Is San Francisco becoming toxic for new startups? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is San Francisco becoming toxic for new startups?

#21

Post by wavefunction » Thu, Jul 03, 2014, 6:40 PM UTC

russell_h wrote: post #15

withdavidli wrote: post #2

>San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera has just sent a cease-and-desist letter to MonkeyParking a competing company that offers another mobile application related to parking. >In fact there seem to be nothing illegal about sharing or even selling parking information. Way to side step the fact that MonkeyParking was basically a service that encourage people to hoard parking spaces for money. That's less about sel…

Selling access to public property wouldn't be profitable if taxpayers weren't subsidizing below-market access to the property in the first place. Edit: which isn't to say I endorse what these companies are doing. It just seems like another example of how governments (and SF is worse than most) try to fix perceived problems by creating one-off rules, but in doing so create broken incentive structures which lead to new…

Do you believe in "public good?" I'm just curious.

For example, is there any value to society in allowing a licensed individual to drive to some part of a city and park for a modest fee collected by the municipality so that the driver and any passengers can patronize a business that is not within walking distance of wherever their origin was? Or perhaps visit friends or family that reside further than walking allows?

Re: Is San Francisco becoming toxic for new startups?

#22

Post by tehabe » Thu, Jul 03, 2014, 7:03 PM UTC

Aloisius wrote: post #20

tehabe wrote: post #18

Was it here or somewhere else, I found a very interesting piece about the price of free parking. And how too much parking makes a downtown even worse than it could be. Because it makes it too cheap to use the car. http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/04/13/donald-shoup/who-shou... It also said that SF wanted to introduce a demand based system for parking, which meant it would be a few cents if nobody needed the space and…

> It also said that SF wanted to introduce a demand based system for parking, which meant it would be a few cents if nobody needed the space and $6 if everyone wanted a space. Of course such a system wasn't realized. Demand based parking meters exist in SF. They've been tested in various areas since 2011. They also have an app that helps you find parking using the same sensors that adjust the price. See: http://sfpar…

Ah, thanks.

Re: Is San Francisco becoming toxic for new startups?

#23

Post by mynewwork » Thu, Jul 03, 2014, 7:49 PM UTC

withdavidli wrote: post #2

>San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera has just sent a cease-and-desist letter to MonkeyParking a competing company that offers another mobile application related to parking. >In fact there seem to be nothing illegal about sharing or even selling parking information. Way to side step the fact that MonkeyParking was basically a service that encourage people to hoard parking spaces for money. That's less about sel…

I wasn't familiar with MonkeyParking until now and a quick glance at the top results on google doesn't make it exactly clear to me what the problem with their service is.

How are people hoarding public parking spaces? Surely it can't be cost effective for people to be repeatedly parking, selling the spot, then driving until they find a new one, but that's the only real abuse I could see of the system.

Can you explain what the problem is with the service for those of us not in SF and not familiar with MonkeyParking?

Re: Is San Francisco becoming toxic for new startups?

#24

Post by withdavidli » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 12:44 AM UTC

mynewwork wrote: post #23

withdavidli wrote: post #2

>San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera has just sent a cease-and-desist letter to MonkeyParking a competing company that offers another mobile application related to parking. >In fact there seem to be nothing illegal about sharing or even selling parking information. Way to side step the fact that MonkeyParking was basically a service that encourage people to hoard parking spaces for money. That's less about sel…

I wasn't familiar with MonkeyParking until now and a quick glance at the top results on google doesn't make it exactly clear to me what the problem with their service is. How are people hoarding public parking spaces? Surely it can't be cost effective for people to be repeatedly parking, selling the spot, then driving until they find a new one, but that's the only real abuse I could see of the system. Can you explain…

>Surely it can't be cost effective for people to be repeatedly parking, selling the spot, then driving until they find a new one, but that's the only real abuse I could see of the system.

This is would be the abuse and main concern. The parking situation is bad enough as is without cash incentive to keep a spot longer to see if they can get money from it.

People have brought up in other posts about how it's not worth a person's time to squat/hoard parking spaces. This is very subjective, but the comments are understandable since there are a lot of developers on this board. Last time I saw, a person can sell the space for up to $20. That's a good chunk of money for most people if they can do it once an hour. If people choose not to disclose this extra income they won't be taxed on it (disclosure: I'm not sure if a reporting feature is built into the app).

$20/hr tax free is equivalent to ~$35/hr pre-tax. That's a fair amount of money for most people. I do realize that at $20 a person can just park in a parking garage so it most likely wouldn't be that high unless the driver is spending the entire day in SF.

Re: Is San Francisco becoming toxic for new startups?

#25

Post by withdavidli » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 1:03 AM UTC

jbigelow76 wrote: post #19

withdavidli wrote: post #2

>San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera has just sent a cease-and-desist letter to MonkeyParking a competing company that offers another mobile application related to parking. >In fact there seem to be nothing illegal about sharing or even selling parking information. Way to side step the fact that MonkeyParking was basically a service that encourage people to hoard parking spaces for money. That's less about sel…

>Way to side step the fact that MonkeyParking was basically a service that encourage people to hoard parking spaces for money. Has MonkeyParking been around long enough to determine if people are "hoarding" spaces to broker the info? After a certain length of time the four or five bucks you could earn is offset by wasting time sitting in your car waiting for info purchaser. I don't live in a city as congested as SF b…

See my answer above on why I think it would be worth it, also consider the unemployed/underemployed.

I don't think the app had been out long enough to get a large user base. I only saw it a 2-3 weeks ago and then the gov't acted pretty quickly. So no data on my end. I think most people that read the article about the app imagined the worse case scenario, which in my opinion was likely to happen.

Another scenario would be for tenants who have reserved parking to park out on the streets, wait for someone that's will to buy the place in their apartment. They would then move their car back to their reserved parking space until they see an easy open space to take that's near them. This scenario doesn't take much effort from the person abusing the system.

Re: Is San Francisco becoming toxic for new startups?

#26

Post by tzs » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 9:14 AM UTC

jbigelow76 wrote: post #19

withdavidli wrote: post #2

>San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera has just sent a cease-and-desist letter to MonkeyParking a competing company that offers another mobile application related to parking. >In fact there seem to be nothing illegal about sharing or even selling parking information. Way to side step the fact that MonkeyParking was basically a service that encourage people to hoard parking spaces for money. That's less about sel…

>Way to side step the fact that MonkeyParking was basically a service that encourage people to hoard parking spaces for money. Has MonkeyParking been around long enough to determine if people are "hoarding" spaces to broker the info? After a certain length of time the four or five bucks you could earn is offset by wasting time sitting in your car waiting for info purchaser. I don't live in a city as congested as SF b…

The big problem is not going to be legitimate parkers lingering a few minutes after they finish their shopping trying to sell their space. It is going to be people who would not otherwise be there specifically grabbing spots to sell.

One of the other parking app companies, ParkModo, is already paying people to do just that. They offer $13/hr to people to go to the Mission District on weekend peak hours, find spots and take them, and then give them up to ParkModo users.