At age 16, most teenagers are still navigating the complexities of high school, but for Miriam Haart, the West Coast was calling. After graduating two years early, she moved across the country from Monsey, NY to San Francisco, CA to learn computer science. Haart joined Make School, a Y Combinator-backed college, where she learned engineering skills that landed her a job as a product engineer at an AI company. At 18, she was accepted into Stanford University.
Since graduating college last year, Haart has founded multiple businesses, works as an engineer for a fashion start-up, runs a podcast called “Faking It,” and advises several female-founded companies—all while being a tech/queer/female-empowerment content creator. On top of juggling those ventures, the 23-year-old also appears in the Netflix show My Unorthodox Life. The show documents the life of her mom, Julia Haart, a fashion mogul and former member of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, and her family as they navigate forging their lives outside of their ultra-religious upbringing. Haart’s ultimate dream is to start a venture fund that invests in female and queer founders.
“As much as I want to do it for the social good, I also want to do it because I think it is a great investment opportunity,” she said. “Take Spanx, which couldn't get investment for years because men didn't understand what shapewear was. I want to start a fund that really listens and invests in those groups of people.”
Miriam’s go-to morning workout is a classic Barry’s Bootcamp class with a friend or going for a run along the Embarcadero (she says the chilly air wakes her up and takes her out of the city grind.) After, she’ll grab an acai bowl or breakfast sandwich at her favorite cafe, Cafe Reveille, a solid spot to get some work done with plenty of natural light.
Since Miriam follows and creates her own schedule, she prioritizes creating a routine that allows her to be most productive. Her method is very much location-based. She usually heads to a We Work office; her favorite location is in the Financial District, which features city views. She prefers not to work from home and reserves her apartment as a space for relaxing with family and friends.
If she has a meeting in Silicon Valley, her go-to South Bay lunch place is Go Fish Poke Bar. “They know me so well there because I ate so much poke that at one point I got mercury poisoning!” Her favorite dishes are the yam noodles and signature poke mix.
In the afternoons, Miriam likes to stop by NoiseBridge in The Mission, an open-source maker space for anyone to learn how to code or use awesome maker products like laser-cutting, soldering, woodworking, and more. She says it’s a great place to meet fellow makers and builders of all ages and create projects/content for her podcast and brand.
When I’m making social media and podcast content, I spend 30 minutes scrolling through TikTok to see what the trends of the week are before producing content around female-empowerment using those trends. “A great spot to get content is by Twin Peaks, which offers a stunning backdrop of the city,” she says.
To get some more movement in and get outside, she likes to skateboard along the Great Highway in the Outer Sunset with friends. She’ll often meet up with her best friend who lives nearby to skate down the flat, smooth road and take in the views of the beach and ocean alongside the SF hills stacked with houses. “It's absolutely stunning and definitely does not exist anywhere else,” she says.
Her favorite place to meet up with friends is Manny’s in the Mission, a political cafe with great food and great events bringing in all sorts of thinkers. “I think it’s super important to constantly be learning,” she says, noting she’s currently studying philosophy, Islamic studies, the Hebrew language, and the guitar.
Miriam prefers dinner parties over restaurants. Her fellow founders/investors switch off hosting dinner and drinks on Friday nights. “I always meet extremely intellectual and interesting people from all walks of life, and it’s one of my favorite things about the city.”
Miriam isn’t really into the party or club scene, but if she’s after a nightcap or needs to pick a date spot, her favorite cocktail bar is Mr. Tipple’s, a dimly-lit jazz and cocktail bar near Market Street. The bar features several jazz bands any given night so “you can hear a variety of jazz instruments, my favorite being the saxophone, which I picked up during the pandemic,” she says.
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