Enter the Monastery of Code
In the high-velocity world of startups, where founders are often caught in the whirlwind of pitch decks, Slack pings, and Twitter threads 📱, Dave Fontenot is crafting a radically different playbook. His creation, HF0 (Hackers/Founders Zero), isn’t just another accelerator. It’s a 12-week, in-person residency in San Francisco built around one core philosophy: subtraction, not addition.
Dave Fontenot believes founders need fewer distractions, not more programming 🧘. HF0 provides elite technical and repeat founders with $1M in uncapped SAFE funding for 5% equity, removes all logistical barriers (housing, meals, laundry, even gym memberships), and immerses them in an environment engineered for flow 🔁. Inspired by Fontenot’s time in actual monasteries, HF0 offers a rare oasis of uninterrupted deep work—a kind of “monastery of code” designed to help founders build their life’s work.
This guide unpacks Fontenot’s unconventional journey, the philosophies that shaped HF0, and the critical insights early-stage founders can take away 🧠.
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From Hackathon Evangelist to Residency Visionary
Dave Fontenot’s journey began at the University of Michigan, where he realized real growth happened outside the lecture hall 🎓. After attending his first hackathon, he became obsessed with the power of rapid prototyping and community-driven creation ⚡. This obsession led him to co-found MHacks, which quickly scaled to become the largest student hackathon in the world, drawing tens of thousands of participants globally 🌍.
He then went all-in: dropping out of college, living out of Airbnbs, and crisscrossing the U.S. to ignite hackathon culture across universities. Along the way, he launched HackMatch (matching engineers with startups), helped run the Hackathon Hackers community, and ultimately co-founded Backend Capital—investing early in unicorns like Ramp and Fabric 🦄.
This path reflects a recurring theme: Dave Fontenot identifies underleveraged communities (student hackers, technical founders) and builds mechanisms to accelerate them 🚀. HF0 represents the apex of this arc—curating a space for top-tier builders to create at maximum velocity.
Monks, Meditation, and the Philosophy of Focus
Between 2016 and 2018, Dave Fontenot turned inward—literally. He lived in monasteries in Thailand, China, and California 🛕, studying meditation 🧘 and battling the chaos of his own mind, including the challenges of ADD. He emerged with a new conviction: the principles of monastic life—routine, simplicity, focus—could be applied to startup creation.
This experience birthed HF0’s central thesis: subtraction beats addition ➖. Instead of offering founders more workshops, events, or distractions, HF0 offers less. No logistics to manage, no context-switching, no social noise. Just space, time, and a single directive: build.
For Dave Fontenot, this isn’t just philosophy—it’s personal. HF0 reflects the structure he wishes he had as a founder with ADD 🧠. It’s optimized for deep work and could benefit other neurodivergent founders who thrive under conditions of focus and routine.
Inside HF0: The Residency Engineered for Flow
The HF0 Residency is a high-touch, high-intensity program unlike any other. Founders live together in a 20,000-square-foot San Francisco mansion 🏡. Everything from meals to laundry is handled 🧺. There’s a $1M check waiting, via an uncapped SAFE 💰. The deal is simple: 5% equity, no cap, no strings.
Founders focus on four things: talking to customers, building, exercising, and sleeping 😴. Weekly demos, expert check-ins, and communal dinners keep momentum without derailing focus. Demo Day isn’t a stage show—it’s a private event at the house, with a curated group of top VCs like a16z, Sequoia, and Benchmark 🎯.
This model is expensive—but strategic. It bets heavily on a small, highly curated cohort. If one breakout success emerges, the returns justify the investment. And early signals are promising: alumni like Bastazo and Roofer.com are already gaining traction 🚀.
The Dave Fontenot Doctrine: Grit, Vision, and Inner Work
At the core of HF0 is Fontenot’s belief that startups are external manifestations of internal states 🧠. He encourages founders to spend 10% of their time on “inner work“—from meditation to mindset exercises 🧘. Simple habits like three deep breaths before meetings are standard practice.
His founder selection process reflects this holistic mindset:
- Repeat founders with resilience and learnings from past ventures 💪
- Technical builders who can ship daily, not monthly 💻
- Visionaries with a fire in their eyes (and enough intensity to scare him if he tried to stop them) 🔥
The application process is brutal. Out of 10,000 applicants, only 10 teams may be chosen 🎯. AI tools like “Boardy AI” screen for overlooked brilliance, especially in humble applicants. Every founder must commit to the full 12-week, in-person program. No exceptions.
Subtraction as Strategy: Lessons for Every Founder
HF0 is more than just a residency—it’s a blueprint for how high-performing founders can structure their lives and companies for maximum creative output 💡. Its lessons extend far beyond the walls of its San Francisco mansion and can serve as a tactical guide for any founder looking to elevate their execution 🛠️. Whether or not you apply to HF0, its core insights are deeply applicable:
✂️Ruthlessly eliminate distractions. Audit your calendar and inbox with discipline. Remove low-value tasks, minimize context-switching, and design your schedule to protect long stretches of uninterrupted work time . Your product and customer are the north star—everything else is noise.
⚡Work in sprints. Organize your team’s efforts into short, focused time blocks (e.g., 1–2 weeks) with clearly defined outcomes. Sprint planning and retrospectives help maintain momentum and ensure consistent, high-quality iteration.
🚀Build fast, ship faster. Implement a culture of rapid prototyping, frequent deployments, and continuous feedback. Use version control, CI/CD pipelines, and clear metrics to streamline your shipping pipeline.
🧘Invest in inner clarity. Treat your mental space like your codebase—keep it clean. Create routines for reflection such as daily journaling, silent walks, or 5-minute breathing breaks to recover energy and stay grounded under pressure.
🤝Surround yourself with peers. Tap into the energy of other ambitious builders. If co-living isn’t possible, join focused communities, mastermind groups, or local founder circles that offer accountability, support, and idea exchange.
HF0’s brand of intensity isn’t for everyone—but for the right founders, it’s rocket fuel 🔥. Applied with intention, these strategies can help any builder move faster, stay sharper, and operate with clarity in a noisy world 🌍.
Final Thoughts for Founders: Build Your Life’s Work
Dave Fontenot’s story is one of evolution—from democratizing hacker culture to curating one of the most selective founder environments in the world 🌍. HF0 is more than an accelerator. It’s a statement about how great companies get built: through deep focus, tight communities, radical execution, and inner clarity 💡.
In a world that tells founders to do more, Dave Fontenot’s message is clear: do less, better. Eliminate noise. Protect your time 🕒. Build what matters. Whether you’re a first-time founder or a seasoned operator, the question remains:
🚀What could you build if you had nothing in your way?
Recommended Article:
🔖How to Get Accepted to the HF0 Residency Accelerator
