Randa Abdel-Fattah

Can you take me to that first meeting?

Because it's almost like an intellectual blind date, right?

Oh, it absolutely is an intellectual blind date.

And they hit it off.

Wayne learned that Patry had studied mathematics and computer science, and they were both excited about seasteading.

They started meeting up periodically, revising that instruction manual Wayne had drafted, getting to know each other along the way.

Occasionally, he would tell me stories of grandma and grandpa fighting.

Talking about economics, this is a family who's very much into the libertarian movement, and I'm not really into the libertarian movement.

The libertarian movement generally believes in individual liberty above all else, a competitive free market, and very little government interference in people's lives.

And Patry saw something very libertarian in the seasteading idea.

Experimentation was something that they talked about a lot.

And Patry really wanted to make that experiment a reality.

From that first email, he'd said to Wayne, I would really like to build one of these things.

I'm going like, well, that's a lot of work.

And it would require a lot of money.

Money they didn't have.

We were always playing with the money problem.

Then the solution fell into their laps.

It was 2007.

Patry was interviewing for jobs at different companies in Silicon Valley.