Life in Chapel Hill

Having moved into our Chapel Hill home nearly a month ago, I now have some reasonably concrete thoughts about life here. The biggest impression made on me so far is the area's dichotomy between being a large metropolitan area of two million people but having a really small town feel.

Durham may feel a little more like a bustling city and Raleigh surely does, but Chapel Hill feels like a sleepy college town out in the country. There is low enough light pollution that the stars are dazzling at night even when we just step out on our deck. The area is densely forested - so much so that our home feels like a tree house - and everywhere you look is green, green, green. When we take Max for a walk it isn't uncommon for us to encounter deer roaming around the neighborhood. Max really, really wants to volunteer to help keep the deer population in check.

The green feel translates to the people as well. There are farmers markets available every day of the week and they are full of fresh, local, natural foods. Recycling is a big deal here too and it is actually illegal to throw away some recyclable materials. People are very active so I have joined several hiking meetup groups to meet others and explore the natural beauty all around.

Despite this small town, country feel, we are a 20 minute drive away from a major international airport (Raleigh-Durham), 15 minutes away from the largest research park in the country (Research Triangle Park), and very near multiple hubs of startup activity. I've found the people here to be very friendly and welcoming, not just on a personal level but also in providing access to the business community.

The area reminds me of Houston in many ways. Many of the locals seem to be non-natives, having moved here for school or work. This endows the region with a strong diversity of culture, opinion, and industry interest. Like Houston, the area also has incredibly low cost of living, which extends from the low real estate prices to the multitude of inexpensive, healthy, delicious food options.

In some ways, however, Chapel Hill is completely unlike Houston. At least twice since we moved in the temperature has reached down into the 60s F at night - don't they know it's August?? And, although people here complain about traffic, they apparently have no idea what real traffic is. I've been out on the major through-ways during what passes for rush hour here and you almost wouldn't know that you were driving during a peak time.

On the subject of transportation, there is very good public transportation here. The municipal buses run all over the place (with UNC Chapel Hill as the main hub) all day and are completely free. Katie and I are now a single car family (I have left my car in Houston because I am still spending so much time there.) and, even so, her car doesn't get much use. She is able to walk and/or take the bus to school and I can bus around to most places as well.

There are many aspects of the area that we still haven't explored. For example, there is a thriving craft beer scene here that I would love to get to know. A few hours to our west is great mountain hiking and a few hours to our east are some good beaches - hopefully we will have a chance to check those out soon.

In the meantime I'm still spending a great deal of time in Houston, which reduces my bandwidth for North Carolina exploration. I'm teaching two entrepreneurship courses at Rice University this semester and steering my Houston-based startup through a critical ramp up to product launch. Still, the little bit I've experienced of the Triangle so far has me quite impressed.

Gone To Carolina In My Mind

Katie and I are moving to Chapel Hill, North Carolina! Those closest to us already know but it's time to make this announcement public. Next month Katie will be beginning a PhD program in nutritional anthropology at the University of North Carolina. This process actually began more than four years ago as Katie became very concerned about the obesity and diabetes epidemics. Having worked her entire career in healthcare, she has seen how our current medical intervention approach doesn't seem very effective, so she will be working to advance the state of the art of preventive cultural approaches.

I am incredibly proud of Katie. Once she set her sights on a PhD, she worked hard to maximize her GRE scores, define a compelling value proposition, and perfect her personal statement. She applied to the top programs in her field and was accepted into all but one of them. We then had the enviable problem of having to choose between several great options, each with its own pros and cons. One late night around the kitchen island, it became evident that UNC was rising to the top, not only because of the program, which is top notch and still maintains a strong focus on the development of its students, but also because of the location.

We have some family in the Research Triangle area and we will be close to Northern Virginia, where I grew up. It is a lush, green, wooded area, with lots of hiking trails - for us and for Max! There are lots of farmers markets and we believe we will be able to live the sustainable lifestyle we have cultivated. We are looking forward to being back in a place with four seasons as well - can't wait for the leaves to change color this autumn!

Of course this move creates both challenges and opportunities for me professionally. My startup, Smart Office Energy Solutions, is headquartered in Houston and I teach entrepreneurship at Rice University, so I will be commuting back to Houston for much of the next six months. At the same time, however, the Research Triangle has a great deal of cleantech / smart grid research going on, a thriving entrepreneurship ecosystem, and major corporate support for innovation. Accordingly, I will be opening a new Smart OES office in the Triangle to cultivate opportunities there. The East Coast represents a major client market for us so it will be advantageous for us to begin developing a foothold in the mid-Atlantic.

Katie and I will both miss Houston a lot; we have called it home for more than 1/3 of our lives. It has been a great place to start our professional careers: a burgeoning land of economic growth, excellent arts, and low cost of living. It is the people, though, whom we will miss most. Houston's great people - smart, fun, and friendly - kept us in Houston after we graduated from Rice, attracted me back after my Swiss experience, and may well attract us back again. The week leading up to our departure was filled with warm send-offs and validation that we truly are blessed to have such people in our lives.

Now we are embarking a new adventure. There will be new people and new challenges in our lives - and new opportunities! We have no idea what the future will hold but, as we vowed to each other two years ago, we will face it together. And so the next chapter begins . . . huzzah!