciFi VC partner Eric Scott, who is also joining Lystable’s board of directors.
"Companies at the forefront of this trend are scrapping their spreadsheets and antiquated freelance management systems, and opting for Lystable’s freelancer collaboration app to do the job, because it’s so much more efficient and easier to use."
Among Lystable’s customers are The Economist, Expedia, Airbnb and Google.
