With two Kickstarter projects breaking the $800,000 barrier in the same day, the mothership of crowdfunding sites is having its moment. We had a hunch this was coming when investors on recent panel about women in venture capital called out, unprompted, to Perry Chen, hoping he might be in the market for funding. But that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement.

So like any dutiful Kickstarter devotee, Hype Machine founder Anthony Volodkin did what he does best, build "apps that allow us to discover and enjoy new things." Enter Kickstumbler: a site and tool bar that lets you stumble upon projects you might have otherwise missed. "This was made over a few weekends, sometimes, truly instead of sleeping," Mr. Volodkin told Betabeat by email. It was a labor of love for what his team calls Hype Machine Labs. "It's a name we use when making something not explicitly related to the core site."

Kickstumbler fixes Kickstarter's weak spot (navigation), with a StumbleUpon-like toolbar. It also extracts those moving mission statements where creators explain their project into one continuous video channel. Fred Wilson is already a fan; Kickstarter founder Yancey Strickler tweeted out his approval as well.

So, is this plan to sell this to Kickstarter, we asked Mr. Volodkin. "The goal is to get more people finding projects they haven't seen.  I figure that can be as valuable as it is fun," he said, sidestepping the question.

Besides, he and his team, who work out of The Yard in Williamsburg/Greenpoint, are busy prepping for a big party at SXSW Music. "Think Hype Machine in real life - music blogs curate lineups at a nice venue right in the center of Austin. We call it the Hype Hotel," Mr. Volodkin explained. Participating taste-makers include Aquarium Drunkard, Gorilla vs. Bear, I Guess I am Floating, My Old Kentucky Blog, Song by Toad, No Modest Bear, Creamteam, Nialler9,  Yours Truly. "Really excited about every single one," he added. Expect a full court press on the event in a few days, but in the meantime, you can sign up for notifications here.

Think this sounds like more fun than your day job? Hype Machine is hiring.

A number of tech companies, including Hype Machine, Wanderfly, Mobile Roadie and Uber are already working out of the space, as well as a few startups still in splash page mode, like Gander TV and Spotflux. Somewhere between 60 to 70 percent of The Yard's residents are techies, although that wasn't exactly the owners' intention. "We knew there was a need in Williamsburg/Greenpoint for something like this, but we didn’t realize the tech scene was happening here and that that was the direction it was going to go," Mr. Levy told Betabeat by phone.

Now that the startup syngery is under way, however, The Yard has been "planning strategic alliances" with angel investors whose portfolio companies might be interested in working there. For example, Mr. Levy said he's currently in talks with Brooklyn Bridge Ventures founder and First Round Capital alum Charlie O'Donnell, who launched a Kings County-centric seed fund last month.

And what about the name? "Um, I dunno, it’s where you work, 'I work in the Yard.' It’s a space to work, so that’s what we call it," said Mr. Levy, whose thick Brooklyn accent would not sound out of place in a Goodfellas remake.

Mr. Levy said he and Mr. Beyda got the idea to open a coworking space after looking at the possibility of working out of one of Manhattan's suddenly-ubiquitous office-sharing arrangements. The same day he crunched the numbers, Mr. Levy happened upon the location, at 33 Nassau Avenue. "Being developers, we kind of overdid it with our Internet," he said, referring to The Yard's 100 megabit-per-second pipe. "A lot of people in other places were experiencing problems with their Internet and you know if you’re an Internet business, you can’t have an outage, so we have a lot of bandwidth here."

We first heard of The Yard from from Simily and vReddit founder Brandon Root, who wrote us a tip emphasizing The Yard's  "potential to become something like Brooklyn's General Assembly."

"I certainly looked at GA when I was trying to find some office space, and certainly would consider it in the future, but I found it to be a bit...pretentious?" Mr. Root,  who works out of the space, explained by email . "Unlike its Manhattan-based cousins, I've found people at The Yard to be just as talented but far more approachable. Maybe I'm just more comfortable with the Brooklyn vibe than the highly-caffeinated Apple-everything crowd in the city."

"I don't mean to be unfair to GA, they have accomplished something incredible," he continued. "But The Yard struck me as more practical and comfortable."

Although The Yard has been hosting events, like the North Brooklyn Breakfast Club, the General Assembly comparison seems far-fetched for now. "I’m a firm believer in not trying to be anything other than what you are," said Mr. Levy. "As far as I’m concerned we’re done and the place is humming."

Hype Machine founder Anthony Volodkin actually signed up as a tenant before construction on The Yard was complete. "We were looking for space in the fall (our first office ever, in our 6 bootstrapped years!) and I happened to see the new sign while cycling through Greenpoint as it was still being built," Mr. Volodkin said by email. "Turned out it was an upcoming coworking space inside a beautiful industrial space, much of the great textures were preserved, so the place is modern while retaining bits of the old character.  Many of us live around here, and there are lots of good coffee places around."

Before The Yard, Hype Machine's seven-person team worked from home or in coffee shops with the "occasional 'office days,' where we'd all meet up in my living room in Williamsburg," he said.

Unlike the typical open floor plan, The Yard has about 100 offices to offer more privacy, although we're not sure if that takes the "co" out of coworking. The space also offers 24-hour access. Mr. Levy said he is "on the selective side" in terms of what kinds of companies or workers he allows in to The Yard, but is open to anyone who could be who would identify as creative. "Some of my competitors are like, 'If you’re not tech or a nerd, you can’t come in,'" said Mr. Levy. "We’re not that harsh."

His pitch: “It’s kind of like Pandora with unlimited skipping and unlimited stations.”

Except for the fact that Pandora has a mobile version, and Spotify's app is still confined to the web (for now), it's hard to imagine that Pandora, which caps users to 100 stations and eight song skips, isn't feeling threatened.

TechCrunch reports:

“We think people will love playing around,” Ek went on about the company’s streaming play. “What we’ve discovered is that we’re a lean back experience and a lean forward. Spotify historically hasn’t been very good at curating music … [And Radio] is a big use case that a lot of people are asking us for.”

And then, “I wouldn’t say that Pandora is a competitor, we want to be a music platform.” Yeah, music platform that just subsumed Pandora’s basic function.

Pandora, of course, is now a public company (one whose stock experts say "is still an expensive proposition, especially in the face of emerging competition"). But can startup founders expect to start viewing Spotify as the next Goliath after Google, Facebook, and Apple? Reminds us of a tweet from Hype Machine founder Anthony Volodkin on the day Spotify announced its app platform:

"I thought I was running a startup but turns out I am just constantly deciding whether I am really working for Facebook, Spotify or Apple."

"We were working on a lot of different things at once, and with a small team that really slows you down," says Hype Machine founder Anthony Volodkin. Moving a big portion of the teams work to MongoDB really helped. "Now that these things are done, we can create new things faster." The app released today was built in just a few months.

An Android app is on the list of projects, but Volodkin says the approach will be very different. "I think for us, the Android will be more about collaborating with the developer community and having them come up with cool things to build using our API."

Apple's ecosystem is a curated experience in which users are much more likely to pay for goods and services. Android is a bit wilder, more fragmented, but with a freedom that makes it ripe for experimentation. "There are a number of challenges there, but I think it's a cool playground," says Volodkin.

The more rigid constraints of iOS were helpful, says Volodkin, for building his first mobile app. "We are used to building on the web, where there is more flexibility, so to find a good way to boil down the Hype Machine experience to its core was difficult. The iPhone really makes you prioritize."

Volodkin has found the mobile app changes the way he listens. "I found I pay more attention," he told Betabeat. "When you are using the website, it's so easy to jump to something else the moment your mind wanders, that it's easy not to leave the same amount of space in your mind for the new music. The app's flow is different, so you get more focus."