Although I don't see this as a great deal of investment. If somebody's really acting in bad faith, they'd get terminated, but if somebody gives it a go and it just doesn't work out, then at the end of their "fellowship" they just move on, no hard feelings. Or so I see it.

The type of people that don't pay rent and get themselves evicted tend to ignore eviction notices too... meaning you have to go get a court order and have the county sheriff throw them out.

You'd also have to worry about Equal Opportunity Housing laws. You could largely mitigate getting deadbeat tenants if you interviewed them all and made sure they were bright young hackers... but whether you can discriminate based on 'hackerness' is probably legally questionable... but IANAL.

Maybe you could make the rent non-free, and then pay them (or call it a stipend/scholarship/grant) the same amount of money as the rent/broadband/food etc while they met some condition? As soon as they stopped meeting the condition they stop getting paid, and they have to pay the costs themselves or get evicted.

What mainly got me interested in them was their pie shop: http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/alissa-walker/designerati/pr...

If it works, maybe you should consider expanding the idea over time – make it into something that can incubate the neighborhood and the town, not just the startup. I bet if you talked to city government, they'd jump all over this.

You wouldn't be alone. I actually posted something a few months back to this effect: http://shortformblog.com/us/need-startup-funding-look-no-fur...

I like your concept. Would love to see where you take it.

My alternative would be to charge rent... to their investors.

I envision a group of investors to whom the tenants would apply. Investors pay rent to you on behalf of the entrepreneur(s) of their choice. As long as they keep the investors happy, they stay at your place, and you have the financial means to make it work.

I've identified multiple sites at which this plan could work, but would need an investor of my own to quit my day job, move into a site, and get it ready.

This issue is somewhat near and dear to my heart because I've seen how bad Michigan has gotten. (Partly because of that, I live in D.C. now, and the rent certainly isn't cheap.)

As for the blind leading the blind, how about a teleconferencing link to Boston or Silicon Valley? A company I worked for tried having a couple of webcams/projectors in a meeting room during a Friday social hour to try and link the Connecticut and Houston offices. It only went so far. But maybe if you had an entire wall of an old school "terminal room" style workroom, this could work. Have 3 connected projector/webcam sets linked on a pair of dedicated machines, with software that could quickly and rapidly change functions of the two side screens. (Add some Wiimote hackery for a cheap augmented multi-touch whiteboard, or instant desktop sharing with any machine in the room.)

Hmm, if a rig like this could be scrounged together cheaply enough, one could form a community of such virtually linked hacker-spaces as a network! Maybe use daily round robin, or random pairing. And then, why limit it to just Boston or Silicon Valley? How about Houston-Atlanta for starters?

I also don't think that you hook up with mentors via teleconferencing. For whatever reason, face to face meetings matter a lot. You don't have dinner with someone via a teleconference. You don't tell stories over beer via a teleconference. There's a rigid formality -- "Why are we having this conversation?" I think mentorship rarely happens within those lines.

One of the comments above talks about the face-to-face networking opportunities. There's a reason he didn't say, "Why would I want that? I can call up people via Skype Video now..." ;-)

Well, I don't know about mentoring per se, but if you have an "always on" connection in the workspace, then you leave the situation open for serendipity. What I'm envisioning is just a "serendipity conduit" or maybe "serendipity space." The workspace can become a play-space in the evening or on the weekend. I could even envision communal dinners.

I'm not thinking about people "calling up" other people. I'm thinking of communal spaces with "magic walls."

But I stand by my love for the teleconferencing setup in my house. I'm all over that. (Except, of course, that you're right.)

http://www.in.gov/iedc/grants.htm

Why limit it to two? Or, I suppose, if the rig were cheap, you'd just have another room that was Houston today.

I think arts groups like The Field could also benefit from something like this.

http://www.thefield.org/

Future-proofing the standard will take some thought. We would like the standard to grow as technology becomes available, but still be inclusive of older installations.

Ultimately, enough would stay that they'd influence the local economy. Frankly, any one startup here would influence the economy. It's a small town and hasn't had serious industry since about WWII. Although when my house was built, it was one of the richest towns in this part of the country, and the architecture shows it.

They built cars here. Pianos. Louis Armstrong and Gene Autry recorded here. It was an actual place. It wouldn't take much to make it a place again.

If I was in a different spot, I would probably roll the dice on this endeavor. Alas, I actually have a career.

One other idea for you: Maybe you could hitch your wagon onto the Knight News Challenge somehow? http://www.newschallenge.org/

They just extended their deadline until December, which is plenty of time to build something. And a town like what you're describing seems like it'd be a great testbed for something like that.

If not for long-term, maybe for programming camps/meetups/etc? Something similar to Big Nerd Ranch[1], or many of the other teaching sessions.

With a very low cost of room and board (and people often traveling to meetups anyway), you might be able to find people who want to host (weekend? weeklong? longer?) events at your 'hacker complex.'

And possibly have long-term residents that qualify for discounts on the camps? i.e. live at the 'hacker complex' over the summer, enjoy the hacker culture of all of the people coming in and out, and go to the events that interest you.

[1]http://www.bignerdranch.com/schedule.shtml

There are lots of tweaks you could do on the basic model.

http://waxy.org/random/arsdigita/

I've seen so much work get done in similar sittings for musicians and writers.

And it'd be great to have more people who "get it" physically around you.

Just like Y Combinator is hosted by PG, etc., if you get the city behind it, then get a few noteworthy ex-entrepreneurs - and put them up in a building of their own, they might be interested.

As the other guys/gals pointed out, there has to be some key value-proposition. Maybe something unique to the area?

This might be something you might be able to get a federal grant to do, considering the many ideas the President's team has been throwing against the wall to see what sticks. I wouldn't be surprised if there were grants already available that you could use.

If I were not married with a kid, I would definitely strongly consider it.

What we have is quiet. Not absence-of-life quiet, but something more contemplative in nature. Earlham College, 150 years of Quaker history, an industrial history that is mostly gone now. If you ever just wanted the world to shut up for a year while you got your startup working, this would be that opportunity. That's how I see it.

But you could put that anywhere. It's just that I know where the good houses are; I walk the dog past them every day and think, man, I could put five smart people in there. And I'd get to save another grand old house.

However: a few bad apples could really ruin the whole bunch. I could see it falling apart messily with only a few dominant-personality types who decided it was just an opportunity to freeload. (Thinking of other group dynamics: throw in one bad person and suddenly everyone's leaving their dishes and trash everywhere because they've seen that it's OK to do it.)

You might want to take some cues from the other end of the economic spectrum: farm-based communes. The ones that have survived (rather than crashing and burning just after inception, as many did back in the 60s and 70s) are the ones that have fairly high barriers to entry, small numbers, and well-defined rules that everyone is familiar with.

Anyway, just because finding the right people is going to be key, I'd be wary of trying to start too big, too fast. I'd start small, and focus on building the community and hammering out how things ought to work, rather than on increasing your numbers or filling the space available. The worst thing that could happen would be to grow too fast and then have the whole thing implode when it becomes unmanageable.

Anyway, sounds like a great idea though; I hope you make a go of it.

Still though, I think it's a really cool idea!

Edit: Also, you should put an email address in your profile.

Edit: I do have an email addy in my profile.

Edit: um, now.

There's another 18-unit building for $179,000 with all hardwood floors, big units, French doors, these all have balconies - it could be sweet! (The realtor lady thought this idea was pretty exciting, for obvious reasons.)

I think the larger units are the most interesting. The chances of fostering success go up linearly with more entrepreneurs but there is also a much greater chance of having synergistic effects.

Perhaps the follow-up topic should be: who's in?

Entrepreneurs don't need other entrepreneurs, because we already knows tons of them. What we have in short supply is advisors, investors, customers, and employees.

You don't need a hacker apartment to meet hackers.

I think you could side step a lot of the problems, i.e. house squatting, housing discrimination, screening of less then ideal individuals... if you made it into a vocational school, or certification style program.

Granted, your biggest hurdle is making those diplomas and certifications carry weight for the prospective entrepreneurs. On the same token, the prospective entrepreneurs would want there efforts to mean something, meaning they would work towards proving the reward.

In this process people are applying for the educational benefit. As the process moves on, education is about empowering the individual. This is generally where entrepreneurship takes flight, or at least leaves the nest in an attempt...

As a founding principle I would take your love for those old brick buildings, and run with it in the application process, as well as a lead into the educational process. The focus being on rebuilding, sustainability, and creating future generations in the program, of witch I'm assuming your goal is to make a Y Combinator style "campus".

There is something to be said about building an empire from the ruins of the past.

As to giving it a shot: man. I'm not sure what the threshold population would have to be to make it work. I could house, like, one person starting next year. (Or two friendly persons.) If their venture paid, that would work, but given that most don't, it probably wouldn't. If I also had some capital, well, there's a three-bedroom place two blocks away for $9000. It looks in pretty good shape from the outside - buy that plus my carriage house and I could house about five people. The odds start to look better in that case.

Once the ball started rolling, well, house prices would unfortunately go up. But maybe not so horribly much, yet. There's plenty of room for growth.

The town would eat it up. They're desperate for anything that might jumpstart something more like an economy.

If I were you I'd tweak this around a bit.

There might be an interesting niche for apartment-complex/executive-suite hybrids.

Basically an apartment complex but with a reasonable # of "conference rooms" and/or mini-workspaces.

The ground floor would be given over to conference rooms / work cubbies / etc. and the upper floors mainly apartments (with perhaps some more workspace thrown in).

The appeal to young contractor / freelancer types would be pretty obvious, if the price is right: convenient to their needs and cheaper than renting a proper office + an apartment would be.

There's probably a bit of a trade-off -- every square foot given over to workspace is a square foot you're not renting out -- but with enough research and input from experts in this area you would be able to figure out if it worked.

I'm not sure Richmond is the right place for it but if there's enough in the vicinity you could possibly make it work.

If you got enough of a good thing going you might then branch out into letting tenants stay for free (or reduced rent, etc.) in exchange for equity if they were starting up their own thing.

I'd be very tempted, I am not location locked working on the current startup, broke, and definitely sounds like a interesting deal.

And, btw, there's very little that's academic about building startups. If that's how you're thinking of it, I'd suggest getting a bit of experience in this area first.

pg can suggest ideas like this because he can give real advice based on experience, star power, and access to his network. Your heart is surely in the right place, but cheap server space, food and a place to live in Richmond Indiana doesn't quite add up.

From your perspective, have you done the math on this?

This is actually an idea of the kind where I think "I could do this for the rest of my life". Considering I'm the kind of person with tonnes of ideas and too little time to make them happen, that says a lot.

Even renting out a small office space in the middle of nowhere like a "get-things-done"-facility would probably work. I'm thinking of the HN story some time ago where the entire development department of a company went to Brazil, rented a cheap place and worked day and night to Get Things Done - and they did.

Sort of like an anti-spa. :)

Could be an extra income if nothing else.

How many people per house? Unless it is zoned for apartments, you are going to have a rough time. Many places have rules against N unrelated people living in the same building. I think in my township it is 2, or some really low number.

That said, there was once a block of cheap apartments in NYC for musicians only. Lots of great talent and big names came out of it. It can work, but I'd read up more on this major precedence. (Arg, google is failing me. I know it is hard to find good old apartments in NYC, but this is just silly.)

You should have a pay-extra-rent-to-retain-your-company option.

Zoning issues are the biggest generally in big cities or areas of rapid expansion.

My family lives in the heart of amish country, and the local boards are a bunch of power tripping bureaucrats. They will ruthlessly shut down little old ladies who try to sell jelly.

Zoning is a huge issue, as it is a township's first line of defense against people who want to change things.

If I wanted to do a startup that required 6-9 months of full time development, the room+board incubator sounds attractive.

Taking a look at the web site now.

I would like to setup something between a co-op, coworking space, hacker space and incubator, preferably in a small city.

Some things that would be provided:

- Good location, somewhere not too urban

- Separated work and living quarters, a little overlap is ok

- Projection room, conference room

- Broadband + backup 3G connections, local VPN, file-server/NAS

- A couple dedicated servers for web development

- Groceries/food/etc, some provided for free, optional combined shopping list for those that want to save money and time

- Communal cooking/lunches/dinner, maybe a dedicated cook

- Cleaning service on-demand

There's lots of exciting possibilities, once you find a few good people to do this with. If any of the above sounds good to you, I'd be glad to discuss further.