Grunge Inc. describes how “live-in startups combine frat-house culture with venture capital::
Meetro is six guys and an Internet startup crammed into a three-bedroom walk-up.It’s the quintessential post-adolescent male fantasy of the business world: a grungy remix of the “Revenge of the Nerds” frat house with bunk beds and Snoopy sheets, a refrigerator packed with soda and beer, and a garage that doubles as the company break room, where employees can channel surf from the couch or take a dip in the inflatable swimming pool. There is no firewall between life and work for these young entrepreneurs, who live together while they build a social networking site that connects people in geographic proximity. Scruffy and stubbled, wearing shorts and sandals, the Meetro mavericks have given up sleep, salaries and personal space for the challenge of building a product they hope millions of people will one day use.
Meetro is taking part in the time-honored, high-tech tradition of the 24/7 “geek house,” the business equivalent of a bachelor pad where entrepreneurs hunker down together to kick-start creativity and curb expenses. With the Internet economy again in overdrive, a growing number of these cubicle communes — from Meetro in Palo Alto to HubPages and Box.net in Berkeley — are dotting the Bay Area landscape as young engineers chase the Silicon Valley dream.
These mostly male domains are a unique model of economic efficiency because they function as “total institutions,” a term coined by sociologist Erving Goffman to describe social microcosms ranging from boot camps to boarding schools that isolate individuals from the outside world and indoctrinate them into the groupthink.
Or, to put it more bluntly: “They are temporary cults,” said Robert Sutton, an organizational psychologist at the Stanford School of Engineering. “Any time you isolate people, bind them together and work them like dogs, it’s very powerful. You can get an enormous amount done when you create a place of such total focus and collective delusion.”