When Nic Halverson was an electrical engineering student at UC San Diego studying for his midterms, he roamed through eight floors of occupied tables and couches at the library before giving up and heading out.

“I wish I knew how busy every floor was before I came,” he said.

That was the inspiration behind Occuspace, a Westlake Village-based proptech startup that raised $6 million in series A funding, the company announced today. The round was led by Lewis & Clark Ventures, with additional funding from the likes of Newport Beach-based Okapi Ventures, Cove Fund, Hamilton Ventures and Shadow Ventures.

Occuspace began in 2017 as a project between then-students Halverson and Linus Grasel. The pair constructed sensors that could plug into any electrical outlet and connect to Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to track foot traffic into their school libraries, gyms and other public spaces and a corresponding app.

Born on social media

When the pair announced their invention on Facebook, it received 10,000 downloads from students and faculty.

But the data Occuspace collects has much larger implications for real estate development – space planners can better optimize how to use different rooms, employers can determine the peak occupancy hours for employees, janitorial staff don’t have to check desks or offices that are unused and building managers can reduce energy consumption where necessary.

“I can shrink my million square feet down to 500,000 or 600,000 square feet with no impact on people being able to actually come into the office and use their desks,” Halverson said.