This story is part of our Inno on the Road series, looking at the tech and startup scene in Minneapolis-St.Paul, Minn. You can see all Twin Cities tech stories here, and other Inno on the Road series here.
Many growing tech hubs are building off the foundations laid by the booming industries of years past.
COCO Coworking took that quite literally with their downtown Minneapolis coworking space, located on the trading floor of the old Minneapolis Grain Exchange.
At desks where business leaders used to talk agriculture, now entrepreneurs and developers type away on laptops. An open layout formerly filled with traders now has hexagon-shaped "campsites" that separate workspaces for resident startups and companies. The board where prices and exchange rates were posted has now been turned into an interactive display of coworkers' tweets and a list of COCO events.
It's a symbol of both what Minneapolis-St. Paul was and what it has become, as the tech and startup scene grows in the Twin Cities. And COCO is just getting started.
COCO first launched in 2010 in a space in the Lowertown neighborhood of St. Paul. It was among the first coworking spaces in the Twin Cities, and has since expanded to four local locations (including Uptown, Northeast, and the downtown Minneapolis Grain Exchange) and one in Chicago.
It's been the home base for founders, entrepreneurs and techies, as well as an early office of the Twin Cities' most notable startups, such as LeadPages, a sales tech company that has raised $38 million, which worked out of COCO until they were "busting at the seams" said Laurie Healy, director of marketing and communications at COCO. Recently they've also seen a growth in membership from mid-sized and large companies seeking an innovation-oriented work setting, as well as lawyers, accountants, and consultants seeking a change of pace.
"They’re looking to get out of the cubicles and the corporate towers, and come to a place like this where communities are thriving," she said.
It's also attracted the attention of tech leaders nationwide: COCO is one of 10 "Google for Entrepreneurs" hubs, which gives the space technical content, business tools and infrastructure upgrades to support local innovators, and allows COCO to send startups to Google's Demo Day each year (earlier this year youth sports injury management platform Player's Health, won the "judge's favorite' award). Eric Schmidt has personally stopped by twice.
It's also become a space for discussions on diversity and inclusivity in the Twin Cities startup and tech scene: This year Google selected Alex Rodriguez, founder of WorkMand, as an entrepreneur-in-residence at COCO as part of Code2040, a program that supports minority founders driving conversation around inclusion. In addition to working on his venture, he also runs Graveti, a meetup for people in tech from underrepresented backgrounds. Healy said they've run workshops on unconscious bias, and put in effort to create diverse panels across race, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation. They also have a COCO fellowship program where large companies can underwrite the membership costs for someone who may not have the means to pay for a coworking space.
Next up, COCO'S Grain Exchange is doubling in size, adding an additional 15,000 square feet of coworking space by Q1 2017, and local code bootcamp Prime Digital Academy is moving into an adjoining office. While they don't have any official plans for further expansion outside Minnesota, aside from their current Chicago location, Healy said they're looking at cities the size of the Twin Cities and above for future growth.
Take a look inside COCO's downtown Minneapolis Grain Exchange headquarters.
