An alcohol-free San Francisco mansion is now a hype house for developers making their own AI apps

September 2024 · 3 minute read

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Aspiring artificial intelligence founders have another haven in San Francisco to develop their ideas.

In an alcohol-free, work-hard, play-hard hotel environment, developers can revel and dine together while building their businesses, The New York Times reports

Hacker Fellowship Zero, or HF0, has a roughly three-month program to help develop startups. It's been steadily attracting developers with a knack for AI, according to The Times' feature, though it's open to aspiring tech founders in general. 

Participants in the program — who've worked at companies like Google —  can also pitch their wares to the big leagues, as VC firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia look to invest in AI, per the report. A recent group of founders in the program all drew interest from investors, according to the report.     

HF0 is hosting replenishing batches of founders in a mansion on the corner of San Francisco's Alamo Square Park. The mansion can also serve as a social hub for engineers and others dipping in for tech soirees, The Times reports. 

There, aspiring developers are building tools to help with both, the mundane business tasks of companies looking to make quicker work of synthesizing documents, as well as the more existential questions of consumers looking for apps to help feel grounded, The Times reported. One of those apps, by a former Google engineer, aims to use an AI assistant to offer cues that made The Times' Yiren Lu become friendly with the tool. 

The "Painted Ladies" next to Alamo Square Park. Jeff Chiu/AP Photo

The recent crop of fellows at the house have also included aspiring founders from other tech fields, including crypto endeavors, though there's a decline from the glut of such efforts back in the pre-FTX collapse era, The Times reported. 

Dave Fontenot, Emily Liu, and Evan Stites-Clayton cofounded HF0.  Fontenot didn't immediately respond to a LinkedIn message ahead of publication.

The dawn of OpenAI's ChatGPT has created not just a wild wave of consumer interest in generative AI tools, but has also opened up resources for developers looking to harness OpenAI's large language model technology. 

Read the full story at The New York Times

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