I’m often asked how my parents, who are from two very different countries, met. While my lazy answer is “through mutual friends,” the real answer is that they fell in love with the same country and ended up in the same place. My dad, enthralled by tales from his brother-in-law about life in America, turned down his acceptance to university in Germany and applied to Georgetown University instead. My mom, who enjoyed a stable life but not enough excitement in Indonesia, gave up her career as a dentist to move halfway across the world, starting over again at 28, lugging packages in a liquor store in Washington, D.C.

As a child growing up in Pennsylvania, I imagined that I, too, would have a moment where I’d pick up and leave my home country. Instead, I spent one weekend in San Francisco and decided that was where I wanted to be. I knew nothing about technology, only that the people there seemed like me. In my hometown, I felt too weird, obsessive and off-putting; in San Francisco, every improbable permutation of the future was earnestly dissected, discussed and built at coffee shops and in the living rooms of sunny Victorian row houses.