Newman got all of ID345’s furniture in classic startup fashion: through Facebook Marketplace and a LinkedIn ask. (Max Scheinblum/BusinessDen)
Danny Newman wants to go back to the future.
“People are very much moving online. We don’t have that true human connection, especially as we talk about all this (artificial intelligence) future literally changing everything,” the Denver tech entrepreneur, restaurateur and buyer of unusual real estate said.
He hopes ID345, his new RiNo coworking space, will bridge that gap.
“There’s been this missing community post-COVID,” the 44-year-old said. “It just was missing the kind of vibes that we’ve had in the past here in Denver and Boulder, just the community really coming together and interacting in person.
“We need these physical spaces to come together for meetups, demos, launches,” he added. “And that’s what really makes a startup community a startup community.”
The 5,000 square-foot space at the corner of High Street and 40th. (Max Scheinblum/BusinessDen)
The 5,000-square-foot space, at the corner of High Street and 40th Avenue, was put together through a piecemeal process of LinkedIn asks and Facebook Marketplace purchases, he said.
It’s outfitted in the most startup of fashions. An orange, retro sectional serves as an entry marker. Church pews sit in the middle of the building. Box TVs and older iMacs are scattered on workbenches throughout. CD players, stereos and speakers sit atop stacks of old tires.
He even has an old scoreboard that looks straight out of a high school gym. He plans to change the “home” and “guest” above the numbers to “humans” and “robots.”
“All and all, it’s been less than two months,” he said of how long ID345 has been open. “We cleared out the space, powerwashed it, got our gig fiber and Wi-Fi all set. It came together very quickly.”
The industrial building also has 10,000 square feet of greenspace, which currently resembles more of a weed jungle. But Newman says it will soon be filled with picnic tables, umbrellas, bleachers, a projector and stacked shipping crates so that ID345’s members can enjoy a view of the mountains – as soon as he hires a landscaper.
Newman owns the building along with business partners. Pre-COVID, they planned on creating a multistory artist hub with housing, gallery space and a restaurant. But the pandemic threw a wrench in those plans, and one of his partners had been using it as a garage up until a few months ago.
Newman will fill ID345’s 10,000-square-foot outdoor space with picnic tables, bleachers and stacked shipping crates. (Max Scheinblum/BusinessDen)
“We’ve got a lot of good amenities: coffee, conference rooms, projectors, plenty of seating, phone booths, whiteboards. Everything to make it happen but doing it on a low budget around bringing a community together. I wouldn’t call it a business venture.”
Newman said ID345 currently has about 50 members, each paying $100 a month to use the space. He anticipates capping that number at around 100.
“I think the ‘modern’ coworking, like WeWork, has some similarities, but those are more rent-a-desk concepts,” Newman said. “What we’re creating at ID345 is bringing back that old-school version of this, where we’ll have constant access to meet and learn from each other and experts in the broader AI community.”
Newman, who has founded and exited several companies, said the spot was mainly born out of the recent AI boom and all the energy around it.
Danny Newman at My Brother’s Bar in Denver on Oct. 10, 2022. (AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
In February, he started a biweekly meetup for “vibe coding” – the process of using English prompts to create code for apps or websites – called Let’s Vibe. The now hundred-plus-person group quickly outgrew Moonflower Coffee, where it originally met.
Anybody can attend, Newman said, from 9-year-old meditation app creators to seasoned engineers building a website that curates playlists from written requests.
“You no longer have to be a coder. You no longer have to be an engineer,” he said. “Anybody, truly, with ideas can now bring them to reality with tens of dollars in subscription fees.”
Newman, who owns My Brother’s Bar and recently sold the Mercury Café, said publicly open Let’s Vibe events will still run every other week. He also anticipates holding other events with people in the Denver-Boulder tech world.
“Our hope and dream is that we’re able to incubate ideas and companies within our membership,” Newman said. “I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that a real, billion-dollar, AI-first company is going to emerge from this.”
Newman got all of ID345’s furniture in classic startup fashion: through Facebook Marketplace and a LinkedIn ask. (Max Scheinblum/BusinessDen)
Danny Newman wants to go back to the future.
“People are very much moving online. We don’t have that true human connection, especially as we talk about all this (artificial intelligence) future literally changing everything,” the Denver tech entrepreneur, restaurateur and buyer of unusual real estate said.
He hopes ID345, his new RiNo coworking space, will bridge that gap.
“There’s been this missing community post-COVID,” the 44-year-old said. “It just was missing the kind of vibes that we’ve had in the past here in Denver and Boulder, just the community really coming together and interacting in person.
“We need these physical spaces to come together for meetups, demos, launches,” he added. “And that’s what really makes a startup community a startup community.”
The 5,000 square-foot space at the corner of High Street and 40th. (Max Scheinblum/BusinessDen)
The 5,000-square-foot space, at the corner of High Street and 40th Avenue, was put together through a piecemeal process of LinkedIn asks and Facebook Marketplace purchases, he said.
It’s outfitted in the most startup of fashions. An orange, retro sectional serves as an entry marker. Church pews sit in the middle of the building. Box TVs and older iMacs are scattered on workbenches throughout. CD players, stereos and speakers sit atop stacks of old tires.
He even has an old scoreboard that looks straight out of a high school gym. He plans to change the “home” and “guest” above the numbers to “humans” and “robots.”
“All and all, it’s been less than two months,” he said of how long ID345 has been open. “We cleared out the space, powerwashed it, got our gig fiber and Wi-Fi all set. It came together very quickly.”
The industrial building also has 10,000 square feet of greenspace, which currently resembles more of a weed jungle. But Newman says it will soon be filled with picnic tables, umbrellas, bleachers, a projector and stacked shipping crates so that ID345’s members can enjoy a view of the mountains – as soon as he hires a landscaper.
Newman owns the building along with business partners. Pre-COVID, they planned on creating a multistory artist hub with housing, gallery space and a restaurant. But the pandemic threw a wrench in those plans, and one of his partners had been using it as a garage up until a few months ago.
Newman will fill ID345’s 10,000-square-foot outdoor space with picnic tables, bleachers and stacked shipping crates. (Max Scheinblum/BusinessDen)
“We’ve got a lot of good amenities: coffee, conference rooms, projectors, plenty of seating, phone booths, whiteboards. Everything to make it happen but doing it on a low budget around bringing a community together. I wouldn’t call it a business venture.”
Newman said ID345 currently has about 50 members, each paying $100 a month to use the space. He anticipates capping that number at around 100.
“I think the ‘modern’ coworking, like WeWork, has some similarities, but those are more rent-a-desk concepts,” Newman said. “What we’re creating at ID345 is bringing back that old-school version of this, where we’ll have constant access to meet and learn from each other and experts in the broader AI community.”
Newman, who has founded and exited several companies, said the spot was mainly born out of the recent AI boom and all the energy around it.
Danny Newman at My Brother’s Bar in Denver on Oct. 10, 2022. (AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)
In February, he started a biweekly meetup for “vibe coding” – the process of using English prompts to create code for apps or websites – called Let’s Vibe. The now hundred-plus-person group quickly outgrew Moonflower Coffee, where it originally met.
Anybody can attend, Newman said, from 9-year-old meditation app creators to seasoned engineers building a website that curates playlists from written requests.
“You no longer have to be a coder. You no longer have to be an engineer,” he said. “Anybody, truly, with ideas can now bring them to reality with tens of dollars in subscription fees.”
Newman, who owns My Brother’s Bar and recently sold the Mercury Café, said publicly open Let’s Vibe events will still run every other week. He also anticipates holding other events with people in the Denver-Boulder tech world.
“Our hope and dream is that we’re able to incubate ideas and companies within our membership,” Newman said. “I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that a real, billion-dollar, AI-first company is going to emerge from this.”
