Six 20-somethings from East London have built what they call an anti-San Francisco hacker house. Rowan Aldean, 26, explained that the goal is not “12 more weeks and Demo Day is coming up,” but “overall improvement in my life.”
Intrigued, I spent an afternoon visiting the house, meeting the residents, and checking out the atmosphere. Aldean led us through the clean sidewalks of a new development in East London to a six-story building facing the water.
The house is known as the London Island Founder House, or “Lift House,” and Aldean and his wife Zarah, 22, a PhD candidate in pharmaceutical research, have lived there since May, just months after it officially opened in March. He said Aldean sold his previous company for millions of dollars last year and now runs an “applied AI” startup that helps companies learn how to deploy agents.
Like all hackerhouses, Lift House is both a startup workspace and a co-living space. Aldean said the house is named for both its elevator, or elevator, and its mission to uplift technology founders. It's one of the few co-living hackhouses in London (compared to San Francisco, where there are dozens, if not hundreds, dotted around the city at any given time).
Lift House is betting on whether British founders can build successful companies without imitating Silicon Valley's over-the-top hustle culture.
Founders say the San Francisco hackhouse operates illegally in warehouses, holds big celebrations, sets up in tents, and espouses the punitive 72-hour sprints typical of the 996 work culture.
“I don't think performative, flashy events will be popular here,” Aldean said, pointing to DeepMind, one of London's most successful AI companies. “They won Nobel Prizes and built cutting-edge innovations without any singing or dancing.”
Instead, Lift House is part of a trend called “Londonmaxxing,” where its founders seek to optimize everything London's tech scene has to offer. London's ecosystem may be less flashy and less startup-friendly than San Francisco's, but its founders share similar ambitions for success, wealth, and market domination.
London's AI startups have raised $12 billion by 2026, out of the $14.7 billion raised by all London startups, according to Dealroom. Six companies have raised more than $500 million: Wayve, Superintelligence, Celebrities, Recursive, Ineffable Intelligence, and Isomorphic Labs, the latter three of which were founded by DeepMind alumni.
The excitement around AI is boosting morale in the UK tech industry and inspiring a new generation of founders, like those at Lifthouse, to make big moves.
LR; Luke, Zarah, Rowan, Varun, David, Presence, One. Varun is the only person who does not live in the lift house. Image credit: TechCrunch
Journaling and Demo Day
The schedule of living at Lift House is flexible. Some stay for a month. Some plan to stay for at least six months. They buy their own groceries, Aldean said, but they often cook together and share ingredients. Cleaning will be divided among the groups. All refused to share information about the rent they were paying.
Lifthouse residents aim for a balanced approach to ambition, each of them told me. It's an almost unheard of idea by San Francisco startup standards.
On Sunday, the group will write in a diary together. It's a practice introduced by David Amor, 28, who runs a brain coaching and training company, to help founders and business leaders better understand their brains and how they can help optimize business performance. The idea of keeping a diary is to allow everyone to record how much time they spent in nature, how well they ate, and how much physical activity they did during the week.
Luke, 27, who runs an AI marketing company, said of living in the house: “I eat healthier, exercise more and sleep more.” “Now I make sure to eat lunch, which is easy, but I didn't do it before I lived here.” (Luke asked that his last name not be used.)
Tuesday nights are volleyball time, and the founders play on the house team in the local league.
After dinner another night, Wan Ying L, 25, who just left her job at an AI startup and is working on new ideas, might play the piano in her living room. Sometimes we play Catan as a group or visit art exhibitions together.
Presence Plum, 25, is a technology strategist. She likes to host rooftop dinner parties where she serves food that reflects the different nationalities of the house, from Iraqi to Spanish, and invited founders, researchers, investors, and executives chat about tech trends and investments.
“It's a little more gentle, a little more balanced and in a way more authentic,” she said of people in London's ecosystem. “They don't want too much of an atmosphere of just startup tech bros. They want a little bit of balance.”
Each founder follows their own schedule for a typical work day. For example, Amor wakes up by 8 a.m. and waits exactly 30 seconds after waking up before starting his morning work. “I have a clear goal: 'Here's what I want to do in the first half of the day with no distractions.'” After his morning work routine, he takes a cold shower. “I get a 250% increase in dopamine, which makes me feel motivated and energized,” he said.
One image playing the piano Credit: TechCrunch
Luke, on the other hand, wakes up around 8:30. His co-founder Varun, 27, who asked that his last name not be used, typically travels to Lifthouse to collaborate, and the two start work around 9 a.m. after receiving a call from the team.
Aldean rarely wakes up before 10 a.m. unless something big happens, like “Mad Angel.” [investor] Give me a call,” he said.
When asked why this house is uniquely British rather than the home of a wellness-focused Silicon Valley founder, Aldean joked: “Well, we drink tea together like the British, and in SF people just drink filtered coffee.”
More seriously, he talked about how founders in the UK face different kinds of pressures than in the US. British founders must overcome a cultural aversion to risk, a penchant for humility and the shame that comes with failure. Investors and founders say they're dealing with so-called “tall poppy syndrome” rather than giving up sleep due to busy schedules. The media creates it, but if it becomes too successful, it will be ruthlessly torn down. Because of this, some founders within the ecosystem are wary of displaying too many wins.
Still, Luke said London is a strong choice for early-stage founders. There are great networks, opportunities for early capital, and life options outside of technology. In many ways, culturally it's more like New York than San Francisco for founders.
“London is so diverse that if you look hard enough, you're sure to find something fun to get involved in,” Amor added. [or going] To a night of jazz. ”
Luke and Varun write marketing terms on the whiteboard. These represent Top of Funnel (TOFU), Mid-Funnel (MOFU), and Bottom of Funnel (BOFU). Image credit: TechCrunch
Luke and Varun largely avoided venture capital funding by taking advantage of the UK government's SEIS/EIS, which is said to help attract more angel investment to local startups. “There are people who basically pay the same tax rate whether they give you money or pay income tax,” Luke explained as another reason why he liked starting life in London.
Aldean also feels that London's ecosystem is less harsh than the Valley. He recalls the days when he lived in a hacker house on the bay. Everyone's desk had to face the wall, and everyone had their head down to build the product. He felt the ecosystem was sometimes too fond of gossip, but apparently things were done quite differently in the UK.
“There's nothing like, 'Oh my god, I heard the CTO did this,'” Aldean says. “I always seem to worry about it,” he said, when someone spreads a negative story, especially when it benefits him.
Aldean also believes that London startups are able to build companies better than Silicon Valley startups without having to kiss each other and try to curry favor with co-workers because they are pitching to slow-moving large companies rather than to each other.
Varun and Luke mentioned another difference between the US and UK ecosystems as a selling point. Varun said of the US: “It's a relatively short-lived market. You can win quickly. It's hard to close a customer here, but if you close a customer, they stay for a long time.”
come to america
But ultimately, the path for many British startups will head straight to the US.
In the UK, founders have access to affordable talent from universities like Oxbridge, and a time zone that is easily linked to the rest of Europe, the Middle East, Asia and parts of North America. But in the US, they have access to the world's largest economy and, most importantly, to many investors willing to write big checks, from pre-seed to growth stages.
“In a way, it's like a factory line,” Varun says. “You can start here and expand from there, or vice versa.”
US investors are also playing a role in attracting British talent abroad. I told the residents of Lifthouse about a startup founder. She told me that the top investors wouldn't even support the company unless I moved to the US. She eventually did so, but decided to leave her family in England to raise her children.
“There was an investor in Miami who said the same thing. This happens often,” Luke said of the investor who wanted to move him and Varun to the US. He and Varun have already started expanding their business in the US, and although they love London, they haven't ruled out moving there to be closer to their customers.
David, who runs a brain coaching startup, is the person who brought journaling into the home. Image credit: TechCrunch
That's the tension brewing at the heart of not only the UK's tech ecosystem, but most of Europe's as well. “I work with a lot of people who are trying to support the European ecosystem more,” Plumb said.
Still, the founders “talk about London. Everyone is bullish on the country until they have a chance to leave London,” Aldean added.
There's about a year left on the Lift House's lease, and there's a feeling inside the house that they want to keep it for as long as possible. After all, there aren't that many in London, but the city is full of short-term gatherings like the Solana Hackerhouse meetup series. Some of the more popular co-living hackhouses are part of a global chain, such as The Residency, a San Francisco-based network that expanded to London last year, and BaseJump, which will soon announce a London version of its hackhouse program.
In 2024, the two founders attempted a reverse version of Lift House called 'London Founder House', which Shifted covered with the headline 'People here don't want work-life balance'. The house was known as London's first hacker house, and although it closed last year, it left an impact through its concept, events and connections with actors in the ecosystem. To be considered for London's Founders House, we had to raise at least $500,000.
For Lifthouse, prospective residents must demonstrate an interest in hobbies or fitness outside of work. This is the same pitch that many in the Londonmaxxing ecosystem use to deter people from leaving. So you can have it all here.
“Culture is about creating something that lasts, not necessarily chasing the flash and burning out,” Aldean said.
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