Self-described serial entrepreneur and angel investor Jason Calacanis says he’s ready to put $25,000 to $100,000 of his own money into a startup that will publish “brutal real estate reviews” to help protect homebuyers from making bad decisions.
After tweeting about the idea last week, he says some designers are off to “a solid start,” and that he’ll help round up another $200,000-$500,000 on AngelList if the prototype “is really awesome.”
Calacanis — who made a name for himself as the publisher of Silicon Alley Reporter and co-founder of Weblogs Inc. — is trying to sell his home in Los Angeles, and buy or rent one in San Francisco. The experience has apparently left him a little bit disillusioned, and he’s “shocked that more folks don’t want to take on” real estate.
“No one is incentivized to STOP you from buying a home,” Calacanis complains. “This becomes super apparent when you look at the descriptions of homes. Everything is ‘charming’ and a ‘compound’ and ‘gorgeous’ in the descriptions, but when you go see them they are ‘depressing’ and ‘dark’ and ‘small’!”
Calacanis wants “an angry journalist or reviewer to just take these places out.”
What’s the business model?
“I honestly never worry about this,” Calacanis says. “If a product solves a small problem for a large number of people, a major problem for a small number of people, or a medium-sized problem for a medium-to-large-sized audience, it will make money.”