Hello! My name is Mark and I am looking for a life partner. This document is about who I am and the woman I hope to find. Thanks to Gabe Broussard for the template.

The Basics

I am 47, male, straight, 5’9”, and live in Mountain View, California. I am a dual U.S. and Swiss citizen and work as an entrepreneur, startup investor, and advisor. I studied human biology and neuroscience at Stanford and dropped out twice for startups (I completed my coursework and will eventually claim the degree but prefer the gym and library access 😛). I don’t smoke and drink alcohol only occasionally. I have never been married and don’t have children but want to start a family. 

Core Beliefs

I believe that life is fundamentally about love in all forms. Romantic, familial, platonic, patriotic, spiritual – expressing care for someone or something beyond ourselves is what makes life most worth living. 

My top five core values are love, joy, truth, freedom, and perseverance. I believe in other values like creativity and justice but I personally resonate with these top five the most. I try to ground my behavior in them and while my partner wouldn’t need to have the same top five, ideally she would resonate with them strongly, too.

I believe the act of creating value for the world is one of the highest purposes we can serve. I am an entrepreneur and my father, mother, and grandfather were entrepreneurs, though I think creation can come in many forms. I see science, art, and children as creations that express who we are and improve the world.

I believe in a balanced life. I committed most of my twenties and thirties to work and while that had its benefits, I now invest more energy in health, family, friends, hobbies, and spirituality. I expect the time and energy in these to flex over time but I want each to be part of my life.

I believe in personal growth. I love the feeling of improvement, especially with strong feedback cycles. My hobbies include weightlifting, running, hiking, yoga, board games, reading, journaling, and listening to podcasts. I love learning.

I believe in playing the long game. I tend to choose long-term over short-term goals and keep a growth mindset through setbacks. I highly value health, knowledge, and deep relationships and get along best with people who do the same. If I see an opportunity for long-term gain through short-term discomfort, especially with asymmetric upside, I tend to go for it.  

I believe in science and technology. I believe they can create a world of abundance where everyone has enough. Technology has risks that must be mitigated and our ethics and culture must grow with it, but I believe many of the improvements in the human condition can be traced to technological advances. In the words of a friend, I want to help make Star Trek a reality. 

I believe life is a game that can be played an infinite number of ways. We can choose the goals, how we play, and who we play with. I try to be intentional in these choices. When I feel out of alignment with my values or I feel as if I am playing someone else’s game, I make changes. For important decisions like choosing a partner or job, I look for a full body yes, an alignment of head, heart, and gut. 

Relationship Goals and Lifestyle

I would like my life partner to be my best friend and co-creator of a family filled with love. I want us to know and accept each other deeply, to be able to tell each other anything, to enjoy each other’s company in almost any context, and to fully support each other. 

I invest in physical and mental health and want a partner who does the same. I see good health as the foundation of a good life and partnership. I exercise and meditate most days, eat fairly healthy, and am improving my sleep hygiene after a lifetime of night owling. I geek out on health optimizations like wearables, supplements, and frontier tech but believe the biggest gains are in the fundamentals of exercise, sleep, nutrition, stress management, and close relationships. 

I believe a healthy family is rooted in a healthy partnership. I like quality time rituals like date nights, game nights, home-cooked dinners, and daytrips. I like a balance of travel and establishing roots in a community. 

In practice, this could look like a few vacations per year to experience different cultures and recharge while fostering community at home more regularly. Between Jan 2024 and April 2025, I went to Burning Man and TED for the first time, stayed in startup cities in Honduras and Healdsburg, visited friends in New York twice, spent two weeks in Hawaii for New Year’s, and spent three weeks in Cancun and Playa Del Carmen. My travel bucket list includes Tokyo, Bali, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Costa Rica, and Shenzhen.  

I want a partnership where we support each other through a lifetime of personal growth. This can be practicing hobbies, taking classes, co-creating art, or just cheering each other on in our goals. I believe in both sharing hobbies and having our own so we can grow together and independently. 

I am close with my family and hope to be close with my partner’s family if possible. My mother, brother, and his fiance live nearby and we hang out regularly. My mother is a riot and you’ll probably love her. My father passed away in 2005. He was an orphaned holocaust survivor and had a difficult life but I respected and grew from his strengths. 

I am into relationship frameworks like quarterly check-ins and bucket lists. Before getting married, I would like a few sessions of couples therapy to make sure we’ve uncovered any sources of misalignment and feel ready to take the leap. 

I believe in equal overall contributions to the relationship that let us lean into our zones of genius and delegate outside of them. That could mean 50/50 effort in some areas and delegating to each other in others. I use money to buy time, free energy, and focus on the activities I enjoy. With a family, this would mean hiring help to maintain a house, run errands, and generally free us from rote tasks so we can spend more time with each other and our children. It definitely does not mean outsourcing parenthood!

I have lived in several types of places, including dense cities, suburbs, deserts, mountains, and beaches. I resonate most with the warmth and calm of beaches but I am open to living anywhere with a safe and friendly community, beautiful nature, a breadth of activities, modern infrastructure, and where English is common (my parents spoke eight languages but unfortunately I only learned English!). Ideally, we would live across several places for variety and to introduce our children to different cultures and languages. 

Relationship Structure

I have always been monogamous and believe that’s likely my ideal structure. I enjoy the stability and depth of committing to one person and believe monogamy provides the most stability for a family. 

Sex

I believe sex is one of the best parts of life. I believe in the GGG model of being good, giving, and game. I am down for anything that seems fun and safe. 

I have always valued sexual health. I get tested with a full STD panel between partners and have never tested positive for anything. I ask to get tested and decide on birth control before becoming intimate. 

Things That Make Me Feel Loved

Touch is my top love language. I promise not to smother you but I love giving and receiving touch. 

I highly value presence. Attention is one of our scarcest resources so I feel loved when a partner uses it to fully attune. I love when a partner remembers and acts on something I’ve said through acts of service or gifts and I enjoy doing this for my partner. I enjoy organizing thoughtful dates and would like a partner who does, too. 

I strongly believe in meeting bids of affection. 

Expectations around Communication and Conflict

I try to be clear, honest, and open in communication. I highly value low drama in my relationships but know some conflict is inevitable. I try to lean into difficult conversations with practices like non-violent communication. I try to understand before being understood, to convey what’s important to me and where I can compromise, and to think win/win. 

I try to avoid Gottman’s four horsemen. When I feel wronged, I explain my story and try to see other points of view. When I am out of integrity, I try to recognize it, apologize, and commit to change.

Personal Strengths 

A section like this risks the appearance of arrogance but my friends describe me as smart, kind, thoughtful, energetic, fun, disciplined, responsible, creative, and curious. I am fit and financially independent. 

Improvement Areas

I believe all of us have improvement areas. I am sharing some of mine here to minimize surprises and help you decide if any are deal-breakers.

When I was younger, I unknowingly repressed emotions like anger and sadness that did not feel safe to express. That led to chronic body tension and sometimes hiding feelings in relationships, which unintentionally caused friction with a few partners. 

Therapy, meditation, and psychedelic medicine have helped me access my emotions and fully feel them to let them go. I am still working through chronic tension but it is a lot better and continues to improve. 

I have a perfectionist streak. This has been a strength but it can lead to unrealistic expectations of myself and others. I am better at identifying high-stakes vs. low-stakes decisions, choosing when to optimize vs. satisfy, and giving myself and others grace. 

I have sometimes committed too much of myself to work and neglected my health and relationships. I still love being productive but am now committed to living in balance.

Caution Areas

I am a recovering workaholic and would be cautious about partnering with anyone who is highly focused on work. I love the entrepreneur tribe and have dated a number of founders but would only partner with an active founder if I had confidence that our partnership and family will be top priorities.

A strong focus on money or status can mean a misalignment of values. I like creature comforts and earning respect but want to focus on love, connection, and inner peace. 

Dogmatic beliefs can lead to inflexibility and misaligned lifestyles. I have a few spiritual beliefs that I hold lightly, such as a belief that we may all be connected by a shared source of consciousness. I am agnostic and open to partners from any religion. I do not believe we can fully understand the universe and that reason and science have their limits, but they are the main ways I understand the world and I gel best with people who feel similar. 

Politics

I am a registered Independent and generally identify as socially liberal and fiscally conservative. I believe in capitalism and democracy, flawed as they are, because I believe they align with our natural desire to be free, empowered, productive, and prosperous. America has many challenges and has made many mistakes but it is still one of the greatest places to live and I am proud to be an American.

I believe in individual rights and regulation that is smart, light, and consistently enforced. I believe societies thrive when they are strong economically, technologically, militarily, and culturally. I believe in sustainability in all aspects of society, especially economics and the environment. 

I am skeptical of the centralization of power, whether it is in government or corporations. I believe power should be concentrated locally in individuals and cities to give people many choices in governance and to learn what permutations of government work best.  I strongly believe in government transparency and civil engagement. I recognize elections are zero-sum games but I strongly dislike zero-sum thinking. We are all in this together.

I am open to partnering with someone with most political affiliations but it’s best if the above description doesn’t give you hives. I believe aligning on problems and listening to each other are as important as agreeing on solutions. I know I do not have all the answers so I want to learn from others. 

Ideal Partner

She would be deeply kind and see love as one of her most important values.

She would be an optimist, a realist, and a believer in being both.

She would love sports, games, and hosting events to bring people together.

She would be brainy and warm, creative and grounded, assertive and fun.

She would believe in caring for her body, mind, and spirit.

She would beat me in board games and debates but respect me in the morning.

She would love learning and teach me often.

She would be beautiful without and within.

Work and Personal Projects

I love building products and am currently experimenting with building an AI-powered lifestyle business. I am intrigued by the idea of building a company in public. I founded three VC-backed startups and don’t know if I will start another. I would only do it again if I could do it in balance. I also enjoy startup investing and advising.

I organize weekly game nights for my neighborhood and an occasional dinner and poker series for founders called Founder Poker. I am also learning how to cook more and enjoy cooking with a partner.  

Contact

If this resonates with you or you want to recommend someone, feel free to reach me at mjgold2@gmail.com, ideally with a dating doc or online profile. Thanks! 🙏