SF’s buzzy Shack15 club offers coworking at Ferry Building

The historic Ferry Building on San Francisco’s Embarcadero is home to more than a blaring private club for techies. It also houses a coworking space.

The 51,000-square-foot Shack15, founded in 2020 and led by Jørn Lyseggen, hosts a coworking space with a VC arm and podcast at 1 Ferry Building, the San Francisco Standard reported.

The club, billed as “the port of entry to Silicon Valley,” has become a tech industry go-to hub, with Michelin-level pop-ups, psychedelic “sound baths” and thumping DJ sets.

It’s also exclusive. To get in, you’ll need a referral. A membership costs $2,000 a year.

Shack15 calls itself “a social club of 2,000 entrepreneurs, innovators, and investors,” according to its website.

But it’s also become a top draw for all things artificial intelligence: hackathons, film screenings on AI disinformation and panels about U.S. strength in a new era. It’s one of the main venues for October’s TedAI conference.

The club, upstairs above the building’s renovated marketplace, opens onto a lobby with a long long coffee bar and cafe, with pastries and sandwiches with hot smoked trout and horseradish dressing or roasted carrots and goat cheese.

The open coworking area, with arched floor-to-ceiling windows to gaze out onto the bay, is decked out in couches, armchairs and coffee tables, according to the Standard.

A copy of “Outlive” by Peter Attia, a bible for the longevity-obsessed, sat underneath a plant and a hand sanitizer pump. 

A June newsletter alerted members to a “synaptic mapping meditation session” in Shack15’s wellness space, “The Sanctuary.” An upcoming session featured a “psychedelic facilitator hosting a 12-instrument sound bath.” 

After dark, there’s wine. Live piano music. DJ beats. And pop-up dinners by top-tier chefs.

The club could rival The Battery, a membership club in Jackson Square that costs $2,800 a year, with a $1,000 initiation fee, plus a nomination from a current member.

“It’s the common man’s replacement for The Battery,” Douglas Dunlap, on a recent visit to Shack15 courtesy of a guest pass, told the Standard. “It’s a great place for little startups to have an impressive meetup site that grants credibility.

“Before, The Battery was the meet-up spot for tech,” he said. “Now, The Battery is getting old.” 

In March, Shack15 launched its own venture fund, focused on AI and deep tech, according to the Standard.

Members can apply to join its syndicate and then write checks. The fund has invested in recycling startup Glacier and the renewable energy semiconductor maker SirenOpt, among others, according to its website.

Lyseggen, who also started media monitoring company Meltwater, did not respond to a request for an interview. Shack15’s chief of staff, Natasha Nisser also declined to comment. The co-working space has a no-interview policy.

The 245-foot tall Ferry Building, which opened in 1898 as a transit stop for Bay Area ferry traffic and revamped in 2003 and this year, is owned by the Port of San Francisco. Its ground floor hosts a marketplace of 50 restaurants. It’s not clear what Shack15 pays the port in rent.

— Dana Bartholomew