A man on the move in the era of lockdown
By: Benjamin Payne
Tags: Blockchain, Remote Working, Nevada, San Francisco, California

Even in the era of remote work, it may come as a surprise that Grossblatt — once described as the real-life version of Silicon Valley’s Erlich Bachman — chooses to no longer live in the Bay Area. Why would he uproot himself and his family from arguably the global capital of all things tech for a tiny state capital where bureaucrats and civil servants far outnumber entrepreneurs and early adopters?

The answer, it turns out, is in that very question: his family.

For one, his 10- and 12-year-old kids were growing — and outgrowing the confines of one of the country’s most densely populated cities.

“For a change and a backyard” is how Grossblatt sums up the decision to move.

Mountains for neighbors: the view from the Grossblatts’ new backyard in Carson City (Photo courtesy of David Grossblatt)

Even for David and his wife Lesley, a backyard is a big draw. Being cooped up for 20 years in a city of now roughly 20,000 people per square mile has a way of making one yearn for extra legroom.

So, over the summer they hit the road in search of that legroom.

“We did what we did before: we started driving down [Interstate] 80, heading east,” says David, referring to how he and Lesley chose Sacramento in their previous (read: pre-children) lives.

“We didn’t want to go back to Sacramento. We’d already done that.”

They’re in good company: between July 2018 and July 2019, roughly 173,000 more people left California than moved there, according to U.S. Census data. Among the top recipients of this exodus was Nevada: in that time period, more than 47,000 people relocated from the Golden State to the Silver State. In fact, according to the Brookings Mountain West institute, there are now more adults in Nevada who were born in California than native Nevadans.

“We just kept driving, and eventually we got to Lake Tahoe and we realized, ‘Oh, this is very different.’…So, then we started deciding where we wanted to live up in the mountains.”

It came down to either Reno or Carson City. After visiting each, the capital city came out on top: “more ‘Tahoey,’ less ‘deserty’” is how David put his calculus.

Lesley was on board, too: “Carson City has a wonderful small town feel where neighbors are friendly and welcoming and have so much pride for their hometown and state,” she says.

“Capital cities, I think, are particularly interesting,” says David. “They tend to have a diverse population from across the entire state. Often, that’s where the museums are, and that’s where there’s interesting history.”

That history — both social and natural — comes in handy for the junior Grossblatts, who gladly spend more time in an exhibit hall or on the foothills of the Sierras than in any classroom.

In fact, they spend no time in a classroom at all — not because of distance learning in the age of quarantine (most public schools in Carson City have gone back to in-person instruction anyway), but because of a major decision that David and Lesley made a few years ago.

“We sent our kids to charter school, private school, tutoring,” says David, but none of that was quite the right fit for their kids.

With a dad around the house most of the time, homeschooling seemed like the logical thing to try out — why they did. But once again, the traditional approach of prescribed curricula fell flat.

Eventually, they came across a form of homeschooling paradoxically called unschooling. David describes it as “radical self-directed learning where the parent’s role is strictly as a facilitator.”

“When I’m in the role of facilitator, I have to push resources to them so they can explore what they’re interested in, empower them, and take them places together — something as simple as going food-shopping.”

The school day “never really begins or ends,” says David, who shares teaching — or rather, facilitating — with Lesley, whose job shifted primarily to remote work during the coronavirus pandemic.

Their kids aren’t the only ones learning. Lesley — the Chief Product Officer of San Francisco public media organization KQED — has picked up a thing or two about remote work from her husband.

“I’ve learned from David to constantly question the value of the time I’m spending on any given project/task,” says Lesley. “Am I adding value, or am I just marking time? Is what I’m doing the best use of my limited time and resources? When you’re not in an office and not worried about face time, you have the opportunity to reset your own expectations about how to best invest your time.”

And for his part, David is learning, too. When he’s in unschooling facilitator mode, David is just as likely to learn something from his kids as his kids from him. He gives the example of going on a hike with his son, when they stumble upon a peculiar kind of oak tree that David knows nothing about, but that his son has already researched online.

“They just spend so much time absorbing information, learning how to think, learning how to do stuff that they want to do. They have no governor on their learning. They never need to slow down for anybody. They never need to learn something they don’t want to learn. The totality of that is just exponentially greater, in my opinion, than having someone go through an organized lesson plan that they don’t care about.”

They may not need to learn something they’re not interested in, but they are learning how to tolerate opposing political views.

Whereas in San Francisco, Grossblatt knew conservatives who were afraid to voice their opinions in America’s liberal mecca, Carson City presents a decidedly more nuanced political makeup.

“In some ways, Carson City is a lot freer. I’ve seen multiple protests across the street. We have one sign on one side, one sign on the other side, and they’re screaming at each other, but everyone’s getting along. That may be a function of a capital city, because you get active people from all sides of the political spectrum in one location.”

Unique to this particular capital is the Carson Hot Springs, where Grossblatt likes to soak — and stew about where the digital economy is headed and how best to invest. While the pandemic has suppressed some industries, others are accelerating; it should come as no surprise that he’s bullish about his investment in a telemedicine startup.

Compared to powerhouse venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia, Grossblatt’s bets are miniscule; he knows he must play his cards carefully.

“As I get older, I really try to emphasize making more mistakes in my head than in real life…And, I’m constantly at this stage trying to make small moves with big impact.”

Making small moves may be Grossblatt’s M.O. in his professional life, but when it comes to his family life, a big move may be on the horizon. As radical a relocation to Carson City may be for a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, it’s nothing compared to what may lie ahead once the pandemic is a thing of the past.

“We’re actually eyeing the possibility of moving to Europe in a few years,” says Grossblatt, who — ever the innovator — calls this his “working concept”: to show his kids the world well beyond the West Coast.

Like Grossblatt said earlier, working from the opposite of American time — in this case, at least seven time zones ahead of Pacific — would present a professional challenge. But although his work is in California, his heart is in family — a family ever on the move.