So here's the pitch:

You want to come to Silicon Valley and be a successful founder while you're still young, hungry, and unencumbered?

You'll need a place to stay, great network connectivity, partners (this is a team sport), connections, and mentors. Location matters: you'll want ready access to neighborhood conveniences; to San Francisco, Palo Alto, and San Jose tech/finance hubs; to parking and transit.

If you're admitted to the Acme House: You'll get...
  • 24x7 immersion in startup culture, just the way Facebook started.
  • Great bandwidth, food, whiteboard walls, projectors, infinite post-its, and everything you need to focus
  • Serious networking opportunities within the house, the better to find partners
  • Access to an angel network and other outside networking opportunities
  • Weekly check-ins with our incubator-vetted mentors

We limit the time you can spend here. We expect you to graduate to your own space inside a year.

Here's the reality: 

  • This is more expensive than a simple real-estate play. You're writing checks for recruiting, project staff, common facilities, and housekeeping (frat house squalor) above and beyond rent. You're selling rent+incubatorship+camaraderie and have to make that case. Most houses or apartment buildings in Oakland need some expensive retrofitting to get high bandwidth and enough power and outlets. Fiber is relatively unavailable (although San Leandro has local fiber loops). Depending on where you locate, working things out with neighbors and City permits can be time consuming and costly.
  • The money comes
    • from tenants (charging a big premium to people relatively unwilling to pay it) or
    • from investors (who subsidize the house in exchange for equity or rights to equity) or
    • from collateral sources (producers of a reality TV show; sponsors who seek some marketing advantage).
  • You have to fight expensive churn: very high startup failure rates drive tenants out, there's drama from close quarters, and tenants move out if they find outside funding or co-founders living elsewhere in the Bay. Normal landlords seek long term tenants who pay on time without fuss.

So it's tough.

It would really help if the house has a tight focus. B2B Growth Hacks startups. Neurochem tech startups. Wearables/fashion/QS consumer startups. Health/clinical startups. This assures a more valuable space design (e.g. arduino startups would need a good hacker space) more synergy, better chances of connections having value, and an easier time attracting partners, investors, media.

- Phil



Phil Wolff

pwolff@gmail.com
skype:evanwolf 

+1-510-343-5664 

http://about.me/evanwolf bio
http://twitter.com/evanwolf @
http://www.linkedin.com/in/philwolff cv
http://LetMyDataGo.org blog
http://www.facebook.com/philwolff face



On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 10:15 AM, Sonja Trauss <sonja.trauss@gmail.com> wrote:
 I don't understand start-up houses - why not rent a house with roomates? What is the value added of the start up house?


On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 8:53 AM, Jehan Tremback <jehan.tremback@gmail.com> wrote:
A guy I work with started and ran one in SOMA for a year. I asked whether he would like to help on this, but he is sick of that kind of stuff.

They basically took over an empty building (legally), and renovated it into sort of a cross between a hostel and a community home for entrepreneurs (and wantrepreneurs) from out of town.

They charged around $1000 a month for a dorm like situation where you would share a room. That's definitely a pretty high price, and may make people want to start yelling about rent-seeking capitalists, but the reality is that they barely turned a profit on that after a year, after legal and construction expenses.

They basically spent the whole time fighting the SF zoning bureaucracy, and were really just delaying their inevitable expulsion from the building by the city.

You could probably reduce expenses considerably by-
1) using volunteer construction labor under some cooperative scheme (you'll still need to pay a bunch for skilled trades, like electricians and plumbers).
2) either choosing a building zoned appropriately, or not informing the city of your plans to have people live there.


On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 12:23 AM, David Keenan <dkeenan44@gmail.com> wrote:
I've worked for a lot of startups, but what is a 'Startup House'?


On Tuesday, March 25, 2014, Liberty Madison <libertymadison@gmail.com> wrote:
Hey!
Sudoers

Anyone on our list skilled in writing business plans?
Anyone passionate about Start up projects?

A Former Mayor and I are working on seeking funding for a new Startup House .
He suggested I find a team ASAP.  
A person who can write a killer plan while conveying the vision as well as a person to develop a splash page for investors.
And since I know Sudo has so many talented folks I thought I would throw it out here first!

If you are interested to be a part of this FAST paced project or have ideas please message me. 
Would love to hack this out with a Sudoer 
You will be compensated in flat fee or equity once funding is secured 
So If you are passionate about startups and want to be a part of a cool, fun, innovate project that helps people grow their startup/project/invention please 

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