The CEO of Bulletproof Coffee shares why he left Silicon Valley and moved to Canada instead
- Bulletproof CEO Dave Asprey moved to Canada about 10 years ago.
- The San Francisco Bay Area was Asprey's home for two decades, but the out-of-control housing prices eventually led the entrepreneur to flee Silicon Valley.
- Asprey said he thinks it's cheaper to commute from Canada - he charters a private plane for about $600 - than live in the San Francisco Bay Area.
After spending decades in the San Francisco Bay Area as an entrepreneur and tech executive, Dave Asprey moved to Canada.
Asprey, a cloud computing executive turned biohacking guru, has built a $100 million empire around his DIY approach to enhancing human performance, complete with two best-selling books, conferences, and a pair of stores that sell buttered coffee, along with supplements known as "smart drugs."
Asprey runs his company, Bulletproof 360, remotely from a 32-acre organic farm on Vancouver Island, off Canada's Pacific Coast. Much of the island is protected parkland, though its beauty and proximity to Vancouver, a major city, has drawn artists, artisans, and even entrepreneurs.
In Silicon Valley, Asprey lived lower-middle-class on a six-figure salary
Before he decamped for Canada, Asprey struggled to make ends meet in Silicon Valley.
His jobs as an IT administrator, project manager, and founder took him across the Bay Area in the 1990s and 2000s. Asprey said he rented in Palo Alto, Los Altos, and Fremont, and bought his first home in Union City, an East Bay suburb where you can still buy homes for under $1 million.
While he spent the majority of his income on rent, the rest just barely covered the $44,000-per-child tuition for his two young children to attend a nearby Waldorf school. On weekends, the family escaped to Lake Tahoe because Asprey wanted his kids to grow up around nature.
Asprey said his quarter-million dollar salary made him feel less than middle-class. The median-priced home in San Francisco costs $1.5 million, and a person needs an annual household income of $303,000 in order to afford the 20% down payment on a home that expensive.
"I've never lived upper-class in the Bay Area," Asprey told Business Insider. "Occasionally I'd be in the worst house in the best neighborhood, but it is really expensive to do that."
In 2010, Asprey decided that the Bay Area had become unlivable for his family.
Asprey found paradise in Canada
Asprey and his wife, Lana, a physician, began searching for new options. He was working at the time as chief technology officer of wearables company Basis, which sold to Intel for $100 million in 2014. He wanted to work the same hours as his employees.
"I wanted to live somewhere beautiful with clean air, good food - lots of sockeye salmon - and needed to be in the West Coast [time zone]," said Asprey.
They moved to Canada and rented for about four years.
On Vancouver Island, in the province of British Columbia, a 32-acre organic farm hidden in the trees offered his family a more permanent respite from the congestion and excitement of Silicon Valley. Asprey bought the property in 2014 for "less than the cost of a one-bedroom in Palo Alto," he said. Today, the typical one-bedroom home in Palo Alto lists for $848,000.
Over the years, Asprey spent at least another $700,000 building a 2,600-square foot home office that's outfitted with medical-therapy and wellness technologies.
Asprey said the process for moving to Canada was easy. He hired an immigration attorney for about $1,200 and - after leaving Basis and launching Bulletproof in 2013 - created a Canadian company that could sponsor his work visa.
Now Asprey's children play in the woods behind the house. At night, they look up and see stars. The family's sheep and a newborn lamb named Blueberry graze in the yard.
"When I'm home, I drop my kids off at school in the morning. I eat dinner with them every night. And the garden grows our food," Asprey said, adding: "That is the most luxurious lifestyle that I could ever imagine, and I could never pull that off in the Bay Area."
The commute from Canada isn't all that bad
The commute from Canada may actually cost less than living in the Bay Area, according to Asprey.
When Asprey needs to go to Bulletproof's headquarters in Seattle, he arranges for a town car to bring him to and from a small airport that's located 12 minutes from his house.
He charters a single-engine plane that brings him to Seattle in 40 minutes. The trip costs about $600 round-trip, including the town car, according to Asprey.
Asprey said that for the cost of a mid-range home in Sunnyvale, a ritzy city in Silicon Valley, "I can buy a 32-acre farm and a jet, I'm not even kidding. A jet. And the monthly payments are the same."
During his trips, Asprey said he focuses on spending quality time with the people he wants to see. The duration of these visits forces him to optimize for productivity.
Asprey prefers town cars to Uber because he doesn't like waiting for the pick-up. He thinks it's important to invest in making the commute more tolerable if you're going to make the decision to give up proximity to the office. Fortunately, those rides are tax-deductible business expenses.
Asprey summed it up: "I just shifted my budget from housing to travel."
Was it worth it?
Life on Vancouver Island comes with some perks. Asprey said he pays only $3,000 a year in property taxes. Everything he buys feels like it's "25% off" because of the US-Canadian exchange rate. And when he steps outside, Asprey said he hears owls despite living only 35 minutes from an airport.
There are downsides to living in Canada. Asprey said he once paid $50 in import fees on a pair of boxer shorts that he ordered from Amazon. The weather on Vancouver Island is cold and wet.
But overall, the entrepreneur has found happiness in Canada.
"It hasn't hurt my career, it's probably helped it," Asprey said.