NYC's First Work and Wellness Club for Founders Opens in June

NEW YORK, NY — On June 1, NYC's first work and wellness club built exclusively for founders opens at 22 Vanderbilt Ave, next to Grand Central Terminal. Founders House brings work, wellness, and community under one roof:

• A workspace built for founders — dedicated coworking, soundproof phone booths, a conference room, and a member lounge.

• An on-site wellness club — full gym, showers, lockers, yoga and a wellness studio with weekly programming.

• A founding member community — peer-to-peer workshops, demo days, panels, and members-only programming.

It comes from the team behind Founders Common and Shanti House, the NYC founder communities that have hosted 150+ sold-out events over the past three years and gathered an audience of 20,000+ founders and operators. Applications are now open.

Apply to join →

Founders House brings the NYC startup ecosystem to one address.

You get a core group of founders you actually know. People you train or take class with in the morning, sit next to during deep work, swap product feedback with at the lounge.

Plus the investors, advisors, operators, and partners moving through the space each week for meetings, programming, and events — building the relationships that turn into intros, hires, deals, and the kind of friendships you couldn't engineer anywhere else.

A recent example. At our TechWeek event last year, one of our founders met an investor in that room. A few months later, that investor wrote her a $250K check. We're building Founders House so connections like that become a once-a-week occurrence, not once-a-year.

Apply to join the cohort →

Why We Created This

Three years ago I moved to New York as a founder, and I was lonely.

I'd studied business and computer science at Michigan, built a tech-enabled media company, and ran the team remote for years. Louisa spent a decade in management consulting, the last five at Boston Consulting Group, before leaving to get her yoga teacher certification in Bali.

I tried coworking, bumped between coffee shops, shook hands with name-tagged strangers at mixers and walked out feeling more disconnected than when I came in.

So Louisa and I started building our own communities. I started running through the city every Tuesday morning with a few founders. Louisa began hosting yoga and wellness for builders. The runs became Founders Common. The yoga turned into Shanti House.

Three years later, our community is 20,000+ deep, with 150+ sold-out events behind us. We've hosted Dan Martell, Max Marchione, panels at Shopify and Tech Week, and partnered with brands like Framer, Rho, Bandit Running, and Othership.

The events kept growing. What ended up mattering more was what happened between them. Founders teaching each other the things you don't get from a textbook or LLM.

A few weeks ago, I got a text from one of our members, "Do you know someone I can talk to about selling their company? We're fielding a few offers."

She'd built an AI security company. Multiple offers on the table between raising the next round and selling. It wasn’t the kind of decision you’d bring to ChatGPT or Claude. I introduced her to another member who'd run an accelerator and helped dozens of founders through similar moments.

A week later: "The conversation was awesome." She had a clear, confident decision and a framework she could use going forward. That one conversation could mean millions of dollars and years of optionality.

Now picture what happens when those two are in the same building every day. This is personal for us. It's the home we wish existed when we moved here, and we're building it the way we needed it.

Apply to join the cohort →

Inside the cohort

Here's who you'd be joining. The first cohort sets the tone for every cohort that comes after, so we're being deliberate about who's in it. We'd rather take time to build it right than fill it fast.

A few of the founders already in — across tech, CPG, and live experiences.

Apply to join the cohort →

What you get as a founding member

The space is built around how founders actually use a day. Three spaces under one roof:

• A workspace built for founders — dedicated coworking, soundproof phone booths, a conference room, and a member lounge. Access 7 days per week.

• An on-site wellness club — full gym, showers, lockers, yoga and a wellness studio with weekly programming.

• A founding member community — peer-to-peer workshops, demo days, panels, and members-only programming.

Plus:

• Founding Advisor intros to active angel investors and operators across go-to-market, legal, and fundraising.

• A speakeasy and dining room for member events, prospect dinners, and community gatherings.

• A food hall with additional work areas — a second home base when you want a change of scene without leaving the building.

• Common-area access to the building's lobby, lounges, and terrace for meetings and gatherings.

• Connected to Grand Central. Five minutes from Metro-North, the 4/5/6, the 7, and the S.

How to apply

Applications are now open. Here's how it works:

1. Apply on the form. Tell us what you're building and where you are in the journey.

2. Louisa and I read every application personally.

3. If it's a fit, we'll be in touch to confirm your founding member spot.

Who we're looking for

We're looking for founders building seriously, scaling teams, and working on real products. But who also think about work, health, and community as a complementary system, not three separate things to balance.

We're being intentional about this first cohort as it sets the tone for everything that follows. We'd rather have the right 50 founders than the wrong 200.

Apply to Join Founders House →

See you there,

Damian & Louisa 

Co-Founders, Founders House

P.S. Founders House is built for founders, but it's an ecosystem — and we can't build it alone. We're partnering with brands and operators who want to grow alongside our community of 20,000+ NYC founders. Some ways to get involved:

• Brand partners with expertise and a product to put in front of NYC's most committed founders.

• Programming collaborators — wellness practitioners, podcasts, communities, and curators.

• Retail and CPG brands for the food, beverage, and lifestyle side of the House.

• Investors who want to back the next chapter of NYC's founder ecosystem.

Just reply to this email with how you'd want to get involved. Or apply to join as a member.