San Francisco

I just landed in SF with my partner, our cats, and some personal belongings. We’ve always made a pilgrimage from NY to SF every year, but the tradition started before “us” when I was a teenager. The first time I arrived I knew it was the promised land. I grew up in New York where the focus was always money. In SF, everyone was so full of ideas, and young people were building companies that would shape our collective future.

My first trip to the SF was for the very first CalHacks. My next, an interview with YC. I kept coming back for one reason or another, and every trip I was sleeping on a beanbag in @mission__ctrl with the other Thiel Fellows, or crashing at my friend @michaelm244's house in the mission, or with @kernio at Berkeley. This was a decade ago. Today, I’m lucky enough to be in a beautiful home in Mill Valley, by the library and the redwoods.

In 2025 I see so many young people on here yearning to be in New York City. To live a city life, a fun one full of adventure. I see the allure. But for those of us who grew up on the East Coast in a time when Steve Jobs still walked this earth and Mark Zuckerberg was not too much older than us, all we wanted to be was there — in San Francisco, California, the place where dreams happen.

I’ve spent years thinking about what makes this place different. Usually right when I land, and the California sun hits my face.

Maybe it’s that simple. The sun just hits different here.