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The author and her husband gave up corporate life in California and moved to a farm they purchased in Puerto Rico 17 years ago.
Courtesy of Sarah Ratliff
My husband and I had careers in biotech, but never felt like we were built for the corporate world.
We were seeking a different life, one that aligned with our nonconformist values and shared dreams.
We moved to Puerto Rico and bought a farm. Life isn’t easy, but it was the right choice for us.
Despite my husband and my family’s belief that our decision to leave the matrix to live on a homestead in the mountains was spontaneous, people don’t just wake up one day and realize they don’t fit in. That moment of clarity is the culmination of years of being different. After all, in high school, I was voted least likely to conform.
Both Paul and I were raised by Depression-era parents. We were expected to take a certain path: go to college, climb the corporate ladder, get married, and have 2.3 kids.
Always square pegs in round holes, Paul and I knew we weren’t built for the corporate world and the trappings of middle-class life. While our peers were happy being molded into successful corporatists who sought that lifestyle, we knew we were supposed to live on a mountain in peace and solitude, raising a few animals, and growing food.
Our dreams have always been aligned
The idea of lifelong devotion to a job that was only fulfilling on pay day and when we were out buying toys to distract us from the monotony, pained us both.
My husband and I started dating in 1997. Our first date was spent planning our escape from the corporate grind and living on that mountain. We knew we had to conform for a few more years to make the money needed to fund our shared dream. Our lifestyle afforded us two vacations annually, so we visited many potential locations: France, Mexico, several states, and Puerto Rico.
We were married seven years and living in Southern California by the time we left our jobs in biotech, in 2008. When the company we were both at announced layoffs, we saw it as the sign we needed. We put our house on the market, got our final stock awards, and quit our jobs.
TK
Courtesy of Sarah Ratliff
The Island of Enchantment felt like home
We’d visited Puerto Rico twice. The second time we stayed on an eight-acre farm in a small town in the interior. As we drove up and down the mountain, we did as we’d seen others do, saying “Yo!” to everyone we saw. People probably wondered who these Americanos were with their funny accents. Between us, we spoke five words of Spanish.
Despite the language barrier, many invited us to their homes for dinner. By day four, I said to Paul, “It feels like we’ve been traveling for 40 years and now we’re home.” He agreed.
The mountain called to us
We knew we were looking for a farm, one that was large enough to offer us privacy and space for animals and lots of trees. We found a 15-acre farm in the same town we vacationed in, called Utuado.
When we bought it, it had 8,000 coffee trees, which we replaced with a rare collection of fruit trees, palm trees, and bamboo from throughout the tropical world. Today, we are consultants to people new to agriculture in the tropics. We raise goats, chickens, ducks, and a mascot pig named Cora. We usually have between three and five dogs and many cats (all outside). Our chickens remind us every morning why we threw out our alarm clock.
The author says that their farm is now filled with many TK plants, including ginger, bamboo, and areca palms.
Courtesy of Sarah Ratliff
We were here for Hurricane Maria in 2017. She took 40% of our trees. Like all other farmers, we’ve spent the last eight years rebuilding. Having gone through the most destructive hurricane in Puerto Rico’s recorded history with the organic farming community, we’ve renewed our commitment to Puerto Rico and our lifestyle.
We’re living the life we were meant to
Our families have stopped asking, “When are you coming back home?” This time, we didn’t have to remind them, “We are home.” They got the message when we jumped into rebuilding the farm.
We speak more Spanish today than we did in 2008. I love being referred to as Doña, which is a title denoting respect for older women. Although our consulting business sustains us in many ways, we don’t make the money we used to. However, I still think our worst days on the farm are better than our best days in the corporate world.
I often wonder if, despite not following our parents’ wishes, if they were alive, they’d be proud of us. I hope so. I’ve certainly lived up to my high school mates’ predictions about me.
Phoebe Gates (right) and Sophia Kianni (left) met at Stanford University.
Zhamak Fullad/Phia
Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni launched the Phia app in April.
The cofounders raised $8 million in a seed round that included VCs and backers like Kris Jenner.
They told Business Insider 3 lessons they’ve learned along the way.
Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, both 23, are turning heads with Phia, their AI fashion app that’s drawing interest from investors andtrendsetters.
Phia, an AI-powered shopping assistant, went live in April and said it has since amassed over 600,000 users. The free app and browser extension compare prices on fashion items across around 40,000 linked sites to help users find deals. It’s the pair’s first business, and it’s making waves with investors.
Gates and Kianni raised $8 million in seed funding in September. The round was led by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins and included investors like Kris Jenner, Hailey Bieber, and Michael Rubin.
Gates is the youngest daughter of billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates and philanthropist Melinda French Gates. While she likely picked up a thing or two about running a business from her parents, Phia’s early success appears to be all hers and Kianni’s doing. They didn’t turn to Gates’ parent to back the startup.
Instead, they pitched investors with an app they developed and tested. While behemoths like Amazon and OpenAI are building AI-powered shopping assistants, Gates and Kianni presented themselves as the shopping-obsessed Gen Zers who were the perfect fit to launch an app like Phia.
“We are the two girls in college who are obsessed with shopping,”Gates said. “We are the people who are using this product.”
Gates and Kianni met as roommates at Stanford University, where they came up with the idea for Phia. Gates floated the idea of dropping out of college to found Phia — as her father did with Microsoft — but her parents said no. Instead, Gates finished her degree remotely in 2024 before working on the app full time.
Since then, Gates and Kianni said they’ve learned a few leadership lessons that are helping them forge their own paths as cofounders. Here’s what they’ve learned so far as young entrepreneurs.
It’s OK to fire yourself
When they started Phia, Gates said they thought they’d always have to do everything themselves. As she started building a team, which now includes 13 employees, she learned that it is OK to admit if you’re not the right person for a job.
For example, Gates, who studied human biology, and Kianni, who studied science and technology, handled the startup’s accounting and taxes in its early days.
“At a certain point, you have to let go of certain things and have trust in your team,” Gates said.
Gates said one of the best pieces of business advice she’s received is that everything goes back to the team that you build.
As cofounders, Gates and Kianni have learned to divide and conquer based on each other’s strengths and passions. While both Gates and Kianni studied science,Kianni has gravitated more toward marketing, and Gates is all over the finance side of the business.
AI can supercharge your workflow
As the founders of an AI-powered app, Gates said Phia is also trying to use artificial intelligence as a tool to “supercharge” their workflow. These days, most companies are trying to get employees to use AI in some way.
Gates said she and her team at Phia use AI to help write emails, vibe code, and perfect speeches for the cofounders. She likes that AI can “poke holes” in human logic to make their work better, Gates said.
In a June episode of Gates and Kianni’s podcast “The Burnouts,” Kianni said they used ChatGPT to break down the common features in viral videos and use them to recreate that in their own content.
AI is“how we’re going to succeed as a startup,” she told Business Insider.
Let the little fires burn
It may sound counterintuitive to let problems in your company persist, but you can’t always sweat the small stuff, Kianni said.
In an era full of distractions, Kianni really connects with the advice to stay focused on the bigger picture, especially when it comes to leading others.
“The best skill you can really learn is to be able to effectively prioritize,” Kianni said. “Just because there is a small fire doesn’t mean that that is the most important thing for you to focus your time and energy on.”
Establishing her work priorities is a big part of her daily routine — along with downing a Celsius energy drink in the mornings. Kianni describes herself as a night owl, while Gates starts her early mornings off by reading customer feedback.
“I’m much more effective when I focus on doing one thing that’s a big problem and solving it within one day, versus trying to tackle micro-fires at once,” Kianni said.
