An all-female 'Hacker House' logs in to break AI's bro code

On a recent Thursday, Miki Safronov-Yamamoto, 18, and several housemates sat around the dining table in their home in San Francisco's Glen Park neighbourhood. Between sending emails and checking LinkedIn messages, they discussed how to host a "demo day", when they would show off their startups to investors.

Safronov-Yamamoto, a rising sophomore at the University of Southern California, declared that they "should low-key talk" more about how long their presentations should be.

"Is the audience mostly investors?" asked Ava Poole, 20, who is creating an artificial intelligence agent to make digital payments easier.


"A lot of investors, but also founders," replied Safronov-Yamamoto, who is working on an AI startup that helps detect medical billing mistakes. Next to them was Chloe Hughes, 21, who is making an AI platform for commercial real estate deals.

They are part of FoundHer House, a "hacker house" that was established in May and geared toward women. That makes FoundHer House a rare experiment. As Silicon Valley has been gripped by an AI frenzy, startups and hacker houses have been dominated by men, according to investors and funding data.

Of 3,212 venture capital deals with AI startups this year through mid-August, fewer than 20% were with companies that had at least one female founder, according to data from PitchBook, which tracks the industry.

FoundHer House has been trying to defy that trend. Founded by Safronov-Yamamoto and Anantika Mannby, 21, a USC student who is building a digital shopping startup, it added six others.

Yet for all the big dreams, FoundHer House is closing Tuesday. Safronov-Yamamoto, Mannby and four other residents are headed back to college. Two have dropped out of school to continue building their companies.

Of the eight startups being worked on, two have raised money from investors and six have launched products.

The demo day took place Tuesday at Entrepreneurs First, a space for founders, in downtown San Francisco.

FoundHer House residents arrived at 4 p.m. to set up 150 folding chairs in front of a stage.

Soon it was standing room only. Each FoundHer House resident took a turn onstage, spending about four minutes explaining her startup.

After wrapping up the demo day, FoundHer House's members returned to the house for a last hurrah. Most said they would pack up and move out by Sunday.