FoundHer House in San Francisco closes after summer of all-female start-up building

FoundHer House, an all-female hacker house in San Francisco’s Glen Park neighborhood, is closing on Tuesday after a summer residency that brought eight women together to build start-ups. Founded in May by Miki Safronov-Yamamoto and Anantika Mannby, the four-bedroom, three-bath home housed residents including Ava Poole, Chloe Hughes, Sonya Jin, Danica Sun, Fatimah Hussain and Naciima Mohamed.

Projects at the house ranged from an A.I. agent for digital payments and an A.I. tool to detect medical billing mistakes to platforms for commercial real estate, A.I. training tools, clean energy and an online mentoring program for high schoolers. The house aimed to counter a largely male-dominated A.I.

boom. PitchBook data cited in the story found that of 3,212 venture capital deals with A.I. start-ups this year through mid-August, fewer than 20 percent involved companies with at least one female founder. Rent and expenses for the summer—about $40,000 for the Airbnb—were defrayed by donations including $500 from Precursor Ventures, $1,000 from Alice Leung and $10,000 from Brad Feld; residents paid $1,100 to $1,300 a month.

The group hosted a demo day on Aug. 19 at Entrepreneurs First where investors filled about 150 chairs and each resident spoke for roughly four minutes. After the demo day, most residents said they would pack up and move out; Ms. Safronov-Yamamoto, Ms. Mannby and four others are returning to college, while Ms.

Key Topics

Tech, Foundher House, San Francisco, Miki Safronov-yamamoto, Anantika Mannby, Artificial Intelligence