Berlin Founder House is a curated live-work community for ambitious founders and builders — designed around the idea that proximity to the right people is the last real unfair advantage.
By Fabian Paegel, Florian Klindt & Moritz Donaubauer
The best founders we know didn't come from the best programs.
They came from the best rooms.
Berlin is full of brilliant people building companies alone — in apartments, in cafés, in co-working spaces designed for employees. They have Slack and Discord, but not what actually changes people: someone one year ahead of them, living the same obsession, willing to say the hard thing at 11pm.
That's not a community product problem. That's a real estate problem. Nobody has solved it seriously in Europe — not at the level of quality that actually attracts the people you want in the room.
The model
Most communities fail for one of two reasons. Either they're too rigid — the same people, same conversations, same comfortable blind spots. Or they rotate so fast that nothing takes root. Trust doesn't form. Culture doesn't crystallise. You're left with a very nice co-living space and absolutely nothing else.
We've thought about this problem seriously. The answer isn't a compromise — it's a designed system. A house that breathes. A stable core that anchors the culture. A rotating layer that keeps the energy alive. And a guest tier that connects the whole thing to the world outside.
"The culture stays. The energy doesn't go stale. Every six months, the house is half new — and fully itself."
Permanence
Long-term residents hold the memory. They know why things work the way they do.
Rotation
Fresh founders bring new problems, new energy, new external networks.
Curation
Every person is chosen. The bar isn't arbitrary — it's what makes the room worth being in.
Compounding
Alumni become nodes. Every cohort strengthens the network permanently.
Permanent Residents
~50% of the house. Long-term members who carry the culture, mentor incoming batches, and give the house its identity. They're the reason cohort two feels like the same house as cohort one.
Batch Members
~50% of the house. Curated founders joining for 6 months. Applied or invited. Half rotate out every cycle — keeping the house in permanent contact with what's being built right now.
Short-Term Guests
2–3 flexible beds for visiting founders, speakers, and builders passing through Berlin. Impulse & energy — a window to what's happening everywhere else.
The 6-month rhythm
The rhythm is the product. Over time, every cohort becomes a permanent node in the network — people who've lived together, built together, and carry that bond long after they leave the house.
Three things, in order. We're starting with the house — but that's just the first layer.
A 450m² Altbau in Berlin. 12 curated residents, private rooms, fast internet, shared kitchen, weekly dinners. No hostel energy — real quality, because quality attracts quality. We open Cohort I in 2025.
Every cohort becomes a permanent node. Alumni don't just leave — they stay connected, refer future residents, make introductions. Over time, BFH becomes the densest founder network in Europe that you actually want to be part of.
Profitable on rent alone from day one. But the real upside is what compounds on top: selective programs, a scout layer, early access to the best pre-seed companies in Europe before anyone else sees them.
More technical founders per capita than any other European city. Cheaper than London. More international than Munich. A culture that rewards people who build weird things and take them seriously. The infrastructure just hasn't caught up yet.
Real rooms. Real beds.
No bunk beds. No hostel energy. Private rooms for permanent residents, quality furniture throughout. The environment sets the standard.
Work infrastructure.
Shared workspace, fast internet, meeting areas. Everything a founder needs to build without friction — inside the place they live.
Weekly rituals.
Shared dinners. Soft structure, not a schedule. The kind of recurring moments that make a house feel like a community without making it feel like a program.
Curated, not open.
Every member is selected. Invited or applied. The bar is real. Because the value of the network is entirely about who's in it.
Three friends who've been frustrated by the same problem long enough to do something about it.
Fabian Paegel
Co-Founder
Has been obsessed with what makes technical communities actually work — not just network effects on paper, but real proximity. Brings the operational brain that makes the house run without friction.
Florian Klindt
Co-Founder
Understands the founder journey from the inside. Has spent years watching talented people build in isolation and asking why nobody had fixed the environment problem yet. Now doing something about it.
Moritz Donaubauer
Co-Founder
Thinks about community as infrastructure, not content. The best product Berlin Founder House ships is the people who live in it — and the connections they carry out into the world.
We're at the beginning. If you believe that the right environment changes everything — for founders, for the work, for the companies that come out of it — we'd love to talk.