The long version.

I. The Golden Dragon

The Golden Dragon opened in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania in 1982, a few months before I was born. My family ran it for forty years. We grew up together.

We played there. We met people and served them food. We learned to make everything from scratch and learned the names of our regulars. We grew up alongside our parents, washing dishes, then hosting, then serving, until we knew how the whole operation worked and that everyone has to pull their weight. And at the end of every day, a meal together, family style. Hospitality was my first language; I learned it before I knew it had a name.

II. The Plant

I went to Oaksterdam University to learn how to make edibles; we wanted to make them for our friends. I came out having seen something else: dispensaries and collectives, small businesses running on paper and manual work. Hospitality businesses, like ours: a counter, regulars, people taking care of people. I had a software background, and these were the tools my family restaurant could have used. Nobody was building them because the plant was Schedule I. I didn't think it was a matter of if, only when, and I wanted to be part of it. In 2014 we started Meadow, YC's first cannabis startup, building for the operators who get clean, safe cannabis into the hands that need it.

III. The Table

We first went to Black Rock City in 2012 and wanted to bring our love of food to the playa. We joined the French Quarter, one of 27 subcamps, and made supper clubs from scratch. It was incredibly hard. We wanted to deliver the same joy a bit easier: something warm and fluffy, without a lot of moop. We came back to bao, our cultural staple. Bao means full. It also means abundance, and that's the energy we wanted to give. In 2014, the same year Meadow was born, Bao Chicka Wow Wow opened alongside our sister camp, Titanic's End. 43,000 bao later, we're still cooking on our own sun. And every fall I host Reboot, a gathering of YC Founders and Alumni in the redwoods of Camp Navarro, because community is the Operating System.

IV. Westward

I've lived in San Francisco since 2007, and I'm raising my family here. I love the people, the food, the bay, the water, the parks, the libraries, the freedom. Technology and counterculture in the same city, a history steeped in making change, and the sense that anyone can do it, so stay humble and pay it forward. These days I teach an AI to remember what I don't, and it hands me back time for the parts only a person can do: cook, gather, build, and pull up more chairs.

I'm still an Eagles fan though. Go Birds.