Massive Ships 12-Miles Offshore to Provide Floating City for Entrepreneurial Start-Ups;

Townhall.com ^ | March 16, 2013 | Mike Shedlock

[Kaslin]

A company named Blueseed is a year away from offering entrepreneurs an inexpensive place, near Silicon Valley, in which to develop their products.

"Blueseed will station a ship 12 nautical miles from the coast of San Francisco, in international waters. The location will allow startup entrepreneurs from anywhere in the world to start or grow their company near Silicon Valley, without the need for a U.S. work visa. The ship will be converted into a coworking and co-living space, and will have high-speed Internet access and daily transportation to the mainland via ferry boat. So far, over 1000 entrepreneurs from 60+ countries expressed interest in living on the ship."

Here is a sampling of images from their page of Concept Vessels.







Who's Going to Blueseed?

Blueseed will be welcoming 1171 entrepreneurs from 368 startups in 66 countries.



Motivation Factor

Motivation for Coming to Blueseed	Not important	Somewhat important	Important	Very important	Critical
An alternative to having to get US work visas for myself or other company founders	25.80%	14.60%	16.80%	19.20%	23.60%
An alternative to having to get US work visas for my employees	27.70%	20.30%	21.20%	18.10%	12.60%
Streamlined legal and regulatory environment made with low overhead in mind	7.10%	11.00%	27.50%	29.10%	25.30%
Ease of finding talent	6.30%	14.30%	22.80%	29.70%	26.90%
Proximity to Silicon Valley's investors	3.30%	9.10%	19.80%	31.00%	36.80%
Living and working in an awesome startup- and technology- oriented space	0.30%	2.70%	10.40%	31.60%	54.90%
Coolness factor / fame / getting press	12.60%	15.40%	23.90%	22.30%	25.8

This is exceptionally cool stuff. Floating offshore hospitals and schools cannot be far off. I wish Blueseed well.

[doug from upland]

This is a big FU to California.

[griswold3]

Probably could charge a 10% ‘fee’.

[COBOL2Java]

Motivation for Coming to Blueseed

Can have their soft drinks in any damn size cup they want

[Elsie]

Who do they pay taxes to?

Whomever they buy their supplies from!

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I'm just SURE that it would be cheaper in the long run to build, supply, maintain, insure and travel to, on LAND; no matter WHAT any nations regulations were!

[Elsie]

A company named Blueseed is a year away from offering entrepreneurs an inexpensive place, near Silicon Valley, in which to develop their products.

Yeah... sure...

Wait 'til Capt. Jack Sparrow and his crew decide to heave to and take it over.

Who they gonna call?

[Elsie]

Wow, this is an excellent idea!

Just like THIS one!!

[Elsie]

I really, really do like the idea of a floating, cut-rate hospital outside US waters, though. I’d invest in that!

Oh; you mean the doctors and nurses and other staff wouldn't get PAID as much; eh?

I'm SURE that quality medical folks will just FLOCK to that enticement!

Besides; there already IS a place like that: it's called INDIA.

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Robin Cook Foreign Body

[Elsie]

is this actually being built or is it still vaporware.

I'd call it SUCKERware!

[Elsie]

I had the Gobi yesterday.

Not bad, but I hear that the Sahara is MUCH better.

[upchuck]

I don’t think it will fly off the California coast for the reasons you point out.

Fine. How about floating off the coast of Mexico?

[Carry_Okie]

What do you bet they'll expect the Coast Guard to protect them from piracy?

[The Antiyuppie]

“Oh; you mean the doctors and nurses and other staff wouldn’t get PAID as much; eh?”

No, I mean, I’m sure it would cost a lot less than the entrenched bureaucracy and overhead of the US medical-industrial complex, which dwarfs the “threat” of the military-industrial complex.

I could not believe how many non-medically trained people were recently involved in me getting my freaking TEETH cleaned.

[Rides_A_Red_Horse]

Going Galt?

[PieterCasparzen]

—— it takes a far smaller percent of revenue to deal with it for big business than it does small business. -——

Doesn’t this level the playing field? Big companies don’t have to get on the boat. This gives start-ups a chance.

First, the boat itself is not owned or operated by a mom and pop (< 500k revenue, < 5 employees, etc.) kind of company. It's operated by "big money".

I'm sure big companies will either directly, or indirectly through contractors, subscribe to most of the space.

That is, if I'm a small contractor with only say 3 employees, but I'm contracting to a large company, my work product is contracting work for several, or even one, large company. In that case, if I save money by hiring cheapies and my customer gets wind of it (they almost always insist on having the resumes of the people who will be working on their work) they will want the labor savings passed on to them.

Consider that, as opposed to the same small 3-person company developing and selling their own software/service/website/etc., that sells to thousands of small customers; in which case the small company is really working for "themselves", i.e., they will be able to grow their revenue and profits independent of the squeezing of any one customer.

I also do not include as "small business" any business that is funded by private equity, where investment capital is available at the snap of fingers once the investor is convinced. Most small business owners that do not have a "rich uncle" do not have that kind of access to capital.

If you look at the boat with this all in mind, and tally the people there and who they are "really" working for, I think when the dust settles we'll see the boat having nothing to do with real "garage" type entrepreneurs. Incidentally - such entrepreneurs never try to outsource their early development efforts, since a) whichever partner(s) are the technical ones can do the work and manage the work of others themselves, b) they mostly do the bulk of work on the first versions themselves and c) once off the ground, actual development labor is not largest cost in early growth phases - it's all the "other" people need to be hired. Of course, once private equity gets involved, outsourcing frequently begins to happen.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

Those are good points. You'd think it would make sense to start on a smaller scale, and build up.

But as someone else said, the ocean 12 miles out isn't exactly a stable platform. If someone can invent a way to dampen the wave oscillations, they'll really have something. Maybe even harness the energy to power the place.

[FDNYRHEROES]

I found the concept vessels to be very amusing, as any finished product will differ greatly from what is being advertised (bait and switch). It would appear that operating and maintaining any of these vessels would be labor intensive and expensive. I could rattle off dozens of things that don’t look right in their designs, but I would actually require more information regarding each vessel’s size, number of persons capacity, etc., before offering any further comment on them.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Kaslin.

[Baynative]

"you KNOW the whore Democrat politicians "

that conjured up the dark question of how long it will take for a couple of hookers to rent a space and set up "shop" (maybe as a message service or physical therapy).

[Baynative]

Another thing comes to mind: what are the laws in international waters about grow rooms and pot sales?

[dalereed]

“Earl Warren gained his fame by cracking down on gambling cruisers in the late 1930’s, which were situated just offshore of California for the same reasons proposed for this ship.”

They were only 7 miles off shore anchored on the Horseshoe Kelp.

Not within the 3 mile State limit but since Catalina is only 23 miles the international limit is 12 miles outside Catalina.

I don’t think they busted them but at least one of them sunk in a storm.