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.
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.
None of these are economical because their high price is driven by regularly unused capacity. Also, there are benefits to being "swappable" in that entrepreneurs are always close to other entrepreneurs. YCombinator alone could benefit from such a system where they have 100+ entrepreneurs temporarily relocated to the Mountain View area every 3 months.
I strongly encourage you to live in another city--possibly even one entirely outside of California--for a year.
To mix two entirely appropriate metaphors, you are attempting to summon the molehill to Muhammad.
Different cities have different problems. As far as I know, "not able to live in close physical proximity to potential investors" is one that is unique to Silicon Valley.
> As far as I know, "not able to live in close physical proximity to potential investors" is one that is unique to Silicon Valley.
I think you're conflating two arguments here. I'm not suggesting this is a solution that scales to other cities. I am suggesting however, it would solve them in SV given the current funding climate.
> I strongly encourage you to live in another city
I've lived (professionally) in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, London and Germany. I'm not sure what my living experiences outside of SV have to do with the context of the discussion... for more context, the problem that is being identified here is not currently a problem that I have.
Perhaps I need to live in Silicon Valley, then, to gain an understanding of why your idea is not completely batty (or perhaps why the region itself is not as barking mad as it appears to an outsider).
While I have no scientific evidence to back this up, you may also have noticed that certain places have their own collective consciousness, where the local social conformity creates standing waves of recurring behavior. People in Chicago go to Portillo's, even though it's pretty much the same food as all the Vienna Beef independents in the city, only with higher prices and longer lines. I can't explain it, other than to say that people go there because people go there.
And just like you can't smell the peculiar odor of your own house until you've been away from it for a while, maybe you just don't notice the oddities of a town until you live elsewhere.
Your suggestion might work. I think the real reason I don't like it is the idea that someone might invest. The very idea that someone might possibly throw a few million into it makes me angry. It's not your fault. It's just sour grapes.
You don't go to Portillos for the hot dogs. It's not the best italian beef in the city, but it's not terrible, and it's reliably available, unlike Johnny's. It's like our In-N-Out.
- 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/