
Thoughts on Campus, a Failed Housing Startup - edward
http://rossgarlick.com/2015/07/14/thoughts-on-campus-the-failed-startup-that-almost-reinvented-how-we-live/
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technotony
I lived in two campus houses for a period over a year. The vision and concept
were great, and it's failure should 100% not be read as a failure of the
sector. Someone's going to do this right and make a big success. I don't know
if they'll reinvent whole cities, Tom's full vision, but they'll make better
places for people to live.

My personal view of why it fails (as a housemate not an insider to the
business) was the following: 1\. Too much money too early meant they spent
more than they should on things which weren't necessarily valued. Examples
being hot-tubs in all the early houses, the vacation houses (I get they were
an experiment) etc. 2\. Poor financial management. Property at it's core is a
simple business and getting the accounting/billing right is vital. I suspect
that the leadership team didn't have enough financial knowledge of the books
to run such a business, needed a grey hair CFO much earlier. 3\. Premature
scaling. I assume pressure from investors and the economics models showed you
had to get mega scale to get VC rewards, and this lead to pressure to grow too
fast. I moved from one house to another and it was clear there was a
difference in how carefully the inhabitants were selected and this weakened
the value proposition (the second house had two separate groups with very
different and competing goals from living together).

I really hope someone gets this right, and not just for 20 something year
olds. When I get married and have kids I'd love to have 5-10 other families
sharing common areas, responsibilities etc. Figuring out how to build that
community element and make it scalable is the hard part.

~~~
dsr_
The name for what you want is cohousing -- I know of at least four cohousing
communities in the Boston area, and there are probably many, many more.

The usual cohousing model is (relatively) small apartments gathered around
shared communal resources, in a condominium financial arrangement. Instead of
the condo just being your share of a building, it's a share of the community.
The fee is partially in money and partially in chores performed: helping to
cook for a communal meal once a week, helping to clean up, helping to maintain
things and make things better.

A cohousing community can generally afford better amenities than the people
could individually: how often do you want to play piano? If you're not a pro,
having a well-insulated piano room is really expensive - but justifying it as
part of the community is easy. Want a really good home theater? A pro kitchen?
Really good gardens?

The people I know who have tried cohousing have either left after the first
year or decided that was how they wanted to live for the rest of their lives.

~~~
klipt
> If you're not a pro, having a well-insulated piano room is really expensive
> - but justifying it as part of the community is easy.

Or you could just use a digital piano with headphones. Much cheaper.

> The people I know who have tried cohousing have either left after the first
> year or decided that was how they wanted to live for the rest of their
> lives.

I imagine a lot of it depends on the other people. Tragedy of the commons can
easily happen unless everyone shares the same standards of kitchen neatness,
etc.

~~~
superuser2
>Or you could just use a digital piano with headphones.

Not necessarily. The tactile feedback from the keys is an important part of
playing the instrument. Properly weighted keys are for some reason very, very
expensive to do well on a digital piano.

Some piano teachers will require that students practice on a real instrument
after their first year of instruction. That way the student can figure out
whether they really want to commit to it before making a large purchase, but a
decent upright in the home is considered a requirement for further study.

~~~
klipt
> Properly weighted keys are for some reason very, very expensive to do well
> on a digital piano.

You can get a decent hammer-weighted digital piano for under $1000:
[http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/216745...](http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/2167459/Comparison_of_Portable_Digital.html)

More expensive than a $100 unweighted keyboard to be sure, but still much
cheaper than a decent acoustic. Plus they can be played silently, can be used
to record MIDI tracks, and you never have to tune them!

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kirubakaran
I lived in a Campus house for a year, till they closed down. I made a lot of
friends out of my roommates as well as the extended community. They really did
a great job and it is so sad that they weren't able to make it a profitable
business.

They removed the biggest issue with coliving : managing roommates moving
out/in, being on the hook for rent if someone moves out and you can't find
someone great in that short period of time etc. You just paid your rent+fee
and they took care of everything else.

I've heard many stories of Campus members (=tenants) asking for ridiculous
things from the support people, simply because Campus would provide it for
them, no questions asked. "This is why we can't have nice things" came to mind
frequently.

~~~
kornish
Out of interest, what are some examples of ridiculous things for which people
asked?

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Danilka
I was one of the 8 people to move into the first Campus house. All of the
other 7 people became my close friends and I never regretted paying premium to
be a part of that community. Would I have chosen to do so without the
community promise? Maybe. Would I have stayed long? Probably not.

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endgame
It saddens me that the first I heard of this was the author hearing of its
closure. We need to have a serious rethink about how we do housing, and
building better communities is part of that.

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api
This is too bad... I would be very interested in something like this. I'd be
curious about more details as to why it failed as a business. Were its costs
too high? I wonder if it was more or less a victim of the insanely high real
estate prices in SF and NYC and whether it might have been more successful
elsewhere.

~~~
danieltillett
I would say it was the standard reason which is the margins are too low
(because of competition and then need for large amounts of human labor) to
support a tech start-up valuation.

There are lots of potential businesses that have high demand, but you just
can’t make money from them. It is relatively easy to build a business that
customers love, what is really hard is to build a business customers love AND
are willing to pay a premium to use AND which can be monopolized so your
margins are not eroded by competition. These are rarer than unicorns.

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beatpanda
The entire business model is s "how can we convince people in expensive
housing markets to pay even more?" and it took this many words to wonder about
why that didn't work?

Fuck these people and anybody dumb enough to buy what they were selling.

~~~
tomasien
I'm moving into a Common in a few days. I'm paying about $250 a month more for
a much nicer place with month to month flexibility than my friends living in a
tiny 3BR with a 12 month lease. All in with utilities/internet/etc included
it's about $100 more per month. It's pretty sweet. $100 more for a nicer place
and full optionality is worth it.

What a horrible attitude you have!

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JackFr
You understand a 12 month lease protects you as well as the landlord.

~~~
Arelius
Yes, but in some places the local laws can make up for most of the protections
of a lease. At which point it mostly just protects the landlord.

