Entrepreneurs spend a lot of time and effort building the right connections to be successful— mentors, talent, and especially investors. Imagine you could walk into a business event and quickly pair up with the right people in the room to have meaningful conversations that yield the greatest return. No more wandering around the room guessing who might benefit your venture. 

 
That’s the design behind Coeo, a new relationship building app developed by Asheville-based Anthroware. Now imagine, instead of a room there’s a whole office building, and you get to strategically partner up with who your neighbors will be. That’s the energy behind a new startup space that opened last week in downtown Asheville, designed in part by Coeo’s creator to serve some of the city’s promising high-growth tech ventures. 
Jon Jones, founder of Anthroware, talked to other startup founders for the past year as he looked for a solution to what he saw as a critical missing piece of the city’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. He wanted a physical space where talent, mentors and tech ventures can brainstorm and share ideas, offer peer mentorship, and collectively grow the city’s tech presence, a place like American Underground in Durham and HQ locations in Raleigh, Charlotte and Greensboro. 
The co-located offices branded as Hatch are home to a handful of local startups and will provide meeting and co-working space for dozens of founders and mentors in Elevate, the entrepreneurship program launched by Venture Asheville earlier this year. Hatch looks to bring together the local entrepreneurial community for many high-caliber startup events, such as 1 Million Cups. 
The amenities aren’t your usual suspects. Adjacent to Hatch is the Grail Moviehouse, an independent 250-seat movie theater, and the Asheville School of Film. Plus there’s a grocery store with café seating and a Thai restaurant. There’s even talk of a small outdoor music stage, a disc golf course and more. 
 
With 5-6 other companies interested, Hatch is expected to fill up by early 2017. The phase II buildout calls for a second floor of office space for young companies, and sometime later, residential units for a live, work and play destination. 
“We’d like Hatch to be one of the things people talk about when they think of Asheville’s business economy,” says Ball.