2 college students created an all-female hacker house in San Francisco to disrupt the startup landscape

SAN FRANCISCO - This summer, 18-year-old Miki Safronov-Yamamoto and 21-year-old Anantika Mannby, both students at the University of Southern California created what they cleverly called "FoundHer House" in the city the pair called the "mecca of startups": San Francisco.  

Under one roof, in a Glen Park neighborhood Art Deco home, a group of women lived together for three months as part of an effort to inspire and support fellow female founders.

In a city known for its high housing prices and where average rents in tech-centric neighborhoods like SOMA or Mission Bay range from about $3,600 to almost $4,400 a month, FoundHer House set out to offer relatively affordable housing as part of its mission to create a breeding ground for innovation, geared specifically toward the female founder. 

The initiative received partial subsidization from donors and venture capitalists, and also had a few thousand dollars in grants from USC.

"So we were able to offer much cheaper housing, anywhere from the range of $1,100 to 1,300, which is much, much lower than the standard in San Francisco," Safronov-Yamamoto said, adding, "We were able to make it a lot more accessible to the girls in the house." 

Selection process

The members were carefully selected, with upwards of 60 interested women applying. They went through an initial online application process, answering questions like, "What are you building?" "What’s an interesting fact about you?’"

The co-founders then narrowed down the list, held interviews, and came up with their eight members.  

"We found that these were the most ambitious, most high-agency, super-talented startup founders that we could find," Safronov-Yamamoto explained.

What FounderHouse members got was a fully furnished living space, curated to inspire creativity with an emphasis on community from "a network of like-minded founders who share resources, insights, and support each other's growth," the group’s website said.

Members also had access to workshops, networking events and other resources to build their company. 

FoundHer House as a non-profit 

As part of their vision to make their hacker house accessible, Safronov-Yamamoto and Mannby made FoundHer House a registered non-profit. 

"There are hacker houses that are for-profit businesses where people are living and paying rent and like people running it. And that makes sense as a model when, you know, you're running it full-time. For us, it’s really about, ‘Can we create spaces and opportunities for women?’ Because the talent is there. The VCs want them," Mannby explained.

Dig deeper:

She pointed to figures that have shown the disproportionate amount of funding from venture capitalists targeting their investments in women-led companies.   

"You hear the 3%, only 3% of funding goes to female founders. But we know there's so many steps in the pipeline that want that to change. And it's just about getting women in the room so that happens, and that was really our goal," Mannby said.

‘Serious founders’ only

Another goal of hers and Safronov-Yamamoto’s was to make sure the women they got in their "room" were aligned with their ambition and dedication to creating something new.

They weren’t looking for people who were exploring the field as students or interns and weren't interested in just making it a group of fun women living together.

"We really indexed on people who were serious about their startups," Safronov-Yamamoto reflected, adding, "Serious founders, people who are building their own companies and people who want to actually make this they're living, like this is really what they want to do. This isn't like a hobby or a side project. Their startup is their life."

What they found in FoundHer House was a small but powerful community of support and encouragement. The co-founders said they fed off each other’s ambition and that there was no negative competitive spirit that came out of that drive.

"It was a space for eight women who were about to take that leap, and we could be that first stepping stone into the world," Mannby shared, "that confidence boost, like any room you're in, you're super important. You've created something. I know there were moments where I'm scared to take a step, but then a girl in the house has done that or is doing that, and all of a sudden you feel like, oh, this is so possible for someone like me to do. And that's been really incredible." 

The co-founders 

The founders of FoundHer House are already deep into their startup journey.  

Safronov-Yamamoto has created a tool called Veyra Health. 

The tool detects errors in medical bills and is designed to help patients and insurance third-party administrators save money.

"Up to 80% of medical bills contain errors and we're able to instantly analyze the bill for overcharges and aid in the dispute," Safronov-Yamamoto explained. "We've saved patients tens of thousands of dollars and are partnering with leading medical bill advocates and TPAs as design partners," she said.  

Mannby is behind Treffa, an app described as "The Social Media Mall."

Treffa seeks to make online shopping social, the company said. "Instead of bouncing between group chats, social feeds, and endless tabs, Treffa brings discovery, validation, and purchasing into one seamless platform," according to Mannby, who also noted, "The app has already drawn 80,000 users and over 500 million organic views."

The pair met at USC as freshmen and found they had a lot in common. Both are a part of the university’s Iovine & Young Academy, a program that promotes innovation and creation.

They both grew up involved in robotics and are both from Seattle. They're both majoring in art, technology, and the business of innovation.

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So over the summer, the two wanted to focus on their respective companies, and they wanted to do it at the epicenter of the tech startup landscape. 

They noted that the hacker house model is a popular one among tech entrepreneurs, offering many benefits, including funding access and exposure. But the opportunities for what they were looking for were limited, if not, non-existent.

"We found that there weren't that many spaces for women in these houses that said they were co-ed, but oftentimes didn't really have space for women, or you would be one woman in a house full of men. We realized that when it comes to living and building, sometimes it's nice to be around people like yourself. And so we created the space that we wanted to live in," Mannby shared. 

'Amazing' group of ambitious women

The two co-founders said they hit the mark. 

"I think the coolest thing about this house is that these are the most talented people I've met, and they're women. It's not like they're the most talented women I've ever met. They're the most talented people I have ever met, and that's incredible," Mannby shared.

"We're not just like a female hacker house. We're already an amazing group of ambitious startup founders, and then we happen to also be all female," Safronov-Yamamoto said. 

Residents of the inaugural FoundHer House included young women, aged 18 to 21. They represented renowned universities, including Cornell and Stanford. There were also a couple of drop-outs, including one from the University of Pennsylvania, who decided to leap-frog the rest of college to build their startup.  

The young women were at different stages of their founders’ journey.

For some, FoundHer house would be an initial stepping stone and launchpad. For others, it furthered their dive as they raised a considerable amount of money and made important connections.

"I think through each other, we were one degree separated from anyone we ever wanted to talk to. And that was like a really incredible opportunity," Mannby reflected. "We had girls raise millions of funding. We had others talking to clients, and they're flying to China and having conversations with manufacturers, and all sorts of really successful steps for each person's application."

A day in the life

Asked what a typical day at FoundHer House looked like, the co-founders painted a pretty idyllic scene of co-habitation and collaboration.

The house, a four-bedroom Airbnb rental, was described as a colorful, vibrant home, with fun amenities like a pool table and great space for hosting events.  

The day would start with many of them having breakfast and hanging out together. 

They would create opportunities to discuss their ideas.

"We have a big dining table that we would sit around that has a whiteboard," Mannby said. "We also bring a lot of friends who are also into startups from all sorts of places coming… So a lot of co-working with a larger ecosystem."

Throughout the day, the members would be going in and out of the house for VC meetings or chasing other start-up leads. 

With their collective love of matcha green tea, they’d often go to coffee shops together to get work done there.

"Then at night, it’s when things really came alive, because all the girls would be there. And that's where we would be kind of picking each other's brains and discussing ideas, and where the whiteboards were really used. We have these big monitors we bring up onto the dining table, and you really feel the hacker house vibes," Mannby shared.

The young women also enjoyed attending events together as a group, and one can presume they were a formidable presence when they walked into a room together. 

"We'd get in our cars and all drive to the events, and we show up like eight girls. And I think that's how we meet a lot of people, because you know, it's like, ‘Who are these eight women who are building accountable things?’ when we’d show up at places."

The vision and mission of FoundHer House are getting noticed, garnering national media attention as well as accolades from the co-founders' college.

What they're saying:

"Miki Safronov-Yamamoto and Anantika Mannby embody the inventive, entrepreneurial, and socially conscious spirit that defines the Iovine and Young Academy and the wider USC community," the program's interim dean, Josh Kun, told KTVU in a statement. "Their work with FoundHER House is a powerful example of how our students don’t just imagine new futures — they actively build them, creating inclusive spaces for innovation and impact that resonate far beyond campus." 

What's next:

As founders with a deep passion to build and create, this experience has convinced both women that they have tapped into a critical need in their field. And they’re already making plans to grow.

Hundreds have continued to express interest since they closed up their San Francisco site last month to return to school. 

Safronov-Yamamoto and Mannby want to expand their team of operators and are considering opening several San Francisco all-female hacker houses. They're also thinking about even going bi-coastal with sites in New York and maybe other cities as well, potentially abroad in London.

"Just looking at how we can expand, how we can take this on an even larger scale. Because there are talented women everywhere," Mannby said.

And as they look ahead, they're also taking stock of all that their product offered, for not only the FoundHer House members, but for themselves. 

"I think what Anantika and I have realized this summer is that truly, nothing was out of reach. We could take up space, we could go after opportunities that you wouldn't really see a lot of women take on," Safronov-Yamamoto said. 

She challenged her fellow female founders to take up those spaces where women are not equally represented. 

"If AI is male-dominated, I think that just means that more women need to enter that space. The main takeaway that I want people to get from FoundHer House and our experience," she said, "is that they can accomplish their startup dreams as well."

Her partner agreed.

"I think as a woman in this world, people will say, 'Oh, it'll be harder to fundraise.' No, you can do anything," the co-founder said. "You can start a successful company. You can make billions of dollars. You can change the world. Whatever your goal is, it's just making people believe that. And the more we can share stories or be a space for that, that's what we want to create."