Office Hours is on a mission to help everyone realize the value of what they know. To do that, we're hard at work building the world's most advanced expert network platform for VC firms, consulting firms, and startups.

Historically, the vast majority of expert consultations have been conducted using a standard telephone dial-in conference bridge. Not only is this inflexible in today's age of hyperconnectivity, but it also means the value of these consultations is not being fully realized.

At Office Hours, we decided to build our own in-app videoconferencing and screen-sharing solution, specifically tailored to the needs of our customers (investors, consultants, and startups) and our growing network of world-class knowledge professionals.

Here's what our customers tell us they love most about this aspect of our product:

More trust = more valuable conversations 

Face-to-face interactions have the power to create a more personal and engaging interview experience. This helps both parties build trust in each other — a crucial element in a worthwhile knowledge-sharing exchange. Clients and advisors seeing each other's facial expressions and body language adds depth and clarity to the conversation, making it more effective than a traditional phone interview.

Connect with advisors around the world — no matter where you are

Especially in the age of remote work, ease of connection is critical. Unlike many competitive platforms, a Wi-Fi connection is all both parties need to join expert consultations via Office Hours. We have clients and experts living in and traveling to different countries all over the world, and with our platform, they never miss a beat.

Especially for our startup clients, the ability to share their product or ideas for live feedback is invaluable — so much so that advisors are often interested in a real demo of the product after the consultation. And for consulting firms, gone are the days of sending an expert a "pre-read". Teams can now simply share documents with advisors during the conversation.

We recognize that certain consultations are sensitive, especially for many of the investment firms that use our platform. That's why we support "incognito mode" in our video experience. This allows clients to blind their identity and hide their video feed to ensure anonymity is maintained. In addition to incognito mode, we also offer compliance officers the ability to chaperone conversations in "stealth mode" to ensure consultations are being conducted properly by their team.

Clients have the option to record the audio of their consultations and generate a high-quality transcript that can be reviewed and revisited by themselves and their teams going forward. This helps teams retain the knowledge they're accessing and ensure insights learned during the call will remain accessible to a wider audience.

Sign up for Office Hours and experience what the world's most advanced expert network platform has to offer.

Expert consultations are more valuable on Office Hours.

In-app video & screen sharing

We started Office Hours with the vision to make human knowledge easily accessible and infinitely scalable. As of recent, we’ve taken a big step toward that vision with a new and improved marketplace search experience.

Show me Marketers who know about product-led growth

Show me Medical Directors who know about oncology

Show me Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) who have worked at publicly traded companies

Despite hearing that direct access to high-quality experts via the marketplace was a game changer, we also knew there was room for improvement. It wasn’t always clear what each search filter meant and how it was being applied, our algorithm needed an upgrade, we weren’t fully leveraging the power of our proprietary data ontology, and the results were prone to being slow.

All of these gaps have been addressed, along with some net-new improvements!

An improved autocomplete preview to find and select the right search term

Simplified filters for Title, Employer, Keyword, Customers, and more

Advanced filters to help identify exact matches for complex queries

Many search results now contain recommendations for similar searches

An all-new ranking algorithm that’s more accurate and 6x faster

Here’s an overview of the upgrades 👇

Our improved search autocomplete feature helps suggest search terms based on the letters or words you type. These predictions are based on a combination of factors including relevance and popularity.

A new suite of filters makes searching more clear than ever.

Here are a few more example searches to give it a try yourself:

Show me Customers of Adobe (if you have a Pro account)

Show me advisors who know about Digital Health and work in Sales

Show me Software Engineers who know about DevOps

Similar searches help recommend related companies, categories, and topics alongside your search that may not have been on your radar initially. This also helps you explore similar results in the event that your search turns up empty.

All of the above improvements are live and available on the platform today. Give them a try and let us know what you think! We take your feedback seriously, and it’s always appreciated.

Q: But what if you don’t have who I’m looking for in your network?

A: No problem! If you have a Pro contract, we’re ready to custom recruit new advisors to the platform, oftentimes with a same-day turnaround. You can do so by creating a new project on the platform, or by emailing our team.

Q: Access to custom sourcing sounds great, but I don’t have a Professional Services contract with Office Hours—how do I go about upgrading?

A: You have a few options. You can learn more and request a demo from our Investors and Startups landing pages, or you can reach out to our team at sales@officehours.com. We’d be happy to give you a demo or send you additional information.

An all around better marketplace search experience.

Ready to explore the network?

Sign up to explore the network, or schedule a demo with a member of our team.