CHAPTER 3 Bits and Bytes

Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is "Who in the world am I?" Ah, that's the great puzzle!

—Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

LIKE MANY STARTUPS, LIVING PLANIT WAS MORE THAN A BUSINESS. It was a community of like-minded people who were passionate about building the future. In January 2011 Steve Lewis, Johanna Weigelt, Rosy Lokhorst, and a few others moved into sleek condominiums at the Vale Pisão resort after their quinta caught fire and nearly burned to the ground. Through a deal struck with the owners of the resort, Lewis and his entourage worked in the underutilized main clubhouse building—an expansive, light-filled modern space that looked out on the golf course and the fields surrounding the property. The clubhouse dining area served meals throughout the day, and a bar seemed to stay open all night, pouring local wine and other drinks that lubricated many a late-night talk among colleagues and the occasional visitors.

Many Living PlanIT employees had IT backgrounds. Some were fresh out of college, some came from another startup or two, and some brought years of experience in large companies like Microsoft or Cisco.

Lokhorst had several startups under her belt by the time she was 24, including hatchery equipment for raising chickens as well as ostrich breeding ("We IPO'd and went bust," she joked). Next came a job in a software startup. Soon she became, in her words, a "geek" through and through. She told us that she had left home at 15, lived for a time in the United States, then in the Netherlands, and finally back in Switzerland, where she earned a master's degree in computer science and economics. "I could see that a person would never be bored in IT," she explained. "We get the opportunity to work on the future." With jobs at Siemens, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft, Lokhorst shifted into consulting and business development before finding a job in Microsoft's global accounts in Switzerland. This is where Manuel Simas found her and told her about Living PlanIT.

After a few months, Lewis made Lokhorst Living PlanIT's business manager. Soon she was the team member most called upon to sit in for Lewis when he wasn't available to meet with prospective partners. Perhaps it was her utter confidence in the project that gave her this status—her underlying belief in the role technology would play in "changing the world" and lessening the "impact on Mother Earth." Perhaps it was her comfort with risk. At a point in her life when she was still free to turn on a dime, unencumbered (with the exception of her beloved dog), Lokhorst was also the team member most likely to buy up shares of Living PlanIT stock that other team members (most of whom were receiving shares in lieu of salary) might be willing to sell. "We are the new immigrants," she often said of the PlanIT Valley team. "We want to make a better life for others and for ourselves; we are designing cities we want to live in!"