Cospace in North Austin Shuts Down and Pivots Its Business

Cospace, one of Austin’s original and popular coworking spaces, shut down last week.
The site, located at Highway 183 and Lamar in North Austin, is working with TechRanch, a nearby tech incubator and coworking site, to relocate its members.
While the physical space is gone, the Cospace brand continues to live on and serve entrepreneurs and professionals nationally through a coworking search engine that also provides economic and real estate information.
“In July 2012, partners affiliated with the workspace
launched the Cospace online site to index and promote every work environment; connecting skilled professionals with the right place to work,” according to a news release.
“I am very proud of the positive impact Cospace coworking has had in the startup community,” Kirtus Dixon, Managing Partner of BlindOx LLC, owner/operator of the Cospace coworking space, said in a news statement. “I will be eternally grateful for all of our customers and colleagues, some of who gave of themselves without any expectation of return. It’s been a great run.”
“Collaborative, accessible work spaces are one of the keys to innovation and working through a cospace should be an option to anyone,” James Weddle, head of Cospace Ventures, the management and holding company for the Cospace brand, said in a statement. “We are proud to continue to support the coworking movement through our web service. I am particularly excited about the role the web service, Cospace.co, can play in helping students, entrepreneurs, skilled professionals, and even cities, bring innovation to market.”
In the past few months, this new, virtual Cospace has grown to serve over 1,000 spaces throughout the country and is connecting nearly 100,000 professionals each month with the ideal work space.
“We’ve mapped over 50 work environments in Austin alone and the insight, from doing that, to Austin’s future as an entrepreneurial community
is tremendous,” Paul O’Brien, Co-founder and developer of the Cospace.co web service, which will be developed further in a new entity, said in a statement. “Cospace.co has helped thousands of skilled professionals, teams, and startups find the right work environment in Austin while working
closely with stake holders invested in the economic development of Austin and surrounding cities to understand how and where to invest
further in creating environments that will foster innovation, help employ Austin, enable success for entrepreneurs.”
The classes and education programs Cospace formerly operated are being acquired by Brainco; a school of advertising, interactive studies, and design, recently relocated from Minneapolis to Austin. Brainco will be further developing and serving such popular classes in Ruby on Rails, iOS app development, WordPress, and other skills through spaces throughout Austin.