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Postmortem of a British Startup: Tract

buildwithtract.com

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Re: Postmortem of a British Startup: Tract

#21

Post by Aeolun »

pjc50 wrote: post #8
cryptopian wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was discussing railways to somebody and noting how at-capacity the British network is. He was adamant that we just hadn't optimised the system enough and that more maths and more software was needed. I tried my best to explain that we had in fact done that, and that in the end, there's no getting around the bottleneck of moving 100 tonne vehicles along a finite set of steel rails.

You could apply clever modelling to work out what minimal set of upgrades would best increase capacity .. and then spend the next 30 years trying to get one line built. We're stuck at basic political questions like "should there be efficient trains between London and Manchester?" At least Burnham knows what a Manchester is.

> should there be efficient trains between London and Manchester?

And preferably at prices lower than what an equivalent journey would cost by airplane.

Re: Postmortem of a British Startup: Tract

#22

Post by cryptopian »

dijit wrote: post #12
pjc50 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could apply clever modelling to work out what minimal set of upgrades would best increase capacity .. and then spend the next 30 years trying to get one line built. We're stuck at basic political questions like "should there be efficient trains between London and Manchester?" At least Burnham knows what a Manchester is.

we’re on year 70 of those 30 years. The issue is that its unsexy, not “profitable” and it requires land - not to mention that the timeframes needed will make “the next government” look better. Our governments are recklessly short sighted, and to be fair, even if they were not, their progress would be undone by the disaffected electorate who can be easily convinced that the sitting government is spaffing money up the…

I find that when selling people on the idea of network upgrades, people find the solutions unintuitive because issues in one place are often caused by bottlenecks very far away. Half the North West and services as far as Scotland, Wales and East Anglia are stuffed because of a single mile of rail in central Manchester, so you have tell people in rural Derbyshire, "hey, Manchester needs more rail funding, it'll help you, promise". It will, but you have to know a bit about the whole network to understand why.

Re: Postmortem of a British Startup: Tract

#23

Post by jarym »

mellosouls wrote: post #11

Depressing that the main lesson learned is "Move to the US", the others also pretty standard HN/PG/SV tropes I think. A useful, quite clear-eyed document though I think. Aside, one of the co-founders websites is an unusually broad affair for a young founder: https://www.henrydashwood.com/

Enjoyed reading the article and I am sad as well to read about any failed startup but especially British ones.

I've tried at various points over the past 2 decades and can confirm: trying to sell startup software into the UK (and European) market is much harder than in the US.

Most businesses are not open to buying from an upstart even if the proposition seems attractive. There is a 'safety in numbers' mentality (markedly less so in the UK than in other parts of Western Europe but still much more than in the US).

It makes securing the first 10 customers ever more challenging. It is not a trope I'd say, its just a lesson that keeps being relearnt.

Re: Postmortem of a British Startup: Tract

#24

Post by brabel »

tnolet wrote: post #7
axod wrote: post #4

" Housing in Britain is expensive because getting planning permission is difficult. " Nothing to do with millions of new people arriving wanting to live somewhere?

About 6% to 10% increase in housing cost due to immigration in the UK since 1990. Total increase ~150%. So marginal impact.[1] But nice populist dog whistle. 1: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/migration-and-hou...

That is not what the report says at all !!

> Over the same period, total population growth in the UK has been approximately 20%, again close to the cross-country average in our sample. Immigration, therefore, accounts for roughly half of the UK’s population growth over the last three decades.

Population growth has nothing to do with price increases? If it does, then half of the increase being due to immigration seems quite significant.

> most credible estimates suggest that a one-percentage-point increase in the immigrant share of the population increases house prices by between 0 and 3%. Rent effects are typically slightly smaller.

> The increase in the immigrant shares since the mid-1990s (around 10 percentage points) and overall population growth are close to OECD averages.

It’s hard to believe a range including “no effect whatsoever” when you add people to a neighborhood. But assuming a more reasonable 2%, that would mean 20% higher prices attributed to immigration alone. Where did you get at most 10%??

Re: Postmortem of a British Startup: Tract

#25

Post by mellosouls »

blitzar wrote: post #16

> Between May 2023 and March 2025, Tract attempted to build a venture-backed company to address Britain’s housing crisis by improving the planning permission process. After raising a £744,000 pre-seed round in April 2024, we explored several business models: a site-sourcing tool for developers (Tract Source), a free land-appraisal tool for landowners (Attract), becoming tech-enabled land promoters ourselves, and fina…

That's quite a cynical take. They say they returned left over cash to investors though without details.

Re: Postmortem of a British Startup: Tract

#26

Post by mellosouls »

enaaem wrote: post #20
tnolet wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 6% to 10% increase in housing cost due to immigration in the UK since 1990. Total increase ~150%. So marginal impact.[1] But nice populist dog whistle. 1: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/migration-and-hou...

The problem with right wing populist parties isn't just that they don't adhere to some "woke" abstract moral concepts, but they are just terrible at governing. They are not serious in understanding the causes of any problem.

They are not serious in understanding the causes of any problem

Thats an ideological accusation that can be just as easily aimed at the left.

Re: Postmortem of a British Startup: Tract

#27

Post by risyachka »

steveBK123 wrote: post #17
brudgers wrote: post #2

Tract was founded to build software to fix Britain’s housing crisis. Though there are problems software can fix, software cannot fix most problems because most problems are not software problems. In the case of real-estate, it is a mistake to assume general market inefficiency. For example, the "housing crisis" might be a crisis for people looking for housing, but it is not a crisis for land owners and land owners ar…

> For example, the "housing crisis" might be a crisis for people looking for housing, but it is not a crisis for land owners and land owners are the real estate market. This is an interesting way of framing the demographic problem, yes. In the US for example, from WW2 thru roughly GFC, working age population grew faster than the retired age population. So there was relative political power in the working age, and a l…

>> Incentives to reduce the value of their largest asset are not strong

Its not just incentives. It can nuke entire economy if done not carefully.

Ideally new housing supply would be slowly increasing so that prices stop growing and there are incentives to invest into other assets but at the same time not reduce the wealth people have been building for many years.

But overall it seems like the world would be a much better and prosperous place if basic need like housing would be more of a commodity than a wealth driver.

If you have housing you can spend your income on building companies, wealth, experiments etc.

If you spend 30 years buying a place to live - obviously your hands are tight pretty badly.

Re: Postmortem of a British Startup: Tract

#28

Post by vintermann »

blitzar wrote: post #16

> Between May 2023 and March 2025, Tract attempted to build a venture-backed company to address Britain’s housing crisis by improving the planning permission process. After raising a £744,000 pre-seed round in April 2024, we explored several business models: a site-sourcing tool for developers (Tract Source), a free land-appraisal tool for landowners (Attract), becoming tech-enabled land promoters ourselves, and fina…

Makes you wonder about their "get to the US" lesson learned.

Re: Postmortem of a British Startup: Tract

#29

Post by wewewedxfgdf »

I know it's being negative but its hard to avoid pointing out that fixing a housing crisis is not a startup opportunity.

It's a social and government and commercial problem, which for many reasons is not actually a problem to be solved because so many people WANT things exactly as they are.

Startups are about creating something that people want - and whilst people want a house, that's not what this startup idea is. I'm surprised it got funding.

Re: Postmortem of a British Startup: Tract

#30

Post by pjc50 »

youngtaff wrote: post #13
mellosouls wrote: post #11

Depressing that the main lesson learned is "Move to the US", the others also pretty standard HN/PG/SV tropes I think. A useful, quite clear-eyed document though I think. Aside, one of the co-founders websites is an unusually broad affair for a young founder: https://www.henrydashwood.com/

But what problem does move to the US actually solve in this case? House builders don't seem to have a problem acquiring land and rights to develop it Indeed there're permission granted for over 1mn yet to be build residential properties in the UK The problem is UK house builders drip feed houses on to the market to keep their profits up, and slow down building when house prices fall

> what problem does move to the US actually solve in this case?

None of the specific ones, but the general problem of startups that the UK is a poor environment for funding.

Source for million unbuilt homes: https://www.terraquest.co.uk/news-and-insights/more-than-a-m...

It's not sounding like a very simple to resolve problem :(

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