Grateful

We’re just about 80% done with packing on our end. My allergies are gone and I actually feel rested and energized. I got a ton of work done over this week to set myself up to be largely OOO for the next two weeks. And it’s Friday going into a fun weekend of activities. Life is good and I am in a very grateful mood.

I am sad to be leaving San Francisco. We’ve been doing a lot during the move like getting rid of my plants that I got during the pandemic and finally throwing away some leftover stuff from our wedding. When one chapter ends, there’s always going to be some sadness.

Today, I’ve been really grateful for the last 7 years back home in San Francisco. Sophia and I came here and lived together for the first time. Got married here in SF and had our first child here. It feels just like yesterday when we went to our first Bay to Breakers a week after Sophia officially moved here.

I’m incredibly grateful for all our friends here and the experiences we were able to share with them. Being able to come home and watch my little sister grow into a teenager has also been special and I’m so happy to have been part of her life. It’s been a blessing being back home for the last 7 years.

Choosing a daycare

We’ll be starting Colin in daycare after we move to New York in a couple of weeks and we’ll need to make yet another decision as parents that could have a impact on Colin and our lives.

I am forever grateful that we are first time parents in this day and age of tech. We were able to do Facetime and Zoom virtual tours despite being across the country. We can sign-up Colin for a spot in daycare in just a couple weeks pretty much all virtually making our lives a lot easier.

Even 10 years ago, I’d guess we’d probably have to go and spend a day or two touring the facilities with no guarantee that he could start the following week. Thanks to tech, we’ll have things figured out by the time we make the journey east and be ready for our first days in the office the following week.

On our choice though - I feel like this is going to be a tough one as we balance location with facilities and care. Luckily, I feel comfortable with all 3 in terms of level of care and they all seem to have good reviews.

Unfortunately, perhaps the ones with the best facilities are far away and we’ll need to weigh adding 30-60 minutes to both our morning and evening commutes if we wanted to go with the ones further away.

Clarity

There’s just so much shit going on with our government right now it’s hard to keep track of. What seems like fake news is actually true, but there’s still a ton of fake news out there. The jokes and memes have been fire lately though.

The market is reacting accordingly and seems to make large movements up and down nearly every day. It does seem like business leaders have had enough though. Trump has folded in many of his initiatives so who knows what’s going to happen in the coming months ahead.

This uncertainty has been brutal for most of us investors in the private market side. A company that we know well has been planning on going public for the last few weeks and everything has been put on hold until there’s some clarity on what will happen. Unfortunately, no one can answer when that clarity will come.

Let’s all just hope that clarity comes before the long-term damage is done.

Mattress tech?

I just sunk a few thousand dollars into a brand new king sized mattress and nice sheets. It’s always painful incurring that big of a cost, but hey at least it’s something we use every day. As a consumer, I usually do an excruciating amount of research into making these large purchases.

Of course the cost is high so it’s important that you spend your money wisely, but almost as important is dealing with the hassle of not liking what you buy and having to deal with it down the road. I read countless blogs with a lot of skepticism knowing that they are often paid, and then supplemented that with hours of reading on Reddit. I suspect a lot of people in our generation do a lot of similar research.

I ended up choosing a Helix mattress for the quality and great reviews. Their parent company owns the factory in Arizona so we know that the quality is there. On top of that, the price of what you get is a fantastic deal despite this being a more expensive mattress comparatively.

The biggest decision that Sophia and I had to make over the last couple of weeks was to get the highest end version or the middle tier. The idea with the highest Elite tier is that you can replace the mattress pads and this mattress last for life. We ended up going with the middle tier Luxe version without that option.

Sophia had a great insight that mattress technology is rapidly changing with a lot of companies innovating. In 7-10 years, there’s going to be that new hot mattress that we’ll want to upgrade to and it’s probably not worth spending the extra $1,000 for that interchangeable mattress today.

Of course, a mattress isn’t considered “tech” necessarily but there’s some really cool companies out there innovating. Just about 10 years ago, the mattress in the box with companies like Casper were just coming out. Nowadays, you have many of these companies offering different cooling features, materials, and firmness.

In another 7-10 years, we’ll likely see the next iteration of the mattress industry. And I’ll probably be back out in the market for yet another mattress.

Monday thoughts

In the latest sign that it’s time for a change, my allergies in San Francisco have been awful and have put me on my ass the last week. Things got better late Saturday a bit as I got out of the city and got to seemingly fresh air away from pollen or whatever else I’m allergic now. I’m now ready for that fresh New York crisp air. I’m convinced the pollution in NY may be better than this pollen air in SF.

The move is picking up quite a bit. Sophia and I made our first big dent into packing over the weekend. I hope to be just about 75% done with packing by Friday afternoon. We have an incredibly busy weekend with seeing friends in town, our goodbye party, and a Sunday wedding celebration. Going into the weekend feeling that we’re almost ready for the movers on Tuesday will put me in a real good spot.

As for the move, I’ve decided to more or less take the next two weeks after this one off to deal with the stress. I’ll still do a bit of work next week, but I hope that the time off will be a nice reset and make the move as easy as possible. The anxiety of everything I need to do hasn’t been easy.

On another note - fatherhood rocks. Colin is a couple weeks away from 6 months and he’s just an amazing kid. I love doing everything with him. Just sitting there watching him explore and play by himself or with me is such a joy. I couldn’t imagine going through life without having children. It’s a void in my life that I really didn’t know I had.

We had a great time over my Dad’s place for Easter. My cousin and sister came into town. Watching my entire extended family including my Dad interact with Colin is an amazing experience. Colin is a star and he loved being the center of attention on Easter Sunday.

Despite all the stress, I can’t wait to get him to New York to show him the city and go on some adventures. In a couple weeks, we’ll hopefully be almost settled in and have New York to explore with some days off. I can’t wait.

IRS cuts

Unfortunately something is in the air here in San Francisco and I’ve been feeling like shit all week. I feel sick, but it seems to be allergy related given my dry cough and that lots of others are also in the same boat. I can deal with a running nose and cough, but the fatigue and brain fog has been really rough on me. It’s not a fun time right now, but hopefully with some rest it’ll pass.

Another tax day has come and gone, and unfortunately this year was a lot more eventful. I just read that the Acting Commissioner of the IRS is stepping down. This is amidst mass layoffs at the agency.

As someone with a tax background, this is a concerning situation happening. I had spoken to a friend who works at a tax API startup, and she mentioned that there’s a sizable percentage difference of people who filed last year compared to this year. The assumption there is that people are waiting to see what happens at the IRS before they file their taxes.

If there is no enforcement, fraud will undoubtedly be rampant. I do not love the IRS and do believe there needs to be major overhauls, but simply firing half the department isn’t good for anyone except the fraudsters. I would understand the decision more if we had gone through a modernization process than eliminated the need for half the IRS, but that is definitely not the case here.

Celebrating how far we've come

One of the hardest parts about running a small business or a startup is the fact that you’re always trying to raise the bar and your success breeds more work in the future.

You have a successful quarter, and then the next quarter is a much bigger goal meaning you’re going to have to work more and harder. You raise a fund which is a major milestone and then you eventually deploy it, and then you have to go out and raise that next fund.

You rarely have the luxury of accomplishing a goal and then being able to relax for an extended period of time. Often times, it’s a one or two week recharge and then you’re back at it. Of course, this is also the reason why building a business is so rewarding.

All that said, I want to make sure that we celebrate how far we’ve come here at Secfi. Sitting in 2022 with the market crashing, things wee not looking great. We had capital so we knew that we weren’t going under imminently, but the private market crash meant that things were about to come to screeching halt on the revenue and fundraising side.

We had to make a ton of tough decisions and really grind through 2022 through 2023 to survive. We did exactly that and then 2024 was the first signs of growth again which was rewarding, but we quickly switched over to 2025 and had more ambitious goals.

It’s easy to forget how far we’ve come since those tough times in 2022. It feels like we haven’t accomplished a lot, but yet we’re sitting here in 2025 in a prime position right now. We successfully navigated the multi-year down market to get the company in a great spot to take advantage of the next cycle. That’s something to celebrate and we need to remember to do just that.

Zoom fatigue

I’m not sure what percent of me feeling tired all day is due to lack of sleep vs. just having a tiring job vs. being alone in an office just on Zoom all day vs. other factors.

I can probably guess that being on Zoom calls all day does not help. If being an “extrovert” means I get my energy from other people - does that same effect still happen on Zoom? I’d probably wager that it’s much less so.

I was exhausted all day at work and then went to an investor dinner, and felt reinvigorated for awhile, until the actual fatigue set in.

I am incredibly excited to get to the office in New York and at least move some of my meetings off Zoom and to in-person. In the meantime, I should try different things like turning your own camera off on Zoom meetings. It won’t be a complete fix but hopefully it helps.

2025 is leaving all of us confused

Like pretty much everyone in this state, we’re all confused by what’s actually happening in the market. With a self-inflicted trade war caused by largely one person who is unpredictable, it’s an incredibly difficult time in business.

We’re fortunate that we live in financial services and we don’t have products to manufacture or import. Those that import goods from China are especially feeling the blunt end of the trade war. I wouldn’t even know where to begin if I worked for one of those companies. I feel especially for the small and medium businesses of the world that are dealing with this crisis in real-time.

Despite not having any products that will have a direct impact of the tariffs, we of course are dealing with the secondary effects in the market. 2025 was supposed the year the IPO cracks open, even if it was just a little. There should have been at least a few IPOs by now if not for Trump’s trade war.

The liquidity in the market is desperately needed and the uncertainty of the months ahead are surely preventing anyone from going public right now. There’s not much we can do at this point.

For us, it’s business as usual with some minor tweaks. We’re continuing to be smart with hiring and growth plans. We’ve put off our hiring at least in the short-term until we can get a bit more clarity on what’s actually going to happen. We’ve adjusted our growth plans down a bit to cater for the uncertainty.

Nearly every person I talk to is in the exact same position. We’re all confused by what is happening and what will happen. I do know that there are still great companies being built right now and that IPOs will come back at some point. We’ll continue to focus on what we know and find the right opportunities.

This is 35

I had an awesome weekend celebrating my long-time friend Mike alongside 7 of our other closest friends. It was his “bachelor” party but it did not feel anything like a bachelor party of the past.

Instead of going to Vegas, or Austin, or Mexico City for a long weekend bender, we all drove a couple hours north to a camping ground with some cabins for just one day and night. While we all had some adult beverages, there were no shots or drinking games. My other friend Mike Cordoba also brought his 5 year old son to hang out.

We spent the morning and early afternoon playing a round of golf. And then spent the late afternoon and evening just playing catch and catching up on life with everyone. We stayed up later than normal and I was the first to tap out at around 1:30am which might be a record for a bachelor party for me.

This is 35 and I’m not disappointed by it. We had a ton of fun just telling old jokes and stories and catching up on where everyone is at. There is nothing like old friends and laughter. And despite not seeing some of these guys in 5+ years, it felt like nothing had changed.

At 7am, all 3 parents woke up before everyone else and sat outside playing wiffle ball with our friend’s son. I couldn’t help but think how much has changed these last 20 years. Even 10 years ago, we’d like be sitting there at 7am still partying from the night before.

While that chapter of our lives are closed, it does get me excited to get older and grow up with these guys. On this Monday, I’m feeling incredibly blessed and grateful for the life I have.

The (maybe) last bachelor party

Tomorrow morning, I’m heading up north to a small town with my high school friends to celebrate my close friend Mike getting married. It’s a mini-bachelor party for Mike. It won’t be a traditional one by any means as we’ll all just be hanging out camping and just enjoying being with each other.

We’re now 35 and we’re mostly through these bachelor parties and weddings. We have a few friends still single, but the classic age 25-35 wedding circuit is coming to an end. I’ll miss them in the sense that it’s not often that we get to get all the friends together. In fact, I’d wager that in all likelihood, we’ll have less than 10 more of these gatherings left in our life times which is sad to say, but it’s the truth.

We all grew up with each other and I’ve known these guys for over 20 years now. Some in the group have known each other for almost 30 years. It’s crazy to think but they’ve been a major part of my life since I went to high school. I’m beyond grateful that we are all still close and stay in touch.

Managing my calendar

I’ve been really struggling the last few weeks in managing my calendar. Prior to having a kid, I would usually just spend most of my day on calls and then suck it up in the evenings to catch-up on all the work to-do items.

Nowadays, I often don’t have the luxury of that evening time anymore as I need to put my kid to bed, get dinner ready, and then usually finish up with chores. Even with a nanny at home, having a kid effectively shortens my day anywhere between 2-3 hours that used to be reserved for catching up for work.

It’s been a hard transition for me and I’m now just starting to get around to making adjustments. This starts with managing my calendar a bit better. In this job, where my role is giving people money, everyone’s case is almost always urgent so my calendar fills up with calls quicker than I’d like.

There’s a simple fix here in blocking times out of my day to focus on work and not making any exceptions to those blocks. It’s the only way I can get real work done nowadays and unfortunately this may mean putting off calls to the next days or weeks. It’s not ideal, but it’s necessary for me to be able to do my job effectively. It’s definitely easier said and done though in practice, and I need to be more disciplined.

Dealing with growing older

Since Colin was born, I’ve been thinking a lot more about my time left on this planet. Having a kid has expanded my love for life multitudes over. With that, I’m also now thinking about my own death in order to try to maximize my time with my son.

Watching him grow over these last 5 months has been amazing but it’s also made me realize just how fast life goes. It feels like yesterday that we were just taking him home from the hospital. I reckon that I’ll be saying the same thing when I’ll be dropping him off to college in 18 years.

Separately from Colin, there’s a lot of other things going on in my life that’s making me realize just how old I’m getting. Dealing with Sophia’s Dad's health scare in 2023 was an eye-opening experience that our parents are getting older and won’t be here with us forever.

More recently, we’ve found out that my childhood nanny who lived with me from age 5 until 15 or so and has been part of my life for 30+ years is now leaving to go back home to Indonesia in June. She is in her 70s and has been in the United States for 30+ years without going back to see her own family.

We knew that time would come eventually as it would make sense for her to spend the remaining years of her life back home with her family. But she has built a great life here and presumably delayed the process as long as possible as she loves it here.

Given the dynamics of visas and her age, I highly doubt that she’ll ever get the chance to come back to the United States again. And knowing that, we know that this may be the last time that we’ll see her.

It’s a surreal concept thinking that someone who has been in your life for 30+ years will be saying goodbye for the final time. She was instrumental in taking care of me and my sister when we were young and we’re forever grateful for that. She was part of the family and I’ve been really sad at the thought that I likely won’t see her again for the rest of our lives.

Fathertime is real and finally starting to hit me hard in life for the first time. Unfortunately, this is part of life and just the beginning of a lot of sad things that will happen. It’s yet another reminder to enjoy the time I have and be as present as possible with the friends and family I have.

Nobody knows

I saw a Tweet yesterday with someone saying that Trump doesn’t know that words can have multiple meanings and he thinks a trade deficit means they are losing. I laughed but then realized that this very well could be the truth. I’d like to think that Trump isn’t dumb enough to not know why a trade deficit happens, but I have no evidence to the contrary.

In fact, he seems to have doubled down on trying to eliminate the trade deficit with each country. Of course, there’s a reason why we buy more goods from countries like Vietnam than they buy from us. Another Tweet I saw the other day said that this trade war is like “Hiring a house cleaner to clean your house, but then fighting with the cleaner so you can keep cleaning the toilet”.

The problem with all this is that no one actually knows exactly what Trump wants or aims to get out of all this. Even the countries who he’s negotiating with and has been open to negotiate.

My two simple theories: Trump thinks a trade deficit is bad for some reason and wants to eliminate said deficit. And/or he simply just wants to flex his power over the rest of the world for a bit because of his ego. Unfortunately both these things can still be true.

We can only hope that this does not continue for much longer. There is no one I respect in the business or investing world out there that says that a prolonged trade war is good for the country or world. Let’s all hope this works out.

Colin's first Giants game

I’ve spent few weeks writing about myself. I simply just have not had the energy or will to write much about work. I hope that changes again in the coming days or weeks and I can get excited to write about things I’m seeing in the markets or at work.

For now though, writing here is therapeutic for me. I don’t know if I or anyone will ever go back and read through everything I’ve written over the last 7 years. But it’s been meaningful for me to try to write something down publicly almost every day. It’s a very grounding experience and I’ll continue to just write what’s on my mind every morning I can.

This morning, the biggest thing on my mind is Colin. I had an incredibly special weekend with my son. Sophia had a quick trip to Seattle for a baby shower so I was alone with Colin all Saturday and most of Sunday.

Despite things being a lot harder without having Sophia, it was a special weekend for us. I made sure to take him out and see the world. On Saturday, I took him to Ocean Beach for the first time on a gorgeous day. It was exhausting as he got a bit fussy at the end of the day, but watching him hang on out the beach and taking him to see the water was a great memory.

On Sunday, I took Colin to his first Giants game. San Francisco did not disappoint with a gorgeous 70 degree day and the Giants also held up their end of the bargain with a bottom of the 9th inning walk-off win. He was a trooper the entire day and despite being confused and perhaps overwhelmed, he did great.

Colin is now 5 months old. It’s not lost on me that he’s growing up fast and this is a very fun period of his time as a baby. I’m doing my best to savor every minute I have with him.

Week off thoughts

I’ve had a great 4.5 days off this week. It was exactly what I needed to get my physical and mental health back to a good spot before a hectic month ahead. Most of February and March were particularly brutal for me with Colin combined with everything happening at work. I let myself get to a really bad state and I’m not proud of it.

On this past week - I spent most of the weekdays just relaxing. I laid in bed a lot on Tuesday. I ran errands with Sophia on Wednesday. I went to the spa on Thursday and relaxed for two hours before grabbing a nice lunch by myself. I played 9 holes of golf and got a nice lunch on Friday. I needed a lot of time to myself and I did just that.

I’m not happy to report that I did think a lot about work during the week. Sitting in the hot tub and the only thing going through my mind was work at times. I felt like slapping myself a few times.

This week has made me realize that I let my work seep into every other area of my life way too much. The stress of the last month came home with me, went to bed with me, and woke up with me. It consumed me nearly 24/7. I lost being present with Colin when I had time with him. I lost sleep thinking about work in bed.

It’s an awful habit and I’m ready to put that behind me. Work will be work. And I need to put better guard rails up to make sure I’m present. There’s only so many hours in the day and I need to start accepting that I don’t have the hours I used to prior to having a kid. If I don’t make changes, I’ll keep running into this issue of burnout which helps no one.

Tomorrow it’s back to work, but the main thing I want to make sure I do this month is start putting those guardrails back up between work and personal.

The "secret" to sleep

It’s hard to ignore what’s happening in the market right now with Trump’s tariff plan. However, especially in my week off, I’m choosing not to torture myself and aim to distance myself away from that as much as possible. I don’t need the added stress on things I can’t control.

On a much more positive note, I had the best night of sleep in perhaps the last couple of months last night. It wasn’t that I slept any longer than normal, but I just had some amazing good deep sleep.

It turns out that having a fulfilling and good day leads to a non-stressful bedtime. When you’re not tossing and turning with anxiety and thinking about things like work in bed, you usually sleep a lot better. That' parts easy and obvious.

The harder part is ensuring that I continue to have good fulfilling days and not go to bed stressed out. Making the life changes to ensure that I continue to do that is exactly what I need to figure out this week.

Just do nothing

Yesterday was a glorious day. After wrapping up work with a couple hours of calls in the morning, I logged off with no plans except to lay in bed and watch Netflix all day. I made it out of the house to grab lunch and had to take one 15 minute work call, but besides that, I spent the rest of the day doing exactly nothing in bed until our nanny left.

I can’t remember the last time I did something like that. It’s crazy to think but it must be many years. I’ve always been someone who needs to get up and do fill my day with things to do when I have free time. The script is usually the same when I have a free day - go exercise, run errands, check out a new restaurant, etc. If I don’t feel like I’m getting ahead, I simply just feel lazy.

Sometimes being lazy and relaxing is much needed though. It was evident yesterday as I fell asleep for almost 2 hours during the day out of exhaustion. I’m getting older and my responsibilities are growing, it’s about time I adjust my schedule to fit my new life. That means less activities and more rest so I can stop feeling like shit all the time.

First order of business is peeling back my schedule so I can simply just get more rest when there’s free time.

Weight off the shoulders

It’s amazing how different I feel today from yesterday.

First, the quarter is officially closed and we had a great Q1 as a company. Given the events over the last 6 weeks or so, I feel incredibly proud of what we accomplished. We had to work harder than we’ve done in the past with all the noise. I’m burnt out from the work, but at least I feel accomplished.

Second, I’m officially free for the next 6 days to rest and relax. My inbox and immediate to-do list is cleared, and I’m ready for some much needed time off. I’m going to do my best to stay away from anything work related for the week. Unfortunately I will need to make some progress with the move, but going to also try to limit my time spent there.

For now, I’m planning on just hanging out at home and being lazy. There are no more workouts for the week. I may get outside at some point tomorrow and hit some golf balls or grab food somewhere I’ve wanted to go, but it feels amazing with no schedule or plans right now.

I feel like an entire weight has been lifted off my shoulders and it’s a great feeling.

Week to get my mind right

The exhaustion really hit me hard on Sunday as I fell asleep while feeding Colin during his 7am feeding. Sophia could see that I was struggling and let me go back to sleep. She’s been amazing through the last few weeks and has been a supermom while I’ve been trying to keep it together.

The built up exhaustion from the last 5 months of being a father combined with the stress of work has been really hard. Add in a cross country move in a month and you’ve got a perfect storm. My anxiety levels have been possibly at an all-time high and it’s definitely made things worse. I had a horrible night of sleep last night as my mind spiraled.

I had decided to take the rest of this week off once the quarter ended about a couple weeks ago. I could sense that I was going to need some time away to recover, and I knew the sprint to close out the quarter wouldn’t be easy. Unfortunately, I didn’t think things would get this bad.

Needless to say, this time off couldn’t come earlier. My main thing that I want to accomplish is to rest and get my mind right. As such, I don’t have many major plans for the week and we kept the nanny to allow me time to focus on myself for a bit.

After some morning calls tomorrow, I think I just want to simply do nothing the rest of the day. I may sit in bed and stream Netflix all day. A day for me to do absolutely nothing sounds fantastic and something I haven’t had in a very long time. I hope the rest of the week will be similar mixed in with some time outdoors, some time reading, and some hanging out with Sophia and Colin.

I want to do my best to just tune everything out when it comes to work. I’ve never been good at unplugging even while on vacation or during my “paternity leave”. But this time it just feels a lot different. It’s time that I get away from my inbox and work for a few days and focus on making sure I come back energized. That’s the best thing for myself and Secfi. Prolonging my burnout isn’t going to do anyone any good.