As published in The Information
Trophy Animals and Actuarial Tables
Presenting an actuarial report to a client became my first exposure to real wealth, a visit to the Hickok Family Mansion. The S. Rae Hickok Professional Athlete of the Year award, commonly known as the Hickok Belt, was a trophy awarded to the top professional athlete of the year in the United States. The entry hall was, it seemed then, as large as a football field, filled with trophy animals. One was a polar bear standing on its hind legs, at least 12 feet tall.
Another experience was meeting with airline and insurance company executives at the Wings Club in NYC to defend a proposal to save Pan American Airlines. Then there was the meeting with Chip Yablonsky, whose father Jock was the president of the United Mine Workers. The discussion involved the Union, mine operators, and the White House to avert a nationwide strike.
I am neither a stranger to hard work nor the notoriety of acquaintances. However, I was always home for dinner, and our travel was as a family of five.
Work/life balance has always been uppermost in my planning and goal setting. Perhaps because I knew from actuarial training that my life expectancy would be brief based upon the early demises of my father and grandfather. As an actuary, I learned to calculate risk, to measure time in probabilistic terms, to understand that longevity is never guaranteed.
So when I look at Silicon Valley's unicorn founders—the billionaires running companies worth hundreds of billions, the CEOs committing $600 billion over three years while simultaneously building fortress compounds—I find myself asking: What does work/life balance mean when you're trying to build artificial general intelligence?
The answer, I've discovered, is that they're not looking for balance at all. They're looking for something else entirely.
The White House at 9 PM on a Thursday
On September 4, 2025, President Trump hosted 33 Silicon Valley leaders at a White House dinner in the newly renovated Rose Garden. It was 9 PM on a Thursday night. For most Americans, that's when you're helping kids with homework, watching television, winding down. For Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, it was time to thank Trump for being a "pro-business, pro-innovation president."
Mark Zuckerberg was there too. When Trump asked him directly how much he was planning on committing to the U.S., the Meta CEO didn't hesitate: "$600 billion through 2028."
Six. Hundred. Billion. Dollars.
This is what passes for an evening out in Silicon Valley's unicorn class. Working dinners aren't interruptions to life—they are the life.
Thirteen billionaires attended that dinner. The combined market cap of Silicon Valley and San Francisco companies had hit an all-time high of $14.3 trillion. The region is home to 273 unicorns—private companies valued at over $1 billion—worth nearly $1 trillion combined.
Which raises the question: Is the real luxury not attending the White House dinner? Is true work/life balance having enough power to say no to the President?
The Geography of Escape
Here's what Sam Altman was doing when he wasn't dining with the President: expanding his San Francisco compound.
Altman's primary residence is a massive Russian Hill mansion on Lombard Street, purchased in March 2020 for $27 million. Last month, he closed on deals for three properties adjacent to his San Francisco residence, spending around $14-38 million to expand his compound. He's not just buying a house; he's buying an entire block.
Mark Zuckerberg owns at least 11 properties in Palo Alto's exclusive Crescent Park neighborhood, creating a fortress costing more than $110 million. When you're running a company valued in the hundreds of billions, apparently, one home isn't enough. You need a compound. You need a moat.
This is the new geography of work/life balance in Silicon Valley: not separating work from life, but separating yourself from everyone else.
The Hickok mansion had trophy animals and a 12-foot polar bear. These Silicon Valley compounds have something else: isolation as aspiration. The Hickoks built a mansion to display their success to the world. Altman and Zuckerberg are building compounds to hide from it.
The Stealth Mode Life
If Altman and Zuckerberg represent the visible end of the unicorn spectrum, there's an entire shadow world of unicorn founders who've chosen complete invisibility.
Safe Superintelligence, founded in June 2024 by Ilya Sutskever, former chief scientist at OpenAI, operates in "stealth mode." The company raised $1 billion at a $5 billion valuation while revealing almost nothing about what it's actually building.
And speaking of the CIA: Palantir Technologies spent years as Silicon Valley's most infamous secretive unicorn before going public in 2020. The company was backed by In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital arm. For Palantir's founders, work/life balance meant building technology so sensitive that secrecy wasn't a preference—it was the business model.
The question I keep asking myself: Is this balance, or is this disappearance?
The AI Boom Changed Everything
Fast forward to 2025, and the unicorn landscape has transformed completely. The AI boom has created unprecedented scale and unprecedented pressure. OpenAI raised $40 billion in a single funding round in March 2025, giving it a valuation of $500 billion. Anthropic has raised $33.74 billion total, with a $183 billion valuation. Databricks is valued at $100 billion.
These aren't companies—they're economic superpowers.
Anthropic outlines a path to break-even in 2028, whereas OpenAI doesn't project profitability until 2030. These aren't quarterly earnings targets; these are existential timelines. The pressure isn't to hit your numbers this quarter—it's to build AGI before your competitor does, to shape the future of human civilization.
What Balance Actually Means at This Altitude
For most people, balance means leaving work at 5 PM, having weekends free, taking vacations without checking email. It means boundaries.
For unicorn founders, "balance" means something entirely different:
- Control. Building compounds so large you never have to leave your bubble. Spending $14-38 million to buy out your neighbors isn't creating work/life balance—it's creating a moat.
- Optionality. Operating in stealth mode when you want privacy, making public commitments when you want influence. The luxury isn't time off—it's choosing when to be visible.
- Integration. When your life's mission IS building AGI, there is no "off." Work isn't something you do from 9-5; it's the organizing principle of existence.
- Resources. When you can spend $110 million on a residential compound, you don't need work/life balance—you need work/life dominance.
The Paradox I'm Living
I should confess something: I'm working harder now than I ever have. At 83, I'm building Hallucinations.cloud, an AI safety startup. I spend 6-10 hours daily on development. I've just successfully submitted my first iOS app to Apple's App Store. I'm writing this column as part of a bid to become a journalist. I'm pursuing patent applications for distributed watermarking technology.
And honestly? I'd like to become a unicorn too.
So am I a hypocrite for questioning Silicon Valley's approach to work/life balance while working myself into the ground at an age when most people are long retired?
I don't think so. And here's why:
The difference isn't in the hours worked—it's in the isolation chosen.
I'm not building a compound to escape my neighbors. I'm not operating in stealth mode. I'm building in public, sharing ideas, engaging with the world rather than retreating from it.
Sam Altman is spending $14-38 million to buy out his neighbors. I moved to South Dakota for clarity and perspective, not isolation.
Ilya Sutskever is building AGI in stealth mode with $1 billion. I'm building AI safety tools and writing about the industry openly.
Mark Zuckerberg is committing $600 billion while living in a $110 million compound. I'm building a startup at 83 hoping to become a unicorn while living in a place where people still talk to their neighbors.
What the Actuarial Tables Know
Here's what my actuarial training taught me: No matter how much money you make, no matter how large your compound, no matter how world-changing your mission, you still have the same 24 hours as everyone else. You still age at the same rate. Your life expectancy, for all your billions, doesn't increase proportionally with your net worth.
I've stood in the Hickok mansion beneath a 12-foot polar bear. I've negotiated with mine workers and airline executives. I've worked on problems that affected thousands of lives. And every night, I went home to dinner with my family.
Not because my work wasn't important. But because I knew something these unicorn founders seem to have forgotten: The polar bear is just a trophy. The mansion is just a building. The billion-dollar valuation is just a number.
And at the end—which comes for all of us, unicorn founders included—no one wishes they'd spent more time at the office. Or at White House dinners. Or in stealth mode building AGI.
The real unicorn—the truly mythical creature—wasn't a billion-dollar company at all, but the time they spent building moats when they could have been building connections.
I'm working harder than ever at 83, chasing my own unicorn dreams. But I can still walk outside and talk to my neighbors. I can still write openly about what I'm building. I can still engage with the world rather than retreat from it.
I'd rather fail at becoming a unicorn while staying connected to humanity than succeed at becoming one while disappearing behind a $110 million moat.
Because in the end, the actuarial tables don't care about your net worth. Time runs out for all of us at the same relentless pace. And when it does, the only thing that matters is whether you spent it building walls or building bridges.