Every City I’ve Lived in Taught Me a Different Part of This Job
This week we threw our Boston summer party. I don’t live in Boston anymore. I haven’t in a long time, but we got our start there and have had our Harvard Square office since 2009.
As I ran on the Charles (once solo and once with the fast paced Eric Paley;) I was reflecting on my 20-something runs along that very same path.
I’ve built a life in four cities, and I’ve come to think of each one as home but for different reasons, friends, professional experiences and learnings.
LA is where I fell in love with entrepreneurship (and maybe the best lifestyle overall – its been downhill since Manhattan Beach;-). My first startup, the one that failed. I had no idea what I was doing, but I learned so much about managing and building a tech company.
Boston is where I learned to build a real company, and a real network. People with skills I didn’t have. Engineers and scientists who taught me to appreciate deep, hard technology, the kind that takes years and a PhD. It’s also, oddly enough, where I learned to surf. Thanks to Ed Tekeian on the cold beach of Nahant.
The Bay is where I understood why it’s the center of all of this. The sheer density of talent. It’s the only place on earth where the person standing next to you at your kid’s soccer game turns out to be both your next business partner, VC and friend. That serendipity is unique to the Bay.
New York my home for over a decade is where I learned the commercial side. Investing as a craft, not a hobby. The density of humanity coupled with ambition make it a special place for me. Our kids were largely raised here and there’s a sense of us being “New Yorkers” despite our having lived elsewhere.
When I go back to any of these spots, I don’t want the old life back. I’m not homesick for who I was. But standing in those places moves me each time, and in a real way. The good times come flooding in. The people I was lucky enough to meet. The version of me who lived there, younger, more naive. There are things I miss but I’m grateful I get to visit the people, the spots, those familiar runs.
The other night was that feeling in one room. Twenty-five years of it. HBS. Brontes. Founders, lawyers, recruiters, VCs I met 25 years ago. All a little grayer, but the smiles were just the same.
You don’t get to keep every place. But the ones that shaped you never fully let go, and you never fully leave them either.
