Reset

“This place is kind of like a Vipassana retreat for founders,” he tells me as I dip my pita into the sumac-dusted hummus. We’re at HF0, one of the mansions that offers a residency for startup founders to incubate their ideas. Unlike Y Combinator’s incubator program, HF0 founders stay in the mansion over the course of the residency. Hence, the Vipassana retreat analogy. HF0 offers community dinners on Friday evenings, and the dinner is one of the catalysts in my decision to leave Google.

I filed my PhD disseration in Berkeley on a Thursday afternoon, which gave me a three-day gap before starting what became a fifteen-year stint at Google. When I think back to the days in between, the main event that marked the transition from graduate to tech employee was the Festival of Harps at the Chapel of the Chimes. The event included Karma Moffett’s indelible Tibetan Bell Experience, which I still reminisce about with the friends who attended with me. They have since moved to Toronto.

Instead of a Vipassana retreat, a hacker residency, or a harp festival, Aarti and I are in SFO, waiting to board a flight to Toronto. In addition to the friends with whom I attended that harp festival, Aarti’s brother has moved there, and I can’t think of a better way to reset than to spend time in a different setting catching up with loved ones.