I thought this was an interesting post, you raised a point which I haven't seen anyone refute yet: wouldn't it be more cost-effective in the long-term to purchase a bankrupt hotel? I'm not the finance guru in the room, but I feel like it would be cheaper long-term.
I've done apartment hunting in the bay area, and it sucks. You have to look around, sign contracts, deposits, etc. It's a huge time and energy drainer.
I like your idea, I find it to be creative. Can someone please discuss the downsides to doing it this way? Let's put aside the whole "YC is dead" argument, that's obviously only going to degenerate this otherwise meaningful discussion.
"wouldn't it be more cost-effective in the long-term to purchase a bankrupt hotel?"
It would be the ultimate extension of the Google (and Microsoft before them) "keep them at work" model. Bed, board, work in one location. Every cost could be amortized over the number of people/companies you have living there. Incomparable face to face networking opportunities.
Certainly one of those brainstorming "this is way too crazy to work...or is it?" kind of ideas.
It works on college campuses, why not elsewhere? Dorms largely eliminate the apartment-hunting roadblock and provide very close contact with (theoretically) interesting people.
I lived off campus for the last two years of college, and it made the experience suck a lot more.
This is the reason why I gave my upvote, nothing about a linkbait title or talk about VCs.
Steve Chen (from YouTube), Aber Whitcomb (from MySpace), Jim Young (from HotOrNot), and Ashwin Navin(Bittorrent) are actually doing something like that right now.
To encourage religious commitment to a project, instead of a hotel, it would be way more appropriate to get access to a monastery in the countryside. This would work especially well for open source projects. I imagine the experience would include wearing robes and taking part in mass, where the attendants chant the GPL license together.
I've done apartment hunting in the bay area, and it sucks. You have to look around, sign contracts, deposits, etc. It's a huge time and energy drainer.
I like your idea, I find it to be creative. Can someone please discuss the downsides to doing it this way? Let's put aside the whole "YC is dead" argument, that's obviously only going to degenerate this otherwise meaningful discussion.