
Nomadic: Zipcar for apartments, for people who only need the Internet to work. - frisco
http://www.livenomadic.com/
======
xal
I think this is a brilliant idea. One of the most frustrating things for me
when I travel is that my requirements are different from what the traditional
Hotel industry caters to. All I need are a desk, chair and low latency /
reasonable bandwidth internet. I tend to stay at the Marriott because they
have their act better together then all the other chains, especially in SF.
But that still means I pay up to $200 a night for the room ( with internet +
car ) and pay for a lot of stuff that I absolutely don't need.

I'd much rather meet some nice people and stay in a cozy place with a single
pillow and good internet.

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hugh3
It took me a while to parse the title: consider "People who need nothing
except the internet in order to work" vs "People who only need the internet in
order to work" vs "People who need nothing except that the internet should
work". I assume the second is intended.

Also, how is this different to a hotel? I guess it's cheaper. So how is this
different to a really cheap hostel with shared rooms? I suppose you can only
let trustworthy people in.

So yes, I can see it working if they (you?) can get the economics right.
Keeping the apartments clean could also be a major challenge.

~~~
MichaelSalib
_how is this different to a hotel?_

When you buy time at a hotel, you're buying a bundle of services. You're
getting a room, with a door that locks. You're getting regular cleaning
service, even if you don't need/want it. You're getting a private bathroom.
You're getting privacy from the locals even if you don't need/want it. You're
getting geographically limited because you can only get a hotel room in a
place where the economics support building a hotel that has at least a few
dozen rooms. I mean, hotels that have only one or two rooms aren't very
profitable. Which means that hotels tend to concentrate in central business
districts and other places where land is expensive.

The point is, all these features that are bundled together have real costs. If
you don't need those features, then you ideally you shouldn't have to pay for
them.

This is sort of like asking why Zipcar is different from a rental car company.
There are efficiency gains to be had in a system where individual cars are
scattered all over a city and where customers rent them by the hour as opposed
to forcing customers to rent cars by the day from a centralized airport
location.

~~~
a-priori
So basically this is a hostel with good internet access?

~~~
patrickk
Surely your not suggesting that a hostel always has privacy, a door that
locks, private bathroom, prime location in a CBD and the other things
mentioned?

~~~
a-priori
No, and that's not what the comment I replied to says. It says that a _hotel_
has those things, but this new lodging doesn't.

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dustydean
How about a service that would rent out nice LCD monitors for a few days in
the cities that I travel?

They would need to deliver/setup at hotels, apartments and other places I like
to work and sleep.

13 inch laptop screens are great for the airport and coffee shops but I need
my screen real estate on the road!

~~~
mmelin
Good idea, but what would you be prepared to pay for it? I think this is
something a hotel chain should do as a value add, otherwise the cost would be
too high. To do it independently I would still partner with hotels and offer a
complete package with a nice "laptop ready" workstation, wifi and perhaps tech
support included in the price.

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bonaldi
I'm such a novelty whore: I bashed my email address in the form on nothing
more than the headline here. Sounds like a fantastic idea, though.

~~~
crc5002
I'm such a chicken: I put the URL into Google Reader, and got a notification
feed.

[http://www.google.com/notificationservice/webchanges/webfeed...](http://www.google.com/notificationservice/webchanges/webfeeds/9031944708768459259)

~~~
davidu
Hah, I didn't know others used that functionality.

I stick various companies and startups management team pages into my google
reader by the dozen in a folder called "Knowledge Is Power"

:-)

~~~
crc5002
NSA uses a slightly different wording: "In God we trust, all others we
monitor."

~~~
PhysicsAndYou
Technically that's the AFTAC.

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briansmith
This is basically a timeshare company, except the condos will be in places
nobody ever wants to go to on vacation, right?

~~~
pskettiwestern
Haha - except when you say, "places nobody ever wants to go on vacation," I
read, "places that aren't boring, but may not be on the beach."

~~~
koenigdavidmj
So, Fargo ND?

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jasonlbaptiste
Alright, so I need this service ASAP. I'm basically spending the next few
months travelling to different startup areas before settling down. My lease
ended in Miami and I didn't want to commit another 12 months to somewhere.
There's certainly a need for shorter term housing that isn't an overpriced
overabundant extended stay. I was quoted like 90 bucks a night for an extended
stay AND another 5 bucks for wifi. That's just the complete opposite of what's
needed.

~~~
adaugelli
You can have my couch (or area where there should be a couch) starting July 12
when I move into my new place.

------
cemregr
Sounds like an airbnb for workspaces :)

~~~
moolave
Which is awesome for startups =)

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stcredzero
One thing I've noticed while posting for a sublet is that there's a lot of
"scrap" left over in housing both demand and supply. My landlord required 60
days notice, so after the premature ending of my last project, I'm on a lease
for two months I don't need. There are _tons_ of people who have gaps between
leases and need housing for the odd month or two, and there are tons stuck
with ends of leases they don't want. Landlords don't want to deal with that
stuff because it's not cost effective for them to vet someone for less than 6
months. Why couldn't an Internet company handle this? Charge people an
application fee of $35 or so, vet them like a landlord would, then let them
into the lease scraps market.

~~~
_delirium
The vetting would have to be really good, though, due to the big ratio of
potential liability to potential income. The potential upside is one or two
month's rent, but the potential downside is a renter who throws a big party
and trashes the place. That's one reason I've never sublet my place when I've
been gone--- the $800 or whatever that I'd get for a month absence isn't worth
the risk of ending up holding a $10k damages bill. So I'd only sublease
through a service like that if either I was sure the service's vetting was
perfect, or the service was willing to insure against any damage done by their
renters.

~~~
stcredzero
My solution (in a cousin comment) is to actually lease to large _corporations_
and _universities_. They can allow their employees a short term stay at a rate
comparable to regular rental in exchange for assuming full liability. There'd
still be vetting of the individuals on top of this.

The insurance is a good idea as well.

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pavel_lishin
How is this significantly different from CouchSurfing.com?

~~~
hugh3
If the Zipcar analogy holds, then the company will own the apartments and
there will be no permanent residents.

~~~
AaronM
I think this would work even better if they had 1 permanent resident to keep
the place clean, and such. Free rent?

~~~
mrduncan
That pretty much describes AirBnB (or CouchSurfing if you take out the free
rent).

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SwellJoe
Someday, I'd like to see a network of people with long, flat, driveways or big
stretches of free street parking right out front, and WiFi, so I could pay
someone $5-$15/day to park my RV in front of their house and use their
bandwidth and optionally plug in to their power and fresh water. That'd be
really cool.

It seems like the places I really want to visit often feature a significant
lack of RV parks, and also often prohibit overnight street parking.

------
spaghetti
Another useful insight: I rent an apartment with a standard lease. I'm gone
almost every weekend and definitely gone for at least nine hours per day
monday through friday. Someone could easily use my apartment for an office (in
the context of current discussion) while I'm not home since it has internet,
chair, desk, couch, fridge, stove, heat, air conditioning, water, bathroom
etc. The point is: my fully functioning apartment is vacant about 55% of the
time (9 hrs/day five days a week + 48 hours on the weekend)... and these are
contiguous blocks of time (9 hours straight on weekdays and 48 hours straight
on the weekends). Seems like someone could use this space. (and I think many
other people are in the same situation)

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steveklabnik
I'm getting a 500 when I try to sign up for the list. How unfortunate, this
idea is awesome.

~~~
c3o
Same here.

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storborg
I've never put my email into a signup form faster.

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tehwayne
For some reason this sounds like a network of hostels with some kind of
membership?

Maybe? Just the first image I had from the site description.

~~~
frisco
No, it would be apartments and houses with a 3-5 person capacity each.

~~~
tesseract
Source? Are you affiliated with Nomadic?

~~~
rbanffy
Since frisco submitted the story, it's a reasonable assumption

~~~
tesseract
Yeah, that's what I kinda figured.

~~~
rbanffy
Frisco, however, did not follow the discussion...

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teye
I signed up because:

\- I live in my car and want to provide a place to stay for visitors.

\- This is all I need when traveling.

My interpretation of this is a work-focused AirBNB.

~~~
picasso81
Have you seen this? <http://www.airbnb.com/groups/coworking>

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haily
Would tents strategically placed next to apartments with open wifi work?

~~~
tamarindo
In places like downtown Tokyo you may encounter some resistance.

~~~
koenigdavidmj
Yeah, the car coming down the road might not like your putting a tent in the
middle of it.

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sfard
I love this idea in principle. I'd love to use it as well as be a host for
people, but I wonder how they're going to keep out people who rob/murder you
in your sleep?

~~~
ichverstehe
CouchSurfing is a nice example of that. Sure, there have probably been some
episodes, but for the majority it works really great.

~~~
tamarindo
If you're not in the majority, it really sucks though:

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1205794/Rape-
horror-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1205794/Rape-horror-
tourist-used-couchsurfing-website-aimed-travellers.html)

------
zavulon
This is awesome!

I was just planning to start a trip around the world next year. Great idea,
waiting to see the execution

------
vishaldpatel
How is this different from couchsurfing?

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perplexes
We're sorry, but something went wrong.

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preek
Even works with empty signup fields.

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fuzzythinker
This is like manga bars in Japan.

~~~
whimsy
Manga what?

------
dnsworks
We should put together a HN equivalent of couchsurfing .. and on that note, I
have two sofas in San Francisco that are free until I move the middle of
august!

There seems to be a small but growing movement of nomads. The first I met was
@ioerror and at least in the way he travels he was quite inspiring. My
personal goal with every move for the past three years has been to reduce my
amount of "stuff". When I moved back to SF from Seattle everything fit in an
SUV. With this coming move, except for those two couches and a stand-up office
desk, I could fit everything in that SUV and have 2 or 3 passengers.

It would be awesome if more of the hacker labs around the country were
live/work so that visiting hackers could crash there. I know a couple of
companies in SF that have "visiting hacker" lofts, like Squid Labs.

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
hey, tried to find your contact info, so going to briefly write here:

a) Would love to put together an HN equivalent of couchsurfing

b) @andreshb and I are thinking of spending a while in SF, so curious to talk
more about the sofas :)

j@jasonlbaptiste.com

~~~
makmanalp
Count me in! makmanalp |at~ wpi ~dot| edu. Also, check out the HN group on
airbnb.com

