I left Australia to settle in a Hacker House in San Francisco.

This essay as told is based on a conversation with Annie Liao, a 24-year-old startup founder based in San Francisco. It has been edited for length and clarity.

After raising $1.75 million in the pre-seed round for my startup last year, I quit my job and moved from Australia to San Francisco to launch as a solo founder.

The reality of being a solo founder has been a lot harder than I thought. It can get lonely and difficult at times, but living with a built-in support system of other founders helps. We all uprooted our lives, left loved ones behind, and moved here to start startups, so we consider ourselves family.

Now I live in a hacker house, where our dining table is covered in laptops and screens instead of flowers – and it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made.

My main reason for moving to San Francisco is the people

After raising pre-seed funding for Build Club, an AI learning hub aimed at democratizing access to AI education, I now have a team of five working around the world, but I live in San Francisco.

I always wanted to live in San Francisco. It’s the pulse of AI, and there are so many incredibly ambitious and talented people to surround yourself with.

You can literally walk into a coffee shop and find yourself in a two-hour deep conversation about AI agents or someone’s YC app. Everyone dreams big and we can feel this optimism in the air. It’s a nice place to build a startup.

There are pros and cons to living in San Francisco

What surprised me most about San Francisco is how generous people are with their time. It’s a true culture of “paying it forward,” and people really want to see themselves win.

Of course, there are downsides. Some streets don’t seem safe, and the contrast between incredible wealth and deep struggle is hard to ignore. Plus, I think Australia has better health care and is simply calmer.

Living in a hacker house was really important

On a visit to San Francisco before moving, I met the person who ran Mission Control, one of the oldest hacker houses in San Francisco, and she told me they had empty rooms available. I then moved there for my first few months in San Francisco.

I met three other founders there and we decided to move to a more intimate location. We named our hacker house “The Stables” because it’s our place of stability in San Francisco and because it’s a breeding ground for unicorns. As a solo founder, I don’t have a co-founder to tell everything to, so living with other founders has been very important.

I probably leaned on my roommates too often, whether for emotional support or even sharing an employee. We had some great times together. The day before one of our launches, we stayed up late and one of my roommates bought us food to celebrate.

What’s it like to live with other founders

We also cook for each other when possible or go out to dinner together. We all run out of time and come home exhausted. So it’s convenient to be able to knock on someone’s door to ask if they want to have dinner. Every Sunday we even go hiking together to get away from work and touch some grass, which is always a highlight of my week.

Our shared spaces definitely get messy, especially during busy times, but we love cleaning together. There’s also less privacy and quiet than if I lived alone, but it’s just nice to have people around.

Living with other founders has shown me that they have tough times just like me

When I look at founders on social media, they often only show the highlights, but living with other founders has been very humanizing and comforting. For example, you might see online that a founder successfully held a pre-seed round, but in reality they are crying on the couch at the hacker house because an employee they really wanted said no.

I remember a time when we were all going through some really tough weeks: one of us was raising money for his tour and everyone else was working until 1am every day. We were all cooped up and our laptops and monitors were everywhere.

I spend the day in a small office or in a cafe

I usually wake up at 6:30 a.m. and spend my mornings doing deep work. My team is spread across multiple time zones, so my afternoons are spent on calls with people in other regions. When I get home in the evening, I usually have more calls with team members who connect even later.

Then my roommates and I could cook together or go for a walk in the park to destress. Most evenings we end by lighting candles in the living room, listening to deep house music, and coworking until midnight or 1 a.m.

San Francisco pushes me to dream bigger, while Australia keeps me grounded

Most people in San Francisco are very obsessed with technology, which is why I don’t like spending more than a couple of months here at a time. I usually return to Australia to spend time with family and ground myself, or I go to a place like Bali, where the focus is on wellness.

The hardest part about moving away from Australia is undoubtedly the distance, both personally and professionally. Many of our early supporters and some of our team are still in Australia, and our customer base is split between that country and the United States.

My whole family is back home. When my niece was born, I wished I could teleport. However, the balance has helped me stay a little sane and appreciate both places more.

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