Who you're responsible for
I’m hiring a CEO for Industrious. The job posting below will describe the role the way these things usually go, and you should definitely read it, but the truest description of this job isn't a list of responsibilities, it's a list of people. I thought you should meet a few of them before you apply.
Jazzman
You will be responsible for a gentleman in our East Austin location who is genuinely upset that we played the 1998 CD remaster of Coltrane’s Giant Steps instead of the 1960 Atlantic mono pressing, and who is right, and who will know whether you fixed it.
Veterans of the thermostat war
You will be responsible for the woman on the fourth floor in Chicago’s West Loop who has been running a years-long campaign about the thermostat, and for the man two desks over who leads the counterinsurgency, and you should know going in that they both renew every year, that we love them, and that the thermostat is, as far as anyone can determine, fine.
The book (wine?) lovers
You will be responsible for a book club that has met fourteen times, talks constantly about book club, and I’m pretty sure made t-shirts. They recently celebrated finishing their second book.
The finance drama hounds
You will also be responsible for a small number of disappointed financial analysts. Industrious pioneered the management-agreement model, meaning we partner with landlords and share the economics rather than signing fifteen-year leases and hoping for the best. Every so often an analyst calls looking for drama, some white-knuckle lease exposure he can put in a short report, and hangs up bored. Part of your job is keeping him bored.
Your teammates
You will be responsible for around a thousand employees, many of whom came to us from hotels and restaurants, and who will tell you, if you ask, that they got into hospitality because they love taking care of people and very nearly got out of it because of everything that came with it: the schedules posted Thursday night for a week that starts Friday, the closing shift followed by the opening shift, the guests who never learned where their hands belonged. They never stopped loving the work. But they did stop loving the conditions, and they came to Industrious because we promised them the first without the second, and that promise transfers to you with the title.
Your teammates’ friends, who are likely also your teammates
You will be responsible for at least one employee whose entire bridal party works here, which sounds like something in a recruiting brochure, but all I can say is the dress fittings are reportedly going well. There is a version of this company where that stops happening, and the most important thing on your desk every morning is making sure it never does.
The striver
You will be responsible for the founder who toured three times before signing a two-person office, the first physical proof that her company existed. The day her team outgrows it and takes the suite down the hall will feel, to both of you, like a small graduation.
The name for all this
There's a name for what everyone on this list is doing, by the way. A psychologist named John Gottman spent decades studying thousands of married couples and found that the happy ones share one habit above all the others: they take each other's bids (those small requests for connection). For example, your spouse mentions birdwatching and you don't say “okay.” You ask why, or you offer to come along. The Giant Steps remaster is a bid. The thermostat is a bid. The book club, the bridal party that started out as a job, all of it, bids, and Industrious is, underneath everything, in the business of taking them.
Because sometimes someone will make a bid that doesn't look like one. You'll walk into one of our locations early and find a woman who spent the night in her office for the third time in a row, and you'll have every right to wake her and ask her to leave, and maybe you should. But maybe she's going through a divorce and there's nowhere else right now. It doesn't have to become policy for you to help her find a place — or to understand that you may have caught her at the exact moment being seen mattered most. You'll never know in advance which bid is that one. So you take them all.
There are nearly a hundred thousand of these people at the moment, with more arriving every Monday, and as you probably already suspect, everything in the job post below is in service of them.
With love,
Jamie
—
About Industrious
Industrious is one of the largest and most respected premium flexible workplace platforms in the world. Since 2013 we've grown to more than 250 locations across 85+ cities globally, creating hospitality-led workplaces designed to make the day feel easier, calmer, and more supported for individuals and teams of all sizes.
From private offices and turnkey suites to meeting rooms and on-demand coworking, our flexible offerings are built for better workdays. We also partner with enterprise organizations and property owners to shape workplaces, streamline operations, and elevate the workplace experience at scale.
In 2025 we became part of CBRE, the world's largest commercial real estate firm, where we sit in its Building Operations & Experience segment, which gives us access to a global landlord network, enterprise client base, and enhanced capital capabilities.
With the business growing fast and performance at record highs, we're looking for the right person to take the helm and build on this momentum.
The role
We're hiring a Chief Executive Officer to lead Industrious through its next chapter. Reporting to Jamie Hodari, our co-founder who now leads CBRE's Building Operations & Experience segment, you'll hold full P&L responsibility for Industrious and set its strategic direction going forwards.
It's a role that asks you to hold several things at once: accelerate profitable growth and strengthen unit economics, turn CBRE's scale into real commercial leverage, and keep Industrious culturally distinct and experience-led while you do it. It calls for someone who can read where flexible work and commercial real estate are heading, allocate capital against it, build new commercial and partnership models, and evolve the business rather than just optimize it incrementally.
It also means operating comfortably inside a global public company while protecting the entrepreneurial velocity and warmth of a founder-built organization. The CEO serves as a key representative of Industrious to landlords, enterprise clients, and the broader real estate community, stewards a culture of warmth, rigor, and high standards as the business scales, and builds the leadership team to carry it there.
What you'll own
Strategy & business model
Set the multi-year strategic direction, covering market expansion, product evolution, and competitive positioning, along with annual and long-range goals.
Identify the macro shifts in flexible work, commercial real estate, and workplace experience that should reshape the roadmap, and act on them early.
Make the capital allocation calls — expansion pace, product investment, build-versus-buy — balancing growth spend against profitability.
Shape new commercial and partnership models, and govern decisions on new locations, non-standard deal structures, and major partnership commitments.
Financial performance
Hold full P&L ownership, including revenue growth, margin expansion, utilization, and disciplined capital-light scaling.
Own operating budget development and resource allocation.
External representation & partnerships
Serve as primary spokesperson and brand ambassador for Industrious with media, industry events, and the broader commercial real estate community.
Own the strategic landlord and enterprise relationships, using them to unlock new partnership models.
Represent Industrious within CBRE's executive leadership.
CBRE integration
Translate CBRE's relationships, capital markets access, and integrated services into scaled, repeatable commercial programs for Industrious.
Hold strategic alignment with CBRE BOE while preserving Industrious's brand and cultural identity.
Culture & talent
Steward a culture defined by warmth, intellectual rigor, humility, and high standards, setting the pace and the standard of excellence and modeling the behaviors that scale it without dilution.
Build and develop a leadership team that can operate at greater scale while keeping its entrepreneurial intensity.
Who we're looking for
Experienced builder-operator who has scaled a brand and built the operating and economic engine to support it, without losing what made the business distinctive.
Has run a business with full P&L accountability, making decisions under pressure and driving sustained growth and profitability.
Real financial fluency, comfortable reasoning through unit economics, profitability, and capital allocation tradeoffs in real time, with clear, structured thinking and fast pattern recognition.
Strong commercial and experience instinct, with taste in product, experience, and brand — a feel for what makes customers care and how to turn that into results.
Credible with enterprise clients and landlord partners at the highest levels, able to build the relationships that turn into scaled commercial outcomes.
Builds and develops high-performing leadership teams.
A culture carrier who embodies and can scale Industrious's culture — low ego, high warmth, high standards, and genuine care for people — building trust, followership, and psychological safety while holding the bar on performance.
Operates effectively alongside a founder-adjacent leadership team and within a broader scaled ecosystem, balancing independence with collaboration.
Compensation
The annual base compensation range for this role is $400K to $450K and total package is $1.2M to $1.5M (including bonus and long-term profit share program), with actual compensation based on experience, skills, and qualifications.
At Industrious, we believe a good workplace supports the whole person. Our benefits include:
Heavily subsidized medical, dental, and vision plans to support you and your family.
Flexible paid time off, to maintain balance.
Paid parental leave to help you welcome a new child and focus on what matters most.
Annual professional development grants so you can keep learning and growing.
401(k) retirement savings program to support long-term financial wellbeing.
Wellness initiatives and additional employee support programs.
Equal Employment Opportunity
Industrious is an equal opportunity employer that values diversity. We have a long-standing commitment to providing equal employment opportunities to all qualified applicants regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, veteran status, political belief, or any other basis protected by applicable law.
