Jevon MacDonald, the co-founder and CEO of GoInstant, is leading a drive to open a new working space in Halifax where tech entrepreneurs can rent space and benefit from each other’s experiences.

MacDonald and his collaborators plan to open the facility, called Volta, this year, starting out mainly as a workspace where founders of young companies can meet and feed off each other’s energy. In time, it might offer some programs, evolving into an incubator or accelerator, which are more structured systems for developing young companies.

MacDonald has been working on Volta since he and his colleagues first started GoInstant two years ago. He originally envisioned young founders sharing the GoInstant offices, but the company’s stellar growth quickly absorbed all its space. Since GoInstant was taken over by Salesforce of San Francisco last year, MacDonald is now in a better position to move forward on a more independent plan.

 “I’m putting a stake in the ground and I’m putting my own money into it and I want other people to join it,” he said in an interview Monday. GoInstant co-founder “Gavin (Uhma) and I are going to get the thing started but I don’t even know if I’ll be on the board in three months.”

He and other entrepreneurs have formed a steering committee that is looking at two possible sites for Volta — one at the Brewery Market and another on Spring Garden Road. They are considering space for about a dozen young companies, each of which would pay cheap rent and benefit from the communal experience. Volta will be a non-profit organization and will neither take a stake in nor charge the participating startups.

According to several sources, the people involved in the discussions have included: MacDonald; Uhma; Tim Burke, CEO of 26ones Inc.; Patrick Keefe, head of a regional venture capital fund; Milan Vrekic, co-founder of TitanFile; and Rob Cowan, partner in the McInnes Cooper law firm.

MacDonald said Volta has lined up two private-sector sponsors and hopes to sign two more. The steering committee wants to establish the facility without government support, but the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency may help to finance it.

The steering committee still has to find an executive director, who they hope will be a former venture capitalist or startup founder who can help guide the young companies.

They also have to nail down which startups qualify to enter and how to determine which ones should leave. Essentially, successful companies should leave because they would add staff and need their own space, but unsuccessful companies should also go because the space should be given to a more worthy candidate. The goal is for each company to “graduate” after a certain period.

The people organizing the facility have been careful not to call it an accelerator, because Atlantic Canada already boasts a successful accelerator in Moncton’s Launch36, and no one wants to detract from the great work it does. MacDonald hopes Volta will work with Launch36 and other support groups for startups in the region like MentorCamp and NextPhase.

But several parties have come to believe the region needs a space where entrepreneurs can work together — something similar to Communitech in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont.

Iain Klugman, CEO of Communitech, came to Halifax last month to meet with Volta organizers and to help guide the steering committee. Boris Wertz, founder and general partner at Version One Ventures in Vancouver, has also advised the steering committee.

The steering committee is getting close to finalizing the project, which would be the culmination of months of talks. Several groups have been working on a workspace for startups — as many as five were in the mix about two months ago.