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Watch the Jupe + YC CEOs video on the site and tell me it’s not a parody. Dude dressed like a guru talking about a glamping tent like it’s as ground breaking as a Tesla and will solve world housing. Wild.
You took the words from my mouth :) Selling tents to clueless SV customers with disposable cash, with a not-so-veiled promise they can rent them out on Airbnb.
It's the lime scooters of "housing": no permits, no safety, lawless, convenient, short-sighted.
The guru guy, and his tasteless leveraging of someone's personal tragedy to his own grift is incredibly out of touch – provided even that is not made up.
Risking sounding like Mr. Wonderful: I can't tell if it's aspirational, pre-product marketing or a parody. If it wasn't a joke, then they've just reinvented the travel trailer without the convenience or the trailer. My conclusion then is that it's an elaborate trolling.
I can see these popping up all over the show at Burning Man. Maybe the guru dude just knows his audience?
Looks like you can stay at the location where that video was filmed: Glamping at Jupe Redwoods on AirBnB: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/700752395276229298
It does feel likes this is straight out of a Silicon Valley episode.
The number of times they referred to the “experience” as “crazy” or “insane”. The interviewer chucking in dundrearyisms (OK, maybe just situational code-switching) like “crib” and “right on, right on”, and “mama taught me right”.
Parody of summat, but I’m afeared of what. Something from an AI marketing department this way comes.
Is this a parody? Are people spending 25k on a tent? Holy smokes.
You can buy a 17 foot travel trailer for less than $15k and it includes a toilet, shower and cooking facilities. Harder to ship in bulk but I bet you can get it delivered anywhere in the continental USA for less than the $2.50/mile Jupe is charging.
I don’t think this is for consumers, the “order quantity” input for something that costs more than a car is a give away.
I think this product is well suited for a eco-resort business. Build a conventional lodge structure to serve meals and host activities, add a few hubs with showers, washing machines, etc, and then plenty of Jupes around each hub. Connect with elevated wood pathways.
This is the sort of place I’m imagining: https://www.booking.com/hotel/cr/kintiri-glamping.html?aid=2...
That's not a shelter, that's highest-end "glamping"! For a minute there I thought this might be an upgrade from a hexayurt, itself already a remarkably luxurious camping shelter - but no, this serves a completely different clientele.
This is quite literally one of the dumbest things I have ever seen. Can’t even claim “weather-proof”, which is the first step to making this worth anywhere near the $25k price tag.
Nothing says, "steal all my shit" like an obnoxiously shaped LED shelter that looks like it cost a fortune.
Before I watched the video, I thought this was going to be a non-profit (or a b-corp) trying to make high quality/ low cost tents to house the many refugees around the word. I clicked on the link thinking - what a great cause.... I only made it about one minute into the video. When I skipped forward and saw all the electronics under the "doug fir" panel, I was super confused. Why do they need all that tech? Do random people really need lights/ solar in your perma-tent? The people I know who are interested in something like this just end up building a platform on their land and either setting up a canvas tent, or just hiking in with their own.
How do these withstand strong winds? How are they secured to the ground? Where I live we've had 21 of the last 30 days with a gust over 50km/h, with one day gusting 113km/h.
Unless the structure is _very well_ secured to the ground, the fabric material looks like a rather inviting windsail, and the supporting structure doesn't seem to inspire confidence either. My immediate thought is that these very much look "designed for where it's 72°F and Sunny", and don't reflect real-world post-disaster conditions.
What happens when you buy a tent, a bed, and a generator all on the same website?
You’ll overspend by $30K.
Is this product a joke? $25k for what looks like a tent that will have no longevity in the elements? And on the site it has marketing about renting out?
Lowes sells barn kits this two story one is $15k. Has a roof, actual wood framing. https://www.lowes.com/pd/Best-Barns-Virginia-16-ft-x-24-ft-W...
Looks like a luxury version of the IKEA/BetterShelter but 20x the price. https://www.dezeen.com/2013/07/03/ikea-develops-flat-pack-re...
Jupe should be great for the west coast market: https://themessenger.com/news/l-a-built-a-licensed-tent-city...
This feels like it’s targeted at the kind of person who buys a managed experience trip to Burning Man.
>> designed by former SpaceX & Tesla earthlings
Man, for a company that is passionate about space stuff, they sure don't seem to care at all about experiencing the night sky. tent made out of glow tubes? madness
This is a good product. When I think about spending twenty five thousand dollars on shelter, digging a hole to shit in is the first thing that I picture. For this much money I deserve the luxury of escaping the tyranny of running water and septic systems.
I see we're now progressing from $80,000 Van Life to $25,000 Tent Life. The economy is really hitting the influencers hard these days.
They’re burying the lede pretty deep: it costs 25 grand.
Does this work where a website writes its own press releases, then the lazy press publish it, then the website includes what is effectively their own writing on their website as if they're quotes from the press?
For more Jupe content I encourage you to watch the Conan O’Brien segment about Jupe:
This is beyond the Juicero level of startup nonsense.
Watching the video of Gerry Tan and the founder describing the design as “space warping” was tedious.
$25k for Jupe or <$500 for a cheap canvas tent [1]. Jupe looks cool, but the marketing positioning of somehow solving homelessness is a bit overstated.
I did an exploratory project during covid lockdown for backyard ADUs. It's difficult to get the manufacturing and install costs below $30k USD for a durable & powered structure.
[1] https://www.wayfair.com/outdoor/pdp/vevor-8-person-100-cotto...
Jesus that's a lot of marketing wank to say "it's a fancy tent".
This feels like the Juicero of tents.
water? septic? Peeing and pooping in the woods is not scaleable.
there are over 500 RVs for sale just in the bay area under 30k
That one guy building a fire, getting smoked and hammered, then sleeping it out in this. Now your jupw smells like smoke, vomit and weed. Idea is dead. Next.
These would have been perfect at the Fyre Festival. ;)
Didn’t see this first glance, but what’s the temperature range it’s built for?
The walls look like they’d be good down to -20°C with the heat blasting.
Hilarious. What an absurd product. You can build a pretty luxurious tiny house for less than the basic model, and grab yourself a composting toilet system with a flush, too. If you're thrifty, you could upgrade to a photovoltaic-thermal panel and a tank for rainwater harvesting so you can shower too.
Somewhat related: the Boxabl people told me this week that their preorder waitlist is 170,000 people deep.
(Boxabls are more expensive and have plumbing and expect to be hooked up to grid power and other utilities.)
I think cheap, tiny dwellings are going to be a huge market. Not sure if something without a toilet qualifies, however.
An Ice Fishing Tent is a popup shelter, this still requires a team of engineers to actually erect the thing.
Interesting design that solves nothing.
Thing looks like the garbage barges the Jawas in Star Wars live in.
For $25k they'll lug solar panels and a luxury mattress out to the middle of nowhere, where you'll then experience the indignity of squatting and shitting on the ground like an impoverished animal.
They didn’t think too hard about the name.
Jupe pronounced like dupe.
dupe -to trick or cheat someone.
Think I’ll stick to my tent/gazebo setup, thanks. $25k for a fancy tent to be closer to nature seems like defeating the purpose to me.
Introducing: The Cybertent
Needs a hardtop asap.
Who's the target? Firefest copycats?
toilet?
for $25K I could get an off grid shelter that I could drive around!
My biggest issue with this is they are going to be an enoumous source of pollution.