When will FinTech be back?

It was nice to be home and spend a full weekend with the family. I was only gone 5 days from last weekend, but it always feels like a long time away with how fast Colin has been growing. My weekends are much less interesting nowadays as a father, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Plus the 50 minute nap I took on Sunday was magical.

I’ve got the next weekend and half at home before I fly back west to Vegas for Money2020. Myself and 3 others from Secfi will be attending and we’re excited to get back to Money2020 after a few years break.

In the last couple weeks of planning our attendance, we’ve noticed that the event is much more dialed down than it was a few years ago. There’s fewer companies and investors attending. The infamous Money2020 party spreadsheet is a fraction of what it used to be. I’ve heard that a lot of the FinTech focused VC funds have pivoted or have been winding down.

FinTech is a tough place to be right now. We went from everything is a fintech to the crypto boom, and now we’re sitting here in 2026 in the world of AI where people in fintech may have flocked to greener pastures.

I don’t believe fintech is dead by any means. Fintech in general is an industry that’s naturally going lag behind other industries due to the high regulatory environment. AI in fintech is really just getting started and I’m excited to see the future. This is my first time going back in 3-4 years, and I’m excited to learn about what’s being built in this day and age of AI.

It may be early for us as investors, but things are cyclical, and I’m willing to put money that fintech will be back in a few years, if not sooner.

The vibes seem off

Being at this conference the past week, I couldn’t help but notice that the vibes just seemed off among a large subset of investors. Not everyone of course, but the majority of investors that I spoke to had similar views into what’s happening right now.

The thing that I kept hearing was “the company is growing like crazy, but I just don’t know how this all shakes out”.

It’s a similar feeling to the one I’ve been having. We’ve never seen companies grow like this before this age of AI. Companies that are 1-4 years old are generating hundreds of millions of revenue and setting unprecedented growth rates. It seems like every other week a company claims “we’re the fastest growing X to get to $100M of revenue”.

That’s all great, but there’s a general uneasiness with what’s happening. Call exploratory revenue. Call it double revenue as lots of these companies are reselling inference. Whatever is happening right now is making a lot of investors uncomfortable and thinking that this won’t last forever.

Of course, there’s a lot of money in VC and they’re not foolish capital allocators so perhaps this is different. But especially among the public company investor pool, there is a general feeling that this is all being marked up way too high and the sentiment amongst the few that I spoke to was that they want no part of these IPOs at these valuations.

My Whoop coach

I’m back in New York after getting to bed at 2am after my flight last night. Waking up after sleeping 4 hours was not fun, but hugging my son after 5 days away cures everything. It’s going to be a 4 coffee kind of day, but that’s life.

Last year prior to getting a Whoop and having a “coach” in their AI chatbot, I would have used today as a way to catch-up on exercise and training that I missed out on. I’m tired but I always felt the need to power through and get a sweat in to get my body right. The thought process was that getting exercise in is always a good thing and the endorphins definitely help make me feel better.

It turns out that is the last thing my body actually needs. I argued with my “coach” a bit this morning on my commute, but it’s a pretty obvious that powering through a workout is actually counterproductive. Slowing down to get healthier always felt counterintuitive to me, but the data and science doesn’t lie.

I find it silly that for someone who prides himself on learning that it took me 36 years to figure this out despite working out consistently for almost 20 years. With that said, it’s better late than never and I’ve been feeling better overall since getting my Whoop and trusting the data/science.

Conference wrap-up

I wrote yesterday after my conference’s morning kickoff that the bankers seemed optimistic on the future. At the networking reception afterwards, I met a handful of public market investors who buy IPOs and there was a much more pessimistic sentiment among that small group that I spoke to. There was a strong feeling that private market valuations are inflated and they weren’t excited about investing in many of the IPOs going forward.

Who is right in the end? Well.. both could be right. We could see a crazy amount of IPOs before valuations reset back to a baseline. Of course neither could happen in the short-term either.

On the other hand, I was fortunate to sit in presentations and meet a handful of operators at the forefront of amazing technology companies. I met someone building an airplane/helicopter hybrid. I met investors discussing the physical AI companies. I learned a lot yesterday.

This morning I’m feeling grateful that I get to do this for a living. I’m constantly surrounded by smart and ambitious folks who are all trying to navigate this world of technology, company building, and investing. It’s not an easy job, but being able to learn and be part of this ecosystem is a blessing and I don’t take it for granted.

Optimism in Silicon Valley

I’m in Palo Alto for an investor conference and it’s been nice to get away from NY and get back to the heartland of tech. There’s a ton of interesting companies here that we don’t typically get to work with, whether they are just too early or in an industry that we just don’t focus on. Going to the humanoid robot demonstration just to see things live has been something that’s fun.

The overall view from the bankers here is one of optimism. The head tech banker expects to see 2027 become a year of IPOs greater than 2021. It’s a bold prediction and truthfully one that is self-serving for the bankers. With that said, it’s a prediction that I’d be more than happy to come through so I’m rooting for him to be right.

San Francisco

I was only delayed 1.5 hours on Saturday morning on my flight out to San Francisco. Out of perhaps the 10 delayed flights I’ve been on starting this summer, this was easily the best one. I got the notification while I was still in bed, and ended up going back to sleep another 1.5 hours. Besides that the flight was as planned and I had the President’s Cup to watch in the morning followed by college football. I wish all flights could be this easy.

I had a nice weekend seeing old friends and family. I’ve only been gone a year and few months but so much has changed. My Dad is getting older. My friends are going through lots of life events. The city is changing so much. It does make me a bit sad that I’m missing a lot of it while I’m out in New York for the next few years.

This morning I got an early lunch at West Portal where I spent a lot of my childhood with friends. The old movie theatre is shuttering and there’s new hot restaurants opening left and right. As I was walking to the MUNI station to catch my train to downtown, one of my childhood best friend’s Moms popped out of the store.

It was amazing to run into her as she served as almost another Mom to me during my childhood. I hadn’t seen her in maybe 10-15 years, and her son and I haven’t seen each other in a similar time frame. It got me a bit emotional just walking around West Portal where I spent a lot of my childhood years and also running into her.

It was yet another reminder just how fast life is going by. I’m planning on coming home for a little over 2 weeks during the holidays with the family, and I need to make sure to make a point to catch up with old friends and really make use of my time home.

Starting with Muse

I downloaded Muse yesterday and decided on holding off on connecting most of my personal accounts. It appears that it’s still a great personal agent even without access to my email and some of my other apps. Right now, I am using it monitor prices for my flights back to SF for Christmas and it seems to be pretty awesome at doing tasks like that.

With my guard up right now, I think the best course of action is to take things slow with these agents. They can do my flight research, but I can still take the 5 minutes to actually book the flight. Similarly, I’m happy to let Muse book my reservations and my golf tee times as well. I was hoping for a simple agent like this that can handle a lot of my basic tasks and Muse seems perfect for my needs.

Meta’s stock price has been skyrocketing since Muse was released. It’s up 36% this month. I can imagine that we’re going to see personal agent apps popping up left and right. The funny thing is that Claude and other providers are already doing the same tasks that Muse can, but distribution seems to be key here. Muse is an easy and user friendly interface for the non-technical folks. Not to mention that pretty much every American has an Instagram or Facebook account already, and your personal preferences (data) is loaded in automatically.

For now, I’m having fun exploring the different apps and tools. And I’m happy to have a personal assistant that can give me more time in the day.

Are we back in 2021 again?

I’ve been fighting a week of fatigue and feeling just a bit off. My data in my Whoop also shows it with a wall of yellow recoveries after more or less 2 full green weeks. It took me a few days but I’m starting to realize that the seasonal allergies are impacting me more than anything. My wife and coworkers are all going through similar or worse allergies.

Looking at my data and my Whoop has caused a bit of weird anxiety at times, but it’s the price I pay to learn about myself and my body. And I guess I’ve developed allergies over time that show up much more in fatigue rather than congestion.

There’s quite a bit of uneasiness in the market right now in my conversations. While the people that are much smarter than I am are generally not ready to call a reset or correction, I can see quite a bit of vibe shift in the recent weeks.

From my standpoint, it feels a lot like 2021 again. Companies with spiking revenues are raising at high multiples and valuations, but quite often that revenue is basically just reselling inference meaning it’s shakier revenue. We’ve now crossed over into the territory where companies with little to no revenue are raising ridiculous valuations. In addition, I’ve started to hear some rumors about some of those companies looking to go public. When do we start seeing SPACs again?

I get it. This time is different with a real new technology coming into the fray versus just inflated valuations due to ZIRP. But you can’t ignore a lot of the similarities of investors chasing logos and quick markups. How long this will all last is beyond something I can answer, but I don’t think anyone can deny there is a bubble as there always is a bubble when a new technology like this emerges.

More delayed IPOs

There seems to be something in the air this week. Some members of my team have been feeling off and that’s made me feel a bit better as I’ve always been feeling out of it. I woke up Monday feeling like I got hit by a dump truck. Tuesday and this morning have been much better, but I am far from my normal self and my Whoop is also telling me that I’m low on recovery despite good sleep and having a very normal schedule.

I need to not overindex on things like my Whoop score, but at the same time, it is pretty telling if I’m feeling off and the data also shows that. I reluctantly agreed with the Whoop chat bot that I should take today easy and not go on my normal hard run. It’s been a struggle for me trying to listen to my body and the data, but it’s the smart move.

The somewhat quiet news that’s been overshadowed by the UN meetings this week is a couple delayed IPOs and a much slower September IPO window. Two companies, Holtec Nucler and Bamboo Insurance decided to postpone their IPOs due to market conditions. While these companies are not typically in the hot AI/tech discussion such as Anthropic or some of the inference companies, there is some anxiety about the markets right now.

With Anthropic rumored to go public in October, there seems to be some doubts that they will actually make it out there. There was an unverified rumor that Anthropic delayed their IPO until November. The post Labor Day IPO rush seems to have gotten to a sluggish start and tech employees and investors are holding their breath.

Muse

I had heard about how impressive Meta’s AI agent app Muse was performing and I wanted to test things out. I downloaded the app this morning and got close to setting things up before I paused and decided to do a bit more research first.

I’ve been looking to play around with a personal AI agent for some time now. I went as far as to look to get a machine for OpenClaw and test out other agents months ago, but decided against it as I knew that it was still early. I figured that I could spend hours setting it up to likely be disappointed. Furthermore, the lack of safeguards was worrisome especially because I deal with a lot of sensitive data and I kept hearing that even technical people had problems.

With the launch of Muse which is meant to be a consumer AI agent app for non-technical folks, I was pretty excited to test things out especially after hearing the generally positive reviews. I was hoping to start small such as asking it to book reservations, research places, and search flights for me which Muse seems to be really good at.

During the set-up, I realized that I was going to be giving Meta effectively all my data including my emails and it gave me significant pause. Perhaps this point is all moot anyways. Anthropic already has most of my data from a work perspective and big tech companies getting access to train may be the trade-off.

But candidly, I had a weird feeling about Meta in general. I have an Instagram already so none of this is really new, but I do have a general distrust about Meta than I do perhaps a Google for many reasons. Perhaps I’m overreacting a bit as this is all inevitable, but for now, I decided to hold off and talk to some people before connecting everything.

Positive changes

I woke up today a bit exhausted and groggy. I didn’t have any big nights as I had dinner with Sophia on Friday and then stayed in to watch football on Saturday. But some small decisions as having a cocktail before bed on Friday and then staying up later to watch the ending of the Ole Miss/LSU game put a damper on my recovery.

Unfortunately as I get older, these small decisions add up and can have a significant impact on my rest and recovery. That one extra drink or that one extra hour of TV probably was the difference between a true recovery night and one that added to my sleep debt. And that debt/strain carries over.

It’s the weekend and I need to live a little of course, but getting older isn’t fun and I’ve been in a constant battle of balance the last couple of years. I’ve come a long ways, but it could always be better. Sometimes a pure recovery night is probably warranted and unfortunately I deprioritized that this past weekend for one reason or another.

Through the data from my Whoop, I’ve been working greatly on my health. I’ve really enjoyed learning about myself and the impact of my various activities on my recovery. I try not to treat it like the gospel as we need to enjoy life a bit, but it has produced positive behavioral changes in my life. In turn, that’s made me a better person and father so I’ve been stoked about the results over the last 6 months or so.

Exciting days ahead for Secfi

It’s Friday afternoon and I’m exhausted after a good two weeks of work and life. I got back from vacation and hit the ground running hard to get back into shape after a hectic summer, and picked up quickly on the work front. I’m planning a lowkey weekend with a lot of recovery and rest built in.

There’s a lot of exciting and fun things happening on the work front in the next few months. The problem with fun and exciting projects? They take a lot of time, effort, and energy and I expect a lot more hours and later nights in the office which is not easy with a young kid at home.

With that said, there’s a balance to be had and I feel grateful everyday that I get to help build an amazing company with great people while working on incredibly interesting projects. I talk to people all the time who don’t have that luxury. They are stuck working 60+ hour weeks slaving away in a rat race.

I used to be in that same rat race, and I have never missed it since I left. In my eyes, life is way too short to be working for a large firm where you are just one small cog in a machine. If I’m putting in those hours, I’d better be doing it working on something I enjoy and care about.

Updating my financial plan

I don’t know if I’ve ever wanted to freeze time as much as I do right now with Colin at just over 22 months. It’s hard to put into words the amount of joy that he brings to me every day right now. He’s just at such a fun age and everything he does is absolutely hilarious. The plus side to him growing is that things have only gotten better with him and being a Dad, so despite loving this stage, that next stage in life will hopefully continue the upward trajectory.

On the topic of life stages, Sophia came in the office and we met with our Secfi financial advisor today. I work here but I was also our first customer on the Wealth side who manages my money and financial plan.

I’d imagine that I’m probably in the top 1% of financial literacy given my line of work and background, but I still have a financial advisor and it’s money well spent. In the basic sense, I have someone else looking after my retirement so I pay for the time I would spend having to do that. But for me, it’s much more than that. I have someone that’s looking over my well being and keeping me accountable, and also stopping me from doing stupid things.

Today, we spent a lot of time just going over our current savings plan and ensuring that it’s setting us up for success. The peace of mind that we’re doing things right is great. On top of that, we spoke a lot about setting up the right accounts and planning for Colin’s future.

The one thing that I did wrong — waiting 2 years to schedule a check-in with my advisor. Luckily we’re in a position of better late than never, but there’s a reason why biannual check-ins are valuable and we plan to do more of these sessions together going forward.

When culture starts bleeding into performance

The college football season is two weeks in and my Washington Huskies are in a very strange spot right now. We’re 2-0 which is where we should be after playing two teams in lower divisions, but it’s maybe the most unsatisfying 2-0 in the country. We’ve looked anywhere from uninspiring to downright awful in our two games at home. We probably should have lost to Utah State last week.

This is just a weird team all around. I’ve seen teams that just have no talent and are clearly outmatched. I’ve seen teams that are just poorly coached with talent and they always seem like they are running around with no purpose. But this team feels like neither of those.

In fact, we look great for the most part and then somehow find a way to implode or shoot ourselves in the foot. Whether it’s just lineman tripping over their own feet, dropped balls, missed easy throws, or just simply boneheaded penalties, we seem to have all the above in the first two games.

I don’t have a great way to explain why this is the case. But I am worried that the worst case scenario may be that we have a culture problem that starts from the top and has bled into the locker room.

First, we have a head coach that was tinkering with a lot of job openings elsewhere in the country. Call it negotiation to get more money or resources or whether he was truly looking to get out, that set-up a weird situation for the players who he is asking to commit to us.

Secondly, we had a situation where our QB tried to transfer out during the offseason only to come back due to contractual reasons. Call that one immaturity or getting bad advice, it’s hard to see how that does not impact a locker room and feelings when your most important player actually tried to leave.

Lastly, I wonder what the impact of the new NIL is on a team like this. Money is the biggest motivator right now for most players, and we have done a good job as a program putting together a system that resembles the NFL. Do we just have a bunch of mercenaries at this point?

This is probably the worst case scenario so I hope I’m wrong. But I wonder if we have a bad cultural problem within the locker room where everyone seems to be playing for themselves, their contracts and NFL potential. If that happens, then the school’s wins and success suddenly don’t matter as much. I really hope that’s not the case and we can right the ship here and salvage the season.

AI Anxiety

I have a group chat with my closest guy friends from college. As you can expect, it’s a chat where we basically just make fun of each other, talk crap about sports, and just riff on the happenings of the world.

Despite multiple kids being born and life events, it’s pretty rare that anything serious ever gets discussed in that group chat. Yesterday was the first time in a long time that we actually got serious for a second as we discussed what would happen with AI and if there’s a real chance it would destroy humanity.

We were all in an interesting state as we discussed the anxiety that AI has caused everyone. Most of us work at tech with one friend at a frontier lab. None of us truly believe that AI is going to destroy humanity, but we all mentioned that we were struggling with a bit of anxiety given how much AI is talked about in our day to day.

My work life naturally has to be focused on AI. But everything I’m being fed on social media is also AI. Whether it’s simply just political news, or another viral topic, or simply just someone trying to sell me their newsletter on “How to get ahead in AI”, it is really overwhelming.

At the end of the day, I believe AI is a tool and that it likely will be a net positive for society. It’s been a net positive for me as I now have a fitness and health coach, mini-pediatrician, etc. in my pocket. But at some point when it’s the only thing talked about in life right now, I’m pretty sick of it and admittedly it has all gotten to my head.

I was surprised that my group of friends also felt similarly and it wasn’t just me given my line of work. It seems to be a common thing and anxiety is high everywhere. For me personally, I probably could use a good solid break from the news a bit. I’ll leave the dooming to others who choose to be miserable.

Learning from Colin

I had Colin solo from Thursday until Sunday. I used to be “scared” of these weekends as solo parenting meant double the work and really no time to myself. There were times in the past where I would basically struggle into Sunday when Sophia got back and need a day or two to recover.

Nowadays, I look forward to these weekends. Part of that is that Colin is a bit older, and part of it is that I’m now a veteran parent who doesn’t stress as much anymore and knows the flow. These weekends are now a lot of fun and I look forward to them.

I know ahead of time that my focus is going to be solely on Colin so my schedule is cleared and I can be 100% present with him. That clarity in my head does wonders for me as I can just simply focus on the most important thing which is being the best Dad possible. Work, friends, etc. suddenly don’t matter as much in that moment. I go to bed early knowing that I have a full day of parenting the next day so I feel refreshed and ready to go.

These weekends are a magical time for me especially at this age. It’s been amazing learning from Colin. There’s so many simple learnings. Yesterday, I took Colin to grab a slice of pizza for lunch and he asked to walk home. It took much longer than pushing him in a stroller, but he took so much pleasure in just walking and seeing things.

He stopped to look at the beautiful flowers. He looked at the building made out of bricks and equated them to his legos and said “wow cool”. He even found pleasure in looking down at the Gowanus Canal… as ugly as that water looks. For me, I had nowhere to be or anything to do and I remembered that life is about the journey not the destination.

There was no need to rush home and going the slow way to just enjoy the simple things with Colin turned out to be one of my favorite lessons that I’ve learned from him.

25 Years since 9/11

Today marks the 25th anniversary of 9/11. I remember waking up in the morning and my cousin calling my Dad to turn on the TV. We turned on a tiny (literally 10 inch) TV in my Dad’s room and saw the news that the planes had hit. I was 11 at the time and my Dad took me to school, but we were all sent home shortly thereafter.

It was crazy days that followed and I still remember one of my cousins telling me “this is the end of the world, you know that right?” Of course it wasn’t, but that day 25 years ago shaped a lot of modern American history. I read a stat that 1/3rd of Americans were born after 9/11 which is a crazy thought to me.

Every 9/11 feels different to me nowadays because I live in New York again, and work in the FiDi by One World Trade. I run past the 9/11 Memorial every other day at least. It’s a surreal thought that all these innocent people could have gone through that incredibly tragedy back then. The stories I still hear from the people who were in New York during that time are still crazy to me.

After 25 years, I’m glad to say that we’ve never forgotten and we’re still continuing to honor the heroes who lost their lives on that day.

Side hustles with AI

I can’t help but think how fun it would be to launch a side business in this day and age. Personally I have enough work at Secfi that I wouldn’t consider it, but if my career took a different path and I stayed at a boring large firm or corporation, I would definitely be exploring launching a business on the side.

I did a bit of that in my early 20s as a way to learn and get away from the day to day grind. The fun parts are fun, but there are a lot of annoying parts about running a business. With AI now, almost all those mundane boring tasks could be almost fully automated allowing someone to really focus on building product and other high value tasks.

Most of my side businesses were never ambitious enough as I didn’t have time and ultimately we winded everything down as our jobs picked up. Nowadays, there may not be a better time to start a side hustle for those Americans that have an entrepreneurial itch.

Perspective after travel

One of the reasons that I love traveling the world is that I get to experience different cultures and see how the rest of the world lives. I love learning how the world works and the history behind different parts of the world.

A byproduct of all my fortunate travels is that it puts my life in perspective. Going to Uzbekistan and seeing how the Uzbekis lived made me remember exactly what matters the most in this life. That is family and community. It didn’t take long to see how family oriented the Uzbekis were as it felt like half my flight from New York was babies or children flying back to Uzbekistan to presumably see family.

Growing up in San Francisco and living in New York, I’ve been accustomed to having nearly everything that I want and need. I didn’t grow up rich by any means, but I was comfortable and got a great education and got to experience different cuisines and travel the world. I don’t want to say the Uzbekis were simple, but I think it’s fair to say that most of the country lives a much simpler life than most Americans.

The country cares less about their status on social media, their material goods, clout from work, etc. And the best part is that they all seem incredibly happy. We all could learn a lot from the Uzbekis.

During one of my tours, our young tour guide asked me if Uzbekistan was the first time I had traveled internationally. I don’t actually know how many countries I’ve been to, but I can confidently say it’s more than the vast majority of the world. This awesome young man had stated that it was his dream to travel and see the world.

When situations like this happen, it really puts things in perspective on just how freakin’ lucky I am to have the life that I have. I definitely do not take it for granted, but traveling is a great reminder from time to time.

Uzbekistan recap Part 2

Uzbekistan was not on my large list of places that I wanted to visit. When my friend Sam said he was going to the Stan countries during his sabbatical and asked me to come as well, I was intrigued and interested in an adventure rather than wanting to see Central Asia. After a bit of research, it became evident that Uzbekistan and the other Central Asian countries are definitely underrated travel destinations.

Given my limited time frame, I was only able to join Sam for the week or so of his trip in Uzbekistan. It definitely lived up to my lofty expectations.

What was once perhaps the center of commerce during the peak of the Silk Road had gone through a few hundred tougher years starting in the 1500s once trade primarily shifted to ships. The country celebrated 35 years of independence after the USSR collapsed while we were there. And the last 10 years has especially been great with a President that has tackled corruption and moved the country forward for the positive.

What I saw was an up and coming country that was interested in technology and opening up to the world. The tourist sites were an incredibly mix of old and reconstructed architecture dating back to even the BC times when Alexander the Great roamed the lands. As a history nerd, I loved the old towns and trying to put myself in the shoes of a silk road trader. There is no shortage of history here, and my only issue is that it’s a bit of shame that so much as destroyed over the years due to war.

While not a major destination for food, I did really enjoy the Uzbeki cuisine which felt most similar to Turkish food but with it’s own flair. There was a lot of rice and meat skewers. I am especially a big fan of the lamb and dumplings. Admittedly, it did get very repetitive after a week of the same dishes, and I was happy to get back to New York and get some variety.

Perhaps one of my favorite underrated parts of visiting Uzbekistan was the people and culture. It’s an incredibly place because of the mix of so many cultures dating back over a thousand years. As the center of trade, people came to the area from Europe and Asia. And the Uzbekis definitely resemble that mix of people. One person could look very European, and the next could look Korean, but they are both Uzbeki. It was definitely really interesting and different from most other places that I’ve visited.

What I saw was a very happy group of people. It is technically considered a developing country, but it felt very modern and the economy is growing rapidly. It was obvious to me that it is a country on the rise with the right leadership in place. It was safe and welcoming. I can only imagine that tourism is going to continuing to grow and it would not surprise me one bit to see Central Asia start becoming a major tourist destination for westerners.