Launch HN: Boxouse (YC W17) – Shipping-container homes - <AUTHOR> Hi HN! We're Luke and Heather, founders of boxouse: https://boxouse.com. We build portable, beautiful(ish), affordable smart homes out of used shipping containers in our West Oakland factory. This began out of our frustration with paying high rent for crappy apartments: we started thinking about our monthly rent in terms of how many shipping containers we could buy (2 per month!). We're particularly interested in using containers as a tool to increase density and affordability; among other things, we're going to deploy containers to people's yards for free, sharing the rent revenue with them. We do all the construction ourselves; more than happy to dig into technical details! <comment><USER3> A couple of points, Photos:

Hire a decent photographer, large sensor, low f number. You'd be surprised what a good camera with a competent person running it will do. Go wide angle.

Your unique selling point should be the thought you put into the layout. Anyone can insulate and sling in some furniture, the real hard part is making the space lovable/liveable. Choose a theme or period, industrial is a good start. You have bamboo flooring, why not use it for the fittings?

o Put beading/moulding around the windows. Its simple and cheap.

o Match the doors and frames to the plywood/cladding

o Change the electrical outlets to metal, anything other than the stock white

o Use industrial light cases, it'll match the industrial look better

o Make sure the stuff you install is straight, and neat, the bed slats are wonky!

o The bamboo flooring looks great make use of it more!

o when taking the photos, think about where the light is coming from, make sure its streaming through the windows making the place look bright

Also, don't give up...

<comment><AUTHOR> Great ideas, thanks! We've been through 4 different attempts at photos, and results are obviously lacking... do any of you have sources you really like for outlet covers, light cases, and other fixture / finish elements?

<comment><USER4> I think this guy [http://vantagepointphoto.com/#slide5](http://vantagepointphoto.com/#slide5) is one of the best in Northern California - great grasp of lighting and space, probably charges commiserate with scale / quality of his portfolio.

This guy has very solid ratings locally, nice portfolio, and worth hitting too - [http://www.dannyosterweil.com/about/](http://www.dannyosterweil.com/about/) \- I think he's probably within a few miles of you guys.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is great; I'll reach out to both of them today. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Guys; I like the idea but your prices are too high. You're in the decent trailer price range.

The big advantage of a shipping container is the ability to cheaply ship it. Once you cut into it you can't ship it anymore. It's not a great use of recycled material as it uses way too much steel for a dwelling.

I'm actually in the market for a shippable shipping container house. Similar to [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sPgjndFqqwY](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sPgjndFqqwY) . He gives the quote of $50K including high quality fittings and market price labor. I will probably build one myself then ship it to where I need it. I'm an expat and I historically move countries every year or so. If you were to build a clone of this I would buy it.

Another benefit of shippable shipping container homes is you can service customers anywhere around the globe! Not just SF.

<comment><USER6> At those price points these posh studio sheds become competitive

[https://www.studio-shed.com/](https://www.studio-shed.com/)

<comment><USER7> The problem with all of these seems to be: where could you actually live in one in any city or suburban area? I don't reckon you can just buy a small plot of land on a residential street in San Jose and plop this down, hook up utilities, pave a driveway, and live in it. I doubt any homeowners here would want it next to them. I've never seen it done in the Bay Area. Is it possible?

<comment><USER8> The idea is beautiful, living "in a box" is sure something complex because of the regulations.

But I remember very pleasantly a holiday in one of these prefabricated (in Sweden): with a good (big and serious) design work and targeting the recreation market they could even raise prices.

An example: [[http://www.vipp.com/en/shelter/the-vipp-shelter/the-vipp- she...](http://www.vipp.com/en/shelter/the-vipp-shelter/the-vipp-shelter/)] - [[https://youtu.be/LCyN1hxQtdA](https://youtu.be/LCyN1hxQtdA)]

> I doubt any homeowners here would want it next to them.

IMHO it all boils down to your product: if you're selling a high quality tiny home / shelter / box, then I definitely want one of those next to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you want a metal building, Butler Buildings has all the parts to make one.[1] Rural America has hundreds of thousands of their prefab structures. They sell prebuilt wall sections with insulation, and wall sections with windows and doors. Putting one together is far easier than slicing through a shipping container, and you can vary the dimensions. The industrial look has been unpopular, and they're seldom used as houses.

There's General Steel Buildings, which makes steel house kits.[2] They're not popular, but they are available. For a little extra, you can get fake brick to hide the steel exterior.

You can get some nice prefab houses for well under the $29K these people want for a modified 150 square foot shipping container. In mobile homes, $29K gets you a 16 foot wide unit with 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, 14 foot square living room, kitchen, A/C, and appliances, installed.[3]

Siting is the problem, not manufacturing cost.

[1] [http://butlermfg.com](http://butlermfg.com) [2] [https://gensteel.com/steel-building-kits/houses](https://gensteel.com/steel- building-kits/houses) [3] [http://www.montysheavybuilthomes.com/index.php?pageID=14676_...](http://www.montysheavybuilthomes.com/index.php?pageID=14676_2)

</comment><comment> n-exploit I love the idea, but as-is, I think your product could more attractive if you hired an interior designer to help with the sample pictures/overall product "image".

Attractive product, unattractive design. There's nothing there to make me want your product over another company doing the same thing with more emphasis on design.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's some photos of work in progress: [https://goo.gl/photos/N6jiAo9696QJG6KU8](https://goo.gl/photos/N6jiAo9696QJG6KU8)

<comment> n-exploit Honestly, there is still nothing here that compels me to buy your product. Who is your target audience? What's your appeal? What makes your product special?

I am a mid-twenties millennial looking for a starter home (considering a container home) and I'm not really seeing something I want.

<comment><USER10> I've followed this space for years now. The problem I see is, at these prices, someone like n-exploit can hire a custom builder to do it exactly to their tastes/layout.

I'm not seeing what benefit do you add to the existing ecosystem?

<comment><AUTHOR> I will be absolutely stunned if you can get a tiny home custom-built with a solar system half this size for less than 80k.

<comment><USER10> The Deluxe priced at $49k is very basic finish that could be replicated for $30k max, potentially much cheaper. So does a 1kW solar system bridge the price gap? Not even close

The reason you anchor on that 80k number is because custom building usually has a lot extra. Better quality. High cost materials. More carpentry. This is basically a plywood box and a solar system. And a solar system of this size is only a few grand installed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> These prices seem too high. Low-end mobile homes are around the same price, are larger, offer nicer interiors, and face fewer legal complexities. I also know tiny home builders who can custom build homes with similar square footage as these for around the same price. I live in Missouri so housing is cheap, but isn't the advantage of pre-fab homes the ability to ship them for a much lower cost than building on-site?

I don't see how this could scale past cities where rent is insane and have housing regulations that allow this kind of home.

What is the advantage of this versus other pre-fabricated homes? What justifies the price?

<comment><AUTHOR> We'll make it clearer on the website, but the 49k version includes a 1.5kw solar array, ~15kwh of battery storage, all water systems, full smart home functionality (ie 'alexa, trigger windows' to go from transparent to opaque), and furnishings down to the utensils. Our 9k barebones model is closer to how most mobile homes I've seen are outfitted (but with better insulation and design in a boxouse); looks like these average over 60k new: [http://www.dailyyonder.com/manufactured-housing-sales- bounce...](http://www.dailyyonder.com/manufactured-housing-sales-bounce- back/2015/01/26/7695/) . am i missing something?

<comment><USER12> Hi Luke, Thanks for taking the time to talk with us and your efforts on tackling the housing problems.

One question, is the main focus of the business to manufacture and sell the Box houses or offer then for renting with AirBnB or similar sites? If the latter do you have some planed strategy to lower the high CAPEX needed for scaling?

<comment><AUTHOR> Both, balancing the capex needs for the latter via sales as I scale:)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How to you ameliorate the toxins inherent in shipping containers? Typically, those paints and pressure treated woods are not used indoors, and I would be worried about some of the chemicals? Second, in the climate here, how do you avoid mold? Metal is a prime target for condensation, and in the bay we are always around the dew point. If you insulate the walls, how do you avoid mold growth (maybe put insulation on the outside)? How about power/gas supply, HVAC, waste plumbing etc? How about moving it? Leveling it? it seems that they'll be substantially heavier than most mobile homes, so trailering with consumer vehicles will be hard, which makes them hard to deliver.

I've been in shipping container buildings before (e.g. Frietag store in Zurich) - they are not really a great size. Many Mobile homes that are comfortable feature pop-out sides. Any plans for expanding them?

Some real positives - fireproof envelope, Envelope can be welded to, several formats available - including ones with side doors can be "racked" can be made airtight (allows you to specify air exchanges, rather than estimate them) portability with the right equipment.

<comment><AUTHOR> The interior environment gets entirely sealed under closed-cell foam insulation applied directly to the metal, leaving no interior space for condensation on the metal. Literally all surfaces that you're exposed to are things we buy at home improvement stores: bamboo flooring, cabinet-grade plywood, etc. A big part of the 'deluxe' cost is the elaborate solar system: we're able to cook, heat space + water, etc. all off of the solar array + batteries. We're thinking about possibilities for pop-outs in the future.

<comment><USER13> Please see: [http://www.archdaily.com/160892/the-pros-and-cons-of- cargo-c...](http://www.archdaily.com/160892/the-pros-and-cons-of-cargo- container-architecture/)

"For instance, the coatings used to make the containers durable for ocean transport also happen to contain a number of harmful chemicals, such as chromate, phosphorous, and lead-based paints. Moreover, wood floors that line the majority of shipping container buildings are infused with hazardous chemical pesticides like arsenic and chromium to keep pests away."

and

"Reusing Containers seems to be a low energy alternative, however, few people factor in the amount of energy required to make the box habitable. The entire structure needs to be sandblasted bare, floors need to be replaced, and openings need to be cut with a torch or fireman's saw. The average container eventually produces nearly a thousand pounds of hazardous waste before it can be used as a structure."

<comment><USER14> This! I've looked seriously into making a large shipping crate home by slowly accumulating them for storage and whatnot at my farm. Ultimately, after learning about the hazardous materials used in many, I gave up. Besides the points mentioned by abakker, one of the things that really got to me was the 'mystery box' aspect. Simply put, you don't know what they carried or what got spilled inside. Was it carrying pesticides? Did a bunch of compact florescence break inside in a storm releasing mercury into the container? There have even been reports of shipping containers which are radioactive above background levels, presumably from spilled nuclear medical waste or shipping something like Uranium ore. Before you call me nuts:

"About 20 million consignments of all sizes containing radioactive materials are routinely transported worldwide annually on public roads, railways and ships."

[http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear- fue...](http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel- cycle/transport-of-nuclear-materials/transport-of-radioactive-materials.aspx)

Note that sprayed on closed cell insulation does little to nothing to mitigate many of the toxins which can be found in shipping containers including mercury - it just makes it poisonous for longer. To use them for a dwelling all wood needs to be removed and they need to be sand or water blasted down to bare metal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I want to give you brutally honest feedback, please do not take it personally.

I looked for something similar in Spain, a house in a rail wagon, something like this:

[http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nEZddcafnkk/SAoPN_PCK_I/AAAAAAAAAk...](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nEZddcafnkk/SAoPN_PCK_I/AAAAAAAAAkE/2illx3HQJ0s/s400/casa- vagon-tigre.jpg)

[http://vilssa.com/aprovecha-un-vagon-de-tren-para-hacer- tu-c...](http://vilssa.com/aprovecha-un-vagon-de-tren-para-hacer-tu-casa)

[https://decoracion.trendencias.com/casas/casas-poco- convenci...](https://decoracion.trendencias.com/casas/casas-poco- convencionales-vivir-en-un-vagon-de-tren)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXbBXpruaW0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXbBXpruaW0)

Some of them were extremely cheap and simple but they had lots of charm and taste.

Your houses look totally ugly to me, cold. Humans not allowed kind of feeling.

You probably need to learn some design. Even when people will tell you the only thing they care is price, it is extremely depressing expending long hours in an ugly place.

</comment><comment><USER16> My dad owns a few trailer parks. Great investment but not for the faint of heart. From our experience, you're not going to want to live in any neighborhood that allows this kind of housing and as a result, it wont be available for long in any neighborhood you're trying to address. Many trailer parks are trashy (literally trash everywhere) with a highly uneducated and unstable demographic. Its the suburban equivalent of an urban ghetto. Alcoholism, assault, vandalism are daily occurrences. Some questions to ask yourself: am I comfortable evicting people on a weekly basis? How many problematic tenants can my system tolerate before all the software engineers who have the option to pay high rents for crappy apartments decide safety and piece of mind are valuable?

Oh and by the way, this type of housing is cheap but not necessarily inexpensive. A trailer in upstate GA an hour and half away from Atlanta in the middle of nowhere makes $500 a month. In Oakland, market rates (and all roads lead to a market rate) will likely get this to $750-800. People are going to start piling into these things to make the economics work, which will make them more dangerous, more unstable.

<comment><USER17> There were (and are) very well maintained mobile home parks. It's more a matter of market segmentation (e.g. college students or retirees or vacationers (and hence location)) than the form factor. Ownership pattern also plays a big role. Resident owned trailer parks are often very well maintained.

For example: [http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/The- Village...](http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/The- Villages_FL/type-mfd-mobile-home)

<comment><USER18> I used to live in The Franciscan Park in Colma/Daly City. It barely felt like a trailer park at all. It was resident-owned trailers, sort of. You had to pay a fee for the land. Don't know much more about the details, we were renting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> [https://boxouse.com/collections/buy/products/boxouse- standar...](https://boxouse.com/collections/buy/products/boxouse-standard)

Those photos don't really fit the "sleek finish out" and "premium materials" description. The tub looks dirty, the bed slats are all wonky, and it looks overall extremely cheap.

It's certainly not $20k worth of add-ons to the barebones bit ([https://boxouse.com/collections/buy/products/boxouse- barebon...](https://boxouse.com/collections/buy/products/boxouse-barebones)).

<comment><USER20> Yeah, this looks less appealing than a single-wide. Since the real value in these not-mobile-home small housing thingies usually seems to be letting people live in a mobile home without compromising their sense of where they sit in the class structure, it needs to at least have a _veneer_ of "superb craftsmanship" or whatever.

<comment><USER21> It really does. Based on these photos, I'd _rather_ live in a single-wide, and I know from experience exactly how shoddy those are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Not trying to be a hater. I understand what is pictured may be prototypes.. if they are you shouldn't be showing them unless you have that caveat in the picture. Both the design is poor, and the craftsmanship is low. If this is past the prototype stage, and this is what you will actually be selling. Then you really don't understand the pre-fab space nor the price points of the pre- fab space.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the feedback. what are the most compelling prefabs you've found that are actually shipping, and how much do they cost?

<comment><USER23> Prefab is a loaded term - unfortunately, depending on people's experiences, it can be loaded in very different ways.

At YC, there's Acre (Pacific NW, California, Colorado): [http://www.acredesigns.com/](http://www.acredesigns.com/)

I work with BrightBuilt (New England originally, now shipping in the mid- Atlantic as well): [http://brightbuilthome.com/](http://brightbuilthome.com/)

Up here in Maine we also have Ecocor, which is a panel product: [https://www.ecocor.us/](https://www.ecocor.us/)

I think those are a couple of good prefab examples, although none of them hang their designs on the shipping container form factor (and I specifically picked three 'prefab' companies with very different delivery methods). Most prefab companies I have experience with have gone that way, primarily because the width constraints of a container aren't great once you get above one or two modules.

I think the branding (or rebranding) of small homes built on tow-able platforms as 'tiny homes' was a genius stroke of marketing. If you can do that with the Boxouse that's some secret sauce, but in the absence of a strong brand I think the Boxouse units will end up being called 'trailers' as opposed to 'prefab'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I know you're trying to keep costs down, but unfinished trim work and/or exposed plywood (especially on the $9k model) makes everything look incredibly cheap. Take a look at how similarly-priced RVs handle their interiors for comparison.

For $29k you can get something that you can drive and is generally furnished better (in a lot of municipalities these tiny houses need to be on wheels to skirt code violations anyway).

</comment><comment><USER25> There was a shipping container home on Grand Designs (what a show!) that looked absolutely breathtaking: [http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/09/24/1411571780563_wps_...](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/09/24/1411571780563_wps_39_UNP_CH4_32376_Grand_Desig.jpg)

I think a bit of sprucing up (with wood and a sound paint-job) would go a long way to remove that whiff of trailer park that I get from your landing page.

<comment><USER26> Do you have a link to more photos of that house?

<comment><USER25> I believe this is the part of the episode where they discuss the finished building: [https://vimeo.com/147232218](https://vimeo.com/147232218)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Imagine spending $49,000 on this boxhouse, and then seeing this 72 airstream go for $35k: [https://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/tro/6036307617.html](https://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/tro/6036307617.html)

<comment><USER28> Well, imagine spending $49,000 on a shipping-container house.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> How are you going to deal with zoning? Generally the big problem with tiny houses is that while they're relatively cheap to make they're not allowed by existing zoning.

<comment><AUTHOR> IMHO, zoning is is one of the biggest challenges facing anybody who wants to do something interesting in real estate. CA actually is forcing cities to make it easier to build ADUs: [http://www.hcd.ca.gov/policy- research/docs/17Jan30-ADU-TA-Me...](http://www.hcd.ca.gov/policy- research/docs/17Jan30-ADU-TA-Memo.pdf) . Worst case, we put wheels on them and have license plates to avoid having to comply with building regulations;)

<comment><USER18> I hate to be that guy but "putting wheels on them" is not a simple solution at all... it will take a lot more than that to make your cargo containers street- legal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Out-of-touch SV types discover the single-wide trailer, decide to make crappy ones from containers and overcharge for them.

You know, Warren Buffet already has that business model and moats don't get a lot wider than Berkshire Hathaway. He also has his own predatory bank, insurance companies, real estate brokerage franchise, railroad, and container manufacturing.

Good luck.

<comment><USER5> That is interesting. I had no idea. I already had my reasons for not liking Warren Buffet but this was new to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> 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?

</comment><comment><USER32> Before you make any of these you need to make sure you're complying with various fire-related regulations and testing against ASTM standards. We ran into this issue at a startup doing something similar about a year back, and it's one of the things that led to its downfall. From the looks of it, you've built a tinder box. Wood paneling, backed by insulating foam, which is likely quite flammable. All wrapped up in a metal container.

</comment><comment><USER33> The boxouse.com website is quite frustrating. I scrolled down the page to view the pictures of the houses, but when each picture scrolls into view, it is obscured by a white overlay?! Readers must click each picture to view it on a new page.

<comment><USER21> I was about to raise the same issue. Not really a satisfactory UX when the photos that might give me some idea of what I'm looking at are obscured whenever they're in the browser viewport.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> While on the topic, does anyone else know of other cool things like this? Cool space. e.g. [http://www.blokable.com/](http://www.blokable.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> More oriented to multi-unit, permanent builds: [https://www.montainerhomes.com/](https://www.montainerhomes.com/) High-end, semi-stackable: [http://kasita.com](http://kasita.com) My favorite ultra-low- cost builder: [http://relaxshacks.blogspot.com/](http://relaxshacks.blogspot.com/) My favorite youtuber for sustainability broadly, with a focus on housing: [https://www.youtube.com/user/kirstendirksen](https://www.youtube.com/user/kirstendirksen)

<comment><USER35> +1 for [https://www.youtube.com/user/kirstendirksen](https://www.youtube.com/user/kirstendirksen)

An amazing channel. My first thought about Boxhouse was, if I've ever seen you on there! You should totally make an appearance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Kirsten's visited us a couple of times: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfqunEuw61k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfqunEuw61k)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> How does the legal side of this work? Do these houses meet the requirements of major construction codes, or are they somehow exempt? Also, aren't there typically restrictions on where units like this can be deployed? There have been all sorts of fights about granny-flats over the years.

</comment><comment><USER37> 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).

</comment><comment><USER38> Getting people excited about living smaller is a big task! (sorry, couldn't help myself) My friend started a tiny home company[0] and I've spoken with him a lot about this space. I think there are a couple of major obstacles to mass tiny home adoption and it seems like your home doesn't solve many of them currently. To start:

1\. Legality - Most tiny homes aren't legal to put on a slab or connect to utilities in jurisdictions around the US. This is getting better over time with people lobbying to allow smaller homes as "accessory dwelling units".

2\. People don't want to feel like they're downgrading - looking at your pictures, Boxouse looks pretty low quality, similar to a hostel or dorm room. While that may appeal to some, most consumers wouldn't choose to live or stay in a home like that. Instead, I think tiny home builders need to concentrate on making more beautiful and functional spaces.

I'd love to chat more with Boxouse (or anyone) about tiny homes and/or connect you with my friend's company. You can find my email in my profile.

[0] [https://boxedhaus.com](https://boxedhaus.com)

</comment><comment><USER39> Well.. all of this reminds me temporary houses used by builders in Ukraine\Russia and other CIS countries (most probably other countries use this as well). For example, [https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&sour...](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1093&bih=469&q=%D0%B1%D1%8B%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BA%D0%B0&oq=%D0%B1%D1%8B%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BA%D0%B0&gs_l=img.3..0j0i30k1l9.4428.6190.0.6718.104.22.168.188.8.131.52.739.2j3j1.6.0....0...1ac.1.64.img..0.7.743.hSxvD4XHNCM#hl=en&tbm=isch&q=%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%8F+%D0%B1%D1%8B%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BA%D0%B0&*) as you can see sometimes such "buildings" even have two or more floors. Not sure how they comfortable to live though.

</comment><comment><USER40> I love the vision and audacity to tackle this rent problem.

That said, help me understand who your GTM target is.

1 - Is it basically SV, young tech guys who want a cheaper and a unique place to live? This is what I'm taking away reading your post. 2 - Is it migratory/seasonal workers who work on a farms during harvest season? 3 - <USER2> it people who want to live off-grid, and plan on buying a lot and just want to drop a house there for cheap?

Some of my initial thoughts:

A - As someone commented, the images don't really connect to any of the segments above. I can see the photographer is going for a certain magazine look. But it doesn't do a real good job of telling a story about these units and your target market.

B - Again as others have commented on regulatory issues both for fire safety and also city regulations. That last part might cause issues with your original vision of lower rent alternatives.

C - Financial model. It seems to me if you are going the rent-share service route and you'll need to put down $40-50K for each unit, you will need a lot of capital as you scale. I'm guessing it will take 3-5 years to recover the cost of each unit (rent-dependent). Which creates a lot of challenges, unless you setup some kind of a partnership scheme. Either individual partners, who will put the money down to help renters finance this as part of revenue share scheme. Or large banking institution who will help underwrite each units.

D - Pricing. As others have pointed out, the pricing once you get to $50k is close to a decent used RV house. And the interiors don't look that great. I'm curious what the cost will be once you put some type of economics of scales into this. Given all the dimensions are set. Can't you just have a shop in China produce all these parts? Is there an opportunity to partner with Lowes or some large retailer who buys in bulk?

Good luck! I'm very impressed you guys have taken it this far and hope it'll succeed.

</comment><comment><USER41> 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.

</comment><comment><USER42> How would I hook up toilet, sink, electrical, cable (for internet)?

What kind of foundation do you recommend?

Does "deploy containers to yards for free" mean shipping is free? To any state? What rent revenue are you talking about? I can't just put one of these in my backyard and rent it out because of zoning and neighbourhood bylaws.

Why is square footage not mentioned anywhere? Usually a primary concern for any housing consideration.

If there's insulation included in the bare bones kit why is it not shown in the photo? Any why is it so dark? Are you trying to scare people away from that option?

You should have a photo of one of these set up in a nicely landscaped yard with a great entrance path and a beautiful exterior.

</comment><comment><USER43> I really don't understand the appeal of this. Are people really so desperate to live in an expensive city that they'd be willing to live in a box?

Also, how do you plan to get away from the image of metal box houses being tied to shanty-towns and favelas?

<comment><USER44> Yes I suspect they are. Rents are incredibly high in major cities. Having seen the size (&cost) of the rooms available for rent in london these containers look quite reasonable.

In the west we don't have favelas so while I think it would be a down-point, I don't think there would be such a strong negative connotation.

<comment><USER43> we don't, but the image of favelas is pretty pervasive in popular culture eg movies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Please take a look at [http://tinyhousetalk.com](http://tinyhousetalk.com) A collection of tiny houses. Some of these tiny houses are very pleasing to the eyes. :)

</comment><comment><USER46> I was under the impression zoning regulation, not construction costs, was the main challenge for development in urban areas.

Can you seriously just drop these off in people's backyards and legally rent them out?

<comment><USER17> There's more than local zoning at play. There are health regulations regarding potable water and sanitary waste disposal for dwellings that occur at the state level. There's ADA and FHA at the Federal Level.

Also at the local level are things like occupational taxes and building permits. Unlike room and whole house rental, a container provides direct visible evidence of the activity from the air, over a neighbor's fence, or sometimes from the street.

<comment><USER13> Short summation: No way. Living in shipping containers is not a great idea. By the time you overcome all the hurdles, you realize the envelope is smallest cost of housing development.

<comment><USER17> It's not so much that it the lowest cost, it is that there are fixed costs that correlate to 'per dwelling unit'. Some of those are monetary, e.g. digging a trench for a sanitary sewer is pretty much the same for a tiny house as a McMansion. But the amount of effort is also mostly constant: getting permits and other entitlement for a four unit project is not that much less than getting entitlement for a forty unit project (and forty high end units are likely to require less work during entitlement than forty low end units because the high end units tend to be more politically palatable because they better improve the tax base).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> > We're particularly interested in using containers as a tool to increase > density and affordability; among other things, we're going to deploy > containers to people's yards for free, sharing the rent revenue with them.

Seems to me that the barrier to people turning their yards into what amounts to trailer parks or micro-apartment compelexes has always been zoning regulations, hability regulations, and building codes, not getting the housing units built or delivered.

</comment><comment><USER48> I wonder if you could have a successful partnership with DIRTT to parametrically design your interiors and automate the construction process. Check them out: [https://www.dirtt.net/](https://www.dirtt.net/)

Also there has got to be a B2B market for these. I know in the Alberta Oil Sands there are lots of camps for employees. Maybe you can provide a better product.

</comment><comment><USER49> Isn't it noisy when it rains? (It rains a lot here).

<comment><AUTHOR> We use several inches of closed-cell foam insulation interior to the metal. In addition to an r-value of 15+, you're not hearing much outside:)

<comment><USER50> R15 feels a little low? Here in Michigan, for example, the ceiling requires R49. Walls require at least R20.

<comment><USER51> For one thing it is a smaller space, easily heated and cooled. Second, closed cell foam means no air infiltration to suck away your heat.

Walls in houses, assuming stud framed, are insulated to R20 but effective R value is less due to thermal bridging, air infiltration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Great idea, just wondering on cost breakdown.

If you can get a new container for just $2550, why is a bare bones $9K?

Seems one could rack out their own very easily. Just wondering.

[http://www.ebay.com/itm/STORAGE-CONTAINERS-NEW-20-CARGO- SHIP...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/STORAGE-CONTAINERS-NEW-20-CARGO-SHIPPING- CONTAINER-/300363323729?hash=item45ef0c9951:m:m4iYR9xnbTz3KZ1Bh4DT9Iw)

<comment><AUTHOR> +insulation, electrical, window, door, flooring, walls, etc.

<comment><USER19> If electrical and flooring are included in the barebones package, you should say so. They're not currently listed on [https://boxouse.com/products/boxouse- barebones](https://boxouse.com/products/boxouse-barebones).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I have a friend who tried this and found that he had to take a crane operating class just so he could move/transport the shipping container.

It's kind of cool to think that you could live anywhere in the world that has an open port, but how the heck do you get it off a boat in Chile or Ireland the same that's cheap and freeing?

<comment><USER54> A few years ago we shipped a fab shop complete with a plasma cnc from Texas to a farm in rural Kenya, the whole process was surprisingly easy and I discovered that farm life is way more fun with a plasma cnc!

<comment><USER53> It'd be really cool to send around a science lab like this. If you need any traveling scientists to live in a boxlab for a trial run, let me know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I would avoid the thing you're doing with the pictures, where you fade them out to show the overlaid text. People have a tendency to mouse over things they're looking at ... and then the picture disappears. It's the opposite of what they want. You have room to put the text alongside or below.

</comment><comment><USER56> Did you also consider 3D printing small homes? Seems like it has potential in the long run. [https://qz.com/924909/apis-cor-can-3d-print-and-entire- house...](https://qz.com/924909/apis-cor-can-3d-print-and-entire-house-in- just-one-day/)

</comment><comment><USER57> This is a company that went on Canada's version of Shark Tank (Dargon's Den) that pitched container living spaces.

[https://www.3twenty.ca/about/](https://www.3twenty.ca/about/)

</comment><comment><USER58> Is it legal to live in one of these in Oakland? What are the other practical costs?

<comment><AUTHOR> Whether parked on the street (my preferred version) or as units in a yard, law is ambiguous in Oakland. If you're in the area, you're welcome to come visit!

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> What do you think happens to pricing at scale?

<comment><AUTHOR> Eventually, we'll make tiny homes as affordable as other factory-built products: car prices, if not cheaper.

<comment><USER60> How does that work, ad your main component, a shipping container, doesn't really scale much?

<comment><AUTHOR> At thousands of units per month, we're probably off of shipping containers and onto something lighter and cheaper:)

<comment><USER12> Building a wood structure with the same size of a container would cost more than the $2,000 price of the container?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Where exactly in the Bay Area could these legally be placed? Do the founders live in the prototypes?

<comment><AUTHOR> We live in ours in Oakland. Legality is a complicated topic in our case, but variants will qualify as Accessory Dwelling Units under state-level rules

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does Boxhouse handle acquiring potable water and sanitary sewer on behalf of the owner?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. Depending on the location and length of time the boxouse will be there, we can do off-grid (tanks monitored and filled/pumped as need, RV-style) or grid-connected (linked to existing house's plumbing)

<comment><USER17> Does Boxhouse absorb the costs of permitting and construction for homeowners? What sort of duration is necessary?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're going to do this selectively: getting the first ADU design fully licensed in a given MSA is going to be important for us. We'll want to see a year+ commitment to justify the cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Any plans to be able to use these modularly and combine several shipping containers?

<comment><AUTHOR> for permanent installs, I really like the idea of containers as side supports to a quonset hut. like this, but with 3-4 containers: [http://alarconbohm.com/](http://alarconbohm.com/)

</comment></comment><comment> git-pull Luke and Heather, I love it. Here are some requests:

\- USB Wall outlets

\- A panel system around the house to keep cords organized

\- More pics

\- Info on how much weight can the bed / tables hold

As for questions, how much does would that Solar power (1kw) on the Boxhouse Deluxe power? Could it handle a Macbook Pro playing video games, a 4k tv screen, a heater running 16 hours a day?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks; great suggestions. 1kW is more than enough to run all of that, with the heater being the only questionable element. In Oakland, we're fine with 1kW to keep ambient in-container temp at 65F year-round.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Hi Luke! What is your initial market, and what are your scaling plans?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Andrew! Initial focus is the Bay Area, where rents are particularly absurd. Unlike other tiny homes, we can stack these to scale existing locations to meet demand (with some zoning hurdles, of course)

<comment><USER64> Have you guys looked into providing these for industrial sites or the military?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> There's a two-story shipping container house in Tucson.

</comment><comment><USER66> Are you hiring any software engineer? :-p

</comment><comment><USER67> how come it took so long to "launch"? I recall seeing you working on this in 2015?

<comment><AUTHOR> This was firmly a hobby until a few months ago, at which point I quit my job to focus on boxouse full-time.

<comment><USER68> It's very inspiring that you were able to build out an idea like this on a hobby level and get it into YC.

Don't let the negativity in this thread get you down. You will work out all the problems listed in this thread, and zoning change is on the horizon all across the country.

There is a real need for housing like this. Pre-fab housing is a proven model, my father developed modular home projects starting in the '80s and swears by them.

If you ever have been on a stick built job site and have gotten to know the workers well socially, you can see the advantage of indoor, factory precise, standardized construction that is supervised.

There is a lot of substance abuse, laziness and the contractor relationship and payment structure very often goes south in home construction.

I think the best decision you could make today is to ditch the shipping container as the starting point.

Just build them out of wood. It's the cheapest material there is besides some composites perhaps. You already are building a wood framed wall inside the metal container. They could still be made the same size, and shipped the same way.

<comment><USER23> I agree, building them out of wood will allow much lower frame costs and greater design control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Is there a tiny housing bubble?

</comment><comment><USER70> Shantytown.com

</comment><comment><USER71> Can we please stop making the fifth element into a reality?

Humans need space.

<comment><USER19> Humans need space, but it doesn't necessarily need to be in their bedroom and kitchen. Small houses work just fine when there are recreational options around - walkable cities like NYC, large properties in the country, etc.

<comment><USER71> Keep telling that to yourself the air quality in these shoeboxes alone is a reason to stay away from them. Homes should be roomy these are not prison cells or airport sleepover rooms.

<comment><USER19> I suspect air quality's tied a lot more to where you live than the square footage of the house you've got. (I dunno, maybe you're an edge case and vape constantly or something...)

As an example, I'll bet this house has better air quality than mine: [https://s-media-cache- ak0.pinimg.com/736x/15/a4/8c/15a48c913...](https://s-media-cache- ak0.pinimg.com/736x/15/a4/8c/15a48c9131330933e92b8cb719073d1c.jpg)

<comment><USER71> It's has nothing to do with Vaping it's about air circulation and total availabile volume, humans exhale 300-500ml of CO2 a minute.

And yes the small cabin in the woods with good air circulation might have better air quality than a flat in the city.

But wasn't your argument just a minute ago that these tiny homes are for "walkable" cities?

<comment><USER19> > humans exhale 300-500ml of CO2 a minute

A 20 foot shipping container has something like 39,000,000 to fill, from a quick Googling of their volume.

> But wasn't your argument just a minute ago that these tiny homes are for > "walkable" cities?

Sure, if you can't parse the comma and the fact that the walkable cities portion of that response was to your "Humans need space" claim, not the "a person in a hotel room-sized house will suffocate from CO2 build-up" claim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> For other people looking for a link like I was: [https://boxouse.com/](https://boxouse.com/)

<comment><USER72> Added. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Are you hiring any SWE ? :-p</comment>


My story as a self-taught AI researcher - <AUTHOR> https://blog.floydhub.com/emils-story-as-a-self-taught-ai-researcher/ <comment><USER2> This is a really good time to be a Independent Scientist (aka Gentleman scientist) in this field because how nascent deep learning and similar techniques are. It requires a lot of trial and error and time/cost investment to bring the AI techniques to the masses.

The FAANGs are trying to hire all the top talent (including Emil who wrote the post) but I believe these independent researchers will be the one finding new opportunities to make AI useful in the real world (like colorizing b&w photos, create website code from mockups).

The biggest challenge I see for these folks is the access to high quality data. There is a reason Google is releasing so many ML models in production compared to smaller companies. Bridging the data gap requires effort from the community to build high quality open source datasets for common applications.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, the lack of data for independent researchers may encourage the development of low data techniques which is much more exciting in the long term since humans are able to learn with much less data than required by most machine learning techniques

<comment><USER4> Arguably humans have a lifetime of data which was used to develop a model of the world that is amazingly efficient at interpreting new data.

<comment><USER5> Or our entire evolutionary history of data.

<comment><USER6> ...which fits into a size of less than 700Mb compressed. Some of the most exciting stories I've read recently for machine learning are cases where learning is re-used between different problems. Strip off a few layers, do minimal re-training and it learns a new problem, quickly. In the next decade, I can easily see some unanticipated techniques blowing the lid off this field.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure our genetics encodes all the physics of being a person. A human brain is so complex we're not even close to simulating it on silicon

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The problem with Emil's approach to learning is that it restricts his ability to learn anything that he has no intrinsic goal off. That includes areas like pure mathematics, theoretical computer science, finance, economics, literature, etc. Those subjects require a different sort of motivation than a motivation to just achieve a set goal i.e capitalistic motivation

Also, Emil's approach to learning will create a flawed sense of expertise. Look at how the article presents him as if he has a __deep-domain expertise __which might not be true.

One important thing to consider is to look at the article more like content marketing tactic, that FloydHub is using promote its brand which might not serve well for engineers as it lacks some aspect of truth.

<comment><USER9> >Those subjects require a different sort of motivation than a motivation

Is that really the case? Apart from the obvious "maybe that's what they're intrinsically interested in" \- if you start with a problem, try to solve it, and "pure mathematics" (whatever exactly that is supposed to be, anyway) is required to arrive at a solution, it becomes part of the intrinsic motivation. And if you keep solving problems without it the question that eventually comes up is "is it really useful at that point?"

I do however agree that if you're looking at someone who's qualification is primarily his "portfolio", you do actually need to check whether it includes interesting problems, or at least projects that are related to what you need them to do at your company. But if that is the case, I really don't see a problem.

<comment><USER8> That's correct. If one is solving a problem and its requires learning of complex topics, then those topics become a part of the individual's intrinsic motivation. However, the problem with his idea is that learning always requires a goal and ones that do not have any have no intrinsic value. My argument here is that learning doesn't have be attached to any goal and the process of learning can purely be a stimulating activity and might not necessarily have any capitalistic value attached to it.

Few ex:

Like, reading literature is a purely fun and mentally draining activity that might/might not have any goal attached to it.

Like travelling, is a purely fun activity and might/might not have any intrinsic goal attached to it.

I started learning Algebra out of the random, without any intrinsic goal. Because, it was purely out of fun. Playing chess is an activity without any intrinsic goal.

<comment><USER9> >might not necessarily have any capitalistic value attached to it.

You seem to use goals and "capitalistic value" interchangeably, I would just like to add that projects in people's portfolios are often not initially created to make money, but simply to satisfy the creator's curiosity or because they thought it would be neat.

<comment><USER8> > I would just like to add that projects in people's portfolios are often not > initially created to make money

We both can agree on this. But that's not how Emil looks at it, his entire point is that projects are better credentials than even degrees.

And since projects have higher value in portfolios, they will implicitly derive capital? One of the reasons why they have capitalistic value.

You and I can both agree, that projects and learning do have fun elements attached to them and might not necessarily be part of a larger goal. However, that's not what his views are!

<comment><USER9> >However, that's not what his views are!

I'm not sure how you got to that conclusion. Certainly I don't see how

>projects are better credentials than even degrees.

would necessarily conflict with

>that projects and learning do have fun elements attached to them and might not necessarily be part of a larger goal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This was a great read (and great nuggets, like that paper on Intelligence by Chollet).

I wonder:

— Is math a problem for non-academic researchers?

Most papers strike me as requiring a non-trivial knowledge of linear algebra, for instance; and topology sits right behind; the bold seem to take it one up on category theory as we speak, and geometric algebra is quickly gaining traction too. Lots of math, cool math but math nonetheless.

Not that you can't learn these on your own, but how big is the gap _in practice_ , on the job, compared with actual PhDs in ML/math? (how much of a hinderance, a problem it is for the self-taught researcher)

— "Contracting" in the field of AI sounds great but, how exactly? Especially solo: what type of clients and how/where to find them, what type of 'business proposition' as a freelancer do you offer, what's the pricing structure of such gigs?

I mean, I can sell you websites and visuals and stuff, but AI? I know first- hand most SMBs (IME the only real customers for freelancers) are a tough sell: their datasets are tiny and demand scripting skills to sort out (extract business value), not AI, so the value proposition is low for both parties; it's still early adoption so 90% don't even consider spending 1 cent on "AI" unless as a SaaS (they actually don't need to know if it's AI or programming).

I can imagine tons of fantastic research to do with SMBs, as partners or 'interested sponsors' (should they reap benefits on a low investment), but really not much yet in the way of "freelancer products" to market and sell for a living. I'm eagerly anticipating those days, but it's more like 2025-2030 as I see it.

I would love to hear first hand takes on this.

<comment><USER11> To be honest, linear algebra is not that difficult to learn on your own, and plenty of people do. Gilbert Strang's course on OCW has made introductory linear algebra quite accessible.

Things like topology (e.g. TDA, persistent homology, etc.) aren't really mainstream yet, but even then most of it isn't really "hardcore" math in the sense that you can get away with a basic understanding, e.g. what a Vietoris- Rips complex is and why we use it instead of a Cech complex in TDA. Plus most DL research nowadays is pretty (advanced) math-light. That being said, taking the time to understand the math is absolutely worthwhile in my experience.

It should also be noted that a lot of real world ML/AI projects in industry aren't really about brand new algorithms using advanced math, but rather more about applying mostly existing techniques to messy, noisy real world data and taking the time to understand the domain you are applying it to.

<comment><USER12> I work as a data engineer, and i was interested in learning some of the stuff our data scientists do so i can better communicate with them. Teaching myself some statistics was fine, probability was fine too and quite fun and surprising. Both subjects have plenty of books that allow you to understand the intuition behind the things they do without having to dive deep into the proofs. Linear algebra was and still is a struggle though. I've sampled many books, from Strang's book to Linear Algebra Done Wrong/Right to some books that are used in the local university in CS courses. But they are all the same. It's clear they are all written by mathematicians for math students, probably to be used as a way to teach students how to write proofs at the same time? It's just one page after another of increasingly esoteric calculations and proof after proof after proof. Which is fine if you study math, but bad for me, because i dont want to work out the proof that taking the determinant of an inverted matrix works, i want to know what it means and why one would want to make the effort to do it.

Basically, i want a book like Statistical Rethinking or Blitzstein's Introduction to Probaiblity, but for linear algebra. And i havent been able to find it.

<comment><USER13> If you haven't seen it, it might be worth checking out 3Blue1Brown's Linear Algebra YouTube series ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNk_zzaMoSs&list=PLZHQObOWTQ...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNk_zzaMoSs&list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2xVFitgF8hE_ab)).

I think it's exactly that kind of "intuition of what Linear algebra is and is for".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not going to lie, his life story made me jealous. Extremely jealous. He did all the things I wanted to do (speaking in categories, not exact things) and is free to do more. It seems like in some cultures (mine is South Asian) there is a threshold on exploration time. Usually around the age of 28-30 years old (for some even lower than that, I consider myself one of the most fortunate ones). As I approach that number I feel the invisible hand of expectations and responsibilities crushing my spirit. But I must also remember comparisons on life scales don't really work and nobody can win neither the happiness Olympics nor the misery Olympics.

<comment><USER15> I'm not going to lie, his life story was written and presented with the precise goal in mind to make people feel this way. I stopped reading after half the article because I found it way too self-promotional.

So don't feel bad about your life just because someone on the internet pretends to have a more interesting one. Those people are usually just attention seekers and for some reason need the outside validation to feel good about their achievements. And remember that not needing that validation can be a strength too!

<comment><USER14> I don't want to dismiss somebody else's life experience because it looks too fancy. I have nothing against honest self promotion, it's someone's story and I clicked on the article after reading the headline. I have no indication that this person is pretending or faking it. Also, even without all the quirky things, there are plenty of things to be jealous of. Like all the different things he tried his hands at, the freedom to just up and leave a pretty successful thing.

I realize that these articles suffer from the connecting the dots thing, where people make connection in the present which they would never have in the past. But that is besides my point, even if he failed at all those things, I am still jealous he had the chance to try all these things.

<comment><USER10> May we go on a short tangent about a word and its associated feeling?

I submit to you that you don't sound _jealous_ , because it really doesn't fit the rest of what you express; I suggest that you are maybe "envious¹" in the sense that jealousy means envy + depriving the other of what they have ("it should be me and not them", it's a matter of exclusivity, like being jealous of #1 if you finished second, or jealous of the one dating someone you love, or whoever took your job/offer). You don't sound hostile to them, merely wishing more for yourself (which in itself is a positive feeling?)

I really don't know what the word you meant to use in your own language actually meant (I'm French personally, so English is just our medium translation layer). But I'm curious, culturally you know, about these nuances².

I'd love it if you could just introspect that feeling a bit and share what it really feels like, the complex emotion and what it "touches" in you (does it bring despair, or motivation, or resolve, etc). [if it's too personal, I got email, just ask]

Personally, I can feel "aspiring to" or "inspiration from" people who achieved more than me — I don't want to deprive them of anything, I don't wish they failed, nor do I wish to belittle their accomplishments; however I'd love to eat everything they know, steal like the greatest of artists (the good ones merely copy!), that is at best become _friends_ with these people and let them _influence_ me (the true deeper meaning of that book³, if you ask me). And I know, somehow deep down, that the more I'd be rooting _for_ these friends, helping them go further, the more I'd be moving forward/up as well, taken in by the positive storm.

[1]: _envy_ is _"a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else 's possessions, qualities, or luck."_

[2]: Part of my (personal) research on human nature, motivations, "what makes us do what we do".

[3]: How to win friends and influence people, by Dale Carnegie

<comment><USER14> Honestly speaking, as english is not my first language, I confused the two words. I thought envious means to want to deprive others of what they have. I guess then I may have confused some people, I am envious but I think it doesn't detract from my overall point. The word in my language would literally translate as desire but it's more than that, it would mean more like I would like to have that and it feels bad that I don't even have the opportunity to have it.

I would definitely say this lack of even the opportunity to do this makes me feel despair. I can try as hard as I want, but some things are just out of my control, some truths about my life were written even before I was born. I honestly cannot muster up the strength to derive inspiration or motivation from these, because those things are relevant for things which are possible.

<comment><USER10> Rest assured that jalousy and envy are actually often confused my many people, even in one's own language. ;-)

> The word in my language would literally translate as desire but it's more > than that, it would mean more like I would like to have that and it feels > bad that I don't even have the opportunity to have it.

Yeah, OK, I get it. That's a very good word (the one in your language). I think it's a rather universal feeling, this "invisible ceiling". Many people feel that for various reasons.

There's a certain school of thought, somewhere between philosophy and spirituality, that speaks of "abundance", and beyond (or perhaps before, on the way) of "inner peace" or "inner happiness". The oldest forms I know are Stoicism (western cultures) and Zen (eastern cultures), and you'll find it nowadays in e.g. Tony Robbins, that kind of field. I think there's truth in it that just works, at least it did for me (took me about 35 years to figure it out though, as it's just totally outside the realm of "education" nowadays¹, unfortunately IMHO).

One mechanism that I've always found to be true, is that _from the depth of our biggest despair comes our symmetrical potential for joy_ , and vice-versa. It takes knowing how good/bad it gets to really feel how worse/better it _is_ , or rather _goes_.

It's certainly trying on one side, but invaluably rewarding on the other.

[1]: at least in most of the western world, afaik.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Was anyone else really put off by the congratulatory tone of the article, and the #Quirks list on the resume?: [https://github.com/emilwallner/Emil-Wallner- LinkedIn-Resume#...](https://github.com/emilwallner/Emil-Wallner-LinkedIn- Resume#quirks)

<comment><USER17> You know, they (read: recruiters) say that if you don't have a normal background, you should have an interesting one. For some reason, if you don't have the same cookie-cutter background as everyone else, you need to have some amazing and convincing story to tell.

I think it's good that companies are willing to look into non-trad candidates, that may not have found their "calling", so to speak, until their late 20's / 30's or whatever. But it does start to sound contrived when a bunch of 'em have the same type of alternate-route stories, which involves traveling to Africa / India / SE Asia to help out kids, create some startup aimed at climate / poverty / equality / etc. I guess it makes you sound passionate and legit - no-one can say that you wasted your time on chasing those things.

<comment><USER16> I guess it can help sound passionate, but the list together doesn't sound interesting -- it sounds like an AI read a bunch of minimalism lifestyle blogs and output "interesting_backstory.txt".

Nothing on the quirks list is actually a quirk. They're interesting things he's done that other people wrote books about, received praise for, and then he followed their newer, well-traveled path.

It's not a non-traditional background. He's not a refugee who managed to learn coding. He's not volunteering at a needle exchange clinic. I think that's what's bothering me; he's pretending to be interesting, and taking the room which could be going to someone else.

Thank you for helping me get to why something felt off. Appreciated, internet stranger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Many are realizing that education is a zero-sum credential game."

Can this silly meme die already? Maybe it's understandable coming from an economist who values education for no other reason than it's economic effects, but it's strange coming from someone who clearly understands the value of personal development.

<comment><USER19> My prediction is that whoever comes up with the next forward leap in AI will be someone who at minimum has a firm grasp on the various branches of undergraduate level maths. Naively tinkering with heuristic statistical ML methods like neural nets and hoping that higher level intelligence somehow magically pops out isn't the way forward. We need a more sophisticated approach.

<comment><USER20> This is logically independent from any claim about the value of formal education. I speak from experience that an undergraduate degree is not necessary in order to gain a firm grasp of undergraduate level math. Happy to elaborate if that is desired.

<comment><USER19> I'm sure it's possible to learn on your own, but I think most people would benefit from taking a few years of their lives to dedicate to learning surrounded by a community of teachers and like-minded classmates. Learning on your own requires a lot of discipline and dealing with solitude.

<comment><USER21> The OP is highlighting maths because deep learning in particular makes use of some light calculus and linear algebra, and the OP is probably mixing together AI, machine learning and Deep learning (as is common today, unfortunately, and I can't blame the OP for that, everyone's doing it).

However, there is a lot more to AI than high-school maths and I don't just meean -more maths. I mean knowledge, lore if you like. It's a field with a long history, stretching back to the 1930's even (before it was actually named as "AI" in Dartmouth, in the 1950's). A lot of very capable people have worked on AI for a very long time and have actually advanced their respective sub- fields each with leaps and bounds and it's not very sensible to expect new leaps while being completely clueless of what has been achived before. You can't stand on the shoulders of giants if you don't know that there are giants and that they have shoulders you can stand on.

Unfortunately, most people who enter the field today know nothing of all that, or even that there was an "all that" before 2012 (if they even know what happened in 2012; and to be honest, one wouldn't understand what 2012 means if one doesn't know what came before). So on the one hand they are not capable of making leaps and on the other hand they don't even know what a leap would look like. And probably think that a "leap" is a 10% improvement of the state of the art for a standard classification benchmark.

I agree with you though that what is needed to make leaps in AI is curiosity. Lots and lots of curiosity. Vast amounts of curiosity. Curiosity of the kind that you only find in people who are a bit zbouked in the head. Or just people who have a lot of time in their hands, to study whatever their fancy tells them to.

So- not the kind of person who flashcards The Deep Learning Book, if nothing else because that means the person doesn't have the time to, you know, actually read the damn book well enough to grokk it.

I mean seriously, what the fuck is it with the bloody flashcards?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Survivorship bias or reality:

3 months learning FastAI, 3-12 months personal projects and consulting, 2 months flashcards of ~100 papers, 6 months to publish a paper

What does he mean by 'paper'? A Medium post? NeurIPS?

<comment><USER8> Submitting papers in conferences rather than journals.

<comment><USER22> Without submitting from a known university or research group? Seems unlikely to me. I have no doubt it can and has been done, but for it to be a regular thing such that one can recommend it in a 'Couch to 5k' style method? No way.

I have some friends in Oxford who are DPhil/Postdocs in highly reputable research departments specializing in ML and if they sometimes struggle to get more than a poster session at the leading conferences, with the addition of well known professors names attached, then there's just no way I can believe Joe Bloggs who just learnt python 12 months ago is able to do the same.

I almost want to follow his guide just to check.

<comment><USER8> The idea is to choose conferences like InfoQ where application type research is accepted. Like Build-X-using-TensorFlow, it doesn't have to align with standard research which requires formal education.

One also needs to be skeptical while reading such a PR post and not get swayed away by the hero's journey in it.

<comment><USER22> I was not aware of InfoQ - that looks pretty cool actually. But yes, this makes a lot more sense. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The thing that disappoints me about the aspirations of being a researcher is that the goal is to get paid to study AI, not solve real-world problems.

I would rather build a small company by solving a real problem than work for a big company spinning my wheels.

<comment><USER24> for a lot of people who end up in research-type jobs, a sense of curiosity is one of their strongest motivators, and they want work that will let them pursue their curiosity. it sounds like you're motivated by something else.

<comment><USER23> Well yes, I am very curious, just more motivated to solve problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think in these sorts of discussions two concepts with the same name tend to get conflated, so I think it's important to make a distinction between:

1) _AI Research_ as applying/tweaking known ML/DL methods to a novel problem. I would term these something like "AI Engineering Research"

2) _AI Research_ as examining the theoretical frameworks & approaches to ML/DL in a way that may itself lead to shifts in the understanding of ML/DL as a whole and/or develop fundamentally new tools for the purpose of #1. What might be termed "basic" or "pure" research.

I'm not placing one of these above the other in terms of importance. They are both necessary, and they form a virtuous feedback loop between the two that, one without the other, would see the other wither on the vine.

In the example of this particular person, Emil Wallner, he appears to be doing #1, and perhaps doing so in a way that might help inform more of #2.

<comment><USER26> I'm having trouble differentiating 1 from 2. Some seem obvious. Discovering deep learning is #2, labeling some data, throwing it at an algorithm after tuning a few hyper parameters sounds like #1.

But in my mind there is also a lot of overlap. Mind providing some concrete examples? For instance what is discovering "transfer learning", "pre-training with self-supervised learning", or "building PyTorch"?

<comment><USER25> >in my mind there is also a lot of overlap.

Yep! There can be. But if you want concrete examples, I used Xgboost to identify people within a population at risk for an adverse event. This is strictly #1. If I optimized Xgboost code to make it faster, that's also probably firmly #1. If I improved Xgboost with a better understanding of gradient boosting to provide more accurate results, that's probably a firm case of overlap. When Leo Breiman [0] did his work that led to gradient boosting and tools like Xgboost, that was firmly #2.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Breiman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Breiman)

<comment><USER26> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is this guy actually a _researcher_ in the way most people would think of it? That is, someone who pushes the boundaries of science; who develops new AI techniques or finds the hard boundaries of existing AI techniques; who finds new ways compose multiple AI techniques cohesively; who explores the theoretical foundations of AI.

Or is he someone who uses AI techniques to solve problems (and then wrote a paper about it)? I can't help but wonder a bit.

<comment><USER28> For better or worse, the definition of researcher has morphed into a combination of

1\. Solves previously unsolved problems

2\. Publishes papers sharing those solutions

without regard to the kind/spirit/scope of problems solved.

Since conference publications don't have the same number constraints as journal papers, and are accepting of application-specific results, this explosion of what is considered "research" is somewhat inevitable. Also, there are a lot of people chasing this given the prestige associated with the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This reeks of survivorship bias to me. I much prefer Andreas Madsen's more sober and self-conscious take on independent research [0].

> I'd spend 1-2 months completing Fast.ai course V3, and spend another 4-5 > months completing personal projects or participating in machine learning > competitions... After six months, I'd recommend doing an internship. Then > you'll be ready to take a job in industry or do consulting to self-fund your > research.

Where are these internships that will hire you based on your completion of Fast.ai (if done in 1-2 months by a beginner I assume it's only part 1) alone, especially in 2020? How many are going to place in a Kaggle competition with just half a year of experience? More importantly, just how many people are privileged/secure enough to put their all into learning, with no sense of security or peer support?

> I started working with Google because I reproduced an ML paper, wrote a blog > post about it, and promoted it. Google's brand department was looking for > case studies of their products, TensorFlow in this case. They made a video > about my project. Someone at Google saw the video, though my skill set could > be useful, and pinged me on Twitter.

So what really mattered was self-promotion, good timing, and luck.

> Tl;dr, I spent a few years planning and embarking on personal development > adventures. They were loosely modeled after the Jungian hero's journey with > the influences of Buddhism and Stoicism.

Why does the author have to present his life like one would in a fucking college essay?

[0] [https://medium.com/@andreas_madsen/becoming-an- independent-r...](https://medium.com/@andreas_madsen/becoming-an-independent- researcher-and-getting-published-in-iclr-with-spotlight-c93ef0b39b8b)

<comment><USER30> > So what really mattered was self-promotion, good timing, and luck.

Yes. He seems like someone who is good at self-promotion and networking. Well, good for him, but I think he underplays the role these have in his success.

> Why does the author have to present his life like one would in a fucking > college essay?

I guess that's the self-promotion. And humble-bragging. Like this bit:

"I started working as a teacher in the countryside, but after invoking the spirit of their dead chief, they later annotated me the king of their village."

<comment><USER29> > Well, good for him, but I think he underplays the role these have in his > success.

Exactly. Good for Emil, but it's always frustrating to hear survivorship bias preaching. Even the interviewer starts off by saying:

"By the way, I really love your CV - the quirks section was especially fun to read."

It's even more frustrating when I hear non-POC's talk about their journey to some non-western country (and subsequent conquering of fantastical goals like gaining the approval of locals) or pursuit of some sense of foreign culture. It's almost a given that they have internalized and appropriated the ideas (i.e. Buddhism or even worse post-retreat Buddhism). Good for the author to receive such positive feedback for such signaling, but it makes me sad to know that I might not receive the same.

<comment> barry-cotter > It's even more frustrating when I hear non-POC's

If you want to talk about white people say white people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > Creating value with your knowledge is evidence of learning. I see learning > as a by-product of trying to achieve an intrinsic goal, rather than an > isolated activity to become educated.

> Early evidence of practical knowledge often comes from usage metrics on > GitHub, or reader metrics from your work blog. Progress in theoretical work > starts by having researchers you consider interesting engage with your work.

> Taste has more to do about character development than knowledge. You need > taste to form an independent opinion of a field, having the courage to > pursue unconventional areas and to not get caught up in self-admiration.

When I study abstract interpretation or lattices, I'm doing so because I find those subjects interesting and beautiful, and studying math relaxes me. I can lie to myself and say that it's improving my problem solving ability and that it's like doing mental yoga and will make me better at my job or some baloney, but that's not why I do it.

I can spend time with a plant in my garden, take a cutting, root it and replant it, and watch it grow, learn the ebbs and flows of its watering needs through the seasons, learn what its seed pods look like, and eventually watch it die through some misstep of my own or otherwise.

And in doing so, I am learning, and building a mental model for this plant and an intuition for it, but I'm not "creating value" in some weird capitalist sense, which I feel always underlies these sorts of opinions about learning and education, and people who self-identify as "makers" in general. It rubs me the wrong way because it encourages a very narrow view of the human experience and what it means to learn and why we should learn.

<comment><USER8> An underrated comment!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think most of us here on this site could do the same in terms of learning and research

Seems to me the difficult part is how to support yourself financially while spending your time doing interesting learning and research, or how to get paid to do it

Maybe the most important detail in the story is "He co-founded a seed investment firm that focuses on education technology" but it is not discussed further

</comment><comment><USER33> I don't see how this is self-taught, as the person got picked up for an internship and could learn from experts first-handly.

FAKE.

<comment><USER34> He also studied at 42, which is most likely why he got picked for the internship to begin with. I don't get this self-congratulating BS, guy says he toured the world (good luck doing that with a shitty passport) and was named king of a village in Ghana (right..). I guess people who get lucky have to always go to great lengths to justify and spin that.

They're free to do so of course, but they should not give advice based on it.

Regardless of that, I suppose the bar for being a "researcher" has been stooped so low. According to this guy publishing an ML paper is equivalent to writing a blog post or making a video about "AI".

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I personally found this article to be very interesting. I don't know much about AI, but I was fascinated by the discussion of peer to peer educational system. I believe that they will become more prevalent as student loan payments cause debt to so much of our population in order to get an education .

</comment><comment><USER36> I don't know why people think getting a credential does nothing or that people "copy and paste" the assignments. Sure it may be possible, but what prevents people from copying and pasting public git repos?

Either way, this whole focus on "portfolios are everything and credentials are meaningless" spits in the face of all the work I did to get my university education. And it didn't involve "copying assignments". And you come out with one hell of a portfolio if you take your education seriously.

I mean I don't think self-educated people are without merit. I happen to think they're really important. But I only ever see them rag on higher education, despite them having "never been there".

Just another example of wunderkin super genius knows all because he was able to follow a non-standard path and make it. Glad he was smart enough to become a Google employee. But I question whether he should be giving advice on paths to get there when there's always many paths to a position. And especially after reading his brief comments on how credentials imply you're a liar.

<comment><USER37> > I don't know why people think getting a credential does nothing

Then actually pay attention to the arguments they're making instead of talking about how offended you are because it goes against your self-interest as a degree holder. It's not as if the people bashing modern education are some kind of elusive minority.

I've got a master's degree and I've always though our education system is stupid, and at least in the U.S. not unlike a giant pyramid scheme given the cost of tuition these days. Absolutely nothing you learn in a college education you can't learn yourself for free on the internet.

<comment><USER38> > Absolutely nothing you learn in a college education you can't learn yourself > for free on the internet.

I don't know who "you" is (perhaps you in particular are very gifted) or what you personally learned in college, but on my end in college I specifically took particular classes to learn topics that I had previously tried and failed to learn on my own, so, if it's meant to be generic, I'm pretty confident your claim is false.

<comment><USER39> _> ...or what you personally learned in college_

I went to a bad No-Name University for undergraduate and then Top Tier University for phd school, so I have an unusually representative view here.

I do agree that, for CS, the no-name university was... bad. Fortunately, I realized this early and did a lot of self-study. I probably learned more reading taocp and going through MIT open courseware courses in the library during the evenings than I learned in my actual undergraduate courses.

The mathematics courses, even at No Name, definitely provided me with a better education than I could have ever gotten on my own. I'm pretty bad at math, it was my worst subject in high school. So I double-majored in it during undergraduate. This dovetails with your advice to use university as a time to learn things you already tried and failed to learn on your own, or which you otherwise know will be difficult to learn on your own.

The CS education that undergraduates get at Top Tier University is far better than what I got, even though I worked through that Top Tier University's online courseware/lecture notes/exercises during undergraduate on my own.

My hot take: college is always worth it, but only if you intentionally invest in "leveling-up" past your previous potential.

That will happen almost by default at Top Tier unless you're a genius (...but you'll pay a lot for it). But not if you're going to university at No Name. So, in that case, students should definitely a) minor or even double-major in something they're not good at, and b) heavily supplement their CS courses during evenings/weekends.

Also, this is all highly specific to very self-motivated learners -- the sort for whom "self-taught" is a reasonable route. I'm one of those people. Over time, I've realized that we're a very small minority. Our perceptions of what others are capable of learning on their own, and prescriptions for how others should learn, are typically quite warped. Most people probably do need something like a 4 year college degree to become a competent programmer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> > deep learning internship at FloydHub.

nice to be able to work for free and not starve

</comment><comment><USER41> This is a great example of how we "collectively" [1] conflate phenomena, skillsets, ... into one topic: machine learning, AI.

1) There is the general phenomena or collective project, where hardware, algorithms and human insights are improved to approach the situation of man- made intelligent machines.

2) There are the people who are designing algorithms, using mathematical intuition and knowledge, analogies with physics, etc... Most people would agree these people are doing optimization / machine learning "proper".

3) There are the people working on improving hardware for machine learning / optimization purpouses, by looking at the most performant algorithms, breaking them down into primitive operations and requirements for hardware, there are also people working on the algorithms themselves and finding computational shortcuts (which can end up in software or hardware, can end up as proprietary knowledge or common knowledge, ...). The distinction between hard and software is somewhat blurry, since hardware designers can optimize or implement a section of software into hardware. A lot of this can still be considered ML "proper".

4) Then there are the people who apply the ML frameworks and their exposed choices and settings to a specific problem domain. Many of them don't need to understand the internals if they don't need state of the art results. Many would nevertheless benefit from understanding the internals, and the requisite math. What I propose is to stop calling their activity as Machine Learning, and instead call it Machine Teaching. They are teachers, and just like elite schools they can choose which specific type of available student they will teach, and they can tweak (or filter from a large family of students) which student they select to teach the task at hand. There are bound to be many advantages of having actual human teachers get involved in machine teaching. These people will not be proficient in designing novel families of students unless they also know the requisite math, and identify those ML papers that are ML "proper" instead of ML "teacher". When trying to find important foundational insights in ML "proper" one is typically overwhelmed by a large surplus of ML "teacher" type papers. These are important datapoints, and necessary to advance human insight into ML "proper", but they are data, not knowledge. There are actual ML "proper" knowledge papers out there that explain why a certain phenomena is such and so, and they get very little attention because they necessarily lag the breakthrough ML datapoint paper, and most ML "teachers" don't have the math background to understand them. So the probability that a given ML "proper" researcher _fundamentally_ improves the state of the art is much higher than the probability that a given ML "teacher" will _fundamentally_ improve the state of the art. At the same time the probability that a given _fundamental_ breakthrough was achieved by an ML "teacher" is higher than the probability that a given _fundamental_ breakthrough was achieved by an ML "proper" researcher:

P( Breakthrough | Proper ) > P ( Breakthrough | teacher)

while

P ( Teacher | Breakthrough ) > P ( Proper | Breakthrough )

Since most people don't have the broad math / physics / ... knowledge to draw on, the number of ML "teachers" is much higher than ML "proper" researchers.

[1] well, really, some actors have vested interests in conflating those together...

EDIT: just to be clear, I am not complaining about ML Teachers, we need the ML Teachers, and their breakthrough datapoints. What I am complaining about, is conflating both activities of ML Proper and ML Teaching. This makes it harder for the few ML Proper researchers to find each other's insights.</comment>


Show HN: Jobs for English speakers in Germany - <AUTHOR> https://englishjobs.de <comment><AUTHOR> Posted this here 4 years ago, the number of jobs has been steadily increasing ever since, and this only captures a portion of the market. I figured it was time to "show it" again.</comment>