Comment by mgkimsal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mgkimsal | Hacker News Reader

I run a coworking space in a small town. We have a small university-type institution within walking distance, and years ago, I thought students might want to subscribe to a 'night-owl' type space. Late night study hall sort of thing (the campus library closes at 9, and most other places are closed by then too). Someone in the office indicated many students were studying at a sheetz gas station (24 hr) at 1am, because there was 'no place else to go'. I'd connected with some, and said "hey, I've got an overnight study hall for $29/month - electronic door code, free coffee/tea/snacks - are you interested?"

You'd have thought I'd have insulted their family. I had multiple people become indignant with "I'm a poor college student! I can't afford that! No way! Do you know how expensive school is?!?!". They're paying at least $3/night on coffee minimum anywhere they go, and often more.

EDIT: quick followup to a bunch of answers. I'm not sure I said it was completely irrational, but... weird. This was just in the last several years - people are paying $400+/credit hour, and using credit/debit cards for everything. Yes, I remember only having a few $ in my pocket, back when the world lived on cash, and conserving every dollar was of the utmost importance. Charging people $1/night... inevitably on a card... nets you about .70c. My point was to try to at least break even, and provide a service to some folks. Making $4/night from 5-6 people, then spending $5 in coffee/tea/snacks... I'm losing money. I guess if I made it up in volume and sold it to a VC, I'd have been rolling in it. As it was, I didn't. It was an idea I floated by people, and it was not received well.

Thank you for the responses.

It's not as irrational a decision as you make it sound. They may spend $3 per day instead of $30 for the month, but they preserve their optionality. College is typically a turbulent time, and paying $30 up front for a service that you end up not needing because your schedule changes unexpectedly would suck.

I think the offer should've been to have a $1/night fee, with free instant coffee/water/tea.

but of course, the coffee they buy at the station is worth the $3 (apparently), and the location was free in their minds. Therefore, the comparison is to have to pay another $3 for coffee else where and then bring it into this space they rent (and pay another $1). That's obviously sounds like a bad deal.

Also I didn’t need to study every night in a month. There’s a handful of stretches where I need to grind but it’s was sporadic. Certainly not something I want to manage a monthly payment for.

Also, in a college students mind, your value comp is a Netflix subscription.

$1 a night (as suggested by sibling) or even $3 a night would have been an instant sell.

College students are notoriously thrifty. At any given time they might have less than a hundred dollars in their bank account, so 29 dollars is a third of their net worth. By spending 29 dollars up front they lose a lot of their liquidity.

Yes, they study at a Sheetz and buy a $3 coffee each time, but I doubt they study every night, in fact I would suspect that those who do that only do it a few times a month before a big test or something.

Marketing to young people is so painful. They don't know what they want and they have no money even if they did.

You probably would have been better off charging $1.00 for all you can drink coffee. Even tho that turns into the same number when you do the math it preserves optionality, but it also just isn’t nominally as big a number for the student. Price sensitivity often has an awful lot to do with the upfront sticker.

You'd probably have better luck advertising online or posting on a bulletin board to the same audience. If someone came up to me offering this and that for $x/mo, I wouldn't really consider it, I'd think it was another forever subscription service.

I'd be interested in seeing if giving them one or a few days free shifted their response much.

I've always liked working in a third space more than home, but there are also a lot of factors that go in to the places I pick and those evolve over time.

In my current life stage I generally spend at least $10/d in one, though it used to be a lot less when I was in college. In any case, I'd still balk at allocating $300 or even $100 for a space I hadn't hung out in for long enough to figure out how I feel about all of the various factors that matter.

I give/gave everyone free trials all the time. The concept of ever paying that price at all seemed to be the stumbling block.

Not shocked, just wondered :)

This might be a difference between people who have come to think of their time/productivity as money or at least a resource to cultivate.

Many years ago it was very hard for me to justify a new laptop for purely personal use. One day I was preparing for a non-leisure trip that I'd otherwise have to miss out on paid work for. Even though the trip was short, it was easy to justify the purchase when the shift in opportunity cost covered the laptop.

A few other thoughts, in case you haven't tried them:

- Assuming these are mostly, say, students under the age of 25 or so--make it easy for parents to gift these memberships (whether that's a subscription or by paying for a gift card) and focus on marketing to them instead.

- See if an N-visit pass/bundle/card works. Might create a little more commitment than pure drop-in, but also avoid aversion to paying for something you might not end up using.

- On top of pure drop-in or a pass/bundle approach, leave some clear benefits to the unlimited pass (placement/scheduling preference, bring-a-friend, locker to store stuff in, etc.)

- If they won't be too disruptive, market something like a bring-a-friend subscription to more stable school-adjacent users like tutors, and then offer the students and tutors both a small referral discount if the students pick up their own pass.

Without going into the economics of it all, I know that most college students, myself included, didn't really need a dedicated place to study very often, if it all.

For those rare times where it could have been needed, we tended to use the University library...or literally any space on campus. Or studied at home for those of us that commuted.

Driving/Walking to a dedicated place would have been seen as wasted time better used elsewhere (studying/partying)

What if you approached the school to pay for it? B2B > B2C, provide access using school keycards or similar. Like a coworking stipend at a remote for profit.

Maybe you could sell the walls inside it as ad space to support a freemium model, then give whoever pays those "They Live" glasses, lol.

College students aren't exactly emotionally stable these days. Let alone financially.

Probably students hang out at the Sheetz because students hang out at the sheetz.

The sheetz is a scene. The library is a scene. That's what matters. If I spend $29 to use your place, it's not a scene unless a bunch of other people pay $29.

Anyway, the premise of your sales pitch was your-scene-sucks. I'm not surprised it didn't go over well. You weren't eating your own dogfood.

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