Why Does TinyBox Exist?
Foreword from the CEO
In 2018, sitting in ALaska, I realized that I'd have huge regrets if I did’nt spend at least a third of my life in places like this. Every major life event — career decisions, relationships, or moments of happiness — seems to trace back to experiences in places like these.
As a kid, I remember how hard we worked just to save $50 a month on rent. I still remember the burning smell of the fire-damaged building we lived in because it was all we could afford. Today, it'd pain me to spend 1/2 million on a city apartment.
So I thought — why not buy 100 tiny houses, scatter them across the country, and share them with 10 friends? We could live rent-free, anywhere we wanted!
It turns out, that existing tiny homes cost $50k-$150k and, even when fully pre-built, still need months of work for permitting, foundations, water, electricity, etc. There isn't an Amazon Prime experience for housing, where you click a button and a house shows up, ready to move in within 48hrs. That is what we're building!
Oliver, TinyBox Co-Founder
Meet the Team
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Oliver Zhang
Passionate about housing since he was 9
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Pooya Saberi
Bioreactor expert who has deployed to the International Space Station
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Charlie Frise
Built muitiple tinyhouses while studying Architectural Engineering
With Advisors from
01 Access to Housing
We build affordably
Housing in Crisis
1 in 4
pay more than 50%. That’s before food and taxes.
500,000 homeless
in the US, 1.5M have experienced homelessness last year
But Solvable
$100,000/year
spent on each homeless person in San Francisco. if 10% was spent on a Tinybox, then they would all at least have a roof!
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It might seem like an insensitive question to ask, but this is a perfectly reasonable thought that many have. Just because we can afford our house doesn’t mean we don’t have other life problems. Why should we worry about others’ problems when we have our own?
Social unrest
Inequality is growing. We’re not here to debate its morals but we know, from history, that violence and instability are highly correlated with inequality.
Innovation
A lot of the innovation happens in places where rents are expensive. A large chunk of venture capital goes into real-estate, not just that of the employees, but also that of each employees’ grocery store, restaurants, etc.
How do we prioritize affordability?
We’re not held back by traditions. We started with a blank slate and asked ourselves: “how can we use the least amount of materials and labor to build the safest, most efficient, and most comfortable house?”
Production at Scale
Tinybox is optimized not only for your comfort but also for modern manufacturing, with precision and economies of scale. We save, you save!
R&D: ADVANCED BUT COST-CONSCIOUS
We don’t even try to impress you with fancy tech. We want you to be impressed by the mesmerizing landscape you’ll live in thanks to a go-anywhere and affordable Tinybox.
Zero excess & Multi-purpose
Every square inch serves at least 2 functions
02 Housing of the future
Not one that’s the same as your parents’
We build Things we don’t need
While houses keep on growing in size and price, we haven’t stopped to ask “do we really need it?”
8000lbs
average waste generated by the construction of a typical house.
This is 2x the weight of an entire TinyBox
80 square feet
needed for 90% of time at home
8hrs - bed - 35sf
4hrs - desk&chair - 30sf
1hr - kitchen counter - 15sf
For once, cost and sustainability aren’t at odds with each other.
Tiny = less material, less consumption, less cleaning
We don’t build Things we need
Let’s forget, for a moment, about over-consumption which causes natural disasters. We need to build in a way that can shield us from them.
22 events
that caused more than $1B in damage in 2020
$100,000,000,000
in total damage caused by these disasters
A Tinybox is built with weather-resistant composite and, in the worst case scenario, can be easily evacuated