In Summer 2024, we hosted the first residential summer founders program at Harvard since the original Y Combinator 19 years ago. From over 600 applicants sourced from livetheresidency.org, we selected and then hosted 16 founders:
Cambridge Residency FoundersHouses Summer 2024:
- C House: 10 founders
- C++ house: 5
- E House: 8
- The White House: 5 founders
Friend Houses:
- Harvard at NYC House with Johnny + Brent
- MIT Entrepreneurship Club SF House with Ricky
- A House with Isaak, Anshul, and James
- Wearable AI Residency by The Augmentation Lab
Having a support network is critical:
- Selective themed funded and insured residencies
- Multiple houses with 4-5 teams of 6-10 people total
- 1+ organizer, industry mentor, faculty adviser, legal counsel, and investor per house
- Each person controls their room, time, and experiences
Timeline thus far:
2020 - Erevna.us - largest researcher federation
“inspiring students to do more”
2021 - GZM - largest gen z builder server
“ITS TIME TO BUILD”
2022 - Dropout.club - largest dropout founder society
“DROPOUT”
2023 - Cerebral Valley - largest AI developer community in SF, and now the world
“Finetuning Vibes”
2024 - SFP - largest college founder residency
“Do great”
2025 - Harvard St Commons - largest Harvard founder community?
“The mission of Harvard St Commons is to build startups and startup leaders”
2026: largest university hacker house network?
Who we get to work with:
- Immigrant student researcher serial entrepreneurs
- Half of America’s billion-dollar startups were founded by immigrants
- Prolific researchers (without kids) that swear in class
- “PhDs that could win a barfight”
- Anyone you would go to war with
- or who could break you out of a prison
“Don’t be self conscious about being an entrepreneur. Be the person that others hope you are” - Pandora founder Tim Westergren
Why here?
- We start early by supporting students before they drop, move, or graduate out
- We are derisked by Harvard investing billions into AI and Allston
- We are connecting Harvard with MIT, Boston, SF, and the rest of the world
“NY is a network. Boston is a community.” - Sarah Hodges from Pillar
House Friends:
- Atmosphere SF
- Fractal NYC
- Arcadia Berkeley
- Andromeda Berkeley
- Green House SF
- AGI House Cambridge
- LxM MIT → SF
- Founder’s Cupid UMich
- Design Buddies
“Vibes are the moat” - Jack Jay from Persist Ventures
Fund Friends
- HF0
- ZF
- EF
"The average investor relationship lasts longer than a marriage"
Incubators I’ve been affiliated with:
- YC
- Columbia-Harvard Summer Accelerator
- Harvard Innovation Labs
- MIT Innovation Initiative
- A16Z CSS
“Build something people want” - YC
Things we’re interested in now:
- AGI
- Doing what was impossible with AI
- Anything that feels like magic
- Democratization
- Abstracting the American Dream
- Make good healthcare, housing, education, and admin more accessible
- Patriotism
- Reduce risk from recessions, pandemics, hacks, and AI
- Protecting democracy and democracies
“We’re at the end of history. The world as we know it is ending. What will you do?”
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