Six 20-somethings from East London have built what they call a San Francisco anti-hacker building. Rowan Aldean, 26, explained that the goal was not “12 weeks, demo day is coming” but “an overall improvement in your life”.
Intrigued, I spent the afternoon visiting the house, meeting the residents, and checking out the atmosphere. I arrived after Aldean led me through the clear sidewalks of a new East London development to where a six-story building faces the water.
The house is called the London Island Founder House, or “Lift House”, and Aldean and his wife Zahraa, 22, who is pursuing a PhD in pharmaceutical studies, have been living there since May, just a few months after it was officially launched last March. Aldean said he 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 hacker houses, Lift House is part startup workspace and part co-living space. The house is named for the elevator and its mission to uplift technology entrepreneurs, Aldean said. This is one of the few co-living hacker houses that exist in London (compared to San Francisco, where there are dozens, if not hundreds, scattered throughout the city at any given time).
Lift House believes that UK startups can build successful companies without emulating Silicon Valley’s over-hustle culture.
The founders described stories advocating for San Francisco hacker houses to operate illegally in warehouses, hold full-scale festivals, set up in tents, or punish the 72-hour sprints typical of the “996” workplace culture.
“We’re not expecting to perform well here and be the best event,” Aldean said, pointing to DeepMind, one of London’s most successful AI companies. “They won Nobel Prizes and built frontier innovations without all the singing and dancing.”
Instead, Lift House is part of a trend called “Londonmaxxing,” where founders are attempting to optimize everything the London tech scene has to offer. The London ecosystem may be less glamorous and have a less startup feel than San Francisco, but its founders share similar ambitions for success, wealth, and market domination.
According to Dealroom, London AI startups have raised $12 billion out of the $14.7 billion raised by all London startups so far in 2026. Six companies have raised more than $500 million: Wayve, Superintelligence, ElevenLabs, Recursive, Ineffable Intelligence, and Isomorphic Labs, the latter three of which were founded by DeepMind alumni.
The excitement of AI has lifted the spirits of the UK tech community and inspired a new generation of entrepreneurs, such as Lift House, to make big changes.
Journaling and Demo Day
Living in a lift house has a flexible schedule. Some people stayed for a month. Others plan to stay for at least six months. They often cook together and share ingredients, but buy their own groceries, Aldean said. Cleaning will be divided into groups. Everyone refused to share information about the rent they were paying.
The residents of Rift House each tell me that they aim for a balanced approach to their ambitions. This is an almost unheard of idea by San Francisco startup standards.
On Sundays, the group will write together a journal, a practice introduced by David Amor, 28, who runs a brain coaching and training company that helps entrepreneurs and business leaders understand more about their brains and how they can help them optimize business performance. The purpose of journaling is to help everyone keep track of how much time they spent in nature, how well they ate, and how much they moved their bodies that week.
“I’m eating healthier, exercising more and sleeping more,” Luke, 27, who runs an AI marketing company, said of living at home. “I always make sure to eat lunch. It’s a simple thing, but I didn’t do it before I lived here.” (Luke asked that his last name not be published.)
On Tuesday evenings there is a volleyball match where the founders play for the house team in the local league.
On other evenings, after dinner, Wan Ying L, 25, who is working on new ideas at an AI startup, might play the piano in the living room. Sometimes the group plays Katan or visits art exhibitions together.
Presence Plumb, 25, is a technology strategist. She loves hosting rooftop dinner parties where invited founders, researchers, investors and operators talk about technology trends and investments while serving cuisine that reflects the house’s diverse nationalities, from Iraqi to Spanish.
“It’s more calm, balanced and authentic in some ways,” she said of those in the London ecosystem. “They don’t want too much of a startup tech bro vibe. They want a bit of balance.”
Each founder follows his or her own schedule for a typical workday. For example, Amor wakes up at 8 a.m. and has exactly 30 seconds after waking before diving into his morning tasks. “I have a clear goal: ‘What I want to do in the first half of the year without any distractions.’” He takes a cold shower after his morning work. “Because when I do that, my dopamine increases by 250 percent and that gives me motivation and spark,” he said.
Meanwhile, Luke woke up around 8:30. His co-founder, Varun, 27 (who asked that his last name be withheld) typically heads to Lifthouse to collaborate, and the duo kicks things off with a team call around 9 a.m.
Aldean rarely wakes up before 10 a.m. unless something big is happening, like a “mad angel (investor) call,” he said.
When asked what made this home uniquely British rather than a wellness-focused Silicon Valley startup home, Aldean joked: “Well, we drink tea together like the British do, and in SF we only drink filtered coffee.”
More seriously, he talked about how British startups face a different kind of pressure than their American counterparts. They must navigate a cultural aversion to risk, a propensity for humility, and the shame associated with failure. Instead of giving up sleep to keep busy, they deal with what the media calls the “tall poppy syndrome,” setting them up to ruthlessly tear them down if they become too successful, investors and entrepreneurs say. This makes some founders in the ecosystem wary of winning too much.
Nonetheless, Luke said London is a strong choice for early-stage startups. There are good networks, ample seed capital opportunities, and options for a life outside of technology. In many ways, it is culturally much more similar to New York than to San Francisco for startups.
“London is so diverse that if you look hard you can always find something fun to join, whether it’s a founder-run club, a wellness event or a jazz night,” Amor added.
Luke and Varun largely avoided venture capital funding by leveraging the UK government’s SEIS/EIS, which they expected would help attract more angel investment to local startups. “There are people who pay basically the same tax rate as they would if they gave us money or paid income tax.” Luke explained another reason why he likes starting in London.
Aldean also believes the London ecosystem is less cruel than the Valley. He recalls his days living in a hacker house in the Bay. Everyone’s desk had to face the wall, and the work involved putting our heads down and creating the product. He felt that sometimes the ecosystem was too willing to gossip, which appears to have been done quite differently in the UK.
“There’s no such thing as, ‘Oh my God, did you hear the CTO did this?’” Aldean said. He said he always seemed worried that someone would spread negative stories. Especially if it benefits them.
Aldean also believes that more than their counterparts in Silicon Valley, startups in London sell to larger, slower-moving companies rather than to each other. This means you can build it without having to kiss or pose so your co-workers will love it.
As for their selling points, Varun and Luke noted another difference between the US and UK ecosystems. “It’s a relatively ephemeral market,” Varun said of the US. “You can get quick wins. It’s hard to close a customer here, but when you close, you stay with them longer.”
Coming to America
But ultimately, the path for many British startups leads straight to the United States.
UK startups have affordable access to top talent from universities such as Oxbridge and time zones that make it easier to collaborate with the rest of Europe, the Middle East, Asia and parts of North America. But in the United States, we have access to the world’s largest economy and, most importantly, many investors willing to write big checks from pre-seed through growth stages.
“It’s almost like a factory line in some ways,” Varun said. “Start here and expand from there, or vice versa.”
American investors are also playing a role in luring British talent out of the country. I told the Lift House residents about a startup founder. He said his best investors would not back his company unless he moved to the United States. She eventually did so, but decided to leave her family in England to raise her children.
“We had an investor in Miami who said the same thing,” Luke said of the investor who wanted him and Varun to move to the United States. “This is a very common practice.” He and Varun have already started expanding into the US, and despite loving London, the duo hasn’t ruled out moving there to be closer to their customers.
This is a tension simmering beneath not just the UK’s tech ecosystem, but most of Europe’s. “I’m working with a lot of people to support more of the European ecosystem,” Plumb said.
But the founders “talk about London. We’re optimistic about this country until everyone gets their chance to leave,” Aldean added.
There is about a year left on the lift house lease, and there is a sentiment in the house to keep it going for as long as possible. After all, there are plenty of short-term meetups in London, like the Solana Hacker House meetup series, but there aren’t that many in London. Some of the more public co-living hacker houses are part of global chains, such as San Francisco-based network The Residency, which expanded to London last year, and BaseJump, which will soon announce a London version of its hacker house program.
In 2024, the two founders attempted an inverse version of the Lift House called ‘London Founders House’. This version featured the headline ‘People here don’t want work-life balance’. The house is known as London’s first hacker house, and although it closed last year, it left an impact through its concept, events and connected players around the ecosystem. To be considered for Founders House in London, you had to raise at least $500,000.
For Lift House, prospective tenants must demonstrate an interest in hobbies and fitness outside of work. This is the same thing many in the Londonmaxxing ecosystem are using to stop people leaving. You can have it all here.
“Culture is about creating something that lasts,” Aldean said. “You don’t necessarily get tired of chasing the flash.”
If you purchase through links in our articles, we may receive a small commission. This does not affect our editorial independence.
