Aug 06



After 12 amazing years in Britain, I’m moving back to the USA and heading to Portland, Oregon.

The reason we’re moving is because I need to be closer to the Treehouse Team. We’re growing very quickly (55 full-time employees) and 54 of them are in the USA. I’m the CEO and Founder and I currently live in Bath, England. It’s just not viable to be 5 - 8 hours ahead of the Team.

I still believe in remote teams, but I don’t think it’s healthy for the CEO to be in a different country for the long term. 

Our main office is in Orlando, Florida but I wanted to set up an office on the West Coast. At first, I wanted to move to San Francisco but the weather isn’t much better than the UK and house prices are stupid, so we started looking for other options.

After a lot of debate we chose Portland, Oregon for these reasons:

  1. Rising tech community. I’d put Portland on the same level as Boulder. I think we’ll see more and more companies flee Silicon Valley and NYC and move to more creative and practical cities like Portland. A ton of exciting companies are relocating from Silicon Valley and NYC, like Simple (who I’ll be banking with).
  2. Affordable housing. Houses are 1/3 of what they cost in Silicon Valley. Gill and I really wanted our next house to be the one where we raise our boys and don’t have to move for 25 years. We can afford that house in Portland.
  3. Community lifestyle. We’re not planning on using our car much in Portland. We’re going to walk or bike everywhere, which will force us to live a more local lifestyle. This means we’ll invest in our neighbors, shop locally and send our kids to local schools. I’m tired of driving everywhere and not being a part of my local community.
  4. Amazing for gardening. Gill loves growing vegetables and wanted to be able to continue to do this.
  5. Sunnier than Bath, England. The Summer is consitently warmer and sunnier than England. When you’ve lived in the UK for 12 years, a little more sun is good enough :)
  6. Environmentally focused. Portland was once-again voted the USA’s most bike-friendly city. It’s also considered one of the most progressive cities in the USA for recycling and public transportation. 
  7. 1.5 hours to the beach and to the ski slopes. Portland is perfectly placed between the coast and Mt. Hood which has amazing snowboarding and camping.

So we’ll be arriving in Portland on August 16th. I’m sad to leave all the wonderful friends I’ve made over the years, but I’m also excited to begin our new adventures in the USA.

[Thanks to Jesse for the PDX photo.]

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16 Notes

  1. keithmon said: I’m excited to welcome you to Oregon! Hopefully I can make it up to Portland and visit (when/if you have a Meetup there). Been using Treehouse since November and I’m loving it! Thanks for all your work that’s made it so amazing.
  2. andreelijah reblogged this from ryanleecarson
  3. kirklove said: All the best!
  4. samstefan said: We’ll be sad to see you go Ryan.
  5. ryanleecarson posted this

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