Loosecubes Secures $7.8M From NEA, Accel To Become The Airbnb For Shared Office Space

Loosecubes, the community marketplace for shared workspace, has today announced that it has secured $7.8 million in series A financing, bringing its total funding to $9 million. The round was led by New Enterprise Associates and Revolution Ventures, with participation from previous investors, Accel Partners and Battery Ventures. As a result of the round, Tige Savage of Revolution Ventures and Alex Kinnuer of NEA will be joining the startup’s board of directors.

For those who work remotely, far from company headquarters, or are busy plugging away at an early-stage business, finding cool, local office space can be tricky — and expensive. There are a number of cool initiatives that offer community workspace for startups and their founders, but Loosecubes aims to simplify the process through a marketplace that connects those with empty desks, studios, ands sofas to workers looking for a friendly, productive setting in which to work.

The company is also announcing today that all Loosecubes users will be able to take advantage of creative, productive workspaces for no charge throughout the month of June. Beginning today, every space available through Loosecubes will be free for its members.

Loosecubes founder and CEO Campbell McKellar tells us that coworking has become a staple of startup culture and that the opportunity to share space with other like-minded, hard-working people has proven to be a great way for companies to test out new talent and share ideas. What’s more, professionals get tired of working at home or in the same, noisy coffee shop every day, so capitalizing on the growing popularity of Airbnb, McKellar and team founded Loosecubes in 2010 as a better way to connect and match workers to workspace occupied by businesses in similar industries and help both parties expand their networks and develop lasting relationships.

Since 2010, Loosecubes has grown its flock to over 13K members, along with 1,000 workspaces in more than 230 cities and 66 countries. The startup also recently launched an HTML5 mobile app that lets its community find coworking spaces while on the go.

Loosecubes plans to expand its services in the coming months, through deeper integration with LikedIn and Facebook to enable people to find space where they have mutual social connections, encouraging those “serendipitous aspects” that come with coworking, McKellar said. This will provide another, social layer on top of its curatorial experience, which enables “Hosts” to post office space and specify which type of professionals they’d like to host, whether they be entrepreneurs, developers, investors, or even bloggers, including images of the office space, location, etc.

In July, as the startup prepares to launch its iOS app, the platform will shift to an invite-only model, with members who join beforehand being grandfathered in. As it transitions this summer, going forward Loosecubes will be playing with a handful of monetization structures, and users may see the startup begin to offer a limited number of passes for free to those looking to join. After they run out of passes, they would be able to subscribe for a fee.

For more, check out Loosecubes at home here.