HackSpaces Is A Cloud-Based Management Tool For Co-Working Spaces

Increasingly, startups and hackers and designers are working out of co-working spaces, and almost all of those co-working spaces have the same problems: People have food and items delivered but aren’t around to sign for them; everyone is fighting for space in the conference rooms; and the spaces have trouble collecting money from users.

A lot of co-working spaces have built their own in-house tools to deal with these problems, but today at TechCrunch Disrupt NY’s Hackathon, one team created a cloud-based platform that can be used for helping co-working spaces communicate with members.

The hack, called HackSpaces, is designed as a platform that can be used to keep track of payments, seats and conference rooms. The conference room scheduler, for instance, replaces whiteboards currently used by some co-working spaces and allows users to quickly see via a mobile app which rooms are in use or scheduled later in the day.

hackspaces 2HackSpaces also provides a messaging tool that can allow co-working members to let each other know when packages arrive or if there are events happening in the space. The messaging tool allows users to communicate with everyone, or to call out individual members with @ mentions. Individual users can get push notifications or text alerts when, for instance, their lunch has arrived at the front desk.

The app was created by Max Savin, a front-end developer who is at BoxKit; Elie Toubiana, a Ruby on Rails back-end developer who works at Unpakt.com; and Jonathan Bensamoun, who is head of product and tech for ShopKeep. The team’s members frequently work in co-working spaces, so they’re hoping to make the experience better for themselves and others.