Blackbox Mansion is playboy mansion for geeks

Silicon Valley is home to many accelerators but not many that are housed in a pimp-daddy style mansion with hot tubs and jacuzzis; cue Blackbox Mansion, co-founded by Bjoern Lasse Herrmann and Fadi Bishara it is home to a number of startups whose founders stay at the mansion and benefit from the co-working space, easy access to Silicon Valley and Sandhill Road for funding trips and the inspiration of entrepreneurial people coming through the doors.

But besides running the mansion which includes hosting a number of events and dinners, co-founder Bjoern is also working on his latest venture: The Startup Genome, which is trying to unravel the DNA of what makes a successful startup opposed to a flop. Just as The Human Genome Project tried to dissect human DNA, The Startup Genome aims to quantify various factors contributing to a successful startup by asking startups to fill out a questionnaire.