NextSpace is an entrepreneurial catalyst located in Santa Cruz, CA. Our mission is to catalyze local talent, local ideas, and local capital to create products, services, and solutions for the global marketplace.

Come in. Connect. Catalyze. Create.

When Erik Gillberg is in town he can often be found sitting at a tall table in NextSpace working quietly on his MacBook Pro creating solutions for the global marketplace. Erik joined the NextSpace community in September of 2009 after relocating from Idaho to Santa Cruz. Avatar Labs, colocated in Encino, California, recently launched their new iPhone game [...]

Last month, NextSpace celebrated its first birthday.  I’m equal parts thrilled and humbled by what NextSpace and our community have accomplished in the last year.  We’ve created a community of over 150 members, we’ve helped stimulate the local economy, we’ve developed a strong relationship with UC Santa Cruz, and we’ve helped reshape the landscape of [...]

By now, almost everyone in the entire known universe has seen the Huffington Post’s mashup of Sarah Palin vs. That Crazy Santa Cruz Lady. Whatever you may think of the former Veep candidate, the young Santa Cruzan in the video ranting to the city council about pesticides and slavery in an attempt to, um, participate [...]

As you probably know by now, our mission at NextSpace is (wait for it!) to catalyze local talent, local ideas, and local capital in Santa Cruz to create products, services, and solutions for the global marketplace.  A hugely important repository of talent and ideas and, indirectly, capital is right in our backyard and is, in [...]

Holy cow, raise the roof, and batten down the hatches! There has been a veritable deluge of press lately about NextSpace members. If you need any further proof that NextSpace is full talented people with amazing ideas who are committed to putting Santa Cruz on the map as a hub for innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship, [...]

At NextSpace, our mission is to catalyze local talent, local ideas, and local capital in Santa Cruz to create products, service, and solutions for the global marketplace.  One way we accomplish that mission is by producing our quarterly NextSpace Investors Forum.  Tonight, five great local companies will be pitching to a group of two dozen [...]

The other day, I spent the morning hanging out with Margaret Rosas, Founder and Chief Strategist at the strategic web consultancy Quiddities. The Santa Cruz Sentinel had just run a story on Margaret and her team (we lovingly call them The Q-Mamas) about how their company and our town thrive on collaboration. As we washed [...]

We created NextSpace with the hope that our members would find ways (as our tagline says) to connect, catalyze, and create new ideas. I use the word hope here on purpose: we weren’t exactly sure if or how our members would come together, let alone trust each other enough to collaborate on projects. But we [...]

One hundred days ago, we launched a new company in Santa Cruz called NextSpace Coworking + Innovation, Inc.  NextSpace is an entrepreneurial catalyst.  Our mission is to catalyze local ideas, local talent, and local capital in Santa Cruz to create products, services, and solutions for the global marketplace.  It’s a pretty bold-sounding mission.  And, like [...]