Gallery: Hack, Hustle, Nap, Repeat: Life as a Young Techie in San Francisco
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Guillaume Lachaud is a French android engineer who builds mobile apps for Uber. He works on the roof of 20 Mission, a former vacant hotel transformed into a co-living community that's home to many startup entrepreneurs.
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A woman tries on a VR headset during a happy hour event at Rothenberg Ventures. The venture capital fund invests in early-stage tech companies with a focus on millennial founders and recently started River, a virtual reality accelerator program.
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People snuggle with stuffed animals and each other in a “cuddle puddle” at tech entrepreneur Ari Kalfayan’s house in San Francisco. The party was a fundraiser to buy even more stuffed animals for a giant cuddle puddle at Burning Man.
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Noah Levenson, Nick Cole, and Oliver Page (left to right) mingle with people at the Startup and Tech Mixer, a large networking event. Occurring every few months, a 2014 event drew as many as 4,500 people spanning three floors of the W Hotel.
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Sandy Frank, Mackenzie Hughes and Danielle Gaglioti (left to right) work for Akimbo, a startup based in New York. Hughes and Gaglioti are in San Francisco for the summer to participate in Tumml, an urban ventures accelerator program. Frank is their intern. The three often work from Hughes and Gaglioti’s sublet apartment, depending on their meeting schedule and transportation options.
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A dance party where all the guests wear silent disco headphones in order to hear the DJ blasting tunes. The event marked the three-year anniversary of 20 Mission, a co-living house popular with startup entrepreneurs.
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Andrew Hines (center) tries to fix a problem during a beta launch party for his app Picnic at Precita Park. Picnic is a game that involves taking selfies in response to challenges to act out certain emotions. The app didn’t work and the launch was postponed because Apple’s TestFlight program, which is necessary for beta testing, was down that day.
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Cal Hacks 2.0, a 36-hour hackathon held inside the football stadium at the University of California, Berkeley. The event drew 2,071 participants from 143 schools and 10 countries. Hackathons usually last several days, and invite computer programmers and others involved in software and hardware development to collaborate on a project over a set period of time. There are often awards and prizes.
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A woman snoozes on her keyboard during a 37-hour hackaton organized by the company Shirts.io.
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Programmer Ben Greenberg works in his room at 20 Mission. Greenberg used to work for Lyft and now has a start-up glowyshit.com where he sells glow-in-the-dark decorations and party supplies.
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Adrien Thibodaux, Lyrod Levy and Adrien Chometon (left to right) take a smoke break in the backyard of a fraternity house in Berkeley. The three are co-founders of Weeleo, a peer-to-peer currency exchange platform, and were in San Francisco from France to participate in a summer accelerator program. To save money, Levy and their fourth co-founder couch surfed for the summer instead of renting an apartment.
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Mohammed Alkadi, Albara Hakami and Abby Wischnia stand at a booth for their company Feelit, a social app to help people express their feelings and emotions. The booth was part of a Startup and Tech Mixer.
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Lev Konstantinovsk naps on break from a data science program he attends at the co-working space Galvanize. The campus is themed around San Francisco's parks, and this common area was built to resemble Dolores Park. Galvanize combines tech office space with a school, and has several campuses around the country.
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Founder and CEO of Puzzlebox Steven Castellotti shows off the Puzzlebox Orbit, a brain controlled helicopter at the Startup and Tech Mixer.
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Housemates have dinner in the communal kitchen at 20 Mission. Darren Lee (left) is from Australia, and moved in temporarily while looking for a customer support job at a tech company. Lior Neu-ner (right) is from South Africa, and lived there for a few months while in a startup accelerator with his parking app Parko.
