This is obviously an ambitious big goal, and so naturally seems like a low likelihood shot.
It's one of those cases where I would like to hear the founders talk. Long, earnest interviews. Podcasting would be great. WTF are they talking about exactly? Step 1 sounds like a house-share idea, maybe purpose built. The likely market is students and recent grads. Beyond that they are talking about building cities.
If these guys have a chance of succeeding, they probably have interesting ideas.
It's actually a cool question: "How do we build new cities as a startup?"
One interesting idea that (I think) seems like a potential bridge between phase 1 and phase 2, is "student villages" where alumni and staff are encouraged to settle permanently. Residents would already be more intimately involved and invested in the community than they would be anywhere else, have things in common.
If 5-10% of a graduating class stayed long term it would give you a fairly rapid growth rate. The eventual size would be reached at whatever size that 5-10% equals the natural rate of attrition. Say 200 graduates settle per year and 1/10 of residents leave in any given year, they would reach 1,000 residents in 7 years and top out at 2,000 residents within a few decades.
You really can't know in advance, but I suspect that a decent number of graduates (especially of post graduate programs) from top universities could be tempted to buy in to alumni communities if the price was right.
But.. you really need to be a badass team to pull off something at this scale and in this space. The list of Big problems is daunting. Financing, governance and ownership structures would be tricky.
It's one of those cases where I would like to hear the founders talk. Long, earnest interviews. Podcasting would be great. WTF are they talking about exactly? Step 1 sounds like a house-share idea, maybe purpose built. The likely market is students and recent grads. Beyond that they are talking about building cities.
If these guys have a chance of succeeding, they probably have interesting ideas.
It's actually a cool question: "How do we build new cities as a startup?"
One interesting idea that (I think) seems like a potential bridge between phase 1 and phase 2, is "student villages" where alumni and staff are encouraged to settle permanently. Residents would already be more intimately involved and invested in the community than they would be anywhere else, have things in common.
If 5-10% of a graduating class stayed long term it would give you a fairly rapid growth rate. The eventual size would be reached at whatever size that 5-10% equals the natural rate of attrition. Say 200 graduates settle per year and 1/10 of residents leave in any given year, they would reach 1,000 residents in 7 years and top out at 2,000 residents within a few decades.
You really can't know in advance, but I suspect that a decent number of graduates (especially of post graduate programs) from top universities could be tempted to buy in to alumni communities if the price was right.
But.. you really need to be a badass team to pull off something at this scale and in this space. The list of Big problems is daunting. Financing, governance and ownership structures would be tricky.