Feb 21 2012

Notman House – Montreal Co-Working Space

I’ve written a lot about the importance of entrepreneurial density. This is especially true in large cities, where it is even more important to have tight clusters (or neighborhoods) of entrepreneurs.

Recently I received an email from Ildar Khakimov about the Notman House, a Montreal co-working space in the heart of the city aimed at being the home of web entrepreneurship in Montreal. Ildar is the volunteer community manager for Notman House and justifiably proud of what they are doing.

Several of the members of the Montreal startup community, including Real Ventures and the Osmo Foundation are responsible for the birth of the Notman House project. Several specific people who drove this project are John Stokes, Alan Macintosh and Mark MacLeod.

Notman House has some great public spaces and regularly hosts events for the startup communities. There’s a wiki, email mailing list, and Hackademy. A web cafe and offices for rent round things out.

Notman House is a very large historic property which is joined by a tunnel to an old hospital. Currently the hospital space is not used, but there is a goal to transform it into a place where startups would be able to work in teams for a period of several months. You can easily envision an accelerator being housed here.

Co-working spaces are quickly becoming a main stay of any startup community. Montreal is off to a good start with Notman House.