matnewton

Absolutely. Just that I've been renting rooms for years and the most I have yet paid while single - admittedly, I can be stingy - is 300 euros a month, in Berlin, all bills included. I've lived in 8 countries too, so this is not an isolated experience.

Part of the reason for this is that most banks, due to the Patriot Act, require a physical presence in order to fulfill their interpretation of their Know Your Customer duties. Am curious to see how Stripe plans to get around this as the precious few services currently on offer are of the 'friend of a friend' wink-wink nudge-nudge type.

Small thing - pay attention to that advice, it really aint a pretty time to come.

Above market rate? As someone who has vigorously engaged in this process for literally years (due to the needs of myself and also my friends), the best I have ever seen is $800, which is the service I ended up using. Do you have any examples to point to?

These chain of thought leads to one of the most common startup ideas ever to cross VC desks - the ability to gift experiences online. (Interestingly, a Google search that I just ran for 'gift experiences' returned almost exclusively UK results. What would a US resident be searching for?)

That's an interesting question - if you read the stories of how Edward Snowden's story came to light, you'll find that his main issue with Glenn Greenwald was to get the guy to use technology properly.

Hopefully out of the many tech heads who read HN, one will have the same thought as you and build the tool.

Roam.co is relevant - a friend works there and the concept is simple:

'A single $ 1,600 lease that gives you month-to-month access to incredible co-living spaces and local communities around the world.'

The idea is to open co-living spaces all over the world and enable people to drift from place to place. As a digital nomad, it's attractive - just that $1600 would be far and away the most I've ever spent on a lease.