What would you do if you had a billion dollars?
Build a new city from scratch, says one cohort of California billionaires.
A group of Silicon Valley elite have been buying up land in Solano County between San Francisco and Sacramento with the dream of building a brand new city.
The idea began with Jan Sramek, 36, a former Goldman Sachs trader who moved to the Bay Area about a decade ago. Sramek “fell in love” with Solano County after going on fishing trips there, and he and his wife recently bought a home in the area where they plan to raise their toddler and new baby on the way.
In the last few years, Sramek’s unassuming company Flannery Associates has spent more than $800 million buying up farms and undeveloped land with the idea of building a new city.
Credit: California Forever
His investors are some of the richest people in Silicon Valley.
The first investment came from Patrick Collison, the Irish chief executive of Stripe, a payments company. Another investment came from the king of venture capital Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz. Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman also invested.
The group went about their plan quite…
