Launch HN: Boxouse (YC W17) – Shipping-container homes

Some feedback: if you have to append (ish) to call them beautiful, they're probably not beautiful. The photos make them look very shoddy, something put together as a weekend project by amateurs. I don't know much about this "space" (hipsters who want to live in shipping containers I'm guessing...) but I'd be surprised if these are competitive. I could be totally wrong though! I once visited a hipster enclave that was basically a bunch of containers slapped together into a 6 unit Airbnb operation so there is defintely some demand.

On a more general note, this is not really a positive solution to the housing crisis which would be repealing nimby laws and the fed stopping pumping up asset prices. But best of luck.

1. "Visit Boxouse $40" sounds like you are charging money for tours, which almost made me leave the site immediately: tweak the copy to say "Stay in a Boxouse $40" or "Try a Boxouse $40"

2. Your presentation needs work.

- Barebones: needs a photo that's less dark, also more than one photo (including inside and outside) - Standard: decent photos, looks bright & clean - Boxouse Deluxe: despite having some nice details this looks like a junky piece of crap. The photo quality is the worst of the three, and the house in the photo is messy and unappealing. The side with the mattress looks sloppy (is that a deflated air mattress? A sleeping bag over a sagging mattress? Whatever it is I don't want to even sit on it, much less sleep on it) and the Ikea-esque drawers with the awkward space between looks unfinished or dysfunctional. The other side by the metal tub has a trashcan and two gadgets plugged in... don't know what they are but that whole side just looks like random junk in the corner of a garage.

The boxouse in the "Visit Boxouse" page is bright, has some design and is appealing: this is what a deluxe one should look like, not the sloppy thing you have there now.

3. If your business model is to deploy them to people's houses for free and split rent revenue, why is your website geared around individual sales?

Man, it's been 23 hours since this was posted, and lots of negative feedback. With that intro, you might expect me to be different, but sadly, I'm not.

If you haven't read the graphic novel about Honest Tea, I recommend it. One thing made an impression on me: you can't sell sustainable organic tea if it tastes bad.

This was born, as you say, out of "frustration with paying high rent for crappy apartments." It seems your 1st attempt at solving this frustration is to charge a high price for crappy containers.

People have become strongly accustomed to excellent design, and so what used to be passable is now off-putting.

The core problem is that there is nothing about what you're doing that provides credible justification that your approach is a real advance. The trial program ain't it, neither is the rent-sharing. You need something more surpising. What would be compelling enough to tempt a claustrophobic person like me to buy a Boxouse? Nothing I've seen yet.

What about building a little hotel out of stacked Boxouses? I'd be more apt to try it if it came with all the amenities of a normal hotel, and gave the perception that lots of people stay there. (Yeah, I know, I'm a follower, whatever.)

You obviously have something going for you if YC took you, but whatever appealed to YC does not come through on the website. I hope things turn up for you guys (sincerely).

That is interesting. I had no idea. I already had my reasons for not liking Warren Buffet but this was new to me.

tell that to the voters in CA who refuse all development. Right now, every freakin house or townhouse built is within 2 feet of each other.

I wouldn't mind this density if it were at least being used to some advantage: for example mixing up the zoning to make a neighborhood walkable, perhaps a local library, or local grocery store or local cafe. But no. Everything is on top of each other for miles on end, with the same cookie cutter tiny townhouse next to each other with no walkability at all.

And then you have these section 8 areas that subsidize undesirable housing (raising crime) and just raise the cost of housing for everyone else.