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Comment by Metacelsus | Hacker News Reader

Now, with housing prices going through the roof, how many would-be founders actually have a garage or basement in which to tinker?

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The actual 'garage startup' is bit of a myth, played up as a rags to riches story. Most startups happen in personal spaces like bedrooms or home offices or rented offices and are often better funded than you might think. Or the 'garage' was just a very temporary thing and mostly for storage/laziness/clutter. Even Woz debunks this:

“The garage is a bit of a myth,” Wozniak told Businessweek. “We did no designs there, no breadboarding, no prototyping, no planning of products. We did no manufacturing there.”

Today a "garage startup" just really means they're just starting out, self-funding, or under-funded.

Also, having a garage is to be in a privileged position, not exactly rags. It means you can afford a car (first barrier), you can afford a covered structure to park your car (second barrier), you can afford to use your garage as a hobby space (third barrier).

It's somewhat normal for the average American, but not anywhere else in the world.

The garage was a story of economic mobility for the middle class. It was never aimed at people in abject poverty. There were stories about going from troubled neighborhoods to college as well during the time when America still believed in class mobility.

The world of the 1800s was a world of hereditary title. There was never a promise of mobility and this is what made America and its legends different for all its failings. Going back to this world will not improve things for the better.

> The world of the 1800s was a world of hereditary title

what book did you read that in?

"titles" never existed in the US. And AFAIK, there weren't any "garage startups" in countries that still had them in the 1800s.

The US was one of the rare exceptions to the hereditary title thing. Most countries still had them in some form, though the big players today were throwing them off. (the English monarchs never used their power of veto, though they still have a lot of influence on the text of laws)

can you point to a garage startup NOT in the US?

The US of the 1800s was a world in which you could legally own another human being, right up until December 6, 1865. Those born into bondage were condemned to live as such and had no legal way to change their personal status. This is kind of the ultimate form of a hereditary title.

Before the Civil War, slavery was only legal in the South. After it: nowhere.

Being a slave was not a "hereditary title" in any common sense of the word, which was "duke" or "earl" or "lord." As in Europe.

> having a garage is to be in a privileged position, not exactly rags. It means you can afford a car

I have lived in plenty of houses with garages or garage-like structures and I have never parked a car in there

Why waste all that beautiful storage space on something you can leave out on the street?

Garages are a weird extension of everyone in the USA trying to pretend they live in the Midwest, just like lawns.

In the Midwest the garage protects the car from ice and snow. In the south it’s not necessary as such, but still built.

Lawns are a Veblen good!

Taken literally, in the US, it tends to imply a house in the suburbs in an environment where an uninsulated attached garage can more or less be used year-round. Which, as you say, is far more common in many areas of the US than elsewhere.

"privileged" -- you mean "middle class" right?

Many had hopes for the TechShop / Hackerspace paradigm to help with this, but it appears it didn't end up too viable as a business and Hackerspaces were problematic in their own ways.

Hackerspaces and non-corporate coworking sort of spaces probably suffer from the fact that people want to have a space in a cool/dense place but don't actually have the means/desire to pay for it which is a big part of why they want the space in the first place.

There are some spaces like that in Seattle that seem to be getting on fine, a Makerspace with a monthly fee (appropriate for access to wood and metal shops as well as various printing and cutting options, but too expensive for me when I was working in the restaurant industry) and some tool libraries with work spaces (free, volunteer run) are the ones I'm familiar with.

Just wanted to point out that there are probably places to go to get that itch scratched just under a different name - I think my examples actually sort of underline that it isn't exactly a booming industry.

I'm not saying that such spaces don't/can't exist. Just that the market for individuals plopping down cash for desks/workbenches outside of where they live is fairly limited. I know someone who tried running such in London for a number of years and it was apparently always a difficult business. Of course some areas are much cheaper but the demand is less too.

There is a hacker space near me - but near isn't good enough to join. By the time I get the kids to bed I couldn't even get there and back before my own bedtime. I can go to my basement/garage and work in that time and do something. I have a nice shed full of tools, but by the time I get out there (it is only 10 meters from the door, but that means shoes, coat...) I can't really find time to get anything done so I end up with a separate workshop with much less tools, but at least it is easy to get to.

For someone working full-time, especially with family, absent a hobby with a lot of specialized equipment needs like photography back in the day, it's a bit hard to imagine the justification for spending the time the time in a hacker space you pay for more than occasionally. The random Meetup--sure. but somewhere you go to on a regular weekly cadence? Harder to imagine.

Care to elaborate on those ways? As an officer in a Hackerspace, I'm likely oblivious to how I'm problematic.

The key advantage for a garage is the zero-cost to carry - you can delay without being eaten alive by costs just for the space.

The advantage of a Hackerspace is access to tooling.

Look at the hilarious trials and tribulations of Noisebridge in SF.

Many people who don't live close into one of the handful of favored metros.

If the goal is to have cheap, dedicated space where you can build stuff, it probably makes a lot more sense to buy an old but sizable house, with land, in a remote place. These are cheaper than garages, and no one will be there to complain about the noise, or how bad your activity looks to the neighborhood. The cost of living tends to be cheaper than in metro areas too.

There are drawbacks too, but it is not like you are going to commute, so one of the biggest one is out. For internet and utilities, some remote places are remarkably well served.

Now, if you are doing software, you don't need any of that, all you need is a computer and you can do it from your bedroom.

You need to live, for most of us that means more than whatever hacking we are doing in our garage/shed. If you have independent wealth and no family moving to a cheap area might be a good option. However if you need a job to support yourself where you live must be in range of that job (though many reading this are able to work from home, most of the world cannot). Family means your spouse - where does she/he need to be for work - this limits where you can live just as much (and if both of you have to go to work what jobs both of you can take) . You can force move your kids to a rural area but they will not be happy about losing all their friends (many do this anyway, but it should be a consideration even if you do it to them. Family also means extended family - where does your sister, parents, in-laws live - moving away from them is hard. Likewise everything about family and your kids friends applies to your friends - do you really want to move away from them? There is also safety - the cheap side of town is often cheap for a reason, do you want to wear a bulletproof vest around all the time?

So realistically: cannot move to a cheap house on some land.

You don't even need to live in the mountains of Wyoming or wherever. I live about an hour west of Boston and have a 2-car garage and plenty of space for hobbies in a location that is not particularly expensive.

Currently don't have a garage but I do have a basement

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