DirectorySF

San Franciscan behavior is often inscrutable from the outside. Is it poverty? Contrarianism? Inexplicable quirks of the techno-bohemian class? It starts making sense when you walk out of SFO, and into the reality distortion field that’s inspired social deviance for decades For those on the other side: If the city is a universe, group houses (loosely defined) are its planets. Each has a unique cultural “gravity” that naturally selects for an orbital community. House “orbits” intersect, forming micro-cultural clusters which themselves overlap with peripheral clusters Given sufficient social energy, one might ride these orbital tracks across the universe Put another way: if SF is Twitter, these houses and their friends form the group chat archipelago Like GCs, houses are mostly assembled for fun, and because they’re natural platforms for conversation, events, and serendipity — not due to financial necessity as you’d see elsewhere. Starting a house is an implicit registration as a node in a sprawling social graph It’s hard to overstate these houses’ roles as SF’s serendipity machines. In some cases, they become de facto semi-public cafes or third places. Friends might flit in and out through the day, often hanging to cowork or take a quick nap on the couch It’s no surprise people choose this. It invites a social richness into life that’s hard to achieve otherwise, with no downside other than occasional raised eyebrows from people on the internet

Over 2,000 members of @DirectorySF ~65% of whom end up living with people they find on-platform! Early on, @thomasschulzz and I saw unexpected usage: members were grabbing coffee, hiring, even dating (one confirmed couple lol). Countless “desire paths” in user behavior to guide future updates. Now: jobs. If you're a growing SF company, we’ll list your open role (so long as you sponsor in any amount). It should be easy for excellent people to live (or work) together. Proximity yields serendipity - the fertile ground from which incredible things grow. Minimizing friction matters, and @DirectorySF will always be free for core users. If you do sponsor, know that you’re making San Francisco that much more of a generative, interconnected village.