I think my dream would be to own a hacker-friendly coffeeshop as my own office. I would run a nice coffee place with fast wifi, lots of power outlets, and big tables, serving coffee, snacks, and simple meals. Maybe also sell some accessories like batteries, stationery, spare chargers, earbuds, etc.
There would be a full office in the back for me and my team to work together in. It'd be the place to meet when we needed to collaborate, but otherwise we'd be free to come out and work in the public area. The coffeeshop needs to make just enough money to run the whole company (the shop itself plus minimum living expenses for the non-coffeeshop employees). That would give us the freedom to work on whatever projects we want at our own pace.
We'd run community events like hackathons, game jams, lan parties, etc. Basically try to build up a public place where people would love to come work and maybe meet others to collaborate with. If the coffee isn't paying the bills, maybe we could charge a membership fee for powerusers, or maybe operate at a loss, if I have a sufficiently successful project that can pay for it.
Once I make my money I dream of opening a 90's esque hacker space like you see in movies like Hackers.
Dark warehouse, neon lighting, The Protegy playing in the background, a place where hackers can bring there machines, talk tech and rage. Coffee in the mornings, bar at night.
Maybe I'll do this later, but I always wanted to open up a hacker's place. I'd call it the Bit Bucket.
Part bookstore (~50 titles, classics only - W. Richard Stevens, etc.), part coffee shop, part decent hardware shop (FPGAs, GPGPU, blade servers, and half & full-height rackmounts you can convince your S.O. to let you put in the basement), and bar.
Also, a good selection of little parts that you'd normally have to ebay, a little selection of RAM, heat sinks, PCI cover plates, etc. I'd put it in a display where you'd normally see the baked goods.
I'd have no illusions of being profitable at this, but it'll give me something to do when I retire :-)
In certain places, there might be enough people to have a Hacker (centric) Cafe, like super happy dev house, constantly. Imagine it -- coffee, high speed wifi, a library, talks, ramen, small meeting rooms, late hours, whiteboards.
For some reason, I started thinking about the barber shop/salon type model. Where you pay X to rent a booth to do you work in, but has shared resources. This idea quickly starts to look like a tech incubator, but different.
Would it be a independant Hacker Incubator? Supplying physical space, mail boxes, phone lines, shared secretary pool, printers, and hopefully some amount of mentorship; but, centered around the independent spirit of the developers.
If there's a hackerspace near you, it might work better than a coffeeshop as a place to get out of the house and focus on work. Having other geeks around helps me. (As long as they're not working on loud projects that day!)
Building something like this has been my dream for the last 6 years or so.
"Hacker Hostel" (That name is already taken, though).
The "I'm an accentric billionaire" fantasy of mine is basically to build this, except to run it as an invite-only non-profit.
Makes me happy to hear that I'm not alone in this thinking :) (Because it does sound a bit like I'm wanting to build a hippie commune when I describe this to people).
To expand on the fantasy a little bit:
"To apply to hacker hostel, send us a puzzle, that's your application. It doesn't matter if you've never touched a computer before, or if you just finished your PhD.
If you get accepted, you can come out and live here for 1 semester, during which time you're free to create whatever you want. We'll fund the supplies, we've got a workshop, just build, and share whatever knowledge you have with the other people that are here.
If, while you're here, you build the next big thing, and are suddenly swimming in cash, good for you! We don't own your IP, although if you would donate to our trust, we'd really appreciate it."
Personally, I see a problem with the current cycle of:
go to school -> go to college -> get a job -> CAT PICTURES/Financial Services/Advertising!
I hate that. If I have have the means, I plan on breaking it.
And stuff I'm doing now: I keep a server that doesn't get any of my personal projects on it. Any time one of my friends posts to facebook or tells me that they want to learn to program computers, or that they have an idea they want to do, I give them an account on the box, and offer to build it with them, or to teach them python [the language that I know].
(Now I'm ranting, it's the tea I had for lunch, I think).
It makes me really sad that I can sit here and look at this computer with an almost total understanding of what is happening with it, and how to make it do whatever I want, and that the majority of my friends can't.
We [programmers] are all supermen. I've noticed that in the last year, a lot of us are trying really hard to give that gift to everybody else (code academy, khan academy, etc.), and that really makes me happy :).
What about a coworking space with high speed Internet access, printers/scanners/faxes and other equipment for work, space for hardware design/hacking, a powerful computer for CAD/3D modelling? Would you go there and pay for a membership?
I've always felt that Radio Shack at this juncture would be more profitable if they created locations that would serve as ad-hoc hacker spaces. Kinda like SF's Tech Shop but for the consumer. I imagine it as a mini Akahabara in your own town, with 3D printers, CNC machines, micro-controllers and SoCs all available to use/purchase, has lessons and other community events and staffed by capable people. Unfortunately I see it only as a maker's utopian pipe dream.
Could he start a hacklab? Find an old warehouse, put in some big tables and some equipment then invite people to come in and learn about engineering?
Some people got together nearby, got a government grant and setup a building to do just that. Charge a monthly fee to members and BAM! He's a business owner doing what he loves.
My hope would be that the educational side of things would draw people in and build a local market. The space would be able to hold seminars and workshops, which would hopefully inspire people to come back and work on their own. The tenants of the building would also guarantee some use of the hackerspace.
I would imagine that some companies would start in the open hacker space with a project and a locker and then grow into a closed office space/work-space. Some others might already need their own space, but would just like to go down to the hackerspace and occasionally borrow/use equipment. Others might have a workshop and use the space as an ancillary lab.
I don't see why we couldn't accomodate all of those use-cases. The noise is an issue, but hopefully we could have some areas that are far enough away/sufficiently insulated from the heavy equipment/socializing to be relatively quiet.
That's so frightening. I was thinking of this exact thing as a business idea on a road trip this weekend. Comfy chairs, a cash bar, maybe pool/foozball/darts. Companies could rent space out for interviews. You could rent rooms to hang out and bounce ideas around, or maybe have an open space where you can just draw up and chat about ideas and allow others to freely come over and weigh in on them. You might meet a new employee or employer this way.
The names I had in mind were ThinkBar and... uh... "Lounge" something.
Anyway, I just thought it interesting that I'd be mulling this over all weekend and jump on Hacker News, only to see this post.
Now that's an interesting idea I hadn't considered; will need to ponder whether the limited amount of cash (rental equivalent * x months) is sufficient investment. I suppose a club house for hackers has other benefits as well..
Meeting the right startup people is very important to me. As with everyone else I have a list of cool ideas. The trick will be the right people to execute.
There would be a full office in the back for me and my team to work together in. It'd be the place to meet when we needed to collaborate, but otherwise we'd be free to come out and work in the public area. The coffeeshop needs to make just enough money to run the whole company (the shop itself plus minimum living expenses for the non-coffeeshop employees). That would give us the freedom to work on whatever projects we want at our own pace.
We'd run community events like hackathons, game jams, lan parties, etc. Basically try to build up a public place where people would love to come work and maybe meet others to collaborate with. If the coffee isn't paying the bills, maybe we could charge a membership fee for powerusers, or maybe operate at a loss, if I have a sufficiently successful project that can pay for it.
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