Silicon Valley's best feature isn't a building

Where I live, in the Emerald Hills area of Redwood City, we look out over a valley. Every day there are hawks up there, majestic ones, flying around and making their distinctive calls. That's pretty amazing. It is also not what most people picture when they think of Silicon Valley.

I came to the San Francisco Bay Area from Australia more than 20 years ago. Like many people I talk to who come here, I expected a technology mecca to have some identifiable place you could go and visit, somewhere you would feel: Aha, I've arrived in Silicon Valley. There are places that come close. Downtown Palo Alto, where I used to live, is one of them.

But in general, it is a sprawl of suburbia with low-rise office buildings and packed roads, utterly architecturally unremarkable. There's really nowhere to go to feel like you have, quote unquote, arrived in Silicon Valley.

Having said that, living here, it is gorgeous. Again, that's perhaps not something you would expect. The stereotype of technology people is that they like to work in dark rooms late at night. The reality of Silicon Valley is unparalleled sunshine and temperatures that make it great for exercising and getting outdoors, and a lot of people obviously take part in that.

Going up the Santa Cruz Mountains to Skyline Boulevard and being among the redwood trees happens pretty regularly for me, because I don't live too far from there.

It's an interesting tension. There are a lot of motivated people here wanting to work very many hours. But often you'd like to just go for a walk and experience the beauty that is the San Francisco Bay Area and its weather.

What we're working on with Bonzai, the company behind Nina, the AI journalist I'm telling this to, and some of the other ideas and entrepreneurial endeavors I'm working on involve voice AI. Being able to work while walking is a very freeing experience. If you're chained to your desk and can't progress your ambitions away from it, you feel chronically like you're missing out on the beautiful outdoors. If you can pick up a phone and use voice AI to interact with your coding agents, create some content or even just brainstorm and think through ideas, it feels like you can hit two birds with one stone.

Being able to work while walking is a very freeing experience.

Does it give me more energy, or change how I think through ideas? Yes, 100 percent. But I wouldn't want to give anyone the impression that I'm living at the trailhead. I don't spend more than an hour a day doing this sort of thing, if I'm lucky, and it's probably not even an hour a day. It's more like an hour every other day. In that time, though, it can be a great source of letting your mind wander and thinking through problems, particularly now that we all have access to a superhuman thought partner with AI.

And it doesn't take much to get there. One weekend in October, I went for a run with my son in a stroller on Sawyer Camp Trail, a long pathway next to Crystal Springs Reservoir. It was absolutely beautiful, and it's 10 minutes from my house. So there you go.