Long hours, high stress and overwhelming pressure to succeed: the work culture of Silicon Valley is notoriously unforgiving, so it’s not surprising that tech entrepreneurs find creative ways to blow off steam in their spare time.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, for example, spends time learning flying trapeze, while former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo is an avid beekeeper. From DIY rocketry and zero-gravity flight through to sonic meditation, many tech execs need more than yoga to claim their “me” time, and say it helps them feel more fulfilled, relaxed and productive at work. But it’s also a revealing insight into what makes them tick. Here, in their own words, eight entrepreneurs explain their favorite extracurricular activity.
‘It’s a joyous, zen-like, free, peaceful experience’
Name: Peter Diamandis
Day job: Engineer, physician and entrepreneur who founded the X Prize Foundation and co-founded Singularity University
Hobby: Zero-gravity flight
In his own words: Space has always been a hobby and passion, particularly how to make it something that individuals can experience.
In the mid-1990s I decided I wanted to fly in zero gravity in a large aeroplane. I was trying to track down a 727 to buy, but before that I flew to Russia where, at the time, $10,000 would get you any experience you desired. I took a ride on the Ilyushin 76, a large cargo airplane with no seats and a padded floor. During takeoff and landing you had to wear a parachute so you could skydive out the back door if anything went wrong.
When I came back I got hold of a 727 and did some zero-gravity test flights (following a parabolic path) with Space Shuttle astronaut Byron Lichtenberg. It was just me in the back of this long aeroplane floating from one end to the other. After 11 years (1993-2004) we got FAA approval to do it commercially – through Zero Gravity Corporation – so that others could experience it too. If it wasn’t for my passion it would never have been a business.
I do a couple of flights a year now and I’m becoming really good at popping water balloons in the air and then trying to drink the water out of the floating globules with a straw.
The most dramatic experience was taking Stephen Hawking up in 2007. It was such a risk it and everyone said: “Don’t do it, you’ll kill him”. It took me six months to persuade the FAA to let me do it.
If I couldn’t fly in zero gravity any more I’d feel cheated. It’s a joyous, zen-like, free, peaceful experience.
‘Alice is emblematic of the imaginative alternative realities’
Name: Ray Kurzweil
Day job: Currently a director of engineering at Google, heading up a team working on machine intelligence
Hobby: Collecting Alice in Wonderland memorabilia
In his own words: The first piece I collected related to Alice was a facsimile of a 90-page handwritten manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, written by Charles Dodgson, otherwise known as Lewis Carroll.
The manuscript was written for and inspired by Alice Liddell. Later he expanded this to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and it became a worldwide success. Decades later Miss Liddell needed money and sold the original manuscript.
I have since collected various original editions and annotated editions of the book and some paintings. Alice is emblematic of the imaginative alternative realities we will create with emerging technologies.
Once I was walking in a San Francisco city fair and recognised Alice Liddell in a painting by artist Terry Guyer. I was familiar with the photograph of Alice by Charles Dodgson that Guyer had based his painting on so I bought the painting. I also have a painting of the White Rabbit by Grace Slick and a hologram of the Cheshire Cat, who disappears when you move leaving only his smile.
‘My sound studio is like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory’
Name: Ivy Ross
Day job: Head of Google Glass at Google X since May 2014
Hobby: Studying sound and vibration
In her own words: We all use terminology like “we’re on the same wavelength” but there’s real science behind it.
For 30 years I would take a lot of the money I was earning in the corporate world and spend my vacations with people studying the sounds monks would use as a “sonic massage” or visiting a man in France bombarding cancer cells with sound.
This led me to instal a studio with all kinds of sound toys in my second home in Santa Fe, which is like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. For example, there’s a pyramid you sit inside with sound tubes all around and I have a mallet that I can use to play different frequencies of sound while you are sitting inside.
Being in a sound pyramid is an incredibly relaxing experience. The first time I was in one I said: “Oh my God, I understand.” So I took part of my bonus that year and commissioned one.
The theory is that your body takes in the vibration that it needs to heal itself. You get a sense of wellbeing, calmness – the same benefits you get from meditation. Your mind automatically relaxes.
My sound room is now the most popular thing when I invite friends to stay. Until they experience it I don’t say a word – it’s very optional. But those coming back for a second visit want to make sure that the package deal includes some time with the sound toys!
I don’t care what people think about my hobby. Life is one big experiment and I’m not going to miss out on exploring those things that engage me and get my attention.
‘I think of myself as a custodian for these machines, not the owner’
Name: Bob Lord
Day job: Chief information security officer at Yahoo. He previously headed up information security at Twitter
Hobby: Collecting cryptography machines
In his own words: In the late 1990s I was at Netscape managing a team working on core cryptography libraries. For some reason I started looking around eBay and discovered an M-209 cipher machine on auction. It was made for use by Americans in the trenches during WWII.
I decided to bid on it and I won. That’s when I got the bug and started to see what else might be available. This led to more eBay purchases and me joining an informal Yahoo Group of crypto collectors with the same bug.
I have nine or 10 working units, but I also collect a lot of manuals and wartime posters – really anything around the security of communications. Being in touch with the history of security and cryptography and privacy is something that resonates on both a personal and professional level.
The one people are always most excited about is my German Enigma machine; there are very few remaining units left and it has tremendous historical significance. However, I think my favorite is the Russian Fialka, used until the early 1990s. It looks like an IBM electric typewriter and it doesn’t suffer from one of the flaws of the Enigma, which is that no letter can encrypt or decrypt to itself.
I think of myself as a custodian for these machines not the owner – eventually I might retire them to a museum or university. It’s been a complete joy to hold these things, share my enthusiasm with other people and get them thinking about the history of cryptography.
‘Probably the most fun I’ve had with my clothes on’
Name: Godfrey Sullivan
Day job: Chairman and former CEO of enterprise software company Splunk
Hobby: Ride & Tie
In his own words: I was introduced to Ride & Tie in the mid 1980s. It’s a tough mountain race involving two people and one horse, where only one person can touch the horse at any one time.
When the race starts, one person will ride ahead into the mountains for a mile or two before finding a place to tie the horse up and starting to run. The second person follows on foot and finds the horse, unties it and rides it for a few miles. You leapfrog like this with the horse for 30-40 miles up and down hills, with each person running half and riding half.
The first race was probably the most fun I’ve had with my clothes on. It’s pure chaos, with 50-75 horses and the same number of runners. You have a shotgun start and then everyone crashes across a meadow towards the trail. Most of the horses are Arabians – fit, strong and high-spirited. The pace of it is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
I used to do about two a year, but I’ve started to do more endurance racing where it’s one person and a horse and you have to cover 100 miles in 24 hours. It’s all about teamwork; you need to learn when the horse should do the work and when you can do the work. The rider normally runs the very steep grades to avoid overheating the horse. It’s another insane sport and I do a few of those every year; the horses are always fit and ready to go.
‘When I’m flying I’m living’
Name: Jessica Mah
Day job: CEO of accounting software startup InDinero
Hobby: Flying a single-engine plane
When I was a kid I was obsessed with Microsoft Flight Simulator. Then two years ago I was at a dinner party at my investor Andrew Warner’s house and we were talking about how cool it would be to be able to fly. So I bought a Groupon voucher for $150 to take a flying lesson.
I went in not expecting much, just a cool life experience I could tick off the list. But I started thinking that it could be an opportunity for me; I really don’t like flying commercially. So I put my mind to it for five months and got my private licence.
I probably fly at least three weekends a month; it’s the only thing that really takes my mind off work. Everyone thinks that’s because when you are focused on flying you are focused on not dying, but when I’m flying I’m living.
Flying has been great for networking. I’ve been able to take CEOs to LA for lunch or Tahoe for breakfast – no one turns that kind of invitation down. My friends love it as well. I have a long list of people who want to go on trips to Vegas with me.
‘I’m the David Hasselhoff of fiction writing’
Name: Rip Gerber
Day job: Chief marketing officer at Vlocity
Hobby: Writing bestselling techno-thrillers
In his own words: I was on vacation one day and saw Jurassic Park 3. It was a terrible movie and I remember walking out and thinking: “I could write that.”
The first 10 pages were really easy, but by page 11 … nothing. It was hard. I got myself all lathered up and I ended up writing and rewriting this book, Pharma, for over a year as a hobby. I would write at nights and weekends and on business trips. Instead of checking into a hotel and going down to the bar I’d stay in my room and bang out pages.
Pharma is a techno-thriller about a pharmaceutical company manipulating the genetics of plants that subsequently grow out of control. Think of it like Jurassic Park but with plants. I was rejected by more than 100 agents, but number 113 took me on. Then I was rejected by a bunch of publishing houses until Random House bought the book and published it in Germany where it became a bestseller. I’m like the David Hasselhoff of fiction writing! They also bought my second book, Killer Virus, which had the same protagonist.
Fiction writing is a very entrepreneurial endeavor – the performance is all on you and you live and die by what you are able to produce. For me that’s what appeals. It’s a bit like what we do in the Valley; it’s very denuding and the rejection is not for the faint of heart.
I still write, and have five other books which have yet to be sold, but these days I’m doing more one-to-one writing through personal letters of gratitude. I started doing this in 2007 where we had a house fire in San Francisco and lost everything. So every year I would send out five letters of gratitude to people who had had an impact on me and my family. Now I like doing them all the time.
‘There’s a visceral excitement with rocketry’
Name: Steve Jurvetson
Day job: The J of venture capital firm DFJ, and is a board member of companies including SpaceX and Tesla Motors
Hobby: Building rockets
In his own words: When my son turned three years old, we were walking through a hobby store and I saw this rocket kit with two ready-to-fly prebuilt rockets. I remembered the pyrotechnic joy of using one as a kid and so I bought it to fly in the neighborhood with the kids.
We then discovered a local rocketry club and started building and flying bigger rockets we made out of cardboard and balsa wood with plastic nose cones and little thin plastic parachutes.
We started going to Black Rock Desert in the state of Nevada where anything goes (it’s the only place in the USA where the FAA lets anyone launch rockets to an altitude of 100,000ft). It’s only big crazy projects and in order to qualify it must be illegal to launch elsewhere.
My son is now 16 and in the last few years we’ve been building much bigger and better rockets out of carbon fibre, GPS, video cameras and computers monitoring altitude and speed and triggering the multiple parachutes. These rockets go faster than the speed of sound – sometimes Mach 2 (twice as fast as the speed of sound).
Some people do crossword puzzles to keep their brain sharp, this is my form of mental exercise.
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