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CEO of Bulletproof Coffee shares why he left Silicon Valley and moved to Canada
- spraak 8y agoI recently watched a debate with Dave Ausprey [1] where he said something like "we're animals so we need to eat animals". I wonder what he thinks cows eat. Edit: So I'm curious why I'd be downvoted for this. This guy is truly hand-wavy crazy. [1] https://youtu.be/o5N-qPEnThs https://youtu.be/o5N-qPEnThs
- lev99 8y agoPersonal attacks are often downvoted.
- beagle3 8y agoCows eat whatever they can find that looks like food to them, including chicks[0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXhElaGCZVU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXhElaGCZVU - warning: could be considered animal cruelty.
- spraak 8y agoSo you have one instance of a cow eating a chick. That's hardly enough evidence to claim that cows eat "whatever they can find", especially without considering the cow's environmental circumstances. How many cows living in their natural environment would eat another animal? I'm open to being shown otherwise, but this is just silly at this point.
- msie 8y ago$88000/year for kids' schooling?!?! Couldn't enroll them in public school?
- jvagner 8y agoIn places where housing was affordable, especially ten years ago, no... you wouldn't necessarily have wanted to enroll your kids in the public school where you lived. I was in SF when my child was young, but as soon as we started digging into the school enrollment processes, I moved to Lafayette and enrolled him there. Lafayette was more expensive than Union City, but a better place to live and school, but perhaps not a place where a house could be as affordable. That said, none of it would compare with a 32 acre farm near Vancouver, IMHO...
- defen 8y agoYou don't know what school your kid is going to end up in, because of the lottery system. You might have your kindergartner going to school across the city.
- taborj 8y agoThis is foreign to me, can you explain it a bit more? Where I live, we have school districts, and inside those districts are boundaries for various schools. You know well before you even buy/rent your home what school boundary that home belongs to.
- lev99 8y agoDifferent school districts weight the location of a child's home differently when choosing which school the child should go to. In most districts location is the highest factor. In other places it's a moderate or low factor.
- azinman2 8y agoSf has a lottery system to avoid all the rich kids at one school, and all the poor kids at another. It’s well motivated but totally impractical from get-kids-to-school-before-work perspective.
- Tempest1981 8y agoI tried to find something similar -- here's 5 acres for CA$350k (US$270k). Home not included. https://www.point2homes.com/CA/Home-For-Sale/BC/Qualicum-Beach/Lot-9-Wesley-Ridge-Place/54815192.html https://www.point2homes.com/CA/Home-For-Sale/BC/Qualicum-Bea...
- begoon 8y agoThis guy is just a charlatan. Period.
- msie 8y agoJust call it a gut feeling, but I don't think he will be criticized as a foreigner buying property in Canada and employing a loophole to gain entry (ie creating a company to sponsor his work visa).
- sdfjkl 8y agoInvestor visas (aka Golden Visa) aren't really a loophole, they're quite intentionally designed to bring money into a country and provide employment for existing citizens.
- mrnobody_67 8y agoThough in this case, all his employees are in Seattle, not in Canada....
- sdfjkl 8y agoNope, as part of the golden visa, he would've paid an immigration attorney to set up a Canadian company, shove some money into it and hire the minimum amount of employees. This is unrelated to the coffee business and doesn't have to be profitable, it's merely a requirement to gain residency. After 6 years of residency, he can then apply for citizenship.
- geff82 8y agoSorry, but that story was pure clickbait. So instead of moving to affordable, yet economically strong places like the metro areas in Texas he went for Canada to pay double the taxes... I do not get that story. There is nothing wrong with moving to Canada, great country, great people. But no one can tell me that the only Alternative to SV was Canada.
- jonawesomegreen 8y agoTaxes in California are very comparable to taxes in Canada, and like the US it does depend on the province one lives in.
- otoburb 8y agoComparable taxes to California, except that Canadian health care is (mostly) free. Some British Columbia residents pay an extra supplement for additional insurance (prescription drugs, vision, dental, etc.), but it's a nominal amount for the coverage you get in return.
- bfuller 8y agoSeems like he feels better about himself having money living around middle class people rather than feeling middle class living around people with more money than he does.
- s73v3r_ 8y agoArguably he gets more for his taxes in Canada than he does in the US.
- toasterlovin 8y agoHigher taxes + social safety net make more sense for lower income people. Higher income people can buy themselves a safety net.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jstandard 8y agoThe article, and by extension Asprey, come across as a bit tone deaf to me. He was making $250,000 salary + stock/benefits + double income with his physician wife. He owned a home, admitted he lived in "nice neighborhoods", sent both his children to private school, spent weekends at Tahoe, and who knows what else. With all of this he says he felt "less than middle class".
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- gaurav_v 8y agoYou have excluded the sentence which immediately follows his stated income: "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 agree that it is a bit tone deaf.
- akcreek 8y agoI do not understand that logic at all. Having a household income $303K says nothing about how much down payment you are able to afford.
- jeffrey_t_b 8y agoPerhaps it meant to say that one needs a $303k/yr salary to support a $1.2M mortgage (i.e. the loan on a $1.5M house after a 20% downpayment). At an interest rate of 3.5%, that's about $5400/month. A $303k salary is maybe about right for that, considering taxes (income and property), insurance, private schools/daycare and things like "food". Wow, this can't go on.
- andechs 8y agoVancouver and Toronto are super overheated by the influx of foreign capital. Here's a stellar 2 bedroom house relatively near me: https://www.blogto.com/city/2018/01/everyones-shocked-toronto-real-estate-listing/ https://www.blogto.com/city/2018/01/everyones-shocked-toront...
- nkrisc 8y agoI knew from the headline his company sounded familiar. He sells coffee mixed with snake oil - I'm sorry, I mean butter. Wait, no - medium chain triglyceride oil. Now that sounds more like it does something.
- kgwxd 8y agoI didn't even know that was a brand name until now, I've been making it myself for months.
- lev99 8y agoHe even sells MCT oil at twice the market rate. https://www.amazon.com/Bulletproof-Brain-Octane-Reliable-Source/dp/B00R7FFYO8?th=1 https://www.amazon.com/Bulletproof-Brain-Octane-Reliable-Sou...
- spraak 8y agoAnd Tibetans have been making it for centuries [1], which is where Asprey says he got the idea from. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter_tea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter_tea
- AndyNemmity 8y agoIt's not snake oil, doing it yourself. It's that he sells the products to do it when they are easy to make. He's marketed the concept, and then tries to sell it at a massive premium. The concept, or at least some of them that he sells, are not snake oil. It's the profiting on the concept that is a bit gross.
- Balgair 8y agoI mean, they kinda market the brand as some big health cure-all, like crossfit. But it's just putting butter in your coffee. Like, maybe having some fats in your diet first thing in the morning is alright, but the science is pretty mixed. Yeah, it's not snake oil, but like, it sure feels like it.
- aphextron 8y agoWho would have guessed being a drug dealer makes good money.
- manishsharan 8y agoIs drinking butter with coffee still a thing ? I had thought that was a passing fad. This guy can make $250k for himself selling this gross concoction blend make me rethink everything I know about humanity.
- AndyNemmity 8y agoIt is still a thing, butter and or mct oil. It's a passing fad insomuch as keto is a passing fad, which depending on who you talk to, or care about as a group can be a fad.
- Kluny 8y agoOh god, he's on Vancouver Island now? Just what we need, another snake-oil-selling pseudo-hippie to run up real estate prices.
- driverdan 8y agoTake a look at his supplement company and you'll quickly find he's a quack. They sell collagen for $40/lb. Collagen is the cheapest, crappiest animal protein source and is incomplete. I bet their markup is over 1000%. $23.50 for a 16oz bottle of coconut oil with unsubstantiated claims. > Brain Octane oil is rapidly absorbed by your body and converted into brain-fueling, fat-burning ketone energy. Fat isn't converted to ketones unless your body is low on carbs. If you are on a low carb diet the fat source doesn't matter. A ketone is a ketone. Also he hasn't built a "$100 million empire" as the article claims. On LI he states that Bulletproof has a valuation of $100 million. That leads me to another point. Why do investors keep putting money into these garbage supplement companies? Stop funding quackery.
- mixedCase 8y ago>Why do investors keep putting money into these garbage supplement companies? Occam's razor says the investment pays off, not all investors have issues with the placebo business.
- rdl 8y agoPaying California income taxes and property taxes and everything else would maybe make sense if you lived in Palo Alto/Cupertino/Hillsborough with multiple kids in school, but if you're paying another $44k/yr for school on top of the taxes and high cost of living, it's pretty crazy. It also makes sense if you want to work at the HQ of one of the bay area tech companies, or if you're involved in a startup or other business selling to other startups, but probably doesn't make sense in any other case (including enterprise-focused startups, or potentially, even consumer focused startups now.) While Vancouver real estate is expensive (largely due to foreign buyers, many of whom do not live in the properties), rental isn't as bad, and Vancouver Island or other areas outside metro Vancouver aren't particularly bad. If you're already willing to accept a Cessna ride to civilization, you can definitely find something cheap. Las Vegas or Texas would have been cheaper, though.
- Balgair 8y agoThe Reddit AMA is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1fa2xs/i_spent_20yrs_and_250k_to_hack_my_own_biology_i/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1fa2xs/i_spent_20yrs_... It's a bit of a disaster, really.