Y Combinator's Original Home For Sale | Hacker News Reader

Y Combinator's Original Home For Sale

ycombinator.posterous.com

71 pointstzury26 comments

Garden Street has a fair amount of traffic, but we solved the noise problem pretty thoroughly: there are 1600 pounds of glass in the windows, and the doors drop down into slots as they swing closed.

We also had larger skylights installed. Plus there was already a greenhouse set into the roof. The result is a place that surprises everyone who walks into it. In the middle of Cambridge you walk into what seems a fairly nondescript building, and inside is a huge, quiet, light space.

Liquidity is such a beautiful thing.

Sigh, it wasn't that long ago that a 17-year-old with no income could have gotten a mortgage to buy a $1M loft.

Why not rent it out as a coworking space to startups in Cambridge?

You could even extend the YC model a bit and rent it out cheap in exchange for some equity

It's hard to imagine an hour spent managing the logistics of a coworking space in Boston that isn't better spent on one of the large number of startups YC is advising already.

That's in addition to the fact that YC was never really a coworking program itself; one of the distinctions Graham drew between YC and "incubators" (remember those?) was that YC companies had to find their own working space.

Also: who gives away equity for office space? Don't do that.

> It's hard to imagine an hour spent managing the logistics of a coworking space in Boston that isn't better spent on one of the large number of startups YC is advising already.

I was thinking more along the lines of diversifying income while keeping what is a great piece of real estate. If there is enough demand, it could even warrant hiring a part time real estate manager, so that precious time is not diverted.

> That's in addition to the fact that YC was never really a coworking program itself;

Exactly. Again, diversification in to a new area.

> Also: who gives away equity for office space? Don't do that.

I would personally never do it, but I was just throwing it out there as another option.

For pg, diversification would be to take that $1M and plow it into 30 promising startups.

I don't think you understand what diversification means. :)

I bet you could get Alexis to manage it ;-).

And maybe live in it too. :)

This is one of the cheeriest buildings I've ever been in. I remember an automatic mood uptake walking in the door for each weekly dinner.

This is where we wrote a good deal of the code for Kiko, and where Steve wrote a lot of Reddit. It makes me nostalgic for our 2005 YC batch, and sad to see it go on the market. I hope whoever buys it puts it to good use.

For sure. I still remember scooping out huge gobs of that yummy spagetti sauce from that stove. This feels a bit like my parents selling my childhood home. So many good memories.

There is something wrong with the slideshow widget on the property listing page:

http://eplacehomes.com/company/featured-listings/135-garden/

Whenever I click one of the arrows to move through the pictures of the property, it reloads the page.

Edit: The code shows that the embedded slideshow object is placed within an <a> link. You should probably fix that so that the widget is useable.

    <a href="http://eplacehomes.com/135-garden"><br />
      <embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf" width="400" height="280" flashvars="host=picasaweb.google.com&#038;hl=en_US&#038;feat=flashalbum&#038;RGB=0xFFFFFF&#038;feed=http%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2Frachaellburger%2Falbumid%2F5527745696588689281%3Falt%3Drss%26kind%3Dphoto%26authkey%3DGv1sRgCPzy6Me54de1gQE%26hl%3Den_US" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed>
    </a>

fixed. thank you.

I never got in to YC, but the pictures made me feel nostalgic. (I'd visited in the fall of 2008 and seen Bill Warner speak.)

Me too. The best I did was driving past it when I came out to Cambridge for the first Startup School, but it was such a unique building even from the outside that seeing it again sparked a fond memory. Nice listing.

I think I went to the first Startup School (2005?) and I was invited to a party the night before at the Garden St House. It had such a nice flow for a party; it encouraged people to circulate rather than congregate in corners.

As a complete aside, the party was fun but I didn't know anybody and I was alone. I'm a very open person, but I still had trouble getting people to talk to me. We all wore silly name tags, so I changed mine from "Matt" to "Linus Torvalds". Suddenly I was popular! Then PG saw me and said "you should probably use your real name, I think that's lame" or something like that. Ah good times :)

It's a cool, bright space, in one of the neighborhoods to the west of Harvard Square (also within walking distance of Mt Auburn hospital vicinity).

It would be a great place for startup with about 10-15 people.

Looks like an amazing place. Since PG said he was open to suggestions. Why not rent it to y-combinator startups? I don't know much about SF, so I am assuming it doesn't make sense from a cost perspective.

The office is in Cambridge, MA. There are few (no?) YC startups left in the Boston area at this point. I'm sure the idea crossed their mind.

There's some. Embedly, for example, moved back east after YC.

How about turning it in to a startup community gathering place?

YC benefits: Instead of just receiving a lot of apps from the area from people you never heard of, you'd be able to get to know them for months before they apply; It'd help your application process, and let you make more accurate judgments on who would succeed and who wouldn't; You'd be able to tap in to the Harvard/MIT crowd and get more of them interested (although I'm sure YC isn't slouching here already).

Architects are usually advised to have light on two sides of every room. It doesn't seem to happen often. And this place has light on three sides. Hot Damn.

Video tour here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31X323N20wU

I think some people saw this coming, but it's good to get another perspective on the topic. Like the pics as well.

Pictures, please ;-)

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