California Forever: The Startup Building America's Next Great City

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Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome California Forever's Jan Sramic.

51.382 - 80.528 Jan Sramek

As you've just heard, I run California Forever, which is building the next great American city. And we are building it right here in California. And I know what all of you are already thinking, which is, California? Really? Well, where are we today? We are in California. The all-in summit is in California. And I think that's kind of the point, because despite all of its flaws and challenges,

81.723 - 109.974 Jan Sramek

California is irreplaceable. Whether you like it or not, there is nowhere else in America that can play the role that California plays in the United States right now. And so we have to fight for fixing all of the things that are wrong with the state. I was born in Eastern Europe in 1987 in the Czech Republic, which was two years before the wall came down.

110.775 - 144.963 Jan Sramek

And growing up as a kid in post-Soviet Eastern Europe, California was the California dream. California was this. And then after 26 years, I finally got here in 2013. And what I found was this. It was homelessness. It was people throwing rocks at Google buses. It was companies beginning to leave the state. And all of it was entirely self-inflicted, all of it.

145.924 - 170.556 Jan Sramek

This was a self-goal, 100% of it, because we had failed to build enough of everything that you need to run an actual state. We failed to build enough housing. We failed to build enough office space. We failed to build enough factories. We failed to build enough freeways and trains and energy, all of it. And I found that profoundly sad.