If you’re a regular reader of Architect This City, you’ll know that I generally like to include at least one photo with every post. Sometimes I run out of time and I don’t always do that, but that is at least the intent.
You might have also noticed that my go-to for stock photography is 500px. That is the case for a few reasons.
I find the photos to be of higher quality than any other service. I can easily “embed” them into my posts while giving appropriate credit to the author and linking back to 500px. The company was founded by a good friend of mine and snowboarding compadre. And the company is made in Toronto.
If you’re a regular reader of Architect This City, you’ll know that I generally like to include at least one photo with every post. Sometimes I run out of time and I don’t always do that, but that is at least the intent.
You might have also noticed that my go-to for stock photography is 500px. That is the case for a few reasons.
I find the photos to be of higher quality than any other service. I can easily “embed” them into my posts while giving appropriate credit to the author and linking back to 500px. The company was founded by a good friend of mine and snowboarding compadre. And the company is made in Toronto.
That’s why it’s exciting to report that
yesterday the company announced an additional $13M in funding
(Series B). To date the company has raised $23M of outside funding, from some big names like
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Y Combinator, they are a super successful funding platform for early stage startups. They are located in Mountain View, California.
What’s unique about their approach is that they invest a relatively small amount of money ($120,000 for 7% of your company) in a relatively large number of companies. Their most recent cohort was around 85 companies and they do that twice a year.
The rationale behind this approach is that it can be incredibly hard to predict which people and ideas will produce the next great company. Oftentimes the best ideas appear really shitty at first. (Here’s a post by one of the cofounders of Airbnb talking about the company’s early rejections.)
So instead of putting all of their eggs in one basket, YC invests smaller amounts in more companies.
But beyond this being beneficial to them, it’s also a model that I think helps to reduce the barriers to people starting a company. It gives more people the chance to prove that their company has the potential to be something great.
And that’s precisely what makes this new YC Fellow program/experiment so interesting to me.
Instead of $120,000, YC fellows will receive $12,000 and they won’t have to move to the Bay Area (although it’ll be encouraged). They’ll still get mentorship and advice like the regular YC program, but it’ll be a kind of light version.
Though this is almost certainly just the beginning. Here’s how Sam ended his announcement post:
“Someday if it works, we’d love to fund 1,000 companies per year like this.”
Now all of a sudden that’s some scale.
What’s exciting about this is that I believe our cities have the potential to be far more innovative than they are today. Every city is trying to be the next Silicon Valley, but every city is not the next Silicon Valley.
I saw a great tweet the other day that went something like this (I wish I could remember who the author was):
“Entrepreneurs aren’t risk takers. They’re just rich kids with big safety nets.”
It’s a bit of a tongue-in-cheek generalization. But to unlock the full potential of our cities, we should be figuring out how to get everyone participating and building their ideas, not just those with a head start.
I think there are a lot of people around the world who could be doing great things, but they just haven’t been able to take that first step for one reason or another.
Hopefully organizations like Y Combinator will be able to help them take it.
Last month, Curated Properties submitted a rezoning and site plan application for a 6-storey, 25-unit building at 45 Dovercourt Road in Toronto. The project is known to the market as Cabin and you can
yesterday the company announced an additional $13M in funding
(Series B). To date the company has raised $23M of outside funding, from some big names like
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Y Combinator, they are a super successful funding platform for early stage startups. They are located in Mountain View, California.
What’s unique about their approach is that they invest a relatively small amount of money ($120,000 for 7% of your company) in a relatively large number of companies. Their most recent cohort was around 85 companies and they do that twice a year.
The rationale behind this approach is that it can be incredibly hard to predict which people and ideas will produce the next great company. Oftentimes the best ideas appear really shitty at first. (Here’s a post by one of the cofounders of Airbnb talking about the company’s early rejections.)
So instead of putting all of their eggs in one basket, YC invests smaller amounts in more companies.
But beyond this being beneficial to them, it’s also a model that I think helps to reduce the barriers to people starting a company. It gives more people the chance to prove that their company has the potential to be something great.
And that’s precisely what makes this new YC Fellow program/experiment so interesting to me.
Instead of $120,000, YC fellows will receive $12,000 and they won’t have to move to the Bay Area (although it’ll be encouraged). They’ll still get mentorship and advice like the regular YC program, but it’ll be a kind of light version.
Though this is almost certainly just the beginning. Here’s how Sam ended his announcement post:
“Someday if it works, we’d love to fund 1,000 companies per year like this.”
Now all of a sudden that’s some scale.
What’s exciting about this is that I believe our cities have the potential to be far more innovative than they are today. Every city is trying to be the next Silicon Valley, but every city is not the next Silicon Valley.
I saw a great tweet the other day that went something like this (I wish I could remember who the author was):
“Entrepreneurs aren’t risk takers. They’re just rich kids with big safety nets.”
It’s a bit of a tongue-in-cheek generalization. But to unlock the full potential of our cities, we should be figuring out how to get everyone participating and building their ideas, not just those with a head start.
I think there are a lot of people around the world who could be doing great things, but they just haven’t been able to take that first step for one reason or another.
Hopefully organizations like Y Combinator will be able to help them take it.
Last month, Curated Properties submitted a rezoning and site plan application for a 6-storey, 25-unit building at 45 Dovercourt Road in Toronto. The project is known to the market as Cabin and you can
The project immediately caught my attention (because of its design, because of its branding, and because I like the work of Curated), so I decided to dig in further and get a copy of their architectural drawings. Development applications and their supporting documents are all public. Anyone can request a copy. But the city isn’t great at making this known.
Since I’m excited to see more of these small scale urban infill projects in the city, today I thought I would highlight some of its key features and some of the things that are being proposed in order to make a project like this work.
The Homes
First of all, 100% of the suites are 2-storey. 76% of the suites are also 2 bedroom or larger.
The result is that the project is essentially a series of townhomes stacked on top of each other. I suspect that this will appeal to more end-users as opposed to investors. Hopefully, it will also attract more families to the area.
Here’s the third floor plan:
You probably can’t see it, but all of the suites are marked as “Level 1”, obviously indicating that there’s more than one level.
Also worth mentioning is the notch or cut out on the north side of the building. This is what makes the 2 suites in the middle of the floor plate possible. In order for them to have windows, they need to be setback from the (north) property line. It also means those suites get terraces.
The Parking
Turning to the ground floor plan, it’s interesting to see that they are proposing 8 triple car stackers that will be accessible off the rear laneway (right side on the plan below). That equates to 24 parking spaces in the building (8 bays x 3 cars per stacker).
On small urban sites like this one, it can be very difficult to accommodate parking. So it’s inevitable that we will see more parking stackers in the city and a continual reduction in parking minimums.
The Construction
Finally, I have been told that this project is expected to be framed in wood, as opposed to reinforced concrete, which is more typical of condominiums in Toronto.
This change was done with the intent of reducing construction costs so that it becomes more feasible to develop smaller infill sites such as this one. So expect to see more of this.
I know that a lot of people would like to remain in the city even when they start having children. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find affordable low-rise homes. And not everyone wants to live in a high-rise tower.
That’s why I think we will see more, not less, low-rise and mid-rise infill projects like Cabin. If you’re interested in this topic, also check out a post I wrote called 3 stages of intensification.
The project immediately caught my attention (because of its design, because of its branding, and because I like the work of Curated), so I decided to dig in further and get a copy of their architectural drawings. Development applications and their supporting documents are all public. Anyone can request a copy. But the city isn’t great at making this known.
Since I’m excited to see more of these small scale urban infill projects in the city, today I thought I would highlight some of its key features and some of the things that are being proposed in order to make a project like this work.
The Homes
First of all, 100% of the suites are 2-storey. 76% of the suites are also 2 bedroom or larger.
The result is that the project is essentially a series of townhomes stacked on top of each other. I suspect that this will appeal to more end-users as opposed to investors. Hopefully, it will also attract more families to the area.
Here’s the third floor plan:
You probably can’t see it, but all of the suites are marked as “Level 1”, obviously indicating that there’s more than one level.
Also worth mentioning is the notch or cut out on the north side of the building. This is what makes the 2 suites in the middle of the floor plate possible. In order for them to have windows, they need to be setback from the (north) property line. It also means those suites get terraces.
The Parking
Turning to the ground floor plan, it’s interesting to see that they are proposing 8 triple car stackers that will be accessible off the rear laneway (right side on the plan below). That equates to 24 parking spaces in the building (8 bays x 3 cars per stacker).
On small urban sites like this one, it can be very difficult to accommodate parking. So it’s inevitable that we will see more parking stackers in the city and a continual reduction in parking minimums.
The Construction
Finally, I have been told that this project is expected to be framed in wood, as opposed to reinforced concrete, which is more typical of condominiums in Toronto.
This change was done with the intent of reducing construction costs so that it becomes more feasible to develop smaller infill sites such as this one. So expect to see more of this.
I know that a lot of people would like to remain in the city even when they start having children. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find affordable low-rise homes. And not everyone wants to live in a high-rise tower.
That’s why I think we will see more, not less, low-rise and mid-rise infill projects like Cabin. If you’re interested in this topic, also check out a post I wrote called 3 stages of intensification.
