Sharry is a Prague-based workplace experience and access platform deployed in Class A office buildings worldwide. Sharry provides mobile access, employee badges in Apple and Google Wallet, visitor management, parking integrations, and tenant engagement tools. They are known for the 'street-to-suite' concept, aiming to unify the entire building journey.

Josef Šachta is the CEO and co-founder of Sharry. His background includes law and journalism, as well as founding CityBee, a portal focused on connecting people with experiences in their city. This earlier work strongly influenced his approach—prioritizing human experience and emotion in how people interact with buildings.

Sharry fits the Founders series because Josef brings a human-centered digital storytelling perspective to a highly technical field. Sharry’s global deployments with wallet-based credentials also reflect where the market is headed.

Smart Spaces is a London-based workplace experience and smart-building platform that connects people to their buildings via a single app. The platform unifies mobile access, desk and room booking, energy and lighting control, tenant engagement, and building communications. Smart Spaces frequently operates in Class A office environments and high-profile developments, positioning its solution as a layer that turns traditional buildings into intuitive, digitally orchestrated workplaces.

Brothers Dan and Tom Drogman co-founded Smart Spaces. They come from a background in enterprise software and digital solutions for the built environment. Rather than starting from traditional hardware or PACS, they approached buildings from a user experience and app-design perspective. Their motivation has consistently been to make complex building systems—access control, HVAC, lighting—feel as simple and seamless as using a modern mobile app.

Accessgrid.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/austonbunsen/

***Company Overview***

AccessGrid is a startup focused on modernizing access control through a wallet-first, API-only platform. Their goal is to make issuing and managing mobile and wallet-native credentials as simple as calling modern web
APIs. The company supports integrating with existing hardware when possible but primarily targets developers and product teams who want to embed access capabilities directly into applications and workflows.

***Founder / Executive Profile***

Auston Bunsen is the co-founder and CEO of AccessGrid. Before AccessGrid, he co-founded QuickNode, a major blockchain developer platform. His background is deeply rooted in infrastructure-as-a-service,
developer tooling, and modern API ecosystems. He entered the access control industry after observing how outdated, fragmented, and opaque it was—particularly compared to the developer-first approach common in
modern SaaS.

***Why They Fit the Series***

AccessGrid is the most disruptive entrant in your lineup. Auston brings an outsider perspective and a developer-centric philosophy that challenges traditional pricing, integration patterns, and channel structures.
They embody a new model where physical access becomes programmable infrastructure, not specialized hardware.

***Key Angles & Themes***

• Why an API and developer-tools founder chose access control.
• Rationale behind an API-only, wallet-first architecture.
• The impact of transparent pricing (e.g., $500/month + per-credential fees).
• How AccessGrid views the future of integrators, OEMs, and PACS vendors.
• What constitutes a 'modern' access platform vs. legacy baggage.
Potential Controversies / Hot Takes
• Transparent pricing disrupting traditional channel negotiations.
• Limitations of an API-only model for customers who want turnkey hardware.
• Whether wallet-native credentials can realistically replace physical cards in all use cases.

Music:

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