8 ms·

A Startup That Wants to Build Cities

115 points by jeremyrwelch 12y ago

honksillet 12y ago
Don't build Brasilia. That is all.
madisonmay 12y ago
Any plans to come to Boston?
headcanon 12y ago
I'm curious as to why they are choosing to start their pilot program in the Bay Area - they're not a software startup, so why choose one of the most expensive areas in the world to rent/purchase land? There's a lot of land out there with easier avenues to self-sufficiency that are just a plane ride away at the most, I cant imagine them needing to be close to an urban area at all actually.
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  > why choose one of the most expensive areas in the world to rent/purchase land? So that they can charge the highest rent / purchase costs and look good on paper for the inevitable takeover / IPO / payout?
- andreasklinger 12y ago
  From my understanding they essentially start as a "co-housing network"- which makes a lot of sense in SF/Bay
  - headcanon 12y ago
    At second glance, you seem correct - I seem to have misunderstood the nature of this venture. I was under the impression they were building distributed urban settlements in strategic but unpopulated areas (which would require large amounts of capital and/or land).
- neovi 12y ago
  I don't know the numbers, though it seems easier to find potential renters more easily in the city. It's about $1.4k with no long-term lease (using the cheapest room for Lower Pac Heights) which is about the same you would find for a single in SoCal (albeit with a contract lease). So, potential residents have the benefits of like-minded roommates, tech-driven area, and no-contract housing. Other cities could have better profit for the landowner to rent out, but it would only really share the no-contract perk.
- netcan 12y ago
  The type of tenant they seem to be targeting, young, mobile and willing to rent a room in a well managed share house exist in high rent, high rent urban areas. If you can rent a furnished townhouse for $750, no one needs this. If the rock bottom rent for a studio is $1,300, some people might prefer to be in one of these boarding houses with a better location instead.
maerF0x0 12y ago
I wonder if they'll choose to make a whole diverse city or just a "monoculture" of 20 somethign roommates. ? I dont imagine seniors are usually attracted to Campus' main market (see the communities on their website). But cities usually have all sorts of demographics.
- stockninja 12y ago
  Most houses are a monoculture of 20 somethings
  - maerF0x0 12y ago
    its a shame. We all can benefit from more community. I think we can also benefit from diversity of ages etc, wisdom passed down/up etc.
    - mc32 12y ago
      Maybe as they develop and become bigger... But kids out of uni are more or less still 'getting away' from the adults. And empty-nesters probably would have a different tolerance for noise and active hours.
    - ebiester 12y ago
      Some of it has to do with the people who would be interested in an arrangement like this. I saw nothing about couples, for example.
  - stevecalifornia 12y ago
    Reminds me of how 'The Real World' TV show started out as a whole bunch of different people living together in SF then as the show progressed season after season it just became a 20 something mono culture.
    - will_work4tears 12y ago
      Actually, 'The Real World' changed cities every year and the original one was in Soho, NYC, only Seasons 3 and 29 were in SF. </pedant> (Sorry, couldn't help myself, but you do make a good point)
stockninja 12y ago
I live in one of their houses. It has beautiful shared spaces and nice kitchens — but it is very expensive. Great place to live when you first arrive in a new city, but most people move on after ~6 months. A nice thing is that the effective land lords (campus employees) are my age — which helps. Previous versions of this vision statement described colonies on Mars ... so they've scaled it back a bit lol
PhoenixWright 12y ago
This reminds me of the Downtown Las Vegas Project spearheaded by Tony Hsieh's. Definitely interesting to see the "hacker" mentality applied to city development.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
bitshepherd 12y ago
As a mid-career professional, this strikes me as the kind of thing that might have appealed to me when I was 19-23, but even then I hung out with 40 somethings. Perhaps I'm just not the target audience. Cool idea, nonetheless.
mbesto 12y ago
Here's my idea to solve the same problem (aimed at tech people): - Buy a decent expensive plot of land in SV - Buy several tiny homes (let's say 10)[0] and put them on said plot - Buy a large cheap plot of land way out in the middle of California (or potentially Nevada for tax reasons) that can accommodate 100 tiny homes - Move the tiny homes (they're portable), effectively swapping them, from the SV plot to the cheap plot every time someone wants to get funding Now, I know this is SV echo chamber speak, but hear me out for a second. I think there is a sizable market of people who realize that living in the SF Bay Area is stupidly expensive, and are willing to go ramen style because they're close to VCs. This brings the best of both worlds - cheap comfortable living + proximity to VCs during the time they need it most (rounds), with a community of founders to keep them from going bored. [0] - http://www.wishbonetinyhomes.com/ http://www.wishbonetinyhomes.com/
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  How about: * Build giant highrise apartment buildings * Rent them out at affordable rates Alternatively: * Build a suburb inland * Build a high-speed train connection to said suburb There are plenty of solutions for housing problems, and only political reasons preventing them. In SF, money is definitely not the problem.
- logfromblammo 12y ago
  Your idea, as well-considered as it may have been, is a complicated workaround to the problem that Silicon Valley money does not want to leave Silicon Valley, and is thereby causing an explosion of inflation, driven by too much money chasing after too little common sense. In the rest of the country, this is called a "trailer park" or "RV campground". There is no second, remote property in Nevada, because all the homes adhere to a common standard for utility hookups and foundation pads. Even so, despite the theoretical possibility, most mobile homes do not actually move more than once. This is because it is several orders of magnitude easier to move people and their personal possessions than the buildings they live in, even when such buildings are designed to be moved. I don't want to be mean about this, because you did put your idea out there and stand behind it, but it is not an ideal business plan. There is already a solution to the problem wherein a businessperson needs to be in a certain city for 10% of the year, while still enjoying most of the amenities of home--several, actually: hotels, time-share condominiums, furnished apartments rented weekly, couch-surfing, pieds-a-terre. There are also existing solutions for portable homes: touring buses, RVs, camper trailers.
infecto 12y ago
Looks at some of their properties in SF. 3 level house in Haight-Ashbury, ~18 units. Each unit is around $1500/month and they estimate clean/utilities at $200-260 per month. Is that insane to anyone else? Where the heck is all the money going for utilities?!?! I have a two bedroom in the richmond, one roommate and we use maybe $30-40 a month in electric and gas, including the washer/dryer.
- nazgulnarsil 12y ago
  Shrug, 1500 a month in SF is cheap.
  - aetherson 12y ago
    It's not really cheap for a room in a shared apartment/house.
- epicureanideal 12y ago
  For some reason I'm paying around $100/mo for water and sewer, $150 for electric per month, then there's garbage service. I'm not sure if they're including cable TV, internet service, etc. Maybe there's some HOA fees?
Animats 12y ago
It's not that building a new city is hard. Real estate developers do it routinely. The problem is jobs. There are, at present, quite a few places in the US with more houses than jobs. Only in a few places, such as SF and some areas of Oklahoma where there's heavy drilling activity, is the reverse the case. If you want to buy an empty town of new houses, there are plenty in San Bernardino. Vacant lots run about $7500. San Bernardino even has a new airport, fully completed and ready to go. But no airlines fly there. Because there are no jobs.
- epicureanideal 12y ago
  I know a way of solving this, but "ideas are worth nothing, execution is everything". If anyone's willing to value the idea as significantly more than nothing, I'd be happy to discuss. See my reply to commenter below. I for one don't believe ideas are worth nothing, and am willing to pay for ideas/information useful to me.
  - davidw 12y ago
    http://journal.dedasys.com/2007/04/26/ideas-are-worthless/ http://journal.dedasys.com/2007/04/26/ideas-are-worthless/ Ideas may be worth something, but how would the market for them work?
    - epicureanideal 12y ago
      Same as any other market. If there is a potential value of say, $5M assuming a problem can be solved, but that potential disappears without the solution, then it's worth $5M. Obviously the other side will want to keep some of that potential value otherwise they won't make the deal. I don't understand why this is getting downvoted (not that it matters much). I'm totally serious. Ask a question if something isn't clear.
    - epicureanideal 12y ago
      For the record, I'm very much open to buying ideas (or other information) that help me make more money. If you're selling ideas that would help me make more money, and willing to make payment conditional upon me being able to utilize your ideas (and I'll certainly try, given that it's in my interest) post your contact info and I'll get in touch. I realize there isn't a very efficient market for ideas, and I have difficulty understanding why. I suppose other market participants are just not like me in being interested to buy them, but I suspect a reasonable number of similar people exist. My 6-second guess about the situation is that the market for ideas is inefficient because the small percentage of people willing to buy ideas is difficult to market to and ideas are not equally useful to each person.
Backlash85 12y ago
A slightly different approach then just building or planning your regular tech startup. That is a bit refreshing I might add..
kumarski 12y ago
This is only humorous because SF has created a hyper-inelastic demand market for housing in which ideas like this can flourish.
andymoe 12y ago
OK, now let's figure out how to do something like this that might actually work for families and then you will have something useful to society as a whole. The current "managed roommate" setup they have going is probably not going to work very well if families are involved. I'm not sure my two year old running through the halls of one of the five bedroom houses after a shower screaming "I'm naked I'm naked" would go over real well but maybe I'm wrong. I'm betting they could do something better and more interesting for families and lower income folks once they start building their own properties. Certainly it's worth a try because housing is badly broken in the US and a lot of other countries.
- jmckib 12y ago
  Your comment reminded me that there's actually a community in Alaska that is located within a single large building. It looks rather pleasant, actually. http://www.npr.org/2015/01/18/378162264/welcome-to-whittier-alaska-a-community-under-one-roof http://www.npr.org/2015/01/18/378162264/welcome-to-whittier-...
makeitsuckless 12y ago
Ah, the arrogance of completely ignoring history and human nature. The problem with building a community of like-minded people is that after a few generations it won't be a community of like-minded people that have chosen to be there anymore. And I'm not even talking about any other form of social and economic reality. All else remaining the same (it won't), just bringing in new generations will change the entire dynamic. What they are basically describing is trying to start a cult.
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  > The problem with building a community of like-minded people is that after a few generation after a few generations it won't be that company's problem anymore - buildings built, money earned, and founders dead or retired.
- jmckib 12y ago
  On the other hand, as workers become increasingly mobile, it should become more feasible to maintain a physical community of like-minded people.
- jeremyrwelch 12y ago
  this is definitely a hard problem, but what they've accomplished so far is IMO better than alternatives. they are careful about adding new roommates, and allow existing roommates to give lots of input during the process. definitely seems to work better than standard Craigslist or friends-network only roommate searching. not sure how it resembles a cult? their goal is not for all the communities to be the same, but rather for there to be many diff types of communities, each of which evolves over time as roommates come and go.
- slm_HN 12y ago
  >What they are basically describing is trying to start a cult. Cult is exactly what I thought when viewing the website. All the talk of like minded people, the photograph of people sitting around in a circle... hugely creepy.
jeremyrwelch 12y ago
didn't expect the post to hit frontpage so quickly! Just thought some other HNers might be interested. regardless of the lofty plans, what they have actually built already is pretty great. The communities indeed evolve overtime, but the team is careful about how they transition communities and how quickly they add new people. The services are useful too. Literally showed up at my place and Internet, common room furniture, cleaning, basic kitchen utensils all already provided and working. Sure there are some kinks in the processes, but remarkably smooth considering all the logistics. And did I mention the month to month lease? I wish this company existed years ago when I was moving cities more often.
itsbits 12y ago
doesn't this mean SEZ's??
brudgers 12y ago
Looking at the website beyond the landing page, their current business is yuppie boardinghouses. Which isn't really building cities and doesn't scale in that direction because what makes cities hard is economic diversity...Greyhound Stations and methadone clinics have to go somewhere or it's just prettier gated suburbia.
- netcan 12y ago
  If you look at their "vision" page: Phase 1 is "communities." These are the yuppie boarding houses. 4, 20, 200, then 5000. Looks like they on about 30 now. Phase 2 is cities. I like it, personally. It's got that too-ambitious element but they set themselves a proving ground. If they hit 200 "communities," are profitable and are managing scale exponentially, I would definitely be listening to them talk about creating cities.
Paul_S 12y ago
I looked at the admission form and this looks to me like a modern day commune.
- netcan 12y ago
  A share house is inevitably commune-like.
netcan 12y ago
This is obviously an ambitious big goal, and so naturally seems like a low likelihood shot. It's one of those cases where I would like to hear the founders talk. Long, earnest interviews. Podcasting would be great. WTF are they talking about exactly? Step 1 sounds like a house-share idea, maybe purpose built. The likely market is students and recent grads. Beyond that they are talking about building cities. If these guys have a chance of succeeding, they probably have interesting ideas. It's actually a cool question: "How do we build new cities as a startup?" One interesting idea that (I think) seems like a potential bridge between phase 1 and phase 2, is "student villages" where alumni and staff are encouraged to settle permanently. Residents would already be more intimately involved and invested in the community than they would be anywhere else, have things in common. If 5-10% of a graduating class stayed long term it would give you a fairly rapid growth rate. The eventual size would be reached at whatever size that 5-10% equals the natural rate of attrition. Say 200 graduates settle per year and 1/10 of residents leave in any given year, they would reach 1,000 residents in 7 years and top out at 2,000 residents within a few decades. You really can't know in advance, but I suspect that a decent number of graduates (especially of post graduate programs) from top universities could be tempted to buy in to alumni communities if the price was right. But.. you really need to be a badass team to pull off something at this scale and in this space. The list of Big problems is daunting. Financing, governance and ownership structures would be tricky.
wcummings 12y ago
But who will build the roads?
rodburns 12y ago
Am I missing something? This company is a Real Estate Agent masquerading as a "startup"
logfromblammo 12y ago
Is this "not invented here" syndrome again? There are plenty of little towns and cities out there already. They were all programmed in non-portable assembly for obscure processors. Some even have a rudimentary OS written in C. And the startup in the article wants to scrap the entire code base, and rewrite the whole thing from scratch in Python, or Scala, or Clojure, or Brainfuck, or whatever closes the first round of funding this year. Never mind that this has been done before, countless times. They're called "company towns". If the company did it well, they diversified their economies and still exist. If not, they failed, and were absorbed by natural communities. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town -or in the extreme case- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_republic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_republic I can't quite tell if Silicon Valley has already jumped the shark, or if they are still seeking funding to build the ramp.
highoctane51 12y ago
This looks very cool, kudos to you guys
novaleaf 12y ago
Isn't this just... sprawl? Sprawl with good infrastructure?

115 points by jeremyrwelch 12y ago

honksillet 12y ago

Don't build Brasilia. That is all.

madisonmay 12y ago

Any plans to come to Boston?

headcanon 12y ago

I'm curious as to why they are choosing to start their pilot program in the Bay Area - they're not a software startup, so why choose one of the most expensive areas in the world to rent/purchase land? There's a lot of land out there with easier avenues to self-sufficiency that are just a plane ride away at the most, I cant imagine them needing to be close to an urban area at all actually.

Cthulhu_ 12y ago
> why choose one of the most expensive areas in the world to rent/purchase land? So that they can charge the highest rent / purchase costs and look good on paper for the inevitable takeover / IPO / payout?
andreasklinger 12y ago
From my understanding they essentially start as a "co-housing network"- which makes a lot of sense in SF/Bay
- headcanon 12y ago
  At second glance, you seem correct - I seem to have misunderstood the nature of this venture. I was under the impression they were building distributed urban settlements in strategic but unpopulated areas (which would require large amounts of capital and/or land).
neovi 12y ago
I don't know the numbers, though it seems easier to find potential renters more easily in the city. It's about $1.4k with no long-term lease (using the cheapest room for Lower Pac Heights) which is about the same you would find for a single in SoCal (albeit with a contract lease). So, potential residents have the benefits of like-minded roommates, tech-driven area, and no-contract housing. Other cities could have better profit for the landowner to rent out, but it would only really share the no-contract perk.
netcan 12y ago
The type of tenant they seem to be targeting, young, mobile and willing to rent a room in a well managed share house exist in high rent, high rent urban areas. If you can rent a furnished townhouse for $750, no one needs this. If the rock bottom rent for a studio is $1,300, some people might prefer to be in one of these boarding houses with a better location instead.

maerF0x0 12y ago

I wonder if they'll choose to make a whole diverse city or just a "monoculture" of 20 somethign roommates. ? I dont imagine seniors are usually attracted to Campus' main market (see the communities on their website). But cities usually have all sorts of demographics.

stockninja 12y ago
Most houses are a monoculture of 20 somethings
- maerF0x0 12y ago
  its a shame. We all can benefit from more community. I think we can also benefit from diversity of ages etc, wisdom passed down/up etc.
  - mc32 12y ago
    Maybe as they develop and become bigger... But kids out of uni are more or less still 'getting away' from the adults. And empty-nesters probably would have a different tolerance for noise and active hours.
  - ebiester 12y ago
    Some of it has to do with the people who would be interested in an arrangement like this. I saw nothing about couples, for example.
- stevecalifornia 12y ago
  Reminds me of how 'The Real World' TV show started out as a whole bunch of different people living together in SF then as the show progressed season after season it just became a 20 something mono culture.
  - will_work4tears 12y ago
    Actually, 'The Real World' changed cities every year and the original one was in Soho, NYC, only Seasons 3 and 29 were in SF. </pedant> (Sorry, couldn't help myself, but you do make a good point)

stockninja 12y ago

I live in one of their houses. It has beautiful shared spaces and nice kitchens — but it is very expensive. Great place to live when you first arrive in a new city, but most people move on after ~6 months. A nice thing is that the effective land lords (campus employees) are my age — which helps. Previous versions of this vision statement described colonies on Mars ... so they've scaled it back a bit lol

PhoenixWright 12y ago

This reminds me of the Downtown Las Vegas Project spearheaded by Tony Hsieh's. Definitely interesting to see the "hacker" mentality applied to city development.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

bitshepherd 12y ago

As a mid-career professional, this strikes me as the kind of thing that might have appealed to me when I was 19-23, but even then I hung out with 40 somethings. Perhaps I'm just not the target audience. Cool idea, nonetheless.

mbesto 12y ago

Here's my idea to solve the same problem (aimed at tech people): - Buy a decent expensive plot of land in SV - Buy several tiny homes (let's say 10)[0] and put them on said plot - Buy a large cheap plot of land way out in the middle of California (or potentially Nevada for tax reasons) that can accommodate 100 tiny homes - Move the tiny homes (they're portable), effectively swapping them, from the SV plot to the cheap plot every time someone wants to get funding Now, I know this is SV echo chamber speak, but hear me out for a second. I think there is a sizable market of people who realize that living in the SF Bay Area is stupidly expensive, and are willing to go ramen style because they're close to VCs. This brings the best of both worlds - cheap comfortable living + proximity to VCs during the time they need it most (rounds), with a community of founders to keep them from going bored. [0] - http://www.wishbonetinyhomes.com/ http://www.wishbonetinyhomes.com/

Cthulhu_ 12y ago
How about: * Build giant highrise apartment buildings * Rent them out at affordable rates Alternatively: * Build a suburb inland * Build a high-speed train connection to said suburb There are plenty of solutions for housing problems, and only political reasons preventing them. In SF, money is definitely not the problem.
logfromblammo 12y ago
Your idea, as well-considered as it may have been, is a complicated workaround to the problem that Silicon Valley money does not want to leave Silicon Valley, and is thereby causing an explosion of inflation, driven by too much money chasing after too little common sense. In the rest of the country, this is called a "trailer park" or "RV campground". There is no second, remote property in Nevada, because all the homes adhere to a common standard for utility hookups and foundation pads. Even so, despite the theoretical possibility, most mobile homes do not actually move more than once. This is because it is several orders of magnitude easier to move people and their personal possessions than the buildings they live in, even when such buildings are designed to be moved. I don't want to be mean about this, because you did put your idea out there and stand behind it, but it is not an ideal business plan. There is already a solution to the problem wherein a businessperson needs to be in a certain city for 10% of the year, while still enjoying most of the amenities of home--several, actually: hotels, time-share condominiums, furnished apartments rented weekly, couch-surfing, pieds-a-terre. There are also existing solutions for portable homes: touring buses, RVs, camper trailers.

infecto 12y ago

Looks at some of their properties in SF. 3 level house in Haight-Ashbury, ~18 units. Each unit is around $1500/month and they estimate clean/utilities at $200-260 per month. Is that insane to anyone else? Where the heck is all the money going for utilities?!?! I have a two bedroom in the richmond, one roommate and we use maybe $30-40 a month in electric and gas, including the washer/dryer.

nazgulnarsil 12y ago
Shrug, 1500 a month in SF is cheap.
- aetherson 12y ago
  It's not really cheap for a room in a shared apartment/house.
epicureanideal 12y ago
For some reason I'm paying around $100/mo for water and sewer, $150 for electric per month, then there's garbage service. I'm not sure if they're including cable TV, internet service, etc. Maybe there's some HOA fees?

Animats 12y ago

It's not that building a new city is hard. Real estate developers do it routinely. The problem is jobs. There are, at present, quite a few places in the US with more houses than jobs. Only in a few places, such as SF and some areas of Oklahoma where there's heavy drilling activity, is the reverse the case. If you want to buy an empty town of new houses, there are plenty in San Bernardino. Vacant lots run about $7500. San Bernardino even has a new airport, fully completed and ready to go. But no airlines fly there. Because there are no jobs.

epicureanideal 12y ago
I know a way of solving this, but "ideas are worth nothing, execution is everything". If anyone's willing to value the idea as significantly more than nothing, I'd be happy to discuss. See my reply to commenter below. I for one don't believe ideas are worth nothing, and am willing to pay for ideas/information useful to me.
- davidw 12y ago
  http://journal.dedasys.com/2007/04/26/ideas-are-worthless/ http://journal.dedasys.com/2007/04/26/ideas-are-worthless/ Ideas may be worth something, but how would the market for them work?
  - epicureanideal 12y ago
    Same as any other market. If there is a potential value of say, $5M assuming a problem can be solved, but that potential disappears without the solution, then it's worth $5M. Obviously the other side will want to keep some of that potential value otherwise they won't make the deal. I don't understand why this is getting downvoted (not that it matters much). I'm totally serious. Ask a question if something isn't clear.
  - epicureanideal 12y ago
    For the record, I'm very much open to buying ideas (or other information) that help me make more money. If you're selling ideas that would help me make more money, and willing to make payment conditional upon me being able to utilize your ideas (and I'll certainly try, given that it's in my interest) post your contact info and I'll get in touch. I realize there isn't a very efficient market for ideas, and I have difficulty understanding why. I suppose other market participants are just not like me in being interested to buy them, but I suspect a reasonable number of similar people exist. My 6-second guess about the situation is that the market for ideas is inefficient because the small percentage of people willing to buy ideas is difficult to market to and ideas are not equally useful to each person.

Backlash85 12y ago

A slightly different approach then just building or planning your regular tech startup. That is a bit refreshing I might add..

kumarski 12y ago

This is only humorous because SF has created a hyper-inelastic demand market for housing in which ideas like this can flourish.

andymoe 12y ago

OK, now let's figure out how to do something like this that might actually work for families and then you will have something useful to society as a whole. The current "managed roommate" setup they have going is probably not going to work very well if families are involved. I'm not sure my two year old running through the halls of one of the five bedroom houses after a shower screaming "I'm naked I'm naked" would go over real well but maybe I'm wrong. I'm betting they could do something better and more interesting for families and lower income folks once they start building their own properties. Certainly it's worth a try because housing is badly broken in the US and a lot of other countries.

jmckib 12y ago
Your comment reminded me that there's actually a community in Alaska that is located within a single large building. It looks rather pleasant, actually. http://www.npr.org/2015/01/18/378162264/welcome-to-whittier-alaska-a-community-under-one-roof http://www.npr.org/2015/01/18/378162264/welcome-to-whittier-...

makeitsuckless 12y ago

Ah, the arrogance of completely ignoring history and human nature. The problem with building a community of like-minded people is that after a few generations it won't be a community of like-minded people that have chosen to be there anymore. And I'm not even talking about any other form of social and economic reality. All else remaining the same (it won't), just bringing in new generations will change the entire dynamic. What they are basically describing is trying to start a cult.

Cthulhu_ 12y ago
> The problem with building a community of like-minded people is that after a few generation after a few generations it won't be that company's problem anymore - buildings built, money earned, and founders dead or retired.
jmckib 12y ago
On the other hand, as workers become increasingly mobile, it should become more feasible to maintain a physical community of like-minded people.
jeremyrwelch 12y ago
this is definitely a hard problem, but what they've accomplished so far is IMO better than alternatives. they are careful about adding new roommates, and allow existing roommates to give lots of input during the process. definitely seems to work better than standard Craigslist or friends-network only roommate searching. not sure how it resembles a cult? their goal is not for all the communities to be the same, but rather for there to be many diff types of communities, each of which evolves over time as roommates come and go.
slm_HN 12y ago
>What they are basically describing is trying to start a cult. Cult is exactly what I thought when viewing the website. All the talk of like minded people, the photograph of people sitting around in a circle... hugely creepy.

jeremyrwelch 12y ago

didn't expect the post to hit frontpage so quickly! Just thought some other HNers might be interested. regardless of the lofty plans, what they have actually built already is pretty great. The communities indeed evolve overtime, but the team is careful about how they transition communities and how quickly they add new people. The services are useful too. Literally showed up at my place and Internet, common room furniture, cleaning, basic kitchen utensils all already provided and working. Sure there are some kinks in the processes, but remarkably smooth considering all the logistics. And did I mention the month to month lease? I wish this company existed years ago when I was moving cities more often.

itsbits 12y ago

doesn't this mean SEZ's??

brudgers 12y ago

Looking at the website beyond the landing page, their current business is yuppie boardinghouses. Which isn't really building cities and doesn't scale in that direction because what makes cities hard is economic diversity...Greyhound Stations and methadone clinics have to go somewhere or it's just prettier gated suburbia.

netcan 12y ago
If you look at their "vision" page: Phase 1 is "communities." These are the yuppie boarding houses. 4, 20, 200, then 5000. Looks like they on about 30 now. Phase 2 is cities. I like it, personally. It's got that too-ambitious element but they set themselves a proving ground. If they hit 200 "communities," are profitable and are managing scale exponentially, I would definitely be listening to them talk about creating cities.

Paul_S 12y ago

I looked at the admission form and this looks to me like a modern day commune.

netcan 12y ago
A share house is inevitably commune-like.

netcan 12y ago

This is obviously an ambitious big goal, and so naturally seems like a low likelihood shot. It's one of those cases where I would like to hear the founders talk. Long, earnest interviews. Podcasting would be great. WTF are they talking about exactly? Step 1 sounds like a house-share idea, maybe purpose built. The likely market is students and recent grads. Beyond that they are talking about building cities. If these guys have a chance of succeeding, they probably have interesting ideas. It's actually a cool question: "How do we build new cities as a startup?" One interesting idea that (I think) seems like a potential bridge between phase 1 and phase 2, is "student villages" where alumni and staff are encouraged to settle permanently. Residents would already be more intimately involved and invested in the community than they would be anywhere else, have things in common. If 5-10% of a graduating class stayed long term it would give you a fairly rapid growth rate. The eventual size would be reached at whatever size that 5-10% equals the natural rate of attrition. Say 200 graduates settle per year and 1/10 of residents leave in any given year, they would reach 1,000 residents in 7 years and top out at 2,000 residents within a few decades. You really can't know in advance, but I suspect that a decent number of graduates (especially of post graduate programs) from top universities could be tempted to buy in to alumni communities if the price was right. But.. you really need to be a badass team to pull off something at this scale and in this space. The list of Big problems is daunting. Financing, governance and ownership structures would be tricky.

wcummings 12y ago

But who will build the roads?

rodburns 12y ago

Am I missing something? This company is a Real Estate Agent masquerading as a "startup"

logfromblammo 12y ago

Is this "not invented here" syndrome again? There are plenty of little towns and cities out there already. They were all programmed in non-portable assembly for obscure processors. Some even have a rudimentary OS written in C. And the startup in the article wants to scrap the entire code base, and rewrite the whole thing from scratch in Python, or Scala, or Clojure, or Brainfuck, or whatever closes the first round of funding this year. Never mind that this has been done before, countless times. They're called "company towns". If the company did it well, they diversified their economies and still exist. If not, they failed, and were absorbed by natural communities. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town -or in the extreme case- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_republic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_republic I can't quite tell if Silicon Valley has already jumped the shark, or if they are still seeking funding to build the ramp.

highoctane51 12y ago

This looks very cool, kudos to you guys

novaleaf 12y ago

Isn't this just... sprawl? Sprawl with good infrastructure?