Content creators are taking over a mansion right outside DC. Of course, it’s focused on politics — but also entrepreneurship.
Residents at America House, coming soon to McLean, Virginia, will work on projects like civic tech platforms tracking government spending and post videos touting political opinions. It’s a new take on a 2010s-era concept that gained fame with “The Hype House,” a now-closed mansion of TikTokers in LA.
This version will aim for more nuance, welcome skepticism and push to make politics less divisive, per cofounder Jack Jay, a 28-year old serial entrepreneur.
“We want to take influencers from the right, the left and the middle, and we want to create a diverse conversation.”
Sydney Thackray, America House
“That embodies the essence,” Jay told Technical.ly last weekend at the house’s first creator summit. “There’s going to be creators, people who tell stories, living together in a cool house …. Hype House didn’t serve a purpose, and so I want that to be understood.”
People selected to be part of the “cast” will get access to private investment opportunities and technical teams to create platforms, and those building products will get equity, or claim on America House’s future profits and assets. Content creators and technologists are encouraged to work together to make civic tech, said Sydney Thackray, the 21-year-old cofounder and Jay’s romantic partner.
The aim is to get people in the US excited about political processes, Thackray said, through vibe coding easy-to-use civic tech platforms, livestreaming sections of America House’s happenings 24/7 and organizing debates. The house is also meant to be a distribution system for the tech built, including to politicians.
“We want to take influencers from the right, the left and the middle, and we want to create a diverse conversation,” Thackray said. “We have been completely polarized, which isn’t good for government.”
Las Vegas creator Nick Andrews flew in for the inaugural summit. He grew a following with Instagram and Facebook videos about the Epstein Files, and has since expanded to covering data center moratoriums and how to (“not”) dismantle Flock cameras.
“I would imagine anyone who gets the invite is going to drop what they’re doing and come out here,” said Andrews, between capturing clips for a post about the weekend. “It’s a crazy opportunity to be involved in trying to figure out how we get out of this mess.”
Civic tech is a core part of the DC region’s ecosystem, with innovation embedded in local governments and frequent hackathons hosted by local meetups. America House will now join in on organizing similar events, per Jay.
‘A crazy opportunity’ to live in a $30k/month mansion
Thackray and Jay, who moved to McLean from LA a week ago, said they’re self-funding America House. It has an outdoor pool, indoor hot tub, a home theater, two parking garages, a sauna, eight bedrooms, nine bathrooms and grand furniture throughout.
Members of the cast will live for free in the $30,000 monthly rental, and there are no plans to take outside investment at this time, per Thackray.
Platforms built at America House will be under the umbrella company America.co domain, she said, and the equity specifics for cast members are still being finalized. There’s also opportunities for people living in the house to get access to funding for their ideas through the cofounders’ respective venture studios.
Persist, Jay’s venture firm, includes America House in its portfolio. Since its founding in 2023, it has deployed about $2 million in investment. Vital Ventures, Thackray’s venture firm, has mostly been an incubator for her own ideas, she said, with a staff of five coders who also hold equity.
One of the platforms vibe-coded so far is ImpactLine, a government spending tracker built by Thackray out of Vital Ventures. Details for this and the other AI-built tools are all fact-checked against other LLMs and by humans, Thackray said.
Though only a max of 10 people will actually get to live at America House, Thackray is hoping other technologists will be interested in virtual collaboration. She’s also looking at additional locations to bring in another half-dozen people.
Kuzey Koremezli flew in from Toronto for the opening weekend, looking to network. He created the website webpunk.com, an anonymous social media platform where people design worlds and chat with people, all generated using AI.
“I’m coming from Canada, and I don’t think it would make sense [to live in the house],” Koremezli said. “But I don’t mind if they need help with my expertise.”
Moving toward a world where ‘robots will build public abundance’
America House has a guiding manifesto, written by Thackray, Jay and others involved. It includes 10 guiding principles such as “AI will work for you, not rule over you.”
“We need humans in the loop because human empathy, human love, human behavior, is important and special,” Thackray said. “We need to continue building for that, not having something else build it.”
At the same time, the manifesto includes that “robots will build public abundance,” where Thackray sees robots replacing humans for “the dangerous” and “the dirty” jobs, citing farming and manufacturing. But she draws the line at robots fighting in wars.
“I would like to see a world where robots are doing all of the basic necessity jobs that people don’t want to do,” she said.
America House will keep building civic tech platforms and political content at least until the next presidential election, the founders said.
What would follow depends on the outcome.
“If we’re successful, we’ll be in the White House. That’s always the joke that we’ve been making,” Thackray said. “We want to get a president that is for the people, and if we do that, then we’ve done our job.”
