Enter the gardens of Arcadia.
A new community in the Bay Area, centered around a 14-BR hacker house in Berkeley.
About Us
Arcadia is a new & growing community in the Bay. Our core house, a 14-bedroom in Berkeley, launched in September 2022.
We are a small group of entrepreneurs, researchers, students, and autodidacts passionate about improving the future of humanity.
We believe that a lot of serendipity comes from intermingling different life paths and different life stages. So, we’re looking for the house to roughly be:
- a third researchers/professors/PhD candidates,
- a third founders/entrepreneurs, and
- a third students/autodidacts.
All these groups tend to share a dedication to their personal work and mission — Arcadia is not a very loud & socially intense house, but rather a quiet, focused place with passion & relentlessness in the air.
Arcadia functions as a serene island between starkly different places and communities: Our Arcadians come from Emergent Ventures, Oxford Neurosciences, SpaceX, YCombinator, biotech academia, B2C software companies, Progress Studies, and more.
Jason Benn
Jason has years of experience in organising well-run group houses, and he often drops wisdom for us to make sure that things run well.
Tyler Cowen
Tyler made the early days of Arcadia possible and occasionally mentors us on to enable Arcadia & the Arcadians become their best possible version.
Paul Rohde
Paul is the productivity coach of a a couple Arcadians. He is a psychology PhD at LSE and founder of the Flourishing Humanity Corporation.
Why Arcadia?
Community
Become productive
Amazing people
What are we looking for?
Agency
There are so many problems to solve, things to be created, and ideas to be had. Take action!
Ambition
Visionaries and dreamers. It matters to see and believe in the future you want to contribute to.
Thoughtfulness
About life, the consequences of actions, and humanity’s future.
All house members contribute to the house and take care of it — we’re a do-ocracy, you can just *do* good things and you’re encouraged and empowered to proactively make changes and improve the house.
Kindness
House Culture
Many group houses end up with their residents being less productive than before due to distractions within the house. We think this is a problem. Living with great people ought to increase your output manifold, not decrease it!
At Arcadia, the most common feedback we’ve gotten from guests and residents is how surprised they were that their productivity increased. A combination of our house culture, the atmosphere, and the dedicated working spaces led to Arcadians and our guests noting — on average — 2.6 productive hours gained per day.
Our days are usually quiet and work-focused, and then we eat and rest with house dinners in the evenings and rare larger events. If you’re looking for a quiet, dedicated, work-focused place, this is for you.
Tom Schulz from Solaris noted after his visit:
“You’re all waking up, working peacefully together in your common space, taking a lunch break, working quietly, and then eating dinner together… It feels like a tech-monastery.”
Whiteboards conveniently double as focus
protectors (picture from a house retreat elsewhere).
About the house
Finding the core property for Arcadia was striking gold. Arcadia has 3.5 floors, up to 14 bedrooms, dedicated coworking space, a dedicated deepwork floor, a balcony, a rooftop, dedicated guestrooms, and lots of cozy hidden corners to retreat to.
For students at Berkeley: Arcadia is literally 20 seconds from campus. We’re closer to campus than “on-campus” housing!
Events
We think that events can contribute a lot to a house, but can also take away a lot of attention. So we balance it by hosting small, curated events occasionally. Usually they’re invite-only and topic-focused. But sometimes we host larger events too, especially for special occasions!
A taste of the dozens of past Arcadia events:
Vitalik visiting Arcadia
Community Paintball
Dinner with Sam Altman
Open role:
The Gardener of Arcadia
As the house grows, we’re also looking for a local who’s interested in co-running many of the essential house logistics — the title-giving example is watering our plants.
Other responsibilities include organizing communal dinners, running events, house improvements, and more.
”The Gardener of Arcadia” is paid, part-time or full-time depending on how much responsibility they’d like to take up. This role also gives you experience as a part-time operations lead and running medium-sized projects, which might be helpful for your career.
As of now, this role is open! Let us know if you’re interested: hello@joinarcadia.org
Come join us!
We’re open to both guests and new residents! Send us an email at hello@joinarcadia.org with information about you.
