The SOTI house model
5 min read
SOTI is built around a simple belief: the internet made it easier to find your people, but not always easier to know them. The house model is our attempt to make internet-native connection physical again.
Curated, not crowded
A SOTI house is not designed to maximize attendance. It is designed to maximize the chance that the right people want to keep talking after the week ends.
That means selection matters. Different editions can have different flavors, but the baseline is high agency, curiosity, generosity and some visible relationship with building.
Work remains central
Residents are not asked to role-play a retreat. They bring laptops, projects, calls, deadlines and half-formed ideas. The house should support the work, not replace it.
The social layer makes the work better: feedback, accountability, context, introductions and the strange motivation that comes from being around people who care.
The magic is mostly unscalable
Dinners, walks, late conversations, shared jokes, small acts of help: these are not easily captured in a landing page, but they are the actual infrastructure of community.
SOTI tries to design enough structure for those moments to happen without turning them into corporate programming.