[ChuckFrank]

I work next to their brand new WeLive on Mission in SF. And from where I sit, I see trouble.

1. Similar models are popping up all over the city, including the much more sophisticated Panoramic just up a block. Beds starting at $1500. Yes Beds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LI0tqVmGtI

2. They built the Panoramic in the time it took WeLive to do their interior improvements. And when they were working on it, it was just a skeleton crew. The whole time I was thinking ... how are they financing the building? This is insane.

3. WeLive has a main floor common space, where they've had two? events since they opened. Both were modestly attended, but certainly had a college dorm feel to it. Not anything anyone over 30 would be interested in.

4. There appears to be value-added services in the common area, a cafe, a juice bar, etc, but I hardly see it used.

5. They continue to putter around the building, putting a whole new set of scaffolding up, taking it down, putting it up again, doing some painting, taking the taping down, putting it up again, and I wonder ... what on earth are they doing? They had a year to get this right, what's the hold up.

6. Compared to the huge number of apartments going in across the street -- 1900? WeLive is a ghost town.

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/S-F-planners-back...

(ps. the Trinity has major problems going in to this as well. I see it as a huge bungle for the Planners. But I am waiting to see what the Market Street retail looks like. If it's anything like the Mission Street side, it'll keep that side of Market dead.)

So, in short, WeLive is some capital intensive problems, that a lot of smart people are trying to solve, just up the block and across the street, and nothing I see puts WeLive ahead of these guys.

Especially when landlords stop leasing to them at .5x, so that they can turn around and dormify the building and get 2x for it. Not with Panorama and Trinity right there.

[ssharp]

> 4. There appears to be value-added services in the common area, a cafe, a juice bar, etc, but I hardly see it used.

Value added? Maybe, I guess. It's really just another way to drain more money from the tenants in the name of convenience. Dorm room too small for a coffee maker? Just pay $4 per cup in our handy cafe.

I wonder where the threshold is for people who would live in a situation like this. Is living in SF such a necessity? If you're consumed most of the day with your startup to begin with, how much of the city's culture are you really going to take in? Especially if you're in one of these dorms, where they drop a cafe and juice bar right in the building "so you never have to leave!"

[goodJobWalrus]

I love the first video. The apartments are lovely, lots of light, a lot of thinking about the usability and comfort went into it. If I was single in my 20s I'd love to live in a place like that (as opposed to same dingy 800sqf with nasty wall-to-wall carpets in a generic apartment complex somewhere in middle America, which is what I actually did).

[rdl]

Panoramic looks pretty awesome. Especially that they're actually doing testing and research on making something that is optimized.

[aidenn0]

I like the naming of the target audience as "Garden variety hipsters"

[clarkmoody]

Super interesting video! I love seeing entrepreneurship flourish within regulatory constraints. There is so much innovation going on with those micro apartments and public spaces, it's really exciting.

[st3v3r]

How is it in any way "innovation"? It's almost literally a college dorm.

[ktRolster]

> Beds starting at $1500.

And there's the problem. For $500? Sure, I'll do that.