UPDATE 2018: See http://www.baylandsincubator.com/

Original post follows —

I live in Palo Alto and have a rental house that’s coming up in May for new tenants. The Ethereum community has been good to me, and I want to give something back. I also want to spend some time this summer diving into the Ethereum codebase.

So I thought, why not host a live-in Ethereum incubator? What better way to learn more about the world of Ethereum than with a small group of people having similar goals, in a carefully constructed environment to promote learning and innovation.

These are the parameters I’m thinking of:

It’s a 4-bedroom house, so it can support 4 people, each with their own room. It’s a clean, sunny house with lots of windows, washer and drier, garage. We’ve rented it for the past 5 years.

Common areas in the house will be configured as a flexible shared workspace.

Earliest check-in May 8, 2017, latest check-out August 17, 2017.

Standard residential lease. I aim to charge less than half the normal rent of this area, pro-rated per person. Logistics will be the same as most shared housing situations, so you’ll buy your own food, cooperate on keeping the house clean, all that normal stuff.

No contractual obligations: no IP rights, no ownership, no employment (but also no pay).

Regarding my background, I’ll give plenty more details to people who apply, but briefly, I’ve been 25 years in the Silicon Valley working in senior engineering and management roles for high-tech companies large and small. I’m an active angel investor, with one small IPO and another one on the way. I’ve advised a few VC funds over the years. I hold both bitcoin and ether. My interests are more on the infrastructure side, such as simulating the Ethereum network, upcoming PoS, and sharding. (Your focus can be anything in the Ethereum ecosystem, not limited to these topics.)

Side note: if you are a fan of the HBO’s TV series Silicon Valley, there are some amusing parallels (it is in fact an Eichler near Philz — but not on Newell Road — I did work for Hooli for 10 years, and before that started a “this is the location in which we will put one of your boxes” data center equipment company).

What’s in it for me?

I expect motivations to vary. The prototype case I’m imagining is you are a college student in another part of the country (or world) and would enjoy a move to California’s Silicon Valley for a summer to have an adventure: to learn more about Ethereum, to meet people and enjoy a new area.

This is a vibrant area for tech. I daresay if you are a software engineer you should spend at least a little bit of time out here to understand the culture of innovation and risk-taking that permeates everything. If you want to make movies, you need to experience LA. For finance, NYC. For country music, Austin. For high-tech, it’s the San Francisco Bay Area.

There are user groups galore, lots of talks and events at Stanford and Berkeley. I plan a series of lively guest speakers. Many older companies are in the valley proper — if I can call Facebook “older” already! — plus the whole SF startup scene which hosts most of the next generation of hot unicorns is easily accessible. If you get tired of the suburbs, that youthful urban scene is just a train ride away. If you are a nature buff, the Bay Area has a phenomenal array of park lands within 1–2 hours drive: dramatic ocean bluffs, beaches, inland mountains, Point Reyes seashore, and on and on.

Sounds interesting. How do I get more information?

I’ll take a first cut at applications with a deadline of March 31. I’ll be honest — I have no idea if I’ll get 2 applicants or 50. Send in a short paragraph describing what you are working on in Ethereum, what skills and knowledge (and attitude!) you would bring to an incubator, and what you hope to draw from the experience. Also, indicate what dates work for your schedule.

Send that information in a short note to: baylands.incubator@gmail.com and I’ll get back for the next steps. I expect to have decisions by end of first week of April, so we can make a go/no-go and everybody can plan their summer.

Thanks for reading. Please forward on to people you think might be interested. Maybe we can build something here and spark some new connections!