BROADCASTS.com

The recent opening of a Chicago office of ANGI Homeservices is one that the firm would like to replicate, but not in terms of size (the site has a capacity for roughly 100 sales representatives) or even necessarily geographic location. Instead, the home services player plans to duplicate the approach that it used to determine whether a Chicago location was worthy of investment, according to ANGI Home Services CFO Jamie Cohen, who says that signing a 10-year lease for tens of thousands of square feet is often just too big a gamble when so many questions remain unanswered.

\u201cCan we recruit in this market? Can we sell in this market? And can we build upon this foundation?,\u201d rhetorically asks Cohen, who adds that the approach involves \u201ca pop-up sales center\u201d concept that permits ANGI to test out new markets in a \u201clow commitment manner.\u201d

In the case of Chicago, ANGI deployed a small team of about 20 people into a Chicago-area WeWork location, where they soon found answers to Cohen\u2019s questions that allowed her and ANGI\u2019s operational team to green-light a larger, more permanent home for the team.

Meanwhile, Cohen\u2019s finance function is now home to ANGI\u2019s real estate team, which oversees about 1 million square feet of property. Besides being one of ANGI\u2019s heftiest expenses, real estate is part of a more collaborative financial model that operates in lockstep with the company\u2019s capacity for hiring sales personnel\u2014the same people that ANGI uses to determine future office space commitments.\xa0\u2013 Jack Sweeney