It should [also] work like that: you deposit say $200k, you get live in any location described, later on you can sell your share at market price that factors in all the property Roam owns multiplied by your share.
It's like instead of buying a home, you buy a slot in Roam.
Of course you can make shares tiered.
(You can buy timeshares on eBay for close to $0)
From their FAQ: " Is Hapimag a timeshare company?
In legal terms, Hapimag is a public limited company whose shareholders are simultaneously the users of the offer. In this respect, Hapimag is a user- and not profit-oriented cooperative of like-minded people. Hapimag members purchase rights of residence for all Hapimag resorts. This idea has been successful for over 50 years. Hapimag is considered to be the inventor of points-based rights of residence and enjoys the reputation of a professional, trustworthy provider."
EDIT: Just took a quick look at Airbnb for Indonesian rentals. I found this: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/5021049 It's cheaper than a room from Roam.
If you want to find an individual room or villa to have by yourself, there are cheaper alternatives in the area. But the reality is that the inventory of larger properties -- say 20 to 50 units -- that are large enough to support an internal community, is much smaller across the whole island and the world, frankly speaking. The whole point of the project is community living in multiple parts of the globe, not being on your own or moving day-to-day from different Airbnbs (which is totally fine too!) So it really depends on your personal preferences of what kind of living space you think is right for you. (And lots of people have lots of different preferences, and that's OK.)
That said, most of the startup oriented stuff in Ubud seems to peg its prices to the Western world rather than local norms: there's coworking space in the City of London that costs about the same as Hubud, for example. Guess it depends on whether the community is worth paying the sort of premium the average middle class Australian holidaymaker won't.
No?
Then it's just a really expensive room with high booking/cancellation flexibility and customer lock-in (you won't pick another room in a city if you've already paid for this).
So this seems to be basically just a premium version of what a youth hostel line membership gets you. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I can imagine that the business model might work.
(If the answer is actually "Yes" then I'm surprised and 1600$ doesn't seem so bad.)
Some of you might know this from last year when we put the idea out there with a wonderfully unpronounceable name http://www.thecaravanserai.co ...
The website seems really light on information (at least without signing up) — how much is it going to cost?
I was surprised that most of the open jobs are not remote, I expected the company to be very open about this and possibly even promoting/preferring this, sort of eating your own dog food.
- Without a network of locations, what you have is effectively a boutique hotel (an expensive one at that).
- If you're starting with Ubud at 1,600 USD/month, how will you make the economics work once you open pricier locations (e.g. Miami).
- User experience is really bad. Even after getting some hints from the comments here, I struggled to sign up and still have absolutely 0 idea of what's happening or what I should I do after I did.
- No info upfront is pretty shady. You're literally expecting to sign people up with a logo and a blurry picture.
- No Instagram pictures? Why linking it then? Why linking to AngelList too? How's that relevant to the average user?
- Who is the user here? People with very high disposable income who are into Capoeira and creating startups?
The list goes on.
Overall, I'm just confused. It looks like a boutique hotel for yoga/health fanatics, at a high price and with little to no information to explain the value.
If you're serious about it:
- Hire somebody to rethink your user experience,
- Rethink your pricing,
- Maybe wait until you have at least a second location before calling it a network.
We've been up and running for a year and a half now, organizing 1-3 month trips for developers, designers, and entrepreneurs all over the world (Bali, Costa Rica, Barcelona, Tokyo, etc.).
Before Bali, we'll be in Vietnam. Afterwards, we'll be in Thailand for a month and then in Portugal for the summer.
Check out our site for more info: www.hackerparadise.org
Also happy to answer questions here.
