Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Willow Garage Founder Scott Hassan Aims To Build a Startup Village

Posted by timothy on from the it-takes-a-startup-village dept.

Tekla Perry (3034735) writes "Scott Hassan, founder of robotic research lab Willow Garage, is behind a large real estate development in Menlo Park, Calif. He reportedly plans to create an incubator village with 18,500 square meters of workspace and another 18,500 square meters of living space on a 30,000 square meter site, combining the advantages of a garage startup environment (what could be more convenient than working where you live) and an incubator (access to other smart entrepreneurs and ideas)." Would you want to live in this kind of environment?

62 comments

  1. Live there? by dex22 · · Score: 1

    Live there? I offer to move there and help set it up! :)

    1. Re:Live there? by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 1

      They could call it the Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow. Certainly it's never been done before.

    2. Re:Live there? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And here we see a lot of the draw. And sure inbuilt set of distractions. Make the very infrastructure behind a set of entrepreneurial ventures an entrepreneurial venture.

      And seen this way this project has no shortage of the same dumbfuck herd think that keeps me avoiding Silicon Valley and venture capitalists like a plague.

      First of all, by doing this where real estate is so brainrippingly expensive he's making the cost of entry literally fifty times what it could be. Think about it. For the amount that this will cost he could do this in a cheaper city (or even right outside one, past the zoning code limitations) at ten times the size and then be able to justify including things like a small funky bookstore and a 24 hour coffee shop that also sells supplies from resistors to plain black polo shirts. And you know, dumplings or something that's a good "junk food" but not a metabolism attack. But by having a community of several *hundred* entrepreneurs and staffers he would have those low costs while getting, if anything, a superior creative synergy to what being in the California hothouse is supposed to be so good for. Shit, he could reserve half a dozen apartments for cute burner acrobats or some such to improve the social dynamic.

      And because his cost structure is what it is he'll need to pressure "his" ventures to the pathological rate of growth and time to going public that is now taken for granted by so many. And which spends innovations and innovators as if we were mass market cheeseburgers.

      So then the whole thing, the very approach, will be judged on basis of this shitty iteration and it will be even harder to get the funding and approvals for anybody trying to do it right because, after all, if this famous rich guy in Silicon Valley couldn't make it work then what chance have we got.

      What a fucking waste.

      Again.

      -Rustin

  2. So .. it's a college? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sounds like a college to me.

    1. Re:So .. it's a college? by ThePhilips · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Except that you would rarely see new people.

      More innovation happens by accidents, mistakes and misunderstandings. Or the ever silly questions of the newcomers.

      Without inflow of new people, the "village" would suffer mental rot pretty quickly.

      In a sense, a maker fairs are already better "startup villages", IMO.

      --
      All hope abandon ye who enter here.
    2. Re:So .. it's a college? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yeah it would really be suck to be isolated in Menlo Park. You would be so far away from Stanford, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, the greater bay area, Napa/Sonoma/SantaLucia, Santa Cruz and Monterey, Lake Tahoe, Yosemite. Think of how long it must take for the pony express to get across the Sierra Nevadas! There would be nobody to talk to but the same coworkers, day in and day out. No wonder the housing is so cheap there!

    3. Re:So .. it's a college? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's an appealing idea, but I don't think it's true. I've read before that innovation generally comes from the experts in a field and the "happy accident" type of innovation from naive newcomers is more myth than reality. In my personal experience, the top people in their field rarely change -- real estate turnover is certainly commensurate, probably much higher if we're including rentals -- and generally speaking the experts have many, many years worth of tasks to do to push their field forward and are more lacking in smart people to carry out the work. Interaction with peers is, of course, very valuable to most and they naturally tend to stay in touch.
       
      Then again, I probably define innovation very differently than someone focused on an incubator village and start-ups. I'm thinking more along the lines of Bell Labs and less like "Who can make the next Facebook?"

    4. Re:So .. it's a college? by ThePhilips · · Score: 2

      That's an appealing idea, but I don't think it's true. I've read before that innovation generally comes from the experts in a field and the "happy accident" type of innovation from naive newcomers is more myth than reality.

      Not in my experience, though.

      But of course professional pride kicks in even before the first round of applause fades, and after that it is "of course it was very very hard work!!!"

      Then again, I probably define innovation very differently than someone focused on an incubator village and start-ups. I'm thinking more along the lines of Bell Labs [...]

      That's precisely the type of innovation I was talking about. (Facebook thingies happen by throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what sticks. When lots of people do it simultaneously, there is a chance that some of it sticks.)

      The thing about big R&D centers is that nobody really sees what's going on behind the closed doors. Behind the closed doors in the most "productive" labs you would find chaos and disorder - precisely the environment where errors and accidents occur. But it certainly takes dedication (to field or problem) to actually make out of that a "Eureka!" moment.

      Otherwise, if innovation was that easy to achieve by simply good planning, then it would have been done a long time ago.

      --
      All hope abandon ye who enter here.
    5. Re:So .. it's a college? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Otherwise, if innovation was that easy to achieve by simply good planning, then it would have been done a long time ago.

      That'd be truer if you had infinite resources to expend at any one time. Most innovation I know of is firmly tied to what came before and, instead of coming from a "Eureka!" moment, comes from the tried and true cycle of hypothesis --> test --> evaluate. The leaders in their field I've known tend to have a list of open problems, a list of possible solutions and a good idea of the hiccups involved, and they just need the man-hours put in to solve them. (In some cases, they're working on the solution to something in the hopes of it being a sub-problem to the end goal; the cycle is still similar.) One guy who's an expert responsible for some algorithms we all know and love literally had a board on the wall like a spreadsheet of open problems, and would gently try to recruit people to help put in the footwork necessary to test possible solutions. The problem is that even though not all of the possible solutions need a leader in the field to carry out the work, they usually still need someone with years of experience and knowledge who -- outside of post-docs -- are prohibitively expensive or rare. The other common hang up is, predictably, equipment costs.

    6. Re:So .. it's a college? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Many things were discovered by accident; the hard work came in making the accident into something marketable.

    7. Re:So .. it's a college? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      Except that you would rarely see new people.

      Why not? Why would there be fewer new people in this neighborhood compared to any other? The only difference would be the people in this neighborhood would be a more interesting.

    8. Re:So .. it's a college? by khallow · · Score: 1

      Except that you would rarely see new people.

      Unless, of course, new people go there all the time. There is a way to fix that problem.

    9. Re:So .. it's a college? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's why I love being a member of Techshop.

      We constantly have new faces stopping by with interesting backgrounds.

    10. Re:So .. it's a college? by Dahamma · · Score: 2

      Yeah college, if they pay your rent and take all of your ideas for themselves.

      VCs have finally figured out how to treat technology and creativity like a company town from the 1890s.

    11. Re:So .. it's a college? by ThePhilips · · Score: 2

      [...] comes from the tried and true cycle of hypothesis --> test --> evaluate.

      Ah. The science. The scientific process. But science is precisely the example of the branch with closed environment, discrimination and elitism, which abhors and rejects any innovation or change. Unless it comes from a prof with a fat grant, of course.

      That's why, for example, computer science, effectively branched off and doesn't use the scientific process. Likewise, most of the industries: the scientific process is way too expensive and way too wasteful when applied to tangible things. Some areas do it because all low hanging fruits are already gone and there is simply no alternative. But again, due to the costs, it is applied in a very very limited fashion.

      In the end, in this particular context, it is OK to ignore science because your definition of innovation is simply different. Heck, you measure "innovation" in number of published papers.

      --
      All hope abandon ye who enter here.
  3. Now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No.
    Berfore I was married and had a kid, sure!

  4. Not in California by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oregon - yes
    Hawaii - Yes
    California - No

  5. Maaybe by Scottingham · · Score: 1

    I wouldn't mind access to a small room if I stayed really late one night or wanted to bang something out over a weekend or few days.

    But live there full time? I don't think so. Seems like it would be the LAN party that never ended.

    1. Re: Maaybe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Bang something out"

    2. Re: Maaybe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Bang something out"

      Where have I heard this before?

  6. An overlap of 7000 square feet by rmdingler · · Score: 1

    If you're doing the math, that's 1750 in dog feet.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

    1. Re:An overlap of 7000 square feet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you only want 7000 sq feet of the overlap, I'll take the other 6350 sq meters

    2. Re:An overlap of 7000 square feet by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 1

      Actually, it's 7000 square METERS.

      What I'm wondering is how much greenspace there's going to be. 11500 square meters? Less? More?

      Depends on how he chooses to stack living space and working space.

      Oh, and how many people are expected to live in this 3 hectares (7.5 acres for the Amis among us)?

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    3. Re:An overlap of 7000 square feet by rmdingler · · Score: 1

      Your American is showing, eh?

      --
      Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

      Ernest Hemingway

    4. Re:An overlap of 7000 square feet by Dahamma · · Score: 1

      Seriously. There was so much douchiness in the article I could hardly stand it.

      The premise itself (let's treat smart college grads as if they were 19th century factory workers and tell them it's great) was douchiness to the extreme. But then the fact IEEE had to try to translate square feet to square meters when NO ONE in Menlo Park would have a clue what that means earns extra douche points to the square douche degree.

    5. Re: An overlap of 7000 square feet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Engineers not familiar with the metric system should seek a different employment.

    6. Re: An overlap of 7000 square feet by Dahamma · · Score: 1

      It's even as much not about that, it's the fact that in the US, office space is rented in square feet, so why would an American organization bother trying to convert it to meters for the article? They might as well start quoting the rent in bitcoins.

  7. No by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'd rather live in a mixed community, one where I'd encounter lots of different types of people on an everyday basis.

    1. Re:No by penguinoid · · Score: 1

      I'd rather live in a mixed community, one where I'd encounter lots of different types of people on an everyday basis.

      But different people are so annoying! :-p Seriously though, it would be nice to have a bunch of friends and peers in the neighborhood.

      --
      Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
  8. next door by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    sorority nudest colony...

    1. Re: next door by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nudest.. Is that like, the most nude one can go for?

  9. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  10. Eloi will move in by zr · · Score: 1

    Morlock will stay out. Wells, buddy, looks like you were right about this.

    Now, where's my time machine?

  11. I'd live in the alley ... where do I sign? by lunadaniel · · Score: 1

    Please please please.

  12. Another center for self absorption by pieisgood · · Score: 2

    Assuming this project succeeded; I can only imagine that this would be another center of self absorbed web techs and recent college grads. People aiming to make 'apps' that will 'change the face of X' and 'rethink how we approach Y'. Yet, these 'apps', will offer half baked solutions to problems that were solved before but now require you to login to a site to work with.

    I could just be jealous of high pay for awful work though.

    --
    Eat sleep die
    1. Re:Another center for self absorption by silfen · · Score: 1

      Assuming this project succeeded; I can only imagine that this would be another center of self absorbed web techs and recent college grads.

      And what's the problem with that? I mean, the whole point of the kind of wealth and liberty we enjoy is that we can do what interests us.

    2. Re:Another center for self absorption by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I could just be jealous of high pay for awful work though.

      Herein lies the problem. Only a small subset will actually be able to afford to move there, and startups generally don't pay for relocation. Stillborn.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  13. Not really by CODiNE · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm working at home and I think it can easily lead to burnout. I need to figure out some kind of mental partitioning scheme. PLUS being surrounded by workmates 24/7? Yikes.

    I know startups aren't exactly paragons of balanced living, but burnout is already a problem with them. Perhaps the physical use of space will help avoid it.

    --
    Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
  14. Too expensive for garage science. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The area would be too expensive for garage science. Why not set-up somewhere that is cheaper?

  15. What's all this startup trends? by androidph · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm seeing a lot of people getting into startups, not only in the US but the rest of the world. My facebook feed is filled with my friends founding a startup. And some of my previous bosses are funding startups.

    However, the problem I am seeing though, is most of these startups is not the next Tesla or doing something innovative, they are just trying to create a new social media app or some new game. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but my opinion is that startups should be about trying to solve a problem. Just like friendster, it got created because the guy just broke up with his girl and wants a way to easily find dates.

    On a side note, given this flood of startups, why is it still hard to find a software development job that gives a decent pay? Can it be that these new startup trend is just another way to get people to write code real cheap?

    I'm imagining this scenario.

    Start Up Boss : Hey you want to join a startup that is like mashable but only better?
    Guy : Yeah cool... <and starts coding some HTML5 stuff and JavaScript.> Here boss all done!
    Start Up Boss : Wow cool. You know, it would be better if we can integrate this with some legacy code. Since, you are so awesome, can you write me some services to communicate with our mainframe application preferably using json.
    Guy: Yeah I can do that... <starts keyboarding some codes>.. ALL DONE BOSS!!! Take note, I've done all this stuff and got time for 2 hours of sleep. I'm really awesome.
    Start Up Boss : Cool! Here's your first month's paycheck for 2K. However, there's some new direction that our startup is taking and we need to let you go.

    1. Re:What's all this startup trends? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes, it's part of this weird general fetishization of entrepreneurship. Why should everyone be making a startup? I've run into people who say they want to have one. Then you ask them what their company would *do* and they tell you they're still trying to decide. When it ends up being having a start-up to have a start-up, something is very wrong.

    2. Re:What's all this startup trends? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When it ends up being having a start-up to have a start-up, something is very wrong.

      What we need is more startups to help new startups decide what their startup should actually do. These startups will need some help getting started, and for that I have created a new startup. I call it the Startup Startup Startup - helping your startup startup help startups.

    3. Re:What's all this startup trends? by real+gumby · · Score: 1

      Some startups are still what I consider (and it sounds like you consider) classic startups. Most these days are like TV shows (essentialy the MVP is the “pilot” and then they “get picked up” — run for a little while and then fade out or get bought in an aquihire. In that they are simply a high tech version of starting a corner shop, which is still the most common kind of business around the world.

  16. Re:What an asshole piece of shit liar by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 0

    It's not because we're Republicans that we hate you.

    It's because you're a ranting dolt that we hate you. And you smell bad. And dress worse. Plus, it wouldn't hurt to brush your teeth once a day at least, and shave those 7 whiskers you grow on your chin - nobody likes patchy hipster beards. Nobody. Including your mom, regardless of what she shouts down the basement stairs to your "command station".

    - The GOP

    PS: the Libertarians and Democrats asked us to not send you their way - they don't want want to associate with you either. Can't say we blame them. Who knew it would take a loathsome beast like you to unite the political parties...

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  17. Re:What an asshole piece of shit liar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Agreed. Republicans have no sense of space. They're used to huge houses and spacious offices. They don't understand how us common people live.

  18. Hmm. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How's the internet and who is the ISP?

  19. In Short? No. by ndykman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    While there are many things about startups that are attractive, in the end, it's just a job, not a lifestyle. It's best to work to live, not live to work. These efforts to create all inclusive environments for programmers will just lead to burnout when the bubble pops. And yes, it is a bubble. We don't need yet another mobile social enabled whatsit pieced together quickly.

    If this was an environment to create new formal verification tools or other revolutionary software tooling, then I'd be interested. Right now, it seems we are going a bit backwards. It's harder to create a nice UI on the web than it was on the desktop more than ten years ago. In the last few years, this is the first time that my job is becoming harder. For the longest time, editors got better, debuggers got better, frameworks got better and there were more tools for the job than before. Now, there's no real commercial breakthroughs in static analysis, security, formal verification, domain specific languages. It's all just mobile apps with no depth. Sure, this has driven some new useful stuff (say, Hadoop), but when big data is just for marketing and ads, what's the point?

    1. Re:In Short? No. by bradley13 · · Score: 1

      You're off-topic, but absolutely right. It is much harder to create a good user experience on the web, as compared to desktop applications. Or even compared to web applications some years ago (when expectations were, granted, lower).

      --
      Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
  20. "Work camp" for appslaves is more like it by Animats · · Score: 1

    Whatever happened to that "startup house" in Kansas City? Much the same idea. Google PR made a big deal about how a 1GB network connection made it possible for a house in KC to do big-time development.

    There are already a few places like this in the SF Bay Area. They're mostly sweatshops for producing appcrap. Now if the Willow Garage guy was doing robotics again, it might be interesting. But Willow Garage robotics tanked, and the people involved mostly went off to a "telepresence" startup which sells a Segway-like teleoperator with a camera and screen. It's controlled from an app, of course.

  21. Stop the worship by Darinbob · · Score: 1

    Seriously people, stop it with the Startup Religion. A start up is nothing other than a new company with likely bad funding or heavy mortgages that employees underpaid and overworked people who usually know nothing about actual product creation or business development. Meanwhile the media treats these like houses of worship, fawning over entrepreneurs, and so on. Wake up.

    A startup village is inherently stupid. Once a startup company gets a product going and is no longer a "startup", then you want as many employees as possible to STAY and finish the product and build the company, not have them jump ship or be forced to move out because the housing is reserved for only startup devs. Also when work is over, GO HOME! Do not live the lifestyle because the lifestyle is a lie. Don't follow all the other cultists.

  22. Just needs a song. by Dahamma · · Score: 1

    You write sixteen apps and what do you get
    Another day older and deeper in debt
    Google don't you hire me cause I can't go
    I owe my code to the incubator whores.

  23. Incubators are worse by LostMyBeaver · · Score: 1

    Incubators are generally a disaster since they're not actually meant to start businesses. They're designed specifically to take assist ventures in acquiring venture capital and then using a lock-in to the agreement to suck that money back out.

    Incubators are a total disaster. The only advantage ever has been that they provide the coffee pot. You'll have to make your own coffee elsewhere.

  24. Why California? by bradley13 · · Score: 1

    Just that - why California? One of the most business-hostile climates in the world, but people who live there can't imagine anything else?

    --
    Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
    1. Re:Why California? by mjwalshe · · Score: 1

      Non competes being unenforceable is one its notable that all the tech areas in the USA are in more "liberal" area's in terms of employment laws

  25. Apps are passe by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 1

    Couples of years ago I invested in startups doing apps as at that time the app market has yet to mature

    After the 'angry bird' phenomena when everyone and their dog wants to get in, I started to divest

    Now, I still invest in startups, but none of them are in the "app business" - the app market is a fools' gold right now

    I am not saying that there is no more new idea in the App space - what I am saying is that with so many people getting involve, the _noise_ level has gotten so loud it even genuinely clever ideas might not get noticed anymore

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
  26. Perfect! Let's build the perfect startup garage... by DiamondGeezer · · Score: 1

    ...slap bang in the middle of the most expensive real estate in the US.

    Brilliant!

    --
    Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
  27. metric to imperial by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    18,500 square meters = 19,9132 square feet

    30,000 square meters = 32,2917 square feet

    not everyone uses meters

    1. Re:metric to imperial by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      Most of the planet does, it's not our fault you're still using a measuring system that seems designed for little children.

      --
      Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
  28. Scott Hassan?? Run away!!!!! by dbc · · Score: 1

    Scott "Bridge Burner" Hassan is a well-known ass-hat in the Sili Valley robotics community. He guided Willow Garage into a controlled cratering, and the spin-out agreements of the companies that have come out of Hassan's previous ventures have contained undigestible poison pills driven by Scott's greed. Hassan has PO'ed enough of the VC's on Sand Hill Road that he is *forced* to go it alone now with strange schemes like this where he can indulge his misguided greed. Scott Hassan is number one on my list of people that I would never, ever, allow to influence a start-up I was involved with.

    Given what I know about Hassan, I predict that this is simply a slave camp disguised as a honey pot. Scott will own everything. The slaves will own nothing. Apparently, Hassan is disatisified with the rate at which he is accumulating personal enemies, and now wants to start manufacturing personal enemies by the warehouse-full.

  29. hello by phongthinghiem · · Score: 1

    Did not a willow garage spinoff recently have to close after failing to work things out with Willow in the series A process? This is a great idea, but Scott Hassan needs to show he is founder friendly; otherwise, watch out.

    --
    noi that phong thi nghiem, bÃn thà nghiám