CEO of Bulletproof Coffee shares why he left Silicon Valley and moved to Canada

http://www.businessinsider.com/bulletproof-coffee-ceo-dave-asprey-moved-to-canada-2018-3?r=UK&IR=T

by bilkoo • 8 years ago

37 74 8 years ago

spraak4• 8 years ago

I 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

lev995• 8 years ago

Personal attacks are often downvoted.

spraak4• 8 years ago

Yeah, I get that. But I think there's a subtle line between calling out his incredibly unsound and strange beliefs and meaning it as a personal attack.

beagle3• 8 years ago

Cows eat whatever they can find that looks like food to them, including chicks[0].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXhElaGCZVU - warning: could be considered animal cruelty.

spraak4• 8 years ago

So 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.

msie2• 8 years ago

$88000/year for kids' schooling?!?! Couldn't enroll them in public school?

jvagner• 8 years ago

In 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• 8 years ago

You 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• 8 years ago

This 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.

refurb• 8 years ago

Calling himself "lower middle class" is a joke. How many middle class send their kids to a private school?

Jtsummers• 8 years ago

A decent number. But most middle class folks (or those outside upper middle class at least) don't send multiple kids to $44,000/student/year schools, let alone one kid.

lev995• 8 years ago

In some cities sending children to private school is a very middle class thing to do. It depends on the local public school system.

cloudwizard• 8 years ago

Some people consider their children their first priority. Why the US education system is failing above average children is a different argument. I send both my kids to private school and consider it a necessity.

Tempest1981• 8 years ago

I 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-Bea...

begoon• 8 years ago

This guy is just a charlatan. Period.

msie2• 8 years ago

Just 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).

sdfjkl2• 8 years ago

Investor 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• 8 years ago

Though in this case, all his employees are in Seattle, not in Canada....

geff822• 8 years ago

Sorry, 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• 8 years ago

Taxes in California are very comparable to taxes in Canada, and like the US it does depend on the province one lives in.

otoburb2• 8 years ago

Comparable 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• 8 years ago

Seems 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_• 8 years ago

Arguably he gets more for his taxes in Canada than he does in the US.

toasterlovin4• 8 years ago

Higher taxes + social safety net make more sense for lower income people. Higher income people can buy themselves a safety net.

gameswithgo• 8 years ago

Canadian taxes include health insurance, possibly also obviates the need to buy a $500k house in order to be in a good school district (not sure if Canada is like this, other first world countries are) So could be a net savings.

sbinthree• 8 years ago

Canada has good schools and bad schools, although not to the same degree that the US does. You pay for better schools primarily through housing. Houses in good school district cost 10-30% more.

toasterlovin4• 8 years ago

Canadian real estate is insane. As bad as California.

stale2002• 8 years ago

I don't know why every talks about the "savings" if health care.

No highly paid tech employee is paying 10s of thousands of dollars for Healthcare.

The employer is the one who pays that, and the Employee is probably paying close to nothing.

driverdan3• 8 years ago

There are plenty of good school districts in the US where a house won't cost anywhere near $500k.

jrace• 8 years ago

Not in every province. Here in BC we pay $75 month for a couple (was $150 a month until last Dec).

And that does not cover dental or "other" items like physio.

toomuchtodo2• 8 years ago

Texas is arguably one of the worst states in the US to live in (unless you're a high net worth individual), which doesn't bode well for a comparison against Canada.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150401050939/https://www.texas...

geff822• 8 years ago

Well, I took it for an example (and I am a little Fanboy concerning Texas, forgive me having chosen it). There exist regions for about any taste in the US, it's such a diverse country.

driverdan3• 8 years ago

Article is from 2011 and you're ignoring the fact that TX is a very large state. There are a wide variety of places to live.

giarc• 8 years ago

Not covered in the story, and my speculation, but his wife is a physician and that likely factored into their decision. Very different physician culture in Canada compared to the US.

wk_end• 8 years ago

Your overall point is totally correct, and as a Canadian I dislike the way Americans often perceive Canada as this place that's basically America but better - that they're entitled to move to in order to escape their issues with their own country.

But I wish people would stop spreading the myth that Canadian taxes are necessarily significantly higher than American ones. The highest federal income tax bracket in Canada is taxed at 33% [1], which is very comparable to US rates.

Certainly, provincial taxes do tend to push things a little higher, and by comparison there are US states with very low or non-existent tax rates. But if you live in SF or New York, with their high state and city taxes, your income tax burden would be barely any higher in Vancouver or Toronto.

[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/financial-consumer-agency/services/...

jstandard• 8 years ago

The 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".

gaurav_v• 8 years ago

You 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• 8 years ago

I do not understand that logic at all. Having a household income $303K says nothing about how much down payment you are able to afford.

andechs• 8 years ago

Vancouver 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-toront...

tomjakubowski• 8 years ago

Surely, being married to a working physician, their household income well cleared that mark.

true_religion• 8 years ago

He had his wife's income so likely the family made more that 300k. As a successful physician, they may have pulled in more than 500k total.

badrequest• 8 years ago

I got the feeling that this guy really had/has no idea what being middle class entails.

clairity• 8 years ago

yes, it's very hard to feel sorry for a guy who is in the top 1% of household income. rather than looking at how good he has it, he focuses on what he doesn't have. what a lack of perspective.

by the way, bulletproof coffee tastes awful--synthetic and mealy-mouthed.

sjg0072• 8 years ago

Plus he was paying for private school tuition at $44k a year. So sure maybe the budget was tight but he had an investment (the house) in that budget and yes your standard of living will be lower than somewhere cheaper (even though it is above most bay area folks)... so yes tone deaf.

nunez• 8 years ago

When you live in an area where basic homes start in the $1M+ range and it seems that everyone else is richer (not necessarily wealthier!) than you, it's easy to feel like you're "barely" getting by. It fucks with you...badly. That's the disadvantage of living in "luxury" neighborhoods: you need to have massive self-control to prevent keeping up with the Joneses.

I felt this way often when I worked in Finance. My and my wife's combined total income was great at >$200k, but it felt like tons of people were way ahead of me despite us being well ahead of the national average, especially for our ages. This felt even worse with the burden of student loans over our heads.

I bet that leaving the Valley was a great decision for them. A lot of these feelings went away when I left NYC as well.

That said, deciding to send their children to private school was 100% on them. My wife has several friends and acquaintances who teach at private schools and charters. They aren't necessarily better, curriculum wise.

rmason• 8 years ago

Is Sunnyvale a 'ritzy' city? I've visited the Valley more times than I can count and that's not my impression of Sunnyvale. Am I mistaken?

nkrisc• 8 years ago

I 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• 8 years ago

I didn't even know that was a brand name until now, I've been making it myself for months.

lev995• 8 years ago

He even sells MCT oil at twice the market rate. https://www.amazon.com/Bulletproof-Brain-Octane-Reliable-Sou...

spraak4• 8 years ago

And 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

AndyNemmity5• 8 years ago

It'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.

Balgair2• 8 years ago

I 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• 8 years ago

Who would have guessed being a drug dealer makes good money.

manishsharan• 8 years ago

Is 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.

AndyNemmity5• 8 years ago

It 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• 8 years ago

Oh god, he's on Vancouver Island now? Just what we need, another snake-oil-selling pseudo-hippie to run up real estate prices.

driverdan3• 8 years ago

Take 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• 8 years 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• 8 years ago

Paying 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.

Balgair2• 8 years ago

The Reddit AMA is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1fa2xs/i_spent_20yrs_...

It's a bit of a disaster, really.

CEO of Bulletproof Coffee shares why he left Silicon Valley and moved to Canada

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