Tech CTO takes 6-hour daily commute from Burbank to SF workplace — by plane

Curt von Badinski, CTO for Motiv, takes a 6-hour commute to work daily. Part of that trip is by airplane. Curt von Badinski, CTO for Motiv, takes a 6-hour commute to work daily. Part of that trip is by airplane. Photo: Courtesy Motiv Photo: Courtesy Motiv Image 1 of / 20 Caption Close Tech CTO takes 6-hour daily commute from Burbank to SF workplace — by plane 1 / 20 Back to Gallery

Curt von Badinski, co-founder of a wearable technology brand called Motiv, prefers to live in Burbank rather than in the Bay Area.

To many, that makes sense; the cost of living is high and the foggy weather isn't for everyone. There's just one big problem: The company he helped establish is nearly 400 miles away in San Francisco.

The distance, however, is not a deal breaker. While by no means convenient or inexpensive, von Badinski commutes, four to five days per week, to his San Francisco office by a combination of plane transport and automobile.

To make it work, von Badinski has two cars — a small sports car he drives in Southern California, and a hybrid car he parks in Oakland — and uses a small airline company called Surf Air. He makes the best of it; the time spent in the air allows him to get a lot of work done.

RELATED VIDEO: Silicon Valley's super commuters (story continues below)

"My days here are spent busy all day," he tells SFGATE. "The commute is a baked-in way to get heads-down time."

The whole roundtrip journey, as he told the BBC, takes around six hours and requires what sounds like a tiring schedule:

Five days a week, he rises at 05:00 for the 15-minute drive to Bob Hope Burbank airport, for a 90-minute flight to Oakland, located 353 miles north west...Von Badinski gets to the office by 08:30 and leaves by 17:00, allowing time for busy traffic on his drive back to Oakland airport to catch his return flight at 19:15. He is home in Burbank shortly after 21:00.

The travel is obviously pricier than a monthly Muni pass but surprisingly, it isn't quite as expensive as one might think; von Badinski pays Surf Air $2,300 monthly, allowing him to fly unlimited to San Francisco and back with seven other people on a small, single-engine turboprop airplane.

That isn't as hard on the wallet as it would appear. As von Badinski tells SFGATE, he's only paying $1,100 per month for an apartment in Burbank, and it's worth it in his current situation, because he's able to stay near his extended family.

"It's really important to be home with my family," he says, noting that he has two elderly parents, one of whom suffers from Parkinson's Disease. Although he at first considered the option of moving his family north to the Bay Area, he says "every scenario I tried to play out didn't work."

And moving the company down to Southern California also isn't an option. "That's not in the cards," von Badinski continues, mentioning that his company's employees are building their lives in the Bay Area. "I don't see that scenario working."

The commute, however, can be tough. The CTO says it works for him because he only sleeps around five hours per night, but that "it's not for everybody."

"It seems cool on the surface, but it could weigh down a lot of people."

Watch a video interview with von Badinski here at BBC.

Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @alyspereira.

