Office Hours raised a $5M seed round in February 2021, led by CRV, with participation from Susa Ventures, BoxGroup, Greenoaks, Manresa Ventures, and AirAngels. Angel investors included Marco Zappacosta, Lenny Rachitsky, Jack Chou, and Aaron Levie.

The company has raised $5M in total funding to date.

Office Hours is a web-based marketplace connecting clients with subject matter experts for one-on-one consultations. Clients can search for advisors using natural language queries or apply filters such as industry, job title, company, and geography through the platform's knowledge graph.

The platform manages the entire workflow, from discovery to payment. Clients can create team workspaces, search for experts, review hourly rates and professional backgrounds, and book 30-, 45-, or 60-minute video calls directly in their browser. The system generates calendar invites, sets up private video conference rooms, and processes payments automatically.

During calls, multiple colleagues can participate, screen-sharing is available, and identities can be masked for sensitive discussions. The platform provides both AI and human transcription services, with transcripts remaining private to the client’s workspace rather than being added to a public library.

Experts can complete the onboarding process in approximately 15 minutes using LinkedIn or Google authentication. The platform builds public profiles based on work history, enables experts to set their own rates and availability, and processes payments via bank transfer, PayPal, or Venmo within 30 days.

Office Hours operates as a B2B marketplace connecting demand-side clients with supply-side experts. The company generates revenue by taking a percentage of each consultation fee, following a model similar to other marketplaces.

The platform distinguishes itself with self-service functionality that reduces the professional services overhead typical of competitors such as GLG and AlphaSights. Instead of relying on large teams of client service representatives to manually match experts with clients, Office Hours leverages technology to automate processes including discovery, scheduling, compliance screening, and payment processing.

Pricing is transparent and determined by individual experts, eliminating the need for negotiation through sales teams. This approach supports scalability compared to traditional expert networks, which depend on human intermediaries and custom pricing for each engagement.

The business benefits from network effects, where an increase in experts attracts more clients, and vice versa. The platform’s open structure allows experts to view other participants in their field, fostering trust and encouraging engagement in ways that traditional closed expert networks do not.

Revenue growth is driven by increased usage within existing customer accounts, as teams conduct more expert calls and adopt additional features such as transcription, compliance tools, and team collaboration capabilities.

GLG holds approximately 35% market share in the traditional expert network space, supported by a network of over 1 million experts. The company has invested in AI-powered matching and maintains a digital content library of 500,000 pieces. Its strengths include a strong compliance reputation and expertise in regulated verticals, though its per-call pricing remains high and product iteration slower compared to competitors.

AlphaSights acquired Tegus for $930M in July 2024, creating an integrated research platform that combines AI-driven search across broker research with expert call transcripts and scheduling. This vertical integration strategy is designed to retain customers by offering a unified solution for both public and private market research needs.

Third Bridge claims to host the largest archive of analyst-led transcripts, with approximately 60,000 interviews and 10,000 new interviews added annually. The company differentiates itself through analyst-curated coverage rather than self-service discovery tools.

Intro and Clarity.fm emphasize reducing friction in on-demand expert access through technology, bypassing traditional professional services intermediation. These platforms compete with Office Hours on a self-service model but may lack the compliance infrastructure required by institutional clients.

NewtonX and Maven operate in adjacent markets, with NewtonX specializing in survey-based research and Maven focusing on verticals such as healthcare and life sciences consulting.

Persana AI raised a $2.3M seed round in October 2024 and markets itself as a direct alternative to Clay, offering similar functionality within an agentic framework. As voice-to-AI technology becomes increasingly commoditized, new entrants may replicate Office Hours' core functionality at lower development costs.

The integration of expert calls, surveys, and market research into a unified primary research category creates measurable opportunities for market expansion. AI-enabled voice interviews allow Office Hours to address use cases that previously relied on separate survey platforms or labor-intensive manual interview processes.

The platform supports asynchronous AI interviews, enabling experts to start, pause, and resume conversations at their convenience. This format reduces logistical barriers while preserving the detailed insights that traditional surveys often fail to capture, broadening the addressable market beyond synchronous expert calls.

As foundation models require more advanced evaluation and fine-tuning, Office Hours' network of credentialed experts provides a resource for AI model training and validation. This creates a new revenue stream within the expanding AI infrastructure market.

Office Hours has diversified its customer base beyond venture capital and consulting firms to include corporate strategy teams, product management organizations, and early-stage startups. Programs such as the Arc Tech initiative, which offers $500 in booking credits, channel thousands of early-stage companies seeking rapid user and customer feedback.

Case studies with companies like Drata for pricing research and Brex for customer persona development highlight the platform's utility for in-house product marketing and strategy teams. This shifts the total addressable market from the $3 billion expert network sector to the broader corporate market research and customer insights budgets.

Enterprise mentorship programs provide another growth avenue, with large companies purchasing packages for employee development. The platform's liquidity enables precise matching rather than generalized coaching, supporting premium pricing models.

The platform's integrated video conferencing and compliance tools facilitate global expansion without the regulatory challenges that traditional expert networks encounter when operating across borders. Features such as anonymous calling modes and data privacy protections allow Office Hours to serve enterprise accounts in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

Life sciences consulting, a $50 billion market where human expertise commands premium pricing, represents a significant vertical opportunity. The platform's credentialing and compliance infrastructure enables it to compete in highly regulated industries requiring verified expert credentials and audit trails.

Professional services competition: Traditional expert networks such as GLG and AlphaSights maintain extensive relationships with large institutional clients and may counter Office Hours' growth by upgrading their technology platforms while preserving their high-touch service models. These incumbents possess greater capital reserves and established compliance infrastructure, which could present challenges for Office Hours in competing within regulated industries.

AI commoditization: The increasing availability of voice-to-AI technology through APIs reduces technical barriers to entry in expert networking. Large customers may opt to develop in-house AI interviewing capabilities to avoid platform fees, particularly if they can contract directly with experts and bypass the marketplace intermediary.

Expert retention: The platform's performance relies on sustaining a high-quality, engaged expert network. However, traditional expert networks often face low retention rates when experts encounter unsatisfactory experiences. If Office Hours fails to consistently provide valuable, well-matched opportunities to its experts, the network effects underpinning its competitive advantage could erode.