For Molly Cantillon, living in a hacker house wasn’t only a dream, but a necessity.
“I had lived in a couple of hacker houses before and wanted to copy that energy,” said Cantillon, 20, co-founder of HackHer House and founding father of the startup NOX. “A spot where really energetic, hardcore people got here together to resolve problems. But every house I lived in was mostly male. It was obvious to me that I desired to do the inverse and construct an all-female hacker house that created the identical dynamic but with women.”
Cantillon, who has lived in several hacker houses through the years, saw a necessity for an area dedicated exclusively to women. That is why she co-founded HackHer House, the primary all-female hacker house within the San Francisco Bay Area.
“A hacker home is a shared living space where builders and innovators come together to work on their very own projects while collaborating with others,” said Jennifer Li, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz and sponsor of the HackHer House. “It is a community that thrives on creativity and resource sharing, making it a cheap solution for those in high-rent areas like Silicon Valley, where talented founders and engineers can easily connect and support one another.”
Founded by Cantillon, Zoya Garg, Anna Monaco and Anne Brandes, this house was designed to empower women in a tech world traditionally dominated by men.
“We’re attempting to break stereotypes here,” said Garg, 21, a rising senior at Stanford University. “This house is not only about living together; it’s about making a community where women can thrive in tech.”
Positioned in North Beach, HackHer House was home this summer to seven women, all of whom share the goal of launching successful ventures in tech.
Enterprise capital played a key role in making HackHer House possible. With financial backing, the home offered subsidized rent, allowing the ladies to give attention to their projects as an alternative of combating the Bay Area’s notoriously high living costs.
“Latest grad students face daunting living expenses, with campus costs reaching the high lots of to over a thousand dollars a month,” said Li. “Within the Bay Area, finding a cushty room typically starts at $2,000, and while prices can have eased barely, they continue to be significantly higher than the remaining of the U.S. This reality forces many, including founders, to share rooms or crash on friends’ couches simply to make ends meet.”
Hacker houses aren’t recent to the Bay Area or cities like Latest York and London. These live-in incubators function homes and workspaces, offering a collaborative environment where tech founders and innovators can share ideas and resources. In a city renowned for tech advancements, hacker houses are viewed as critical for driving the following wave of innovation. By providing inexpensive housing and a vibrant community, these spaces enable entrepreneurs to thrive in an otherwise cutthroat and expensive market.
Watch this video to see how Hacker Home is shaping the longer term of girls in tech.
