The Best Outdoor Deals From the REI Anniversary Sale
It’s nearly summer. Birds are migrating, flowers are blooming, and REI is kicking off its annual anniversary sale.
It’s the outdoor retailer’s biggest sale of the year. This year’s REI sale starts May 15 and runs through Memorial Day, May 25. Many items are up to 30 percent off, but REI Co-op members save up to 20 percent on any full-price item and an extra 20 percent off any REI Outlet item. To get the discount, add the promo code ANNIV26 at checkout.
Goal Zero’s new Yeti 1500 is one of the best camping and overlanding power stations we’ve tested. The new LiFePO4 chemistry battery is rated for 4,000 charge cycles (about 10 years of average use) and there’s a new high amp output (30 A) for tying into van and overlanding setups. Goal Zero also engineered it to be able to handle the high vibration environment of off-roading. With 4 AC outlets and USB charging at up to 140 watts, the Yeti 1500 can keep your wired world running for well over a week, no grid required.
Yes your phone has some features of a dedicated satellite messenger, but we still think you’re better off with a dedicated device. Garmin’s new inReach Mini 3 now offers some of those phone features—like voice and photo messaging—along with the emergency features and excellent service world wide. It’s also still tiny, well built and it has great battery life. The cheaper Garmin Inreach Mini 3 (which does not have the new photo sharing features) is also on sale for $400 ($50 off).
The Garmin Instinct Solar is our favorite rugged and affordable outdoor watch powered by the sun. It has long battery life and yes, recharges any time it’s in the sun. GPS is enabled and there’s tons of sports tracking and navigation features. It’s cheaper than a Fenix and just as reliable.
Courtesy of Coleman
My favorite of Coleman’s current lineup, the Cascade 3-in-1 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) features heavy-duty cast iron grates, comes with a cast-iron griddle and grill, and can fit a 12-inch pan and a 10-inch pan side by side. It’s sturdier and all-around more robust than other Coleman stoves, well worth the extra money if you’re serious about camp cooking. That said, the much cheaper stove below will get you by if you’re only using it a few nights a year.
This is our favorite camp stove for most people. Technically this version is a little fancier than our top pick, with electronic ignition and a nice pale green paint job. Is it worth an extra $30? That’s up to you. If it’s not, snag the less fancy version for $59 at Walmart.
The thing to keep in mind when you shop REI brand gear is the company’s basic proposition: you get 90 percent of the designer item for 70 percent of the price. It’s a strategy that works quite well and has generated some really great, affordable gear. This chair is a good example of that. It’s not as nice as the Nemo above, but it’s still comfortable (it does wobble a little, side to side when you move) and nearly half the price.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
Whenever I can, I like to cook over open flame using my firebox stove, which often means cutting wood. The best portable saw I’ve found is this Silky folding saw. It’s light enough to bring bike packing (5.3 ounces), and it folds down to about 9 inches long, which slips in a pannier no problem. This thing is razor sharp though, be careful when using it in the backcountry.
The thing to keep in mind when you shop for gear bearing the REI brand is the company’s basic proposition: You get 90 percent of the designer item for 70 percent of the price. It’s a strategy that works quite well and has generated some really great, affordable gear. This REI chair is a good example of that. It’s not as nice as the Nemo above, but it’s still comfortable (it does wobble a little, side to side when you move) and nearly half the price.
REI’s Base Camp tent is WIRED’s favorite car camping tent. It’s extremely well designed and proved plenty weatherproof in our testing. The traditional dome tent design, with two crossed poles and two side poles, holds up well in wind, and the tent floor is high-quality 150-denier (150D) polyester. There’s loads of storage pockets, double doors, great vents, and huge windows, making it comfortable even in summer heat.
The REI Half Dome 2 is the best budget two-person backpacking tent. I’ve toted it on many a backpacking trip and found it to be plenty sturdy, quick to set up, and capable of fitting two people and their gear. It even comes with a footprint (which I never bother with, but it’s nice to have it if you have to deal with prickers or pointy rocks).
The Big Agnes Copper Spur series is our top pick for freestanding ultralight tents. This is a high-quality, well-designed tent that’s lightweight, easy to set up, and roomy enough to be livable in the backcountry. The “awning” design (where the front fabric is held aloft with trekking poles or sticks) is a nice extra and the mix of 15D nylon, and 20D ripstop, while to feels fragile, as held up well over time. The 4-person version, which is one of the lightest 4P tents on the market is also on sale.
Nemo’s Dragonfly tents are great. I really like the generous amount of mesh at the top, which provides some nice ventilation on warm summer nights and is perfect for falling asleep under the stars when the weather permits. The Osmo fabric continues to live up to the hype, with much less water absorption than nylon tents in rainy weather, and there’s a good amount of room for storing all your stuff.
REI’s Magma line of down gear are some of the best deals around. The Magma 15 sleeping bag has long been an affordable bag that’s perfect for shoulder season trips when the temp potentially swing lower than you’re expecting (the comfort rating is 21 degrees Fahrenheit). There are three lengths and three widths, making it easy to get something that’s perfect for your body, and the 850-fill-power goose down (Bluesign-approved) packs down nice and small. If you don’t need the shoulder season coverage the Magma 30 is also on sale for $262 ($87 off), and makes a great summer sleeping bag.
I just spent a week sleeping under this quilt at the Biggest Week in American Birding. The Magma quilt was surprisingly warm. I did have on an puffer jacket, but I managed to stay comfy down to 30 degrees. Like the sleeping bag version above, this is 95 percent of what you get from far more expensive quilts. It’s light (20.3 ounces for the medium), packs down small, includes straps to keep it on your sleeping pad, can be completely unzipped and used like a comforter or snapped up in a proper foot box on colder nights.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
This is one of my favorite ultralight sleeping bags. There are lighter quilts out there, but when you need the warmth of a mummy bag on those colder nights, this is what I use. It also has the smallest pack size of any bag I’ve tested in this temperature range. With the included compression sack, this thing is truly tiny. The down fill is PFC-free, 850+ hydrophobic down. The zippers are on the small side, but they slide well and rarely if ever snag on the bag. I’ve slept in this bag down to 20 degrees and never been the least bit cold.
Nemo’s Forte 20 is a 20-degree synthetic-fill sleeping bag, but the comfort rating is 30 degrees. In my testing, this feels more like where you’d want to stay temperature-wise with this bag. The outer shell uses a 30-denier recycled polyester ripstop with an inside liner made from 20-denier recycled polyester taffeta. The fill is what Nemo calls Zerofiber insulation, which is made from 100 percent postconsumer recycled content fibers. The Zerofiber packs down remarkably small—this is the most compact synthetic-fill bag I’ve tested in this temp range.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
I had to surrender my ultralight cred to the Reddit mods for carrying this robust pad, but it is totally worth the improved sleep. The 6 or so extra ounces is more than made up for by how well I sleep—rest and recovery are a key part of long miles, kids—on this pad compared to, well, every other backpacking sleeping pad. It’s that good. Alas, it is also kinda pricey … which is why you should grab one now on sale.
The Tensor All-Season hits all the sweet spots. It weighs an acceptably light 18.2 ounces, provides a good 3 inches of padding, and has an R value of 5.4. (The R value of a sleeping pad denotes its level of insulation; the higher the number, the warmer you stay and 5.4 is enough insulation for colder spring or autumn nights.) That works out to the best padding and R rating for the weight. It’s also mercifully quiet—none of that annoying crunching noise every time you roll over.
If you’re gearing up for a winter trip, this is a good deal on a great winter sleeping pad. The Tensor Extreme Conditions has the highest R value of any pad we’ve tested (8.5) yet somehow manages to pack down to about the size of a Nalgene water bottle and weighs just 21 ounces (587 g).
Courtesy of Exped
This is my new favorite winter sleeping pad. It doesn’t have quite the R-value of the Tensor Extreme above, but I find it more comfortable and when paired the a Therm-a-Rest Z-lite, I stayed plenty warm even on a night spent at minus 25 degrees Fahrenheit this past winter. I like it so much a bought a second one for whomever is foolish enough to come with me on such trips.
The big fat camping pad that started the trend of big fat camping pads, the Megamat is a revelation. Trust me, you have no idea how comfortable tent camping can be until you sleep on a Megamat. The 4-inch-thick Exped MegaMat is soft and surprisingly firm thanks to the closed-cell foam inside it, which relieves pressure and feels about as close to the mattress in your bedroom as you’re going to get in the woods.
When I sold my Jeep, I had to give up my overlanding dreams and return to being a mere camper. But this Megamat, which cuts in to fit around the wheel wells of an SUV, has brought some of those overlanding dreams back to life. I throw this in the back of my wife’s Rav4, and while it’s not a perfect fit (check Exped to see which vehicles are supported), it’s close enough that I can get a good night’s sleep in the car.
It’s nearly summer. Birds are migrating, flowers are blooming, and REI is kicking off its annual anniversary sale.
It’s the outdoor retailer’s biggest sale of the year. This year’s REI sale starts May 15 and runs through Memorial Day, May 25. Many items are up to 30 percent off, but REI Co-op members save up to 20 percent on any full-price item and an extra 20 percent off any REI Outlet item. To get the discount, add the promo code ANNIV26 at checkout.
We’ve highlighted the best deals on gear we’ve loved over our years of testing. There’s something for nearly all our favorite summer activities: tents, stoves, sleeping bags, and plenty of outdoor apparel. Be sure to look at our guides to outdoor gear, like the Best Tents, Best Sleeping Bags, Best Backpacking Sleeping Pads, Best Rain Jackets, Best Backpacking Water Filters, Best Merino Wool, and Best Binoculars.
WIRED Featured Deals
Deals on Camping Gadgets and Gear
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
Goal Zero’s new Yeti 1500 is one of the best camping and overlanding power stations we’ve tested. The new LiFePO4 chemistry battery is rated for 4,000 charge cycles (about 10 years of average use) and there’s a new high amp output (30 A) for tying into van and overlanding setups. Goal Zero also engineered it to be able to handle the high vibration environment of off-roading. With 4 AC outlets and USB charging at up to 140 watts, the Yeti 1500 can keep your wired world running for well over a week, no grid required.
Yes your phone has some features of a dedicated satellite messenger, but we still think you’re better off with a dedicated device. Garmin’s new inReach Mini 3 now offers some of those phone features—like voice and photo messaging—along with the emergency features and excellent service world wide. It’s also still tiny, well built and it has great battery life. The cheaper Garmin Inreach Mini 3 (which does not have the new photo sharing features) is also on sale for $400 ($50 off).
The Garmin Instinct Solar is our favorite rugged and affordable outdoor watch powered by the sun. It has long battery life and yes, recharges any time it’s in the sun. GPS is enabled and there’s tons of sports tracking and navigation features. It’s cheaper than a Fenix and just as reliable.
Courtesy of Coleman
My favorite of Coleman’s current lineup, the Cascade 3-in-1 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) features heavy-duty cast iron grates, comes with a cast-iron griddle and grill, and can fit a 12-inch pan and a 10-inch pan side by side. It’s sturdier and all-around more robust than other Coleman stoves, well worth the extra money if you’re serious about camp cooking. That said, the much cheaper stove below will get you by if you’re only using it a few nights a year.
This is our favorite camp stove for most people. Technically this version is a little fancier than our top pick, with electronic ignition and a nice pale green paint job. Is it worth an extra $30? That’s up to you. If it’s not, snag the less fancy version for $59 at Walmart.
The thing to keep in mind when you shop REI brand gear is the company’s basic proposition: you get 90 percent of the designer item for 70 percent of the price. It’s a strategy that works quite well and has generated some really great, affordable gear. This chair is a good example of that. It’s not as nice as the Nemo above, but it’s still comfortable (it does wobble a little, side to side when you move) and nearly half the price.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
Whenever I can, I like to cook over open flame using my firebox stove, which often means cutting wood. The best portable saw I’ve found is this Silky folding saw. It’s light enough to bring bike packing (5.3 ounces), and it folds down to about 9 inches long, which slips in a pannier no problem. This thing is razor sharp though, be careful when using it in the backcountry.
Petzl’s Tikka headlamp is one of our favorite headlamps. It provides plenty of light to cook by in the backcountry, runs on three AAA batteries (we recommend Panasonic Eneloop rechargeable batteries) and lasts over 5.5 hours. It’s also compatible with Petzl’s USB-rechargable Core battery ($30).
The thing to keep in mind when you shop for gear bearing the REI brand is the company’s basic proposition: You get 90 percent of the designer item for 70 percent of the price. It’s a strategy that works quite well and has generated some really great, affordable gear. This REI chair is a good example of that. It’s not as nice as the Nemo above, but it’s still comfortable (it does wobble a little, side to side when you move) and nearly half the price.
Deals on Tents
REI tents are some of the best deals around, even more so during sales. If you’d like to learn more, see our guide to the best backpacking tents and best car camping tents.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
REI’s Base Camp tent is WIRED’s favorite car camping tent. It’s extremely well designed and proved plenty weatherproof in our testing. The traditional dome tent design, with two crossed poles and two side poles, holds up well in wind, and the tent floor is high-quality 150-denier (150D) polyester. There’s loads of storage pockets, double doors, great vents, and huge windows, making it comfortable even in summer heat.
The REI Half Dome 2 is the best budget two-person backpacking tent. I’ve toted it on many a backpacking trip and found it to be plenty sturdy, quick to set up, and capable of fitting two people and their gear. It even comes with a footprint (which I never bother with, but it’s nice to have it if you have to deal with prickers or pointy rocks).
The Big Agnes Copper Spur series is our top pick for freestanding ultralight tents. This is a high-quality, well-designed tent that’s lightweight, easy to set up, and roomy enough to be livable in the backcountry. The “awning” design (where the front fabric is held aloft with trekking poles or sticks) is a nice extra and the mix of 15D nylon, and 20D ripstop, while to feels fragile, as held up well over time. The 4-person version, which is one of the lightest 4P tents on the market is also on sale.
Nemo’s Dragonfly tents are great. I really like the generous amount of mesh at the top, which provides some nice ventilation on warm summer nights and is perfect for falling asleep under the stars when the weather permits. The Osmo fabric continues to live up to the hype, with much less water absorption than nylon tents in rainy weather, and there’s a good amount of room for storing all your stuff.
Sleeping Bag and Sleeping Pad Deals
Whether you need a cheap car camping bag or something more robust for fall and spring trips, we’ve got you covered. Be sure to read our guides to the best sleeping bags, best camping sleeping pads, and best backpacking sleeping pads for even more options.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
REI’s Magma line of down gear are some of the best deals around. The Magma 15 sleeping bag has long been an affordable bag that’s perfect for shoulder season trips when the temp potentially swing lower than you’re expecting (the comfort rating is 21 degrees Fahrenheit). There are three lengths and three widths, making it easy to get something that’s perfect for your body, and the 850-fill-power goose down (Bluesign-approved) packs down nice and small. If you don’t need the shoulder season coverage the Magma 30 is also on sale for $262 ($87 off), and makes a great summer sleeping bag.
I just spent a week sleeping under this quilt at the Biggest Week in American Birding. The Magma quilt was surprisingly warm. I did have on an puffer jacket, but I managed to stay comfy down to 30 degrees. Like the sleeping bag version above, this is 95 percent of what you get from far more expensive quilts. It’s light (20.3 ounces for the medium), packs down small, includes straps to keep it on your sleeping pad, can be completely unzipped and used like a comforter or snapped up in a proper foot box on colder nights.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
This is one of my favorite ultralight sleeping bags. There are lighter quilts out there, but when you need the warmth of a mummy bag on those colder nights, this is what I use. It also has the smallest pack size of any bag I’ve tested in this temperature range. With the included compression sack, this thing is truly tiny. The down fill is PFC-free, 850+ hydrophobic down. The zippers are on the small side, but they slide well and rarely if ever snag on the bag. I’ve slept in this bag down to 20 degrees and never been the least bit cold.
Nemo’s Forte 20 is a 20-degree synthetic-fill sleeping bag, but the comfort rating is 30 degrees. In my testing, this feels more like where you’d want to stay temperature-wise with this bag. The outer shell uses a 30-denier recycled polyester ripstop with an inside liner made from 20-denier recycled polyester taffeta. The fill is what Nemo calls Zerofiber insulation, which is made from 100 percent postconsumer recycled content fibers. The Zerofiber packs down remarkably small—this is the most compact synthetic-fill bag I’ve tested in this temp range.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
I had to surrender my ultralight cred to the Reddit mods for carrying this robust pad, but it is totally worth the improved sleep. The 6 or so extra ounces is more than made up for by how well I sleep—rest and recovery are a key part of long miles, kids—on this pad compared to, well, every other backpacking sleeping pad. It’s that good. Alas, it is also kinda pricey … which is why you should grab one now on sale.
The Tensor All-Season hits all the sweet spots. It weighs an acceptably light 18.2 ounces, provides a good 3 inches of padding, and has an R value of 5.4. (The R value of a sleeping pad denotes its level of insulation; the higher the number, the warmer you stay and 5.4 is enough insulation for colder spring or autumn nights.) That works out to the best padding and R rating for the weight. It’s also mercifully quiet—none of that annoying crunching noise every time you roll over.
If you’re gearing up for a winter trip, this is a good deal on a great winter sleeping pad. The Tensor Extreme Conditions has the highest R value of any pad we’ve tested (8.5) yet somehow manages to pack down to about the size of a Nalgene water bottle and weighs just 21 ounces (587 g).
Courtesy of Exped
This is my new favorite winter sleeping pad. It doesn’t have quite the R-value of the Tensor Extreme above, but I find it more comfortable and when paired the a Therm-a-Rest Z-lite, I stayed plenty warm even on a night spent at minus 25 degrees Fahrenheit this past winter. I like it so much a bought a second one for whomever is foolish enough to come with me on such trips.
The big fat camping pad that started the trend of big fat camping pads, the Megamat is a revelation. Trust me, you have no idea how comfortable tent camping can be until you sleep on a Megamat. The 4-inch-thick Exped MegaMat is soft and surprisingly firm thanks to the closed-cell foam inside it, which relieves pressure and feels about as close to the mattress in your bedroom as you’re going to get in the woods.
When I sold my Jeep, I had to give up my overlanding dreams and return to being a mere camper. But this Megamat, which cuts in to fit around the wheel wells of an SUV, has brought some of those overlanding dreams back to life. I throw this in the back of my wife’s Rav4, and while it’s not a perfect fit (check Exped to see which vehicles are supported), it’s close enough that I can get a good night’s sleep in the car.
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The policy does not prevent users from posting AI-generated videos elsewhere on Snapchat. It also does not disqualify every video that involves AI. Creators can continue using Snapchat’s AI tools to edit or enhance their original footage, and those videos will remain eligible for Spotlight recommendations with transparency indicators.
The line Snapchat is drawing comes down to who, or what, created the underlying video. AI can help a person make something. It cannot make the entire thing and still expect Snapchat’s recommendation system to distribute it.
“As low-quality, repetitive, AI-generated content becomes increasingly common across the internet, we want Spotlight to remain a place where people can discover authentic creativity from real people,” the company wrote in a blog post.
Keeping entirely generated videos out of Spotlight matters on the platform because recommendation is what allow a creator’s work to reach people who do not already follow them. Removing that distribution makes Spotlight far less valuable as a growth channel for automated content farms that can produce synthetic videos at scale.
It also protects a part of Snapchat that has been attracting more creators. Snap said the number of unique people contributing to Spotlight globally has increased by more than 120 percent over the past year.
Exactly how Snapchat will identify wholly AI-generated videos is less clear. The company has not explained what level of human involvement would make a video eligible or how it will distinguish an AI-enhanced recording from a generated video that received a few human edits.
Mashable Trend Report
Snap acknowledged that challenge in its announcement, saying that “no detection system is perfect.”
Social platforms are reconsidering AI slop
Snapchat isn’t the first platform to decide that the flood of repetitive AI content is becoming a problem for its users.
LinkedIn began expanding tools in July that allow members to report posts and comments that “seem like AI slop.” The company is also introducing classifiers intended to reduce low-quality AI content in recommendations and replacing its “enhance your post” writing feature with a more limited proofreading tool.
LinkedIn Chief Product Officer Hari Srinivasan emphasized that the company does not consider all AI-assisted work to be slop. The concern is content that feels automated, generic, or disconnected from the person publishing it.
Substack has taken a transparency-focused approach. On July 21, the newsletter platform introduced an optional AI-detection feature built with Pangram. Readers can scan posts, notes, replies, and comments longer than 100 words to receive an estimate of how much of the text was written by a person or with AI assistance.
TikTok has also put more of the decision in viewers’ hands. The platform began testing a setting in November that lets users increase or decrease the amount of AI-generated content that appears in their For You feeds.
Snapchat’s decision also arrives as Meta imagines a very different future for social media.
In its latest earnings remarks on July 29, Meta said its Muse image and video models would create a “nearly infinite universe of personalized content” across its platforms. That AI-generated material would become another source of recommendations alongside posts from friends and established creators.
Snapchat is making a different bet for Spotlight. As synthetic video becomes easier to produce and harder to distinguish from recorded footage, the platform is reserving its most valuable discovery space for content that begins with a person.
Drawing that line may be easier than enforcing it. Still, Snapchat has made its preference clear: AI can stay behind the scenes. Spotlight belongs to the humans.
The policy does not prevent users from posting AI-generated videos elsewhere on Snapchat. It also does not disqualify every video that involves AI. Creators can continue using Snapchat’s AI tools to edit or enhance their original footage, and those videos will remain eligible for Spotlight recommendations with transparency indicators.
The line Snapchat is drawing comes down to who, or what, created the underlying video. AI can help a person make something. It cannot make the entire thing and still expect Snapchat’s recommendation system to distribute it.
“As low-quality, repetitive, AI-generated content becomes increasingly common across the internet, we want Spotlight to remain a place where people can discover authentic creativity from real people,” the company wrote in a blog post.
Keeping entirely generated videos out of Spotlight matters on the platform because recommendation is what allow a creator’s work to reach people who do not already follow them. Removing that distribution makes Spotlight far less valuable as a growth channel for automated content farms that can produce synthetic videos at scale.
It also protects a part of Snapchat that has been attracting more creators. Snap said the number of unique people contributing to Spotlight globally has increased by more than 120 percent over the past year.
Exactly how Snapchat will identify wholly AI-generated videos is less clear. The company has not explained what level of human involvement would make a video eligible or how it will distinguish an AI-enhanced recording from a generated video that received a few human edits.
Mashable Trend Report
Snap acknowledged that challenge in its announcement, saying that “no detection system is perfect.”
Social platforms are reconsidering AI slop
Snapchat isn’t the first platform to decide that the flood of repetitive AI content is becoming a problem for its users.
LinkedIn began expanding tools in July that allow members to report posts and comments that “seem like AI slop.” The company is also introducing classifiers intended to reduce low-quality AI content in recommendations and replacing its “enhance your post” writing feature with a more limited proofreading tool.
LinkedIn Chief Product Officer Hari Srinivasan emphasized that the company does not consider all AI-assisted work to be slop. The concern is content that feels automated, generic, or disconnected from the person publishing it.
Substack has taken a transparency-focused approach. On July 21, the newsletter platform introduced an optional AI-detection feature built with Pangram. Readers can scan posts, notes, replies, and comments longer than 100 words to receive an estimate of how much of the text was written by a person or with AI assistance.
TikTok has also put more of the decision in viewers’ hands. The platform began testing a setting in November that lets users increase or decrease the amount of AI-generated content that appears in their For You feeds.
Snapchat’s decision also arrives as Meta imagines a very different future for social media.
In its latest earnings remarks on July 29, Meta said its Muse image and video models would create a “nearly infinite universe of personalized content” across its platforms. That AI-generated material would become another source of recommendations alongside posts from friends and established creators.
Snapchat is making a different bet for Spotlight. As synthetic video becomes easier to produce and harder to distinguish from recorded footage, the platform is reserving its most valuable discovery space for content that begins with a person.
Drawing that line may be easier than enforcing it. Still, Snapchat has made its preference clear: AI can stay behind the scenes. Spotlight belongs to the humans.
The policy does not prevent users from posting AI-generated videos elsewhere on Snapchat. It also does not disqualify every video that involves AI. Creators can continue using Snapchat’s AI tools to edit or enhance their original footage, and those videos will remain eligible for Spotlight recommendations with transparency indicators.
The line Snapchat is drawing comes down to who, or what, created the underlying video. AI can help a person make something. It cannot make the entire thing and still expect Snapchat’s recommendation system to distribute it.
“As low-quality, repetitive, AI-generated content becomes increasingly common across the internet, we want Spotlight to remain a place where people can discover authentic creativity from real people,” the company wrote in a blog post.
Keeping entirely generated videos out of Spotlight matters on the platform because recommendation is what allow a creator’s work to reach people who do not already follow them. Removing that distribution makes Spotlight far less valuable as a growth channel for automated content farms that can produce synthetic videos at scale.
It also protects a part of Snapchat that has been attracting more creators. Snap said the number of unique people contributing to Spotlight globally has increased by more than 120 percent over the past year.
Exactly how Snapchat will identify wholly AI-generated videos is less clear. The company has not explained what level of human involvement would make a video eligible or how it will distinguish an AI-enhanced recording from a generated video that received a few human edits.
Mashable Trend Report
Snap acknowledged that challenge in its announcement, saying that “no detection system is perfect.”
Social platforms are reconsidering AI slop
Snapchat isn’t the first platform to decide that the flood of repetitive AI content is becoming a problem for its users.
LinkedIn began expanding tools in July that allow members to report posts and comments that “seem like AI slop.” The company is also introducing classifiers intended to reduce low-quality AI content in recommendations and replacing its “enhance your post” writing feature with a more limited proofreading tool.
LinkedIn Chief Product Officer Hari Srinivasan emphasized that the company does not consider all AI-assisted work to be slop. The concern is content that feels automated, generic, or disconnected from the person publishing it.
Substack has taken a transparency-focused approach. On July 21, the newsletter platform introduced an optional AI-detection feature built with Pangram. Readers can scan posts, notes, replies, and comments longer than 100 words to receive an estimate of how much of the text was written by a person or with AI assistance.
TikTok has also put more of the decision in viewers’ hands. The platform began testing a setting in November that lets users increase or decrease the amount of AI-generated content that appears in their For You feeds.
Snapchat’s decision also arrives as Meta imagines a very different future for social media.
In its latest earnings remarks on July 29, Meta said its Muse image and video models would create a “nearly infinite universe of personalized content” across its platforms. That AI-generated material would become another source of recommendations alongside posts from friends and established creators.
Snapchat is making a different bet for Spotlight. As synthetic video becomes easier to produce and harder to distinguish from recorded footage, the platform is reserving its most valuable discovery space for content that begins with a person.
Drawing that line may be easier than enforcing it. Still, Snapchat has made its preference clear: AI can stay behind the scenes. Spotlight belongs to the humans.
The sale includes the 10-inch Skylight Calendar for $119.99 ($50 off), the 15-inch Skylight Calendar 2 for $259.99 ($20 off), and the 27-inch Skylight Calendar Max for $479.99 ($90 off). The 10-inch model takes up the least amount of space, though the newer, larger 15-inch Calendar 2 features faster performance, a brighter display, and swappable magnetic frames. The 27-inch Calendar Max, meanwhile, offers the sharpest and largest screen and must be mounted to the wall (the other models can stand on a table or be mounted), making it the easiest option for large families to view from across the room.
Regardless of which model you choose, every Skylight Calendar includes the same set of organizational features. Each member of your household can have their own color-coded profile, and each can sync events from Google, Outlook, Apple, Cozi, or Yahoo calendars. You can also create shared lists for groceries, chores, and other to-dos that everyone can access from the calendar or the companion mobile app, and even send your grocery list to Instacart with a couple of taps. Built-in weather forecasts also can help you plan around upcoming events, and you can also share calendar access with family members and trusted contacts.
You get even more perks if you subscribe to the $79 per year Plus Plan (the first month of the service is free to try). Skylight uses AI to automatically turn emails, photos, flyers, and spreadsheets into calendar entries. It also adds meal planning, tools for assigning and rewarding completed chores, and a mode that displays your photos like a digital picture frame.
The sale includes the 10-inch Skylight Calendar for $119.99 ($50 off), the 15-inch Skylight Calendar 2 for $259.99 ($20 off), and the 27-inch Skylight Calendar Max for $479.99 ($90 off). The 10-inch model takes up the least amount of space, though the newer, larger 15-inch Calendar 2 features faster performance, a brighter display, and swappable magnetic frames. The 27-inch Calendar Max, meanwhile, offers the sharpest and largest screen and must be mounted to the wall (the other models can stand on a table or be mounted), making it the easiest option for large families to view from across the room.
Regardless of which model you choose, every Skylight Calendar includes the same set of organizational features. Each member of your household can have their own color-coded profile, and each can sync events from Google, Outlook, Apple, Cozi, or Yahoo calendars. You can also create shared lists for groceries, chores, and other to-dos that everyone can access from the calendar or the companion mobile app, and even send your grocery list to Instacart with a couple of taps. Built-in weather forecasts also can help you plan around upcoming events, and you can also share calendar access with family members and trusted contacts.
You get even more perks if you subscribe to the $79 per year Plus Plan (the first month of the service is free to try). Skylight uses AI to automatically turn emails, photos, flyers, and spreadsheets into calendar entries. It also adds meal planning, tools for assigning and rewarding completed chores, and a mode that displays your photos like a digital picture frame.
#Skylights #smart #calendars #backtoschool #saleDeals,Gadgets,Smart Home,Tech,Verge Shopping">Skylight’s smart calendars are up to $90 off during its back-to-school sale
The start of a new school year can feel hectic, as parents juggle their kids’ classes, extracurriculars and sports on top of work, appointments, and other responsibilities. It’s easy for things to slip through the cracks, but Skylight’s shared smart calendars can help keep everyone on track, and from August 2nd through August 9th they’re up to $90 off.
The sale includes the 10-inch Skylight Calendar for $119.99 ($50 off), the 15-inch Skylight Calendar 2 for $259.99 ($20 off), and the 27-inch Skylight Calendar Max for $479.99 ($90 off). The 10-inch model takes up the least amount of space, though the newer, larger 15-inch Calendar 2 features faster performance, a brighter display, and swappable magnetic frames. The 27-inch Calendar Max, meanwhile, offers the sharpest and largest screen and must be mounted to the wall (the other models can stand on a table or be mounted), making it the easiest option for large families to view from across the room.
Regardless of which model you choose, every Skylight Calendar includes the same set of organizational features. Each member of your household can have their own color-coded profile, and each can sync events from Google, Outlook, Apple, Cozi, or Yahoo calendars. You can also create shared lists for groceries, chores, and other to-dos that everyone can access from the calendar or the companion mobile app, and even send your grocery list to Instacart with a couple of taps. Built-in weather forecasts also can help you plan around upcoming events, and you can also share calendar access with family members and trusted contacts.
You get even more perks if you subscribe to the $79 per year Plus Plan (the first month of the service is free to try). Skylight uses AI to automatically turn emails, photos, flyers, and spreadsheets into calendar entries. It also adds meal planning, tools for assigning and rewarding completed chores, and a mode that displays your photos like a digital picture frame.
Like all hacker houses, Lift House is part startup workspace, part co-living space. The house is named after both its lift — that is, its elevator — and its mission to uplift tech founders, Aldean said. It’s one of the very few co-living hacker houses to exist in London (compared to San Francisco, where dozens — if not hundreds — are scattered around the city at any given time).
Lift House is a bet that U.K. founders can build successful companies without mimicking the over-the-top hustle culture of Silicon Valley.
Founders have described stories of San Francisco hacker houses illegally running in warehouses, throwing full-on galas, or setting up in a tent or espousing punishing, 72-hour sprints typical of the “996” work culture.
“I don’t expect the performative and over-the-top events will be a thing here,” Aldean said, and pointed to one of London’s most successful AI companies, DeepMind. “They’ve won Nobel prizes and built frontier innovation without any song and dance.”
Instead, Lift House is part of a trend called “Londonmaxxing,” in which founders attempt to optimize everything the London tech scene offers. The London ecosystem feels less showy and less startup bro-y than San Francisco, but its founders share similar ambitions: success, wealth, and market domination.
London AI startups have raised $12 billion so far in 2026, out of $14.7 billion raised by all London startups, according to Dealroom. 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 from AI has boosted the morale of the U.K. tech scene, inspiring a new generation of founders, like those in the Lift House, to take big swings.
LIFT TourImage Credits:TechCrunch
Journaling vs. demo day
The timeline for living on Lift House is flexible — some people have stayed for a month; others intend to stay for at least six months. They buy their own groceries, Aldean said, although they often cook together and share ingredients. Cleaning is split among the group. Everyone declined to share information about the rent they pay.
The residents of Lift House aim for a balanced approach toward ambition, each one of them tells me — an almost unheard-of idea by San Francisco startup standards.
On Sundays, the group will journal together, a practice introduced by David Amor, 28, who runs a brain coaching and training company, helping founders and business leaders understand more about their brain and how it can help optimize business performance. The idea of journaling is to help everyone track how much time they spent in nature that week, how well they ate, and how much they moved their bodies.
“I’m eating healthier, working out more, and sleeping more,” Luke, 27, who runs an AI-marketing company, said about living in the house. “I always make sure to have lunch now, which is something that is simple, but I wasn’t doing before I lived here.” (Luke asked that his last name be withheld.)
Tuesdays evenings are for volleyball, where the founders play on the house team in a local league.
After dinner on other evenings, Wan Ying L, 25, who just left an AI startup and is working on a new idea, might play the piano in the living room. Sometimes the group plays Catan or visits art exhibitions together.
Presence Plumb, 25, is a tech strategist. She likes to host rooftop dinner parties, serving dishes that reflect the different nationalities in the house — from Iraqi to Spanish — while invited founders, researchers, investors, and operators chat about tech trends and investments.
“It’s a bit calmer, balanced, authentic in a way,” she said of people in the London ecosystem. “They don’t want too much of that only startup tech bro vibe. They want a bit of balance.”
Each founder follows their own schedules for a typical workday. Amor, for example, is up by 8 a.m. and gives himself exactly 30 seconds after waking up before jumping into his morning work. “I have a clear objective of ‘this is what I want to do in the first half of the day, when there’s no distractions.’” After his morning work routine, he takes a cold shower, “because it increases your dopamine by 250% and that gives me that motivation, that spark,” he said.
Wan playing the pianoImage Credits:TechCrunch
Luke, meanwhile, is up at around 8:30. His co-founder, Varun, 27 (who asked that his last name be withheld), typically travels to the Lift House to co-work, and the duo starts work at around 9 a.m. with a team call.
Aldean rarely wakes before 10 a.m. unless something big is happening, like a “crazy angel [investor] call,” he said.
When asked what makes this house uniquely British rather than a wellness-focused Silicon Valley founder house, Aldean joked: “Well, we drink tea together like Brits, and in SF folks just drink filtered coffee.”
More seriously, he spoke of how British founders face a different kind of pressure than those in the U.S. They must navigate a cultural aversion to risk, an inclination toward humility, and a shame associated with failure. Instead of forgoing sleep for hustle and grind, they deal with what they call the “tall poppy syndrome,” when the media builds one up only to ruthlessly tear them down should they become too successful, investors and founders say. It makes some founders in the ecosystem wary of displaying too many wins.
Still, Luke said London is a strong choice for an early-stage founder: There’s a good network, ample early capital opportunities, and an option for a life outside of tech. In many ways, it is much more like New York culturally for founders than in San Francisco.
“London is so diverse that if you look properly enough, you’ll always find something fun to get involved with,” Amor added, “whether that’s a founder-run club, wellness events, [or going] to jazz nights.”
Luke and Varun write marketing terms on the whiteboard. They stand for top of funnel (TOFU), middle of funnel (MOFU), and bottom of funnel (BOFU).Image Credits:TechCrunch
Luke and Varun largely avoided venture capital funding by taking advantage of the U.K. government’s SEIS/EIS, which is supposed to help attract more angel investments into local startups. “There’s people who will pay basically the same rate of tax if they give us the money versus if they pay income tax,” Luke explained as another reason he liked starting out in London.
Aldean also feels the London ecosystem is less cutthroat than the Valley. He recalls his days living in a hacker house in the Bay — everyone’s desk had to face the wall, and it was heads-down, product-building. He felt the ecosystem, at times, was too willing to gossip, which is apparently done quite differently in the U.K.
“There’s nothing like ‘oh my god did you hear that the CTO just, like, did this,’” Aldean said. “It’s like you’re always worried,” he said, that someone would spread negative stories, especially if it benefited them.
Aldean also thinks London startups, more than Silicon Valley ones, sell into slow-moving large corporations rather than to each other, meaning one could build without having to kiss up or posture to get their peers to like them.
To the selling point, Varun and Luke mentioned another difference between the U.S. and U.K. ecosystem. “It’s a relatively fleeting market,” Varun said of the U.S. “You get quick wins. Here, it’s hard to close a customer, but if they close, they stay with you longer.”
Coming to America
Eventually, though, the road for many U.K. startups goes straight to the U.S.
In the U.K., founders have access to affordable top talent from universities like Oxbridge and a time zone that makes it easier to work with the rest of Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and parts of North America. In the U.S., however, they have access to the world’s largest economy and, most importantly, a lot of investors willing to write large checks, from pre-seed to growth stages.
“It’s almost like a factory line in a way,” Varun said. “You start here, and then you expand there or vice versa.”
American investors are also playing a role in luring British talent away from the country. I told the Lift House residents about one startup founder who said a top investor wouldn’t even back the company unless she relocated to the U.S. She ended up doing so, though decided to keep her family based in the U.K. to raise her children.
“We had an investor in Miami who said the same thing,” Luke said of an investor trying to get him and Varun to move to the U.S. “It’s quite a common practice.” He and Varun have already begun their U.S. expansion, and despite loving London, the duo hasn’t ruled out moving to the U.S. to be closer to their customers.
David, who has a brain coaching startup, is the one who introduced journaling into the household. Image Credits:TechCrunch
That’s the tension bubbling beneath not just the U.K.’s tech ecosystem but most of Europe’s. “I work with a lot of people trying to support the European ecosystem more,” Plumb said.
Yet, founders “talk about London; everyone is bullish on the country until they get the opportunity to leave,” Aldean added.
The Lift House lease has about a year left, and there is sentiment in the house to keep it going for as long as they can. After all, there aren’t too many in London, though the city sees many short-term gatherings, like the Solana Hacker House meet-up series. Some of the more public co-living hacker houses are part of a global chain, like the San Francisco-based network The Residency, which expanded into London last year, and BaseJump, which is announcing a London version of its hacker house program soon.
In 2024, two founders tried the opposite version of the Lift House called “The London Founder House,” which Sifted covered under the headline “The people here don’t want work-life balance.” That home is noted as London’s first-ever hacker house, and though it wound down last year, it left an influence through its concept, events, and connected players around the ecosystem. To even be considered for the London Founder House, one had to have raised at least half a million dollars.
For Lift House, prospective residents need to show a hobby outside their companies and an interest in fitness. It’s the same pitch many in the Londonmaxxing ecosystem are using to keep people from leaving: That here one can have it all.
“The culture is to build something that lasts,” Aldean said, “not necessarily burn out chasing a flash.”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
Like all hacker houses, Lift House is part startup workspace, part co-living space. The house is named after both its lift — that is, its elevator — and its mission to uplift tech founders, Aldean said. It’s one of the very few co-living hacker houses to exist in London (compared to San Francisco, where dozens — if not hundreds — are scattered around the city at any given time).
Lift House is a bet that U.K. founders can build successful companies without mimicking the over-the-top hustle culture of Silicon Valley.
Founders have described stories of San Francisco hacker houses illegally running in warehouses, throwing full-on galas, or setting up in a tent or espousing punishing, 72-hour sprints typical of the “996” work culture.
“I don’t expect the performative and over-the-top events will be a thing here,” Aldean said, and pointed to one of London’s most successful AI companies, DeepMind. “They’ve won Nobel prizes and built frontier innovation without any song and dance.”
Instead, Lift House is part of a trend called “Londonmaxxing,” in which founders attempt to optimize everything the London tech scene offers. The London ecosystem feels less showy and less startup bro-y than San Francisco, but its founders share similar ambitions: success, wealth, and market domination.
London AI startups have raised $12 billion so far in 2026, out of $14.7 billion raised by all London startups, according to Dealroom. 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 from AI has boosted the morale of the U.K. tech scene, inspiring a new generation of founders, like those in the Lift House, to take big swings.
LIFT TourImage Credits:TechCrunch
Journaling vs. demo day
The timeline for living on Lift House is flexible — some people have stayed for a month; others intend to stay for at least six months. They buy their own groceries, Aldean said, although they often cook together and share ingredients. Cleaning is split among the group. Everyone declined to share information about the rent they pay.
The residents of Lift House aim for a balanced approach toward ambition, each one of them tells me — an almost unheard-of idea by San Francisco startup standards.
On Sundays, the group will journal together, a practice introduced by David Amor, 28, who runs a brain coaching and training company, helping founders and business leaders understand more about their brain and how it can help optimize business performance. The idea of journaling is to help everyone track how much time they spent in nature that week, how well they ate, and how much they moved their bodies.
“I’m eating healthier, working out more, and sleeping more,” Luke, 27, who runs an AI-marketing company, said about living in the house. “I always make sure to have lunch now, which is something that is simple, but I wasn’t doing before I lived here.” (Luke asked that his last name be withheld.)
Tuesdays evenings are for volleyball, where the founders play on the house team in a local league.
After dinner on other evenings, Wan Ying L, 25, who just left an AI startup and is working on a new idea, might play the piano in the living room. Sometimes the group plays Catan or visits art exhibitions together.
Presence Plumb, 25, is a tech strategist. She likes to host rooftop dinner parties, serving dishes that reflect the different nationalities in the house — from Iraqi to Spanish — while invited founders, researchers, investors, and operators chat about tech trends and investments.
“It’s a bit calmer, balanced, authentic in a way,” she said of people in the London ecosystem. “They don’t want too much of that only startup tech bro vibe. They want a bit of balance.”
Each founder follows their own schedules for a typical workday. Amor, for example, is up by 8 a.m. and gives himself exactly 30 seconds after waking up before jumping into his morning work. “I have a clear objective of ‘this is what I want to do in the first half of the day, when there’s no distractions.’” After his morning work routine, he takes a cold shower, “because it increases your dopamine by 250% and that gives me that motivation, that spark,” he said.
Wan playing the pianoImage Credits:TechCrunch
Luke, meanwhile, is up at around 8:30. His co-founder, Varun, 27 (who asked that his last name be withheld), typically travels to the Lift House to co-work, and the duo starts work at around 9 a.m. with a team call.
Aldean rarely wakes before 10 a.m. unless something big is happening, like a “crazy angel [investor] call,” he said.
When asked what makes this house uniquely British rather than a wellness-focused Silicon Valley founder house, Aldean joked: “Well, we drink tea together like Brits, and in SF folks just drink filtered coffee.”
More seriously, he spoke of how British founders face a different kind of pressure than those in the U.S. They must navigate a cultural aversion to risk, an inclination toward humility, and a shame associated with failure. Instead of forgoing sleep for hustle and grind, they deal with what they call the “tall poppy syndrome,” when the media builds one up only to ruthlessly tear them down should they become too successful, investors and founders say. It makes some founders in the ecosystem wary of displaying too many wins.
Still, Luke said London is a strong choice for an early-stage founder: There’s a good network, ample early capital opportunities, and an option for a life outside of tech. In many ways, it is much more like New York culturally for founders than in San Francisco.
“London is so diverse that if you look properly enough, you’ll always find something fun to get involved with,” Amor added, “whether that’s a founder-run club, wellness events, [or going] to jazz nights.”
Luke and Varun write marketing terms on the whiteboard. They stand for top of funnel (TOFU), middle of funnel (MOFU), and bottom of funnel (BOFU).Image Credits:TechCrunch
Luke and Varun largely avoided venture capital funding by taking advantage of the U.K. government’s SEIS/EIS, which is supposed to help attract more angel investments into local startups. “There’s people who will pay basically the same rate of tax if they give us the money versus if they pay income tax,” Luke explained as another reason he liked starting out in London.
Aldean also feels the London ecosystem is less cutthroat than the Valley. He recalls his days living in a hacker house in the Bay — everyone’s desk had to face the wall, and it was heads-down, product-building. He felt the ecosystem, at times, was too willing to gossip, which is apparently done quite differently in the U.K.
“There’s nothing like ‘oh my god did you hear that the CTO just, like, did this,’” Aldean said. “It’s like you’re always worried,” he said, that someone would spread negative stories, especially if it benefited them.
Aldean also thinks London startups, more than Silicon Valley ones, sell into slow-moving large corporations rather than to each other, meaning one could build without having to kiss up or posture to get their peers to like them.
To the selling point, Varun and Luke mentioned another difference between the U.S. and U.K. ecosystem. “It’s a relatively fleeting market,” Varun said of the U.S. “You get quick wins. Here, it’s hard to close a customer, but if they close, they stay with you longer.”
Coming to America
Eventually, though, the road for many U.K. startups goes straight to the U.S.
In the U.K., founders have access to affordable top talent from universities like Oxbridge and a time zone that makes it easier to work with the rest of Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and parts of North America. In the U.S., however, they have access to the world’s largest economy and, most importantly, a lot of investors willing to write large checks, from pre-seed to growth stages.
“It’s almost like a factory line in a way,” Varun said. “You start here, and then you expand there or vice versa.”
American investors are also playing a role in luring British talent away from the country. I told the Lift House residents about one startup founder who said a top investor wouldn’t even back the company unless she relocated to the U.S. She ended up doing so, though decided to keep her family based in the U.K. to raise her children.
“We had an investor in Miami who said the same thing,” Luke said of an investor trying to get him and Varun to move to the U.S. “It’s quite a common practice.” He and Varun have already begun their U.S. expansion, and despite loving London, the duo hasn’t ruled out moving to the U.S. to be closer to their customers.
David, who has a brain coaching startup, is the one who introduced journaling into the household. Image Credits:TechCrunch
That’s the tension bubbling beneath not just the U.K.’s tech ecosystem but most of Europe’s. “I work with a lot of people trying to support the European ecosystem more,” Plumb said.
Yet, founders “talk about London; everyone is bullish on the country until they get the opportunity to leave,” Aldean added.
The Lift House lease has about a year left, and there is sentiment in the house to keep it going for as long as they can. After all, there aren’t too many in London, though the city sees many short-term gatherings, like the Solana Hacker House meet-up series. Some of the more public co-living hacker houses are part of a global chain, like the San Francisco-based network The Residency, which expanded into London last year, and BaseJump, which is announcing a London version of its hacker house program soon.
In 2024, two founders tried the opposite version of the Lift House called “The London Founder House,” which Sifted covered under the headline “The people here don’t want work-life balance.” That home is noted as London’s first-ever hacker house, and though it wound down last year, it left an influence through its concept, events, and connected players around the ecosystem. To even be considered for the London Founder House, one had to have raised at least half a million dollars.
For Lift House, prospective residents need to show a hobby outside their companies and an interest in fitness. It’s the same pitch many in the Londonmaxxing ecosystem are using to keep people from leaving: That here one can have it all.
“The culture is to build something that lasts,” Aldean said, “not necessarily burn out chasing a flash.”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
#London #hacker #house #stand #founder #burnout #TechCrunchLondon,UK">Inside the London hacker house taking a stand against founder burnout | TechCrunch
Six twentysomethings in East London have built what they say is the anti-San Francisco hacker house. The goal is a “holistic improvement in life,” rather than “12 weeks, Demo Day is coming,” Rowan Aldean, 26, explained.
Intrigued, I spent an afternoon visiting the house, meeting its residents, and doing a vibe check. I arrived after Aldean escorted me through the clean sidewalks of a new East London development to where the six-story building stood facing the water.
The house is called the London Island Founder House — or “Lift House” — and Aldean and his wife, Zahraa, 22, an upcoming pharmaceutical research PhD candidate, have lived there since May, just a few months after it officially launched in March. Aldean sold his previous company last year for millions, he said, 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, part co-living space. The house is named after both its lift — that is, its elevator — and its mission to uplift tech founders, Aldean said. It’s one of the very few co-living hacker houses to exist in London (compared to San Francisco, where dozens — if not hundreds — are scattered around the city at any given time).
Lift House is a bet that U.K. founders can build successful companies without mimicking the over-the-top hustle culture of Silicon Valley.
Founders have described stories of San Francisco hacker houses illegally running in warehouses, throwing full-on galas, or setting up in a tent or espousing punishing, 72-hour sprints typical of the “996” work culture.
“I don’t expect the performative and over-the-top events will be a thing here,” Aldean said, and pointed to one of London’s most successful AI companies, DeepMind. “They’ve won Nobel prizes and built frontier innovation without any song and dance.”
Instead, Lift House is part of a trend called “Londonmaxxing,” in which founders attempt to optimize everything the London tech scene offers. The London ecosystem feels less showy and less startup bro-y than San Francisco, but its founders share similar ambitions: success, wealth, and market domination.
London AI startups have raised $12 billion so far in 2026, out of $14.7 billion raised by all London startups, according to Dealroom. 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 from AI has boosted the morale of the U.K. tech scene, inspiring a new generation of founders, like those in the Lift House, to take big swings.
LIFT TourImage Credits:TechCrunch
Journaling vs. demo day
The timeline for living on Lift House is flexible — some people have stayed for a month; others intend to stay for at least six months. They buy their own groceries, Aldean said, although they often cook together and share ingredients. Cleaning is split among the group. Everyone declined to share information about the rent they pay.
The residents of Lift House aim for a balanced approach toward ambition, each one of them tells me — an almost unheard-of idea by San Francisco startup standards.
On Sundays, the group will journal together, a practice introduced by David Amor, 28, who runs a brain coaching and training company, helping founders and business leaders understand more about their brain and how it can help optimize business performance. The idea of journaling is to help everyone track how much time they spent in nature that week, how well they ate, and how much they moved their bodies.
“I’m eating healthier, working out more, and sleeping more,” Luke, 27, who runs an AI-marketing company, said about living in the house. “I always make sure to have lunch now, which is something that is simple, but I wasn’t doing before I lived here.” (Luke asked that his last name be withheld.)
Tuesdays evenings are for volleyball, where the founders play on the house team in a local league.
After dinner on other evenings, Wan Ying L, 25, who just left an AI startup and is working on a new idea, might play the piano in the living room. Sometimes the group plays Catan or visits art exhibitions together.
Presence Plumb, 25, is a tech strategist. She likes to host rooftop dinner parties, serving dishes that reflect the different nationalities in the house — from Iraqi to Spanish — while invited founders, researchers, investors, and operators chat about tech trends and investments.
“It’s a bit calmer, balanced, authentic in a way,” she said of people in the London ecosystem. “They don’t want too much of that only startup tech bro vibe. They want a bit of balance.”
Each founder follows their own schedules for a typical workday. Amor, for example, is up by 8 a.m. and gives himself exactly 30 seconds after waking up before jumping into his morning work. “I have a clear objective of ‘this is what I want to do in the first half of the day, when there’s no distractions.’” After his morning work routine, he takes a cold shower, “because it increases your dopamine by 250% and that gives me that motivation, that spark,” he said.
Wan playing the pianoImage Credits:TechCrunch
Luke, meanwhile, is up at around 8:30. His co-founder, Varun, 27 (who asked that his last name be withheld), typically travels to the Lift House to co-work, and the duo starts work at around 9 a.m. with a team call.
Aldean rarely wakes before 10 a.m. unless something big is happening, like a “crazy angel [investor] call,” he said.
When asked what makes this house uniquely British rather than a wellness-focused Silicon Valley founder house, Aldean joked: “Well, we drink tea together like Brits, and in SF folks just drink filtered coffee.”
More seriously, he spoke of how British founders face a different kind of pressure than those in the U.S. They must navigate a cultural aversion to risk, an inclination toward humility, and a shame associated with failure. Instead of forgoing sleep for hustle and grind, they deal with what they call the “tall poppy syndrome,” when the media builds one up only to ruthlessly tear them down should they become too successful, investors and founders say. It makes some founders in the ecosystem wary of displaying too many wins.
Still, Luke said London is a strong choice for an early-stage founder: There’s a good network, ample early capital opportunities, and an option for a life outside of tech. In many ways, it is much more like New York culturally for founders than in San Francisco.
“London is so diverse that if you look properly enough, you’ll always find something fun to get involved with,” Amor added, “whether that’s a founder-run club, wellness events, [or going] to jazz nights.”
Luke and Varun write marketing terms on the whiteboard. They stand for top of funnel (TOFU), middle of funnel (MOFU), and bottom of funnel (BOFU).Image Credits:TechCrunch
Luke and Varun largely avoided venture capital funding by taking advantage of the U.K. government’s SEIS/EIS, which is supposed to help attract more angel investments into local startups. “There’s people who will pay basically the same rate of tax if they give us the money versus if they pay income tax,” Luke explained as another reason he liked starting out in London.
Aldean also feels the London ecosystem is less cutthroat than the Valley. He recalls his days living in a hacker house in the Bay — everyone’s desk had to face the wall, and it was heads-down, product-building. He felt the ecosystem, at times, was too willing to gossip, which is apparently done quite differently in the U.K.
“There’s nothing like ‘oh my god did you hear that the CTO just, like, did this,’” Aldean said. “It’s like you’re always worried,” he said, that someone would spread negative stories, especially if it benefited them.
Aldean also thinks London startups, more than Silicon Valley ones, sell into slow-moving large corporations rather than to each other, meaning one could build without having to kiss up or posture to get their peers to like them.
To the selling point, Varun and Luke mentioned another difference between the U.S. and U.K. ecosystem. “It’s a relatively fleeting market,” Varun said of the U.S. “You get quick wins. Here, it’s hard to close a customer, but if they close, they stay with you longer.”
Coming to America
Eventually, though, the road for many U.K. startups goes straight to the U.S.
In the U.K., founders have access to affordable top talent from universities like Oxbridge and a time zone that makes it easier to work with the rest of Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and parts of North America. In the U.S., however, they have access to the world’s largest economy and, most importantly, a lot of investors willing to write large checks, from pre-seed to growth stages.
“It’s almost like a factory line in a way,” Varun said. “You start here, and then you expand there or vice versa.”
American investors are also playing a role in luring British talent away from the country. I told the Lift House residents about one startup founder who said a top investor wouldn’t even back the company unless she relocated to the U.S. She ended up doing so, though decided to keep her family based in the U.K. to raise her children.
“We had an investor in Miami who said the same thing,” Luke said of an investor trying to get him and Varun to move to the U.S. “It’s quite a common practice.” He and Varun have already begun their U.S. expansion, and despite loving London, the duo hasn’t ruled out moving to the U.S. to be closer to their customers.
David, who has a brain coaching startup, is the one who introduced journaling into the household. Image Credits:TechCrunch
That’s the tension bubbling beneath not just the U.K.’s tech ecosystem but most of Europe’s. “I work with a lot of people trying to support the European ecosystem more,” Plumb said.
Yet, founders “talk about London; everyone is bullish on the country until they get the opportunity to leave,” Aldean added.
The Lift House lease has about a year left, and there is sentiment in the house to keep it going for as long as they can. After all, there aren’t too many in London, though the city sees many short-term gatherings, like the Solana Hacker House meet-up series. Some of the more public co-living hacker houses are part of a global chain, like the San Francisco-based network The Residency, which expanded into London last year, and BaseJump, which is announcing a London version of its hacker house program soon.
In 2024, two founders tried the opposite version of the Lift House called “The London Founder House,” which Sifted covered under the headline “The people here don’t want work-life balance.” That home is noted as London’s first-ever hacker house, and though it wound down last year, it left an influence through its concept, events, and connected players around the ecosystem. To even be considered for the London Founder House, one had to have raised at least half a million dollars.
For Lift House, prospective residents need to show a hobby outside their companies and an interest in fitness. It’s the same pitch many in the Londonmaxxing ecosystem are using to keep people from leaving: That here one can have it all.
“The culture is to build something that lasts,” Aldean said, “not necessarily burn out chasing a flash.”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
-SOURCE-Scott-Gilbertson.jpg)
![Inside the London hacker house taking a stand against founder burnout | TechCrunch
Six twentysomethings in East London have built what they say is the anti-San Francisco hacker house. The goal is a “holistic improvement in life,” rather than “12 weeks, Demo Day is coming,” Rowan Aldean, 26, explained.
Intrigued, I spent an afternoon visiting the house, meeting its residents, and doing a vibe check. I arrived after Aldean escorted me through the clean sidewalks of a new East London development to where the six-story building stood facing the water.
The house is called the London Island Founder House — or “Lift House” — and Aldean and his wife, Zahraa, 22, an upcoming pharmaceutical research PhD candidate, have lived there since May, just a few months after it officially launched in March. Aldean sold his previous company last year for millions, he said, 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, part co-living space. The house is named after both its lift — that is, its elevator — and its mission to uplift tech founders, Aldean said. It’s one of the very few co-living hacker houses to exist in London (compared to San Francisco, where dozens — if not hundreds — are scattered around the city at any given time).
Lift House is a bet that U.K. founders can build successful companies without mimicking the over-the-top hustle culture of Silicon Valley.
Founders have described stories of San Francisco hacker houses illegally running in warehouses, throwing full-on galas, or setting up in a tent or espousing punishing, 72-hour sprints typical of the “996” work culture.
“I don’t expect the performative and over-the-top events will be a thing here,” Aldean said, and pointed to one of London’s most successful AI companies, DeepMind. “They’ve won Nobel prizes and built frontier innovation without any song and dance.”
Instead, Lift House is part of a trend called “Londonmaxxing,” in which founders attempt to optimize everything the London tech scene offers. The London ecosystem feels less showy and less startup bro-y than San Francisco, but its founders share similar ambitions: success, wealth, and market domination. London AI startups have raised billion so far in 2026, out of .7 billion raised by all London startups, according to Dealroom. Six companies have raised more than 0 million: Wayve, Superintelligence, ElevenLabs, Recursive, Ineffable Intelligence, and Isomorphic Labs, the latter three of which were founded by DeepMind alumni. The excitement from AI has boosted the morale of the U.K. tech scene, inspiring a new generation of founders, like those in the Lift House, to take big swings.
LIFT TourImage Credits:TechCrunch
Journaling vs. demo day
The timeline for living on Lift House is flexible — some people have stayed for a month; others intend to stay for at least six months. They buy their own groceries, Aldean said, although they often cook together and share ingredients. Cleaning is split among the group. Everyone declined to share information about the rent they pay.
The residents of Lift House aim for a balanced approach toward ambition, each one of them tells me — an almost unheard-of idea by San Francisco startup standards.
On Sundays, the group will journal together, a practice introduced by David Amor, 28, who runs a brain coaching and training company, helping founders and business leaders understand more about their brain and how it can help optimize business performance. The idea of journaling is to help everyone track how much time they spent in nature that week, how well they ate, and how much they moved their bodies.
“I’m eating healthier, working out more, and sleeping more,” Luke, 27, who runs an AI-marketing company, said about living in the house. “I always make sure to have lunch now, which is something that is simple, but I wasn’t doing before I lived here.” (Luke asked that his last name be withheld.) Tuesdays evenings are for volleyball, where the founders play on the house team in a local league.
After dinner on other evenings, Wan Ying L, 25, who just left an AI startup and is working on a new idea, might play the piano in the living room. Sometimes the group plays Catan or visits art exhibitions together.
Presence Plumb, 25, is a tech strategist. She likes to host rooftop dinner parties, serving dishes that reflect the different nationalities in the house — from Iraqi to Spanish — while invited founders, researchers, investors, and operators chat about tech trends and investments.
“It’s a bit calmer, balanced, authentic in a way,” she said of people in the London ecosystem. “They don’t want too much of that only startup tech bro vibe. They want a bit of balance.”
Each founder follows their own schedules for a typical workday. Amor, for example, is up by 8 a.m. and gives himself exactly 30 seconds after waking up before jumping into his morning work. “I have a clear objective of ‘this is what I want to do in the first half of the day, when there’s no distractions.’” After his morning work routine, he takes a cold shower, “because it increases your dopamine by 250% and that gives me that motivation, that spark,” he said.
Wan playing the pianoImage Credits:TechCrunch
Luke, meanwhile, is up at around 8:30. His co-founder, Varun, 27 (who asked that his last name be withheld), typically travels to the Lift House to co-work, and the duo starts work at around 9 a.m. with a team call.
Aldean rarely wakes before 10 a.m. unless something big is happening, like a “crazy angel [investor] call,” he said. When asked what makes this house uniquely British rather than a wellness-focused Silicon Valley founder house, Aldean joked: “Well, we drink tea together like Brits, and in SF folks just drink filtered coffee.” More seriously, he spoke of how British founders face a different kind of pressure than those in the U.S. They must navigate a cultural aversion to risk, an inclination toward humility, and a shame associated with failure. Instead of forgoing sleep for hustle and grind, they deal with what they call the “tall poppy syndrome,” when the media builds one up only to ruthlessly tear them down should they become too successful, investors and founders say. It makes some founders in the ecosystem wary of displaying too many wins.
Still, Luke said London is a strong choice for an early-stage founder: There’s a good network, ample early capital opportunities, and an option for a life outside of tech. In many ways, it is much more like New York culturally for founders than in San Francisco.
“London is so diverse that if you look properly enough, you’ll always find something fun to get involved with,” Amor added, “whether that’s a founder-run club, wellness events, [or going] to jazz nights.”
Luke and Varun write marketing terms on the whiteboard. They stand for top of funnel (TOFU), middle of funnel (MOFU), and bottom of funnel (BOFU).Image Credits:TechCrunch
Luke and Varun largely avoided venture capital funding by taking advantage of the U.K. government’s SEIS/EIS, which is supposed to help attract more angel investments into local startups. “There’s people who will pay basically the same rate of tax if they give us the money versus if they pay income tax,” Luke explained as another reason he liked starting out in London.
Aldean also feels the London ecosystem is less cutthroat than the Valley. He recalls his days living in a hacker house in the Bay — everyone’s desk had to face the wall, and it was heads-down, product-building. He felt the ecosystem, at times, was too willing to gossip, which is apparently done quite differently in the U.K.
“There’s nothing like ‘oh my god did you hear that the CTO just, like, did this,’” Aldean said. “It’s like you’re always worried,” he said, that someone would spread negative stories, especially if it benefited them.
Aldean also thinks London startups, more than Silicon Valley ones, sell into slow-moving large corporations rather than to each other, meaning one could build without having to kiss up or posture to get their peers to like them.
To the selling point, Varun and Luke mentioned another difference between the U.S. and U.K. ecosystem. “It’s a relatively fleeting market,” Varun said of the U.S. “You get quick wins. Here, it’s hard to close a customer, but if they close, they stay with you longer.”
Coming to America
Eventually, though, the road for many U.K. startups goes straight to the U.S.
In the U.K., founders have access to affordable top talent from universities like Oxbridge and a time zone that makes it easier to work with the rest of Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and parts of North America. In the U.S., however, they have access to the world’s largest economy and, most importantly, a lot of investors willing to write large checks, from pre-seed to growth stages.
“It’s almost like a factory line in a way,” Varun said. “You start here, and then you expand there or vice versa.”
American investors are also playing a role in luring British talent away from the country. I told the Lift House residents about one startup founder who said a top investor wouldn’t even back the company unless she relocated to the U.S. She ended up doing so, though decided to keep her family based in the U.K. to raise her children.
“We had an investor in Miami who said the same thing,” Luke said of an investor trying to get him and Varun to move to the U.S. “It’s quite a common practice.” He and Varun have already begun their U.S. expansion, and despite loving London, the duo hasn’t ruled out moving to the U.S. to be closer to their customers.
David, who has a brain coaching startup, is the one who introduced journaling into the household. Image Credits:TechCrunch
That’s the tension bubbling beneath not just the U.K.’s tech ecosystem but most of Europe’s. “I work with a lot of people trying to support the European ecosystem more,” Plumb said.
Yet, founders “talk about London; everyone is bullish on the country until they get the opportunity to leave,” Aldean added.
The Lift House lease has about a year left, and there is sentiment in the house to keep it going for as long as they can. After all, there aren’t too many in London, though the city sees many short-term gatherings, like the Solana Hacker House meet-up series. Some of the more public co-living hacker houses are part of a global chain, like the San Francisco-based network The Residency, which expanded into London last year, and BaseJump, which is announcing a London version of its hacker house program soon.
In 2024, two founders tried the opposite version of the Lift House called “The London Founder House,” which Sifted covered under the headline “The people here don’t want work-life balance.” That home is noted as London’s first-ever hacker house, and though it wound down last year, it left an influence through its concept, events, and connected players around the ecosystem. To even be considered for the London Founder House, one had to have raised at least half a million dollars.
For Lift House, prospective residents need to show a hobby outside their companies and an interest in fitness. It’s the same pitch many in the Londonmaxxing ecosystem are using to keep people from leaving: That here one can have it all.
“The culture is to build something that lasts,” Aldean said, “not necessarily burn out chasing a flash.”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#London #hacker #house #stand #founder #burnout #TechCrunchLondon,UK](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/LIFT-tour-2.jpg?w=680 "Inside the London hacker house taking a stand against founder burnout | TechCrunch
Six twentysomethings in East London have built what they say is the anti-San Francisco hacker house. The goal is a “holistic improvement in life,” rather than “12 weeks, Demo Day is coming,” Rowan Aldean, 26, explained.
Intrigued, I spent an afternoon visiting the house, meeting its residents, and doing a vibe check. I arrived after Aldean escorted me through the clean sidewalks of a new East London development to where the six-story building stood facing the water.
The house is called the London Island Founder House — or “Lift House” — and Aldean and his wife, Zahraa, 22, an upcoming pharmaceutical research PhD candidate, have lived there since May, just a few months after it officially launched in March. Aldean sold his previous company last year for millions, he said, 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, part co-living space. The house is named after both its lift — that is, its elevator — and its mission to uplift tech founders, Aldean said. It’s one of the very few co-living hacker houses to exist in London (compared to San Francisco, where dozens — if not hundreds — are scattered around the city at any given time).
Lift House is a bet that U.K. founders can build successful companies without mimicking the over-the-top hustle culture of Silicon Valley.
Founders have described stories of San Francisco hacker houses illegally running in warehouses, throwing full-on galas, or setting up in a tent or espousing punishing, 72-hour sprints typical of the “996” work culture.
“I don’t expect the performative and over-the-top events will be a thing here,” Aldean said, and pointed to one of London’s most successful AI companies, DeepMind. “They’ve won Nobel prizes and built frontier innovation without any song and dance.”
Instead, Lift House is part of a trend called “Londonmaxxing,” in which founders attempt to optimize everything the London tech scene offers. The London ecosystem feels less showy and less startup bro-y than San Francisco, but its founders share similar ambitions: success, wealth, and market domination. London AI startups have raised billion so far in 2026, out of .7 billion raised by all London startups, according to Dealroom. Six companies have raised more than 0 million: Wayve, Superintelligence, ElevenLabs, Recursive, Ineffable Intelligence, and Isomorphic Labs, the latter three of which were founded by DeepMind alumni. The excitement from AI has boosted the morale of the U.K. tech scene, inspiring a new generation of founders, like those in the Lift House, to take big swings.
LIFT TourImage Credits:TechCrunch
Journaling vs. demo day
The timeline for living on Lift House is flexible — some people have stayed for a month; others intend to stay for at least six months. They buy their own groceries, Aldean said, although they often cook together and share ingredients. Cleaning is split among the group. Everyone declined to share information about the rent they pay.
The residents of Lift House aim for a balanced approach toward ambition, each one of them tells me — an almost unheard-of idea by San Francisco startup standards.
On Sundays, the group will journal together, a practice introduced by David Amor, 28, who runs a brain coaching and training company, helping founders and business leaders understand more about their brain and how it can help optimize business performance. The idea of journaling is to help everyone track how much time they spent in nature that week, how well they ate, and how much they moved their bodies.
“I’m eating healthier, working out more, and sleeping more,” Luke, 27, who runs an AI-marketing company, said about living in the house. “I always make sure to have lunch now, which is something that is simple, but I wasn’t doing before I lived here.” (Luke asked that his last name be withheld.) Tuesdays evenings are for volleyball, where the founders play on the house team in a local league.
After dinner on other evenings, Wan Ying L, 25, who just left an AI startup and is working on a new idea, might play the piano in the living room. Sometimes the group plays Catan or visits art exhibitions together.
Presence Plumb, 25, is a tech strategist. She likes to host rooftop dinner parties, serving dishes that reflect the different nationalities in the house — from Iraqi to Spanish — while invited founders, researchers, investors, and operators chat about tech trends and investments.
“It’s a bit calmer, balanced, authentic in a way,” she said of people in the London ecosystem. “They don’t want too much of that only startup tech bro vibe. They want a bit of balance.”
Each founder follows their own schedules for a typical workday. Amor, for example, is up by 8 a.m. and gives himself exactly 30 seconds after waking up before jumping into his morning work. “I have a clear objective of ‘this is what I want to do in the first half of the day, when there’s no distractions.’” After his morning work routine, he takes a cold shower, “because it increases your dopamine by 250% and that gives me that motivation, that spark,” he said.
Wan playing the pianoImage Credits:TechCrunch
Luke, meanwhile, is up at around 8:30. His co-founder, Varun, 27 (who asked that his last name be withheld), typically travels to the Lift House to co-work, and the duo starts work at around 9 a.m. with a team call.
Aldean rarely wakes before 10 a.m. unless something big is happening, like a “crazy angel [investor] call,” he said. When asked what makes this house uniquely British rather than a wellness-focused Silicon Valley founder house, Aldean joked: “Well, we drink tea together like Brits, and in SF folks just drink filtered coffee.” More seriously, he spoke of how British founders face a different kind of pressure than those in the U.S. They must navigate a cultural aversion to risk, an inclination toward humility, and a shame associated with failure. Instead of forgoing sleep for hustle and grind, they deal with what they call the “tall poppy syndrome,” when the media builds one up only to ruthlessly tear them down should they become too successful, investors and founders say. It makes some founders in the ecosystem wary of displaying too many wins.
Still, Luke said London is a strong choice for an early-stage founder: There’s a good network, ample early capital opportunities, and an option for a life outside of tech. In many ways, it is much more like New York culturally for founders than in San Francisco.
“London is so diverse that if you look properly enough, you’ll always find something fun to get involved with,” Amor added, “whether that’s a founder-run club, wellness events, [or going] to jazz nights.”
Luke and Varun write marketing terms on the whiteboard. They stand for top of funnel (TOFU), middle of funnel (MOFU), and bottom of funnel (BOFU).Image Credits:TechCrunch
Luke and Varun largely avoided venture capital funding by taking advantage of the U.K. government’s SEIS/EIS, which is supposed to help attract more angel investments into local startups. “There’s people who will pay basically the same rate of tax if they give us the money versus if they pay income tax,” Luke explained as another reason he liked starting out in London.
Aldean also feels the London ecosystem is less cutthroat than the Valley. He recalls his days living in a hacker house in the Bay — everyone’s desk had to face the wall, and it was heads-down, product-building. He felt the ecosystem, at times, was too willing to gossip, which is apparently done quite differently in the U.K.
“There’s nothing like ‘oh my god did you hear that the CTO just, like, did this,’” Aldean said. “It’s like you’re always worried,” he said, that someone would spread negative stories, especially if it benefited them.
Aldean also thinks London startups, more than Silicon Valley ones, sell into slow-moving large corporations rather than to each other, meaning one could build without having to kiss up or posture to get their peers to like them.
To the selling point, Varun and Luke mentioned another difference between the U.S. and U.K. ecosystem. “It’s a relatively fleeting market,” Varun said of the U.S. “You get quick wins. Here, it’s hard to close a customer, but if they close, they stay with you longer.”
Coming to America
Eventually, though, the road for many U.K. startups goes straight to the U.S.
In the U.K., founders have access to affordable top talent from universities like Oxbridge and a time zone that makes it easier to work with the rest of Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and parts of North America. In the U.S., however, they have access to the world’s largest economy and, most importantly, a lot of investors willing to write large checks, from pre-seed to growth stages.
“It’s almost like a factory line in a way,” Varun said. “You start here, and then you expand there or vice versa.”
American investors are also playing a role in luring British talent away from the country. I told the Lift House residents about one startup founder who said a top investor wouldn’t even back the company unless she relocated to the U.S. She ended up doing so, though decided to keep her family based in the U.K. to raise her children.
“We had an investor in Miami who said the same thing,” Luke said of an investor trying to get him and Varun to move to the U.S. “It’s quite a common practice.” He and Varun have already begun their U.S. expansion, and despite loving London, the duo hasn’t ruled out moving to the U.S. to be closer to their customers.
David, who has a brain coaching startup, is the one who introduced journaling into the household. Image Credits:TechCrunch
That’s the tension bubbling beneath not just the U.K.’s tech ecosystem but most of Europe’s. “I work with a lot of people trying to support the European ecosystem more,” Plumb said.
Yet, founders “talk about London; everyone is bullish on the country until they get the opportunity to leave,” Aldean added.
The Lift House lease has about a year left, and there is sentiment in the house to keep it going for as long as they can. After all, there aren’t too many in London, though the city sees many short-term gatherings, like the Solana Hacker House meet-up series. Some of the more public co-living hacker houses are part of a global chain, like the San Francisco-based network The Residency, which expanded into London last year, and BaseJump, which is announcing a London version of its hacker house program soon.
In 2024, two founders tried the opposite version of the Lift House called “The London Founder House,” which Sifted covered under the headline “The people here don’t want work-life balance.” That home is noted as London’s first-ever hacker house, and though it wound down last year, it left an influence through its concept, events, and connected players around the ecosystem. To even be considered for the London Founder House, one had to have raised at least half a million dollars.
For Lift House, prospective residents need to show a hobby outside their companies and an interest in fitness. It’s the same pitch many in the Londonmaxxing ecosystem are using to keep people from leaving: That here one can have it all.
“The culture is to build something that lasts,” Aldean said, “not necessarily burn out chasing a flash.”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#London #hacker #house #stand #founder #burnout #TechCrunchLondon,UK")
![Inside the London hacker house taking a stand against founder burnout | TechCrunch
Six twentysomethings in East London have built what they say is the anti-San Francisco hacker house. The goal is a “holistic improvement in life,” rather than “12 weeks, Demo Day is coming,” Rowan Aldean, 26, explained.
Intrigued, I spent an afternoon visiting the house, meeting its residents, and doing a vibe check. I arrived after Aldean escorted me through the clean sidewalks of a new East London development to where the six-story building stood facing the water.
The house is called the London Island Founder House — or “Lift House” — and Aldean and his wife, Zahraa, 22, an upcoming pharmaceutical research PhD candidate, have lived there since May, just a few months after it officially launched in March. Aldean sold his previous company last year for millions, he said, 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, part co-living space. The house is named after both its lift — that is, its elevator — and its mission to uplift tech founders, Aldean said. It’s one of the very few co-living hacker houses to exist in London (compared to San Francisco, where dozens — if not hundreds — are scattered around the city at any given time).
Lift House is a bet that U.K. founders can build successful companies without mimicking the over-the-top hustle culture of Silicon Valley.
Founders have described stories of San Francisco hacker houses illegally running in warehouses, throwing full-on galas, or setting up in a tent or espousing punishing, 72-hour sprints typical of the “996” work culture.
“I don’t expect the performative and over-the-top events will be a thing here,” Aldean said, and pointed to one of London’s most successful AI companies, DeepMind. “They’ve won Nobel prizes and built frontier innovation without any song and dance.”
Instead, Lift House is part of a trend called “Londonmaxxing,” in which founders attempt to optimize everything the London tech scene offers. The London ecosystem feels less showy and less startup bro-y than San Francisco, but its founders share similar ambitions: success, wealth, and market domination. London AI startups have raised billion so far in 2026, out of .7 billion raised by all London startups, according to Dealroom. Six companies have raised more than 0 million: Wayve, Superintelligence, ElevenLabs, Recursive, Ineffable Intelligence, and Isomorphic Labs, the latter three of which were founded by DeepMind alumni. The excitement from AI has boosted the morale of the U.K. tech scene, inspiring a new generation of founders, like those in the Lift House, to take big swings.
LIFT TourImage Credits:TechCrunch
Journaling vs. demo day
The timeline for living on Lift House is flexible — some people have stayed for a month; others intend to stay for at least six months. They buy their own groceries, Aldean said, although they often cook together and share ingredients. Cleaning is split among the group. Everyone declined to share information about the rent they pay.
The residents of Lift House aim for a balanced approach toward ambition, each one of them tells me — an almost unheard-of idea by San Francisco startup standards.
On Sundays, the group will journal together, a practice introduced by David Amor, 28, who runs a brain coaching and training company, helping founders and business leaders understand more about their brain and how it can help optimize business performance. The idea of journaling is to help everyone track how much time they spent in nature that week, how well they ate, and how much they moved their bodies.
“I’m eating healthier, working out more, and sleeping more,” Luke, 27, who runs an AI-marketing company, said about living in the house. “I always make sure to have lunch now, which is something that is simple, but I wasn’t doing before I lived here.” (Luke asked that his last name be withheld.) Tuesdays evenings are for volleyball, where the founders play on the house team in a local league.
After dinner on other evenings, Wan Ying L, 25, who just left an AI startup and is working on a new idea, might play the piano in the living room. Sometimes the group plays Catan or visits art exhibitions together.
Presence Plumb, 25, is a tech strategist. She likes to host rooftop dinner parties, serving dishes that reflect the different nationalities in the house — from Iraqi to Spanish — while invited founders, researchers, investors, and operators chat about tech trends and investments.
“It’s a bit calmer, balanced, authentic in a way,” she said of people in the London ecosystem. “They don’t want too much of that only startup tech bro vibe. They want a bit of balance.”
Each founder follows their own schedules for a typical workday. Amor, for example, is up by 8 a.m. and gives himself exactly 30 seconds after waking up before jumping into his morning work. “I have a clear objective of ‘this is what I want to do in the first half of the day, when there’s no distractions.’” After his morning work routine, he takes a cold shower, “because it increases your dopamine by 250% and that gives me that motivation, that spark,” he said.
Wan playing the pianoImage Credits:TechCrunch
Luke, meanwhile, is up at around 8:30. His co-founder, Varun, 27 (who asked that his last name be withheld), typically travels to the Lift House to co-work, and the duo starts work at around 9 a.m. with a team call.
Aldean rarely wakes before 10 a.m. unless something big is happening, like a “crazy angel [investor] call,” he said. When asked what makes this house uniquely British rather than a wellness-focused Silicon Valley founder house, Aldean joked: “Well, we drink tea together like Brits, and in SF folks just drink filtered coffee.” More seriously, he spoke of how British founders face a different kind of pressure than those in the U.S. They must navigate a cultural aversion to risk, an inclination toward humility, and a shame associated with failure. Instead of forgoing sleep for hustle and grind, they deal with what they call the “tall poppy syndrome,” when the media builds one up only to ruthlessly tear them down should they become too successful, investors and founders say. It makes some founders in the ecosystem wary of displaying too many wins.
Still, Luke said London is a strong choice for an early-stage founder: There’s a good network, ample early capital opportunities, and an option for a life outside of tech. In many ways, it is much more like New York culturally for founders than in San Francisco.
“London is so diverse that if you look properly enough, you’ll always find something fun to get involved with,” Amor added, “whether that’s a founder-run club, wellness events, [or going] to jazz nights.”
Luke and Varun write marketing terms on the whiteboard. They stand for top of funnel (TOFU), middle of funnel (MOFU), and bottom of funnel (BOFU).Image Credits:TechCrunch
Luke and Varun largely avoided venture capital funding by taking advantage of the U.K. government’s SEIS/EIS, which is supposed to help attract more angel investments into local startups. “There’s people who will pay basically the same rate of tax if they give us the money versus if they pay income tax,” Luke explained as another reason he liked starting out in London.
Aldean also feels the London ecosystem is less cutthroat than the Valley. He recalls his days living in a hacker house in the Bay — everyone’s desk had to face the wall, and it was heads-down, product-building. He felt the ecosystem, at times, was too willing to gossip, which is apparently done quite differently in the U.K.
“There’s nothing like ‘oh my god did you hear that the CTO just, like, did this,’” Aldean said. “It’s like you’re always worried,” he said, that someone would spread negative stories, especially if it benefited them.
Aldean also thinks London startups, more than Silicon Valley ones, sell into slow-moving large corporations rather than to each other, meaning one could build without having to kiss up or posture to get their peers to like them.
To the selling point, Varun and Luke mentioned another difference between the U.S. and U.K. ecosystem. “It’s a relatively fleeting market,” Varun said of the U.S. “You get quick wins. Here, it’s hard to close a customer, but if they close, they stay with you longer.”
Coming to America
Eventually, though, the road for many U.K. startups goes straight to the U.S.
In the U.K., founders have access to affordable top talent from universities like Oxbridge and a time zone that makes it easier to work with the rest of Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and parts of North America. In the U.S., however, they have access to the world’s largest economy and, most importantly, a lot of investors willing to write large checks, from pre-seed to growth stages.
“It’s almost like a factory line in a way,” Varun said. “You start here, and then you expand there or vice versa.”
American investors are also playing a role in luring British talent away from the country. I told the Lift House residents about one startup founder who said a top investor wouldn’t even back the company unless she relocated to the U.S. She ended up doing so, though decided to keep her family based in the U.K. to raise her children.
“We had an investor in Miami who said the same thing,” Luke said of an investor trying to get him and Varun to move to the U.S. “It’s quite a common practice.” He and Varun have already begun their U.S. expansion, and despite loving London, the duo hasn’t ruled out moving to the U.S. to be closer to their customers.
David, who has a brain coaching startup, is the one who introduced journaling into the household. Image Credits:TechCrunch
That’s the tension bubbling beneath not just the U.K.’s tech ecosystem but most of Europe’s. “I work with a lot of people trying to support the European ecosystem more,” Plumb said.
Yet, founders “talk about London; everyone is bullish on the country until they get the opportunity to leave,” Aldean added.
The Lift House lease has about a year left, and there is sentiment in the house to keep it going for as long as they can. After all, there aren’t too many in London, though the city sees many short-term gatherings, like the Solana Hacker House meet-up series. Some of the more public co-living hacker houses are part of a global chain, like the San Francisco-based network The Residency, which expanded into London last year, and BaseJump, which is announcing a London version of its hacker house program soon.
In 2024, two founders tried the opposite version of the Lift House called “The London Founder House,” which Sifted covered under the headline “The people here don’t want work-life balance.” That home is noted as London’s first-ever hacker house, and though it wound down last year, it left an influence through its concept, events, and connected players around the ecosystem. To even be considered for the London Founder House, one had to have raised at least half a million dollars.
For Lift House, prospective residents need to show a hobby outside their companies and an interest in fitness. It’s the same pitch many in the Londonmaxxing ecosystem are using to keep people from leaving: That here one can have it all.
“The culture is to build something that lasts,” Aldean said, “not necessarily burn out chasing a flash.”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#London #hacker #house #stand #founder #burnout #TechCrunchLondon,UK](https://i3.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/LIFT-tour-2.jpg?w=680&ssl=1 "Inside the London hacker house taking a stand against founder burnout | TechCrunch
Six twentysomethings in East London have built what they say is the anti-San Francisco hacker house. The goal is a “holistic improvement in life,” rather than “12 weeks, Demo Day is coming,” Rowan Aldean, 26, explained.
Intrigued, I spent an afternoon visiting the house, meeting its residents, and doing a vibe check. I arrived after Aldean escorted me through the clean sidewalks of a new East London development to where the six-story building stood facing the water.
The house is called the London Island Founder House — or “Lift House” — and Aldean and his wife, Zahraa, 22, an upcoming pharmaceutical research PhD candidate, have lived there since May, just a few months after it officially launched in March. Aldean sold his previous company last year for millions, he said, 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, part co-living space. The house is named after both its lift — that is, its elevator — and its mission to uplift tech founders, Aldean said. It’s one of the very few co-living hacker houses to exist in London (compared to San Francisco, where dozens — if not hundreds — are scattered around the city at any given time).
Lift House is a bet that U.K. founders can build successful companies without mimicking the over-the-top hustle culture of Silicon Valley.
Founders have described stories of San Francisco hacker houses illegally running in warehouses, throwing full-on galas, or setting up in a tent or espousing punishing, 72-hour sprints typical of the “996” work culture.
“I don’t expect the performative and over-the-top events will be a thing here,” Aldean said, and pointed to one of London’s most successful AI companies, DeepMind. “They’ve won Nobel prizes and built frontier innovation without any song and dance.”
Instead, Lift House is part of a trend called “Londonmaxxing,” in which founders attempt to optimize everything the London tech scene offers. The London ecosystem feels less showy and less startup bro-y than San Francisco, but its founders share similar ambitions: success, wealth, and market domination. London AI startups have raised billion so far in 2026, out of .7 billion raised by all London startups, according to Dealroom. Six companies have raised more than 0 million: Wayve, Superintelligence, ElevenLabs, Recursive, Ineffable Intelligence, and Isomorphic Labs, the latter three of which were founded by DeepMind alumni. The excitement from AI has boosted the morale of the U.K. tech scene, inspiring a new generation of founders, like those in the Lift House, to take big swings.
LIFT TourImage Credits:TechCrunch
Journaling vs. demo day
The timeline for living on Lift House is flexible — some people have stayed for a month; others intend to stay for at least six months. They buy their own groceries, Aldean said, although they often cook together and share ingredients. Cleaning is split among the group. Everyone declined to share information about the rent they pay.
The residents of Lift House aim for a balanced approach toward ambition, each one of them tells me — an almost unheard-of idea by San Francisco startup standards.
On Sundays, the group will journal together, a practice introduced by David Amor, 28, who runs a brain coaching and training company, helping founders and business leaders understand more about their brain and how it can help optimize business performance. The idea of journaling is to help everyone track how much time they spent in nature that week, how well they ate, and how much they moved their bodies.
“I’m eating healthier, working out more, and sleeping more,” Luke, 27, who runs an AI-marketing company, said about living in the house. “I always make sure to have lunch now, which is something that is simple, but I wasn’t doing before I lived here.” (Luke asked that his last name be withheld.) Tuesdays evenings are for volleyball, where the founders play on the house team in a local league.
After dinner on other evenings, Wan Ying L, 25, who just left an AI startup and is working on a new idea, might play the piano in the living room. Sometimes the group plays Catan or visits art exhibitions together.
Presence Plumb, 25, is a tech strategist. She likes to host rooftop dinner parties, serving dishes that reflect the different nationalities in the house — from Iraqi to Spanish — while invited founders, researchers, investors, and operators chat about tech trends and investments.
“It’s a bit calmer, balanced, authentic in a way,” she said of people in the London ecosystem. “They don’t want too much of that only startup tech bro vibe. They want a bit of balance.”
Each founder follows their own schedules for a typical workday. Amor, for example, is up by 8 a.m. and gives himself exactly 30 seconds after waking up before jumping into his morning work. “I have a clear objective of ‘this is what I want to do in the first half of the day, when there’s no distractions.’” After his morning work routine, he takes a cold shower, “because it increases your dopamine by 250% and that gives me that motivation, that spark,” he said.
Wan playing the pianoImage Credits:TechCrunch
Luke, meanwhile, is up at around 8:30. His co-founder, Varun, 27 (who asked that his last name be withheld), typically travels to the Lift House to co-work, and the duo starts work at around 9 a.m. with a team call.
Aldean rarely wakes before 10 a.m. unless something big is happening, like a “crazy angel [investor] call,” he said. When asked what makes this house uniquely British rather than a wellness-focused Silicon Valley founder house, Aldean joked: “Well, we drink tea together like Brits, and in SF folks just drink filtered coffee.” More seriously, he spoke of how British founders face a different kind of pressure than those in the U.S. They must navigate a cultural aversion to risk, an inclination toward humility, and a shame associated with failure. Instead of forgoing sleep for hustle and grind, they deal with what they call the “tall poppy syndrome,” when the media builds one up only to ruthlessly tear them down should they become too successful, investors and founders say. It makes some founders in the ecosystem wary of displaying too many wins.
Still, Luke said London is a strong choice for an early-stage founder: There’s a good network, ample early capital opportunities, and an option for a life outside of tech. In many ways, it is much more like New York culturally for founders than in San Francisco.
“London is so diverse that if you look properly enough, you’ll always find something fun to get involved with,” Amor added, “whether that’s a founder-run club, wellness events, [or going] to jazz nights.”
Luke and Varun write marketing terms on the whiteboard. They stand for top of funnel (TOFU), middle of funnel (MOFU), and bottom of funnel (BOFU).Image Credits:TechCrunch
Luke and Varun largely avoided venture capital funding by taking advantage of the U.K. government’s SEIS/EIS, which is supposed to help attract more angel investments into local startups. “There’s people who will pay basically the same rate of tax if they give us the money versus if they pay income tax,” Luke explained as another reason he liked starting out in London.
Aldean also feels the London ecosystem is less cutthroat than the Valley. He recalls his days living in a hacker house in the Bay — everyone’s desk had to face the wall, and it was heads-down, product-building. He felt the ecosystem, at times, was too willing to gossip, which is apparently done quite differently in the U.K.
“There’s nothing like ‘oh my god did you hear that the CTO just, like, did this,’” Aldean said. “It’s like you’re always worried,” he said, that someone would spread negative stories, especially if it benefited them.
Aldean also thinks London startups, more than Silicon Valley ones, sell into slow-moving large corporations rather than to each other, meaning one could build without having to kiss up or posture to get their peers to like them.
To the selling point, Varun and Luke mentioned another difference between the U.S. and U.K. ecosystem. “It’s a relatively fleeting market,” Varun said of the U.S. “You get quick wins. Here, it’s hard to close a customer, but if they close, they stay with you longer.”
Coming to America
Eventually, though, the road for many U.K. startups goes straight to the U.S.
In the U.K., founders have access to affordable top talent from universities like Oxbridge and a time zone that makes it easier to work with the rest of Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and parts of North America. In the U.S., however, they have access to the world’s largest economy and, most importantly, a lot of investors willing to write large checks, from pre-seed to growth stages.
“It’s almost like a factory line in a way,” Varun said. “You start here, and then you expand there or vice versa.”
American investors are also playing a role in luring British talent away from the country. I told the Lift House residents about one startup founder who said a top investor wouldn’t even back the company unless she relocated to the U.S. She ended up doing so, though decided to keep her family based in the U.K. to raise her children.
“We had an investor in Miami who said the same thing,” Luke said of an investor trying to get him and Varun to move to the U.S. “It’s quite a common practice.” He and Varun have already begun their U.S. expansion, and despite loving London, the duo hasn’t ruled out moving to the U.S. to be closer to their customers.
David, who has a brain coaching startup, is the one who introduced journaling into the household. Image Credits:TechCrunch
That’s the tension bubbling beneath not just the U.K.’s tech ecosystem but most of Europe’s. “I work with a lot of people trying to support the European ecosystem more,” Plumb said.
Yet, founders “talk about London; everyone is bullish on the country until they get the opportunity to leave,” Aldean added.
The Lift House lease has about a year left, and there is sentiment in the house to keep it going for as long as they can. After all, there aren’t too many in London, though the city sees many short-term gatherings, like the Solana Hacker House meet-up series. Some of the more public co-living hacker houses are part of a global chain, like the San Francisco-based network The Residency, which expanded into London last year, and BaseJump, which is announcing a London version of its hacker house program soon.
In 2024, two founders tried the opposite version of the Lift House called “The London Founder House,” which Sifted covered under the headline “The people here don’t want work-life balance.” That home is noted as London’s first-ever hacker house, and though it wound down last year, it left an influence through its concept, events, and connected players around the ecosystem. To even be considered for the London Founder House, one had to have raised at least half a million dollars.
For Lift House, prospective residents need to show a hobby outside their companies and an interest in fitness. It’s the same pitch many in the Londonmaxxing ecosystem are using to keep people from leaving: That here one can have it all.
“The culture is to build something that lasts,” Aldean said, “not necessarily burn out chasing a flash.”
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#London #hacker #house #stand #founder #burnout #TechCrunchLondon,UK")
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