Live-in offices, air mattresses, and stacks of ramen: Inside the apartments of 6 young tech founders

Lin's closet doesn't have hanging rungs, so she lives out of a suitcase.

ThirdLayer has beds both upstairs and downstairs. Julia Alvarenga, ThirdLayer's intern, got the most prized room downstairs: a storage closet. The company's design engineer also lives there, and they outfit the downstairs couch as a bed when remote employees visit.

The founders sleep upstairs. Lin sleeps in a king-size bed; she said she wanted a smaller mattress so that they could fit more, but it was too big to get out the door. Her cofounder, Kevin Gu, sleeps on a couch just feet away.

"Everyone in the house is just right next to each other all the time," Lin said.

The room has a closet, though it doesn't have any racks to hang clothes. Lin suspects that it was built as a room to take calls. The founders leave their suitcases in there, and Lin also stacks her clothes in a large plastic bin next to her bed.

The upstairs bathroom is small. If Lin wants to do her makeup or get ready for the day, she'll go downstairs to the bigger common bathroom, she said.

Docket cofounder Boris Skurikhin uses a cardboard box as a nightstand.

25-year-old Docket cofounder Boris Skurikhin's mattress is on the floor.

His makeshift nightstand is a short cardboard box, on which he stacked his computer and a biography of physicist Andrei Sakharov. His clothes are folded and stacked against the room's windows.

"We moved here very, very quickly from New York," he said. "We started the YC batch that following Monday, and we were build mode, we were think mode. Furniture was not that important."

Skurikhin doesn't like clutter; he says the almost empty room allows him to walk around and think.

Skurikhin stuck the cofounders' three tenets above their desks with packing tape.

The living room has two desks, his and his cofounder's. He doesn't use the desk much, since the office is within walking distance. The "most interesting part," he said, was a piece of paper with the cofounders' three tenets stuck to the wall with some packing tape:

1. No pivot discussions
2. B2B SaaS, Real Money ($1k+/month) contracts
3. Daily 50 outreach each

In their doorway is a small "conversational table" where Skurikhin sometimes eats lunch or dinner. He doesn't touch the kitchen much, he said, though he's proud of his tea collection.

TrainLoop cofounder Jackson Stokes finally has a dishwasher.

26-year-old TrainLoop founder Jackson Stokes' apartment doesn't have a living room. It's worked for him: "We were just never actually here," he said, explaining that he'll spend 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the office on a normal day.

It's more spacious than his last apartment, which was a five-bedroom with six guys in it. That apartment also didn't have a dishwasher.

This apartment also has a robotic coffee machine, which he bought off a friend for $1. "It's very tech," he said.

The company coffee maker is much nicer. He recently bought a $1,500 machine for the TrainLoop office. They haven't moved into the new space yet; the machine sits on his bedroom floor.

Gale cofounder Haokun Qin stores protein shakes under his bed.

23-year-old Haokun Qin and his Gale cofounder moved into their Toronto apartment two months ago: "We just shoved our stuff in here, and we've been here maybe half the time."

He keeps his room basic, just "whatever I need to sleep." That includes a bed, a nightstand, and a heated blanket — no comforter or duvet needed.

"I move around too much to have that much stuff on me," Qin said.

His favorite thing in the room, Qin said, was the protein shakes that he stores under his bed.

Qin's skincare products are from his mom and Amazon.

In his bathroom, Qin has a variety of skincare products.

"I don't even know what it is, but half the stuff my mom bought, and half the stuff I bought on Amazon over time," he said. "I couldn't tell you, man."

In his apartment's living area, Qin has floor-to-ceiling windows. He points out one to The Velocity Incubator, a local startup program. His office, he says, is a three-minute walk away.

Opening his freezer, Qin pulls out an ice pop and laughs. "We call them freezies," he said.

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