Updated at 10:39 am PT with a response from Loosecubes.

Sad news today in the New York City startup scene: Brooklyn’s Loosecubes will shut down on Friday, the company said in a blog post.

Loosecubes was built up as a “community marketplace for workspaces.” If people had open desks or space in their office, they could list it for other people in need of a place to work. Unfortunately, it appears this wasn’t a service people were clamoring for.

The announcement is somewhat surprising, especially in light of Loosecubes raising $7.8 million in June from New Enterprise Associates and Revolution Ventures. Including seed funds, the company raised about $9 million total.

Read the full blog post announcing the departure below:

The past two and a half years have been such an incredible journey. From a team of two to an incredible company of 16. From a big idea to a community of 25,000+ Loosecubers in over 60 countries around the world. And from a single coworking space to thousands of hosts, from Stockholm to San Diego, who have opened their work environments and minds to a better way of working.

We’ve been amazed to see how the Loosecubes community has grown and embraced a new attitude toward the workplace and the people they work around. We’ve watched Loosecubers launch organic food companies together, hire each other, and attend each others’ weddings. It has been incredible to see just how many partnerships, businesses, and friendships have been formed in our midst.

We’ve learned so much along the way, and are so appreciative of all who have lent their time, feedback, and expertise to making Loosecubes a success. We’re humbled to have had even a small impact on peoples’ ability to do great work.

What this means for our members and hosts:

• Friday, November 16th will be the last day that we will honor reservations booked through Loosecubes.
• Loosecubes reservations booked for any date after November 16th have been cancelled.
• After November 16th, members and hosts will no longer be able to log-in and access our site.
• Member confidentiality is of the utmost importance to us. Rest assured that we would never share or sell your information without your permission.

If you have any questions, please contact hi@loosecubes.com and we’ll do our best to get back to you as soon as possible.

Thank you to all of our members, hosts, colleagues and friends who have spent their workdays with us and supported us along the way.

Keep work loose,
Campbell, Anna and the Loosecubes Team

Anna Thomas, Loosecube’s Chief Happiness Officer, declined to give us more info about why the company shut down so soon after receiving its latest round of funding.

“The information regarding the shutdown on our website and blog is what’s currently available,” Thomas told us via email. “We aren’t speaking with the press at this time, but will certainly follow-up with you directly if we share additional information.”

Empty office photo via Wendt Commons/Flickr

New York businesses will be getting a generous helping of invigorating fiber courtesy of Time Warner Cable. No, not the dietary type, but the just-as-essential variety designed for super speedy Internet browsing.

Time Warner announced Tuesday that it will spend $25 million in 2012 to bring its far faster, fiber-optic network to Manhattan neighborhoods and to parts of Brooklyn.

The investment is specifically tailored around city businesses and upstarts; it’s meant to give New York companies a competitive advantage over others.

“With all the technology start-ups emerging in Brooklyn, Time Warner Cable Business Class has made the right decision by investing in the expansion of the fiber optic network,” assemblyman Joseph R. Lentol said in a statement. “Laying down this cutting-edge infrastructure will definitely attract more businesses to Brooklyn, and as result, create more jobs.”

Time Warner said the fiber network will provide speeds that reach upwards of 1 gigabyte per second, which is comparable to the consumer-facing fiber service that Google is currently rolling out to the people of Kansas City.

Occupants of the Brooklyn Navy Yard (pictured above), a 300-acre business complex, will be some of the first to gain access to the fiber-based offering. The cable company has promised to extend its fiber network to business locations such as the World Trade Center, the Flatiron District, Midtown, and the Financial District.

As part of its New York investment, Time Warner Cable is also opening a Learning Lab inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard complex. The lab will provide the public with free access to computers connected to the high-speed network.

MakerBot is growing.

Emerging from its modest three-person founding, the 3D printing company is now 125 employes strong — and it needs some new office space.

Hence why Markerbot is moving to the MetroTech Center, a business and academic complex in downtown Brooklyn. A 16-acre site, MetroTech is currently home to the New York City Fire Department headquarters, Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Polytechnic Institute, among others.

MakerBot will be taking up the entire 21st floor of One MetroTech Center, a space offering it 31,250 square feet to develop and test new products. The company won’t, however, be leaving its current location behind: A little under half of the company’s current employees will stay at MakerBot’s current office at 87 3rd Avenue in Brooklyn.With the move, MakerBot also intends to expand its staff even further, adding fifty jobs by the end of the year.

That the company has made it this far is in and of itself a success story. MakerBot was born in Boerum Hill, a Brooklyn neighborhood more famous for being home to hipsters and Spike Lee movies than DIY startups.

“We are a Brooklyn-based company and it was important to stay where we started (and it’s only a short walk from our current offices)!” MakerBot’s Gavin Murphy told VentureBeat over e-mail, when asked why the company didn’t consider a move to Manhattan. “We are growing pretty quickly, and are running out of room where we are just as quickly, so I would say yes, the move is motivated purely by our personnel growth.”

Now, three years after its founding, MakerBot is more than just a small Brooklyn startup. It’s slowly nearing its goal to make products like the Replicator as common as the microwave.

Photo via MakerBot

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Charlie O’Donnell, formerly a principle at First Round Capital, is launching his own venture fund to focus on his home borough of Brooklyn. He announced the move on his blog this morning.

Having done stints investing at GE Capital, Union Square and First Round, O’Donnell is now aiming to raise a $10-20 million fund, sources say. The idea, he wrote on his blog, is to be, “leading or co-leading seed deals — having enough capital to meet a team at a hackathon, for example, and telling them, “I’m in and you now have a round.” I don’t like the idea of telling an entrepreneur to go get someone else interested and then I’ll be able to commit.”

He got some great praise from Union Square’s Fred Wilson, who told TechCrunch, “Charlie is pure Brooklyn hustle. It’s fantastic to see him focusing on the growing Brooklyn tech community. Startups are sprouting up in Greenpoint, Bushwick, Williamsburg, Fort Greene, Dumbo, Downtown Brooklyn, and Red Hook and probably in other neighborhoods too. Nobody is better suited to catalyze the Brooklyn tech community and seed it with startup capital than Charlie O’Donnell.”

As CB insight noted earlier this month, Brooklyn had just five venture deals in 2011, compared to 61 in New York. But a lot of entrepreneur activity goes on in Brooklyn, even if the venture funding doesn’t flow through there directly. As O’Donnell wrote, “Given that many of the companies I work with don’t even have offices yet, and that many of their founders and future employees live in Brooklyn, I won’t be surprised if the majority of the fund winds up being invested in Brooklyn startups. It’s a great place to build a business — creative, less expensive, flexible, etc.”

Brooklyn Bridge photo via Flickr