CANOPY, a premium network of shared workspaces for entrepreneurs and accomplished professionals in San Francisco, prides itself on having the best member experience rather than focusing on hyper efficiency and maximum occupancy seen in many coworking spaces. Their value is defined by exceptional design, a rich diverse community, and staff that truly cares to make members feel cared for.

When looking for access control systems, Steve Mohebi and his partners were looking for a seamless solution that not only met these high standards of CANOPY but added value to their member experience as they strive to make their workday easier and inspiring. Nexkey exceeded their expectations.

Provisioning access and onboarding members is now seamless with Nexkey’s mobile access control platform. Not only can members effortlessly enter their private offices but Nexkey’s hardware beautifully blends in with the exceptional design of CANOPY’s workspaces.

Find out why CANOPY loves using Nexkey to manage and access their various premium workspaces.

Can please introduce yourself and talk about your background of founding CANOPY?

I'm Steve Mohebi. I'm one of three co-founders here at CANOPY. I execute on our finance and operations strategy. My partners, Amir Mortazavi and Yves Béhar, are more on the design and culture side.

Amir Mortazavi and I conceived of CANOPY as a means of solving our own pain. I was in a solo office, not terribly inspiring. Amir was in a home office and of course now post pandemic, the whole world can identify with that. We came together and just said, “Hey, let's go share an office”.

We were not looking for just the rock bottom cheapest office. We actually wanted something that was more design forward, more generous in space, generous in natural light and not feeling like we're the oldest grandpas in the room.

That product didn't exist. This is back in 2015-16. At the time, products were really engineered and built for a totally different demographic, really cost-conscious and centered around hyper efficiency.

We started with the pilot trial in Pacific Heights, which we opened in November of 2016 and it opened on day one fully pre-sold. So we said, “Well, okay, that's a proof statement.” We just went on from there to keep adding sites as there were, and continues to be, seemingly endless demand for this product, a premium yet still shared workspace.

How does CANOPY differ from other coworking spaces?

Our main pillars of our value proposition are an emphasis on design and how design actually informs the user experience. We are all about the member experience. We are not about hyper efficiency, maximum occupancy density ratios.

All of our locations have been featured in Architectural Digest. We have even design heavyweights like Dwell magazine located at CANOPY.

The next monumentally important part is our member community, who do you share your workday with? We're really proud that we're almost 50/50 male and female gender balanced. In a city like San Francisco, that seems to be heavily weighted towards male, it's somewhat remarkable. That adds a richness to the community.

Also just a minority of our members are tech startups. It's not just one SaaS company, or long corridors of SaaS startups. It's a very rich and diverse blend - finance, nonprofits, boutique law firms, design firms, a lot of AI, crypto, etc.

The last pillar of differentiation and value is our staff. We really pay close attention to not just who we hire, but how we train and engender our brand values to our staff. Our staff is what brings the space to the next level. We just hear that all the time.

You feel like a first-class experience at CANOPY, we really aspire to have you feel like you're really cared for.

Who uses Nexkey at your various locations?

So the Nexkey user cohorts are, of course, our staff which includes our community management staff, our facilities people, our porters, and then our member companies.

I think the members are actually enjoying the Nexkey experience even more than our staff because as their employees come and go, it's just all that much easier to provision access versus the brain damage of card keys. I don't think anybody uses brass keys anymore.

That's where we found the strongest reception, with our member companies. And I guess it adds up in some way to the member experience I referred to, which is how we can make your work day easier, but also inspiring.

And certainly, something as functional access should just be completely seamless. That's why we settled on Nexkey in the first place. Our member companies now affirm that it is exactly what they want.

What were you looking for when looking for an access control solution?

We for sure wanted something that was all mobile, all cloud and really no additional hardware or expertise required.

Our goal was something as seamless and really invisible as possible. Getting in and out of your private office should be effortless. We've achieved that with Nexkey.

And it's not that easy, given that within our member companies, people are coming and going. The employee turnover within these companies is what it is in Silicon Valley. Nexkey is really seamless for them to handle that provisioning.

In the early days I was also yearning for an Apple Watch integration, which I know you've since added. I, myself, am a power user of that. So the answer is we were looking for a seamless solution that's all in the cloud and that's what Nexkey provides.

*Nexkey Apple Watch app unlocking private office*

What other possible solutions did you look at and why did you decide to go with Nexkey?

So we looked at the kind of emerging e-locks from some large incumbents. Frankly, their software was a little clunky, but even more so their hardware was really, really big and ugly. They just didn't have the design polish that we needed to fit into our spaces.

Nexkey Cores are nearly invisible. Of course hardware's hardware, it's not totally invisible, but Nexkey blends in and becomes nearly invisible with the form factor being so small. So that's what really gripped us. And Nexkey’s software is seamless as I've stressed. So it was a good one, two punch there.

What were some key challenges Nexkey has solved for you?

The provisioning of access. Just to give a sense of scale, we have over 400 member companies that range from a solopreneur individual to larger, small and medium sized organizations. Some with global footprints, people are coming from far and wide, in and out of San Francisco, visiting Canopy.

That's a lot of people. It's a lot of provisioning. Our staff has so many other things that they're focused on so we needed something that was easy to use and easy to train others to use.

That's, again, what Nexkey solves for us.

We've been pleased. And we've continued to double down with Nexkey on each successive location opening which will include our Menlo Park opening in Q1.

Why do you think that other coworking spaces need a solution like Nexkey?

Canopy as a part of our premium offering is more boutique in size. Therefore the converse of that is that our competitors are much larger in just physical size. So I would imagine that the logistics of provisioning access with 5, 6, 7, 10 times as many bodies is that much more severe.

The need for a seamless tool, like Nexkey, where you can onboard people in the blink of an eye becomes even that much more exacerbated, that much more necessary.

Access to CANOPY is seamless as Nexkey beautifully blends into their shared workspace