Niners played 50 of 60 minutes and blew it

Yesterday, my 49ers took on the Chiefs in the Super Bowl. Another Super Bowl and another disappointing outcome for the 2nd time in 7 years. First of, congratulations to the Chiefs who haven’t been to the Super Bowl for 50 years. They’re a very likable team and Mahomes is easily the best quarterback in the NFL right now.

Of course, this will be another loss that I will remember for awhile. Again, I felt like we were the overall better team evidenced by our 20-10 lead with 11 minutes left in the game.

On one hand, the Chiefs have been doing this and coming from behind in each of their last games so you can’t be too surprised or shocked. On the other hand, well we were up by 10 and had so many chances to put the game away or win.

We were the best running team in the NFL this year and we failed to run the clock out. Jimmy Garroppolo showed that he was not an elite quarterback. He made mistake after mistake and missed Emmanuel Sanders who was wide open for a touchdown on the last drive.

This the Super Bowl and you need to play all the full 60 minutes at an elite level to win. Whether in business or sports, you need to be full go all the time. Never assume that something is a done deal until the clock shows 0:00 or the ink is dry.

The Chiefs suffered a devastating loss in last year’s AFC championship game and came back to win it all this year. I’ll remain optimistic and hope that the Niners can also be on that same trajectory.

Veterinary disruption?

My cat Toro was trending for the better in the latter half of the week, but he is back to being lethargic and not eating. He could just be full and wants to have a lazy Saturday, but this could unfortunately be the final trend down. I have my fingers crossed and I’m staying optimistic, but like I mentioned in my previous blog post, I know the time is coming sooner than later.

Toro has had many vets. He had a vet when I adopted him in Seattle that was great, a couple vets in New York that were more or less worthless and just wanted to charge me for anything possible, and now I have been taking him to the San Francisco SPCA for his emergency visits.

The SPCA is a wonderful organization. They are a non-profit so anything we pay goes to help run the hospital as well as pay for pet adoptions and getting pets fixed. Like any organization, they aren’t perfect and I believe this is largely in part due to the lack of funding. The organization runs mainly on donations.

I was not happy to see my bill for Toro’s two emergency room visits, but I understood and paying money to the SPCA made me feel a lot better. Being a vet, like a doctor is mostly a thankless job. One vet tech at the SPCA said, “we’re the red headed step child of the medical industry.” Unfortunately, I can see how this is very true.

I’m not well versed in healthcare and my suspicion is that this is more of the norm, but the software they were using looked like a Windows 95 application. Pet hospitals are overwhelmed. Vets do not have room for appointments within 2+ weeks. There is a lack of technology to help vets do their jobs better.

This is an industry prime for disruption.

Unfortunately, the big problem here is that disrupting an industry does not always make a good business. As I understand it, being a vet is a highly stressful job without the pay of a highly technical job.

As a consumer, I would love to see more startups try to take on the pet healthcare industry and improve the lives of our pets and owners. Unfortunately, as an investor or entrepreneur, I don’t see how this could be a very profitable industry to take on at the current moment.

There are too many issues. Medicine and hospital care is brutally expensive and consumers just don’t have that kind of money to spend on their pets.

I hope there is a day in my life where I can write a check for an investment in a startup that I think could truly disrupt the industry and make a good business. There’s a lot that needs to happen in the healthcare industry overall before we get there though.

The long term hold

One of my best friends reached out saying that he needs to learn how to keep his money in things he believes in. He was early on in Bitcoin and sold really early before the huge rise. And he’s been an avid supporter of Tesla for many years now, but sold his stock well before the stock 3x’ed in a span of 3 months.

He’s now got major fomo, but has a great learning experience. Most new investors have to get burned to really learn how to invest.

My recent streak has not been great either. I had targeted 3 stocks to buy in January. $CDLX, $DIS, and $SHOP. I bought into $CDLX and $DIS and both have been down since then. On the flip side, $SHOP hit new all-time highs today. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. That is investing.

Despite this, it’s important for myself to hold true to my thesis on these companies. The longer you hold stock, the more room there is for growth. Whenever I buy into a company, I look to hold long-term for at least a year if not many more.

I’m not a skilled enough investor to be a day trader and I don’t ever intend to be. We’ve all heard famous investors have different quotes such as “investing is easy” and “investing is simple”. My take is that investing is as easy or as hard as you want it to be.

I choose the easy route and follow trends. I stick to my theses and hold stock long-term so my potential for error is much lower. There’s no right way to invest, but you need to stick to your guns and your beliefs.

Life, death, and taxes

One of the smartest people I’ve known and someone I consider a mentor once said, "There’s 3 truths in life: Life, Death, and Taxes”. RIP Bill, we miss you.

Over the last few days, I’ve been dealing and coming to terms with my cat’s inevitable death. I mentioned that I took Toro to the vet last week and it appeared that he was turning a corner over the weekend. Sophia and I came home on Monday to see a constipated and really weak Toro. We took him to the ER and had him hospitalized over night to get tests done.

The doctor isn’t 100% sure, but the diagnosis appears to be lymphoma or a form of cancer. If true, the absolute best case is Toro lives for another few months to a year and at worst, we’re going to have to put him down soon.

I had never really thought too hard about Toro dying. I have had him for the majority of my adulthood since I was 22 and he is an older cat at around age 12. He’s been such a big part of my life and I had thought that he would live to meet my first born child or at least that was the goal.

Unfortunately life likes to bite you in the ass sometimes. Life is full of amazing highs and some miserably painful lows and I feel like one of the lows will be coming shortly. I suppose that is the beauty of it all. Life without death is life without happiness. We can’t feel highs without feeling pain at times.

It’s been a weird week between Kobe Bryant’s death and Toro being diagnosed with terminal cancer. Writing about death may go down in history as one of the weirdest blog posts I ever write, but this is perhaps my way of coping and dealing with death.

If you’r reading this, you’re experiencing life right now. You’ve also likely experienced taxes and will continue to experience taxes for the rest of your life. The one unknown is death and if there’s one thing for certain is that we will all experience it at some point.

Now comes the happy part. We’re all going to die anyways so might as well love one another, make an impact in someone’s life, and have a lot of fun while we’re here.

What Kobe meant to me

Just like much of the rest of sports fans in the world, I was really shook by news of Kobe’s death. It was surreal and my first instinct was that this had to be some kind of hoax.

I never thought this day would come. Kobe seemed damn near invincible. The fact that he died at age 41 is incomprehensible. This is easily the most devastating death of our generation.

Like many in my age group, Kobe was a hero and inspiration. He was someone that we all wanted to be like when we were older. He inspired an entire generation of basketball players.

Possibly the worst part about everything was that his life was just getting started. His post basketball life was going to be just as great as his accomplishments on the court. He won an Oscar award just last year and has been huge in moving forward women’s basketball.

He’s going to be missed. He was my childhood hero and inspiration. Even though I was never close to becoming a professional athlete, I learned so much from Kobe in many ways. His life will continue to inspire mine for the rest of my life.

I wanted to write some thoughts on some lessons that I learned from Kobe.

• Compete. Although he may have seemed like an asshole on the court, Kobe was one of the most competitive people on the planet. He competed in everything he did. We know what he did on the court, but stories of him off the court are just as crazy. He wanted to win and he won a lot. Life isn’t about winning or losing, but you need to understand that to be the best, you have to compete.

• Inspire the next generation. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment in life is about inspiring others to also be great. Despite being one of the most competitive humans on the planet, he understood that his records would be broken by those that he inspired. In the end, it isn’t about records or winning for Kobe, it was ultimately the impact he had on others. We must continue to understand that our lives will be measured by the impact we have on others, not our own accomplishments.

• Over prepare. Kobe’s greatest asset on the court wasn’t his natural athletic ability although he had a lot of that, but his intelligence for the game and his preparation. He knew the ins and outs for every player, every tendency of every team, and every referee on the court. He prepared, and then prepared more. There will always be someone smarter than you in the room, and you can never control that, but what you can control is how much more prepared you are.

• Be a good father. Kobe’s genuine love for his children was well documented. I don’t need to write a paragraph on why this is important in life, but perhaps this was one of Kobe’s most underrated accomplishments.

I’m going to miss Kobe. The best thing I can do in my life is to do what Kobe would want: live his legacy through my actions.

Secfi's $550 million raise to help employees of private companies

I don’t write directly about Secfi very much on this blog. I imagine that’s mainly due to the fact that I use this blog as personal therapy and after living and breathing Secfi 5-7 days a week, it’s a nice breath of fresh air to write about other topics.

I’ll break that trend for now as I wanted to discuss a significant milestone.

About two weeks ago, we went to the press with our $550m capital injection by Serengeti. You can read about it in the Financial Times here.

The cash was raised as a facility for us to provide more financing opportunities for employees of private companies. Having a dedicated facility allows Secfi to focus on our efforts on the important parts of the business: helping employees with their equity.

While this was just announced a couple weeks ago, we have been working with Serengeti for almost 2 years now on deals. They have been a very valuable partner and I am excited to continue to work with them to solve equity compensation for all.

This is undoubtedly a significant milestone for us as a company, but it really is just the start. We have helped thousands of people with equity compensation over the last two years, but that is barely even scratching the surface of the gigantic market of private company employees with stock options.

This may be the first large facility we raise, but if everything goes to plan, this won’t be the first. We have a massive opportunity ahead of us and I personally am looking forward to taking this head-on. Time to my head down and go to work.

BTFD? Credit card data analysis

To buy the dip or not. That was the question I was pondering as I caught up on the market this morning. Coronavirus scare has the market pulling back a bit and naturally I found myself as a potential buyer. I’m not a doctor or scientist, but I don’t believe the coronavirus is as big as an epidemic as some people make it out to be.

One company that I started to follow this morning was Cardlytics ($CDLX). I am a bit late to the party here as the company went public in January 2019 at $17. The stock is trading at around $88 at the time of writing.

The stock fits nicely in one of the criteria I like in stocks: unsexy that not many people know about. The average person does not know that Cardlytics exist or can explain the business model without deep research.

I simply love the business model. Cardlytics creates software that helps marketers analyze credit card spending. Every major bank is a customer or will likely be a customer as Cardlytics helps analyze their customers’ spending habits and identify trends so that they can better reach their customers.

The stock has already 5x’ed since IPO and is definitely a bit overvalued. With that said, the business model is strong and major financial institutions with lots of cash are their primary customers so I see this growing quite significantly.

I’ll be monitoring this one and be looking to add to my portfolio when there’s a dip.

Day from hell and home

I’m officially back in San Francisco after nearly 3 weeks and words can’t describe how good it feels to be back at my desk.

Overall, it was a great trip mixed in with a lot of unfortunate events such as a bad cold turned worse after landing and a stomach bug for an entire day. Yesterday’s travel day was no exception. Here is a bullet point recap of my day:

• Flight was slightly delayed. No harm, no foul as we took off 45 minutes after expected.

• Seat in front of me decided to see how fast he could lean back and slammed my headphones against the back of laptop and broke them.

• Got a lot of work done, but my laptop charger broke so my laptop ran out of battery half way through my flight.

• I finally get home, but find my cat looks frail and skinny. My girlfriend said she was worried as he seemed to have a cold, but this seemed much worse. Brought him to the vet almost immediately after and spent 4 hours in the ER.

By the time I got home at 8pm, I was on the verge of collapsing in stress and exhaustion. Seeing my cat looking that frail and weak perhaps pulled the “father” out of me for the first time in my life. It was brutal watching him like this and not being able to help, and I can imagine this is what a father feels like when they see their children in a similar situation.

Everything seems to be okay. He started eating a bit this morning after receiving a few shots and we’re hoping to hear good news from his blood tests.

Unfortunately life is going to present these days quite often. It’s important to stay positive and realize that everything is going to be okay. I had a good meditation this morning and then went to a workout class and I feel much better on my outlook on life right now.

Simplicity and overcomplication

One of my favorite football coaches and personalities in the world is Mike Leach. He was formerly the head coach at Washington State University which is one of UW’s rivals. I loved him for many reasons, one of which is that he never had much success against us. He’s an eclectic personality and quite possibly one of the weirdest people alive.

His twitter account is pure gold. A friend of mine sent me this Athletic article where they interview current and former WSU players about Coach Leach. It’s aptly named.

What the %#$@ is going on right now?

It’s a highly entertaining article, but has a lot of great insight on his style of “leadership” and how he coaches. One of sections in the article discusses Leach’s offensive philosophy and his “playbook”, or lack thereof.

Several players comment about how they didn’t have a playbook and how insanely simple the offensive scheme was. Leach’s coaching entailed telling his quarterbacks to throw it to the open man, not the ones that were covered.

As major college football as offensives get more complex every year to keep up with the times, Leach has been remarkably successful in taking under skilled players and taking them to new levels.

Over complicating matters can be a killer of talent. Sometimes you need to let your players just go out there and play football.

This is what Leach does. He sets the simple groundwork and let’s his most trusted players call plays, adjust on the fly, and just play ball.

We can all be guilty of over complicating matters in our day to day life. Sometimes we don’t need to run a complex analysis to get to the right answer. Most times the best answer is the easiest and simple one right in front of us.

Remote Work Trips

I am currently sitting in my hotel room in Amsterdam at midnight watching the end of the AFC Championship game waiting for my 49ers to come on in about 40 minutes. I had planned on flying back home today, but decided to extend until Thursday for some meetings this week.

While I am happy to get the NFL games on TV in my hotel, I am a bit homesick. I wish I was in San Francisco for the game. It’s been over 2 weeks since I’ve been home. Modern technology such as FaceTime makes things as easy as it has been to keep in touch with loved ones and friends, but it obviously does not replace in-person time.

Unless aviation technology moves quicker, I don’t see a world in my lifetime where flight travel can take a 10 hour SF to Amsterdam flight and make it that much quicker or better. I hope to live long enough to see this, but we’re just not there yet.

Something in our lifetimes that we can look forward to is remote work becoming ubiquitous in our work culture. These long work trips would be much better if our family would be able to come with.

The tech world is much farther along in the remote work space for obvious reasons, but I look forward to the day when other industries catch up.

This standard of course starts with us who work for innovative companies. We have to set the standard going forward and perhaps even encourage this future of work.

The short attention span trend

Took a few days off from writing so I can enjoy my time with the team in Austria. We had an amazing time snowboarding for 3 days and then doing a lot of socializing. We have a lot of new team members that I had yet to meet in person so it was the perfect opportunity to get to know everyone.

I am very grateful and excited to be surrounded by this amazing team. A year and a half ago I joined Secfi in search of something new, but I did not know I was gaining a family. I am back in Amsterdam for a few meetings before taking off back home on Thursday.

Onwards…

I don’t watch a lot of television or movies. I do enjoy a lazy day every once in awhile, but generally Sophia and I have trouble sitting for 2-3 hours at a time. We lose attention, start checking our phones, and our minds began to wander.

I suspect that this is a generational thing. Millenials have so much access on their fingertips and we’re always looking for something to stimulate ourselves.

Enter Quibi. The new short-form video streaming service is set to launch in April led by founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and CEO Meg Whitman. The duo has raised a $1.4b to help create content to be delivered to your mobile devices in 7-10 minute chapters.

When you think about the decision to sit down and watch a TV episode or a movie, you are entering in a bigger commitment. Many of us, myself included, enjoy the occasionally content splurge but do not often have the time for a full movie or episode. This is exactly the trend that Quibi is trying to fulfill.

While someone is waiting for a train, in a short Uber, or perhaps just waiting for someone at the bar, they can watch a short chapter in a much more digestible format.

The streaming wars are going to get more interesting and it will be interesting to see how Netflix, Disney, and others change their content strategy to match what Quibi is doing.

A few of us at the top of the mountain in Austria.

Hello from Austria

The entire Secfi team is here in Austria for our annual company trip. We flew into Innsbruck this morning and we’re currently in Kirchberg which is a small ski town.

I love spending time with this diverse and brilliant team. We’ve got people from all over Europe, the US, Brazil, and Russia. While we’re a “start-up”, we’re already at over 30 people and it’s quite crazy to think what this trip is going to look like next year.

There’s not a lot of work to be done this trip. It’s all about relaxing, getting to know each other better, and having a lot of fun. Naturally, the conversation is likely going to gravitate towards our work because we all care and are passionate about it.

Last night over beers, I spent a good 30 minutes discussing alternative investment products with one of our newest hires. Then I spent another 30 minutes discussing hiring in San Francisco with another colleague.

While we may not be “working” in the traditional sense, I have a feeling that there’s going to be a lot of great ideas being thrown around on this trip.

Wrapping up and saying bye

I had a relatively lazy and solo Sunday in Amsterdam. I think quite often when I am here, I feel as if I need to take advantage and go out and do things. Given that I’ve been here 8+ times in less than a year and half, I think it’s fair to assume that I’ve done most things in the city. It’s almost like having a different kind of fomo where I feel guilty for staying in my apartment and watching Netflix on a Sunday.

Last night, I went and saw 1917 in theaters and the cinematography was amazing. I am a big fan of war movies and 1917 was really well done. We don’t get to see a lot of WW1 movies as perhaps the storylines are a little better in WW2, so it was great to see a well done one.

Onwards…

I am in the process of wrapping up my LLC which my two best friends and I started 7 years ago. Since our launch, we ran a successful Kickstarter for Intervention, sold out multiple batches of Intervention, started and sold San Francisco Box, and explored various other business ideas.

The businesses were started out of boredom. I was very unfulfilled and bored with my first year of school. John was in law school and Francis was just starting development bootcamp. We had extra time, needed extra cash, and wanted to learn what it was like starting a business.

I want to write more about my journey doing all these businesses, but really what it came to was that we no longer had the time and if we were going to work on a business, it should be 100% in. The last couple that we launched or tried to launch were part time gigs which resulted in a part time business.

I’m going to focus on recapping my learning from these businesses in a future post.

Age and moderation

One thing I’ve learned from getting older is moderation. My 22 year old self would have asked what almost 30 Vieje would be like.

I’ve grown up in a lot of ways and I’ve changed a lot, but one thing that I’ve noticed among friends the same age is much more moderation. We don’t like drink like we used to in college and that’s a good thing.

I know when to pass on that last drink, and call it a night. It’s a wonderful feeling knowing that I’ll wake up feeling good tomorrow.

Race to the bottom in DTC land

I’ve been taking classes at Saints and Stars which is the Dutch Barry’s Bootcamp and have generally been impressed. This morning I took the boxing version of the class and man it was pretty bad. I wanted to leave halfway through due to pure boredom but I stuck it out the entire way and walked out with barely a sweat. The instructor was not inspiring and the music was bad, like really bad. Energy level in the room was nearly 0.

Onwards…

The DTC mattress company Casper has filed for an IPO. This is of particular interest to me as there has been a nice trend towards high end sleep products which I wrote about previously.

I have not had a chance to look at the S1 but going off a few articles and tweets from people who did, it appears that Casper is no different than many of the other direct to consumer companies. Good revenue numbers with bad margins, high marketing costs, and large annual losses.

It’s hard to imagine Casper getting to profitability based on just their core business product, mattresses. As someone who recently bought a new mattress, the market is very saturated and the different products are not very differentiated. Every company has different “foam” and “technology” but at the end of the day, they all generally feel the same with minor differences such as firmness.

So what is Casper going to do? Well, according to their S1, their plan is to transition into a technology company that sells high end sleep products. Think accessories that help you sleep better such as natural light lamps, aromatherapy, temperature control, and supplements to promote sleep.

This has been the trend with a lot of DTC companies as they strive towards profitability. SmileDirectClub just announced now offering other dental products besides braces.

Casper is riding the business of sleep and it’s going to need to be creative in the R&D department. Consumers like myself are willing to pay top dollar for high end equipment to help you sleep. This has been a growing trend and will continue in the future.

What is yet to be seen is whether Casper will develop any unique and useful products that help you sleep better or if they’re just going to continue to play in a saturated market with no product differentiation.

Investors will be betting on whether Casper can convert on this. I will be in a wait and see approach here.

Co-working communities

Day 6 in Amsterdam and I am at the lingering cough phase of my cold and the last legs of beating jet lag. Despite all this, I managed to take 3 workout classes and was productive in the office all week. I am not sure if “toughing it” is the best method for recovery. Maybe I would’ve been better off in the long run if I stayed home for the first couple days.

Onwards…

I am always impressed everything I come to our Amsterdam office. Secfi has called TQ Co-working home since the beginning. The TQ Offices are located right at the flower market in the Amsterdam city center. It is a big tourist area but being central makes it really easier for transplants and visitors to get to the office.

We have moved offices multiple times in the last 2 years and we now occupy two large offices and perhaps will need to start looking for a 3rd soon. It won’t be much longer when we outgrow a co-working space completely and move to a permanent office.

TQ does an awesome job of creating a community among it’s residents. I’ve met lots of cool people from awesome start-ups in my visits here. There’s a large cafeteria and community room on the top floor that looks more like a bar than an office. Daily and affordable lunches makes it easy for companies to provide the basics without breaking the bank.

The basement is a large floor completely with multiple ping pong tables, badminton and volleyball nets, and serenity rooms. There’s bicycle and car parking, and even two decks on the top floor where all residents are free to roam.

When we looked for offices in San Francisco, we found nothing close to TQ. I understand there are space and cost restraints in SF nowadays, but I do hope that SF has a co-working space that resembles TQ one day. It makes working much more fun.

I am looking forward to today’s happy hour at the upstairs cafeteria. There’s free beer from 4-6pm and it’s always fun unwinding with the team as well as meeting people from other start-ups. This could possibly be the last time I am at TQ so it’s a bit of a sad ordeal as I reflect all that was accomplished here by Secfi.

The fall of robots

I wrote about the rise of “gimmick” robots back in November here. In that blog post, I discuss how I am not a fan of barista and pizza making robots as they are more akin to a novelty gimmick rather than serving a real purpose.

My biggest issue with these gimmick robots are on two fronts: 1) it is highly unlikely they are actually cutting costs, and 2) I have yet to see a robot make coffee or pizza better than a human. Compare that to driving robots who are statistically safer than human drivers. That is what I mean by gimmick robots.

I am revisiting this post as two news stories came out earlier this week.

CafeX, the start-up that makes the robot barista machine, is now closing all 3 San Francisco locations and cutting staff. They seem to be pivoting towards placing their machines in airports now. While never great news, this may be a good business decision as placing an unattended robot in an airport is undoubtedly much safer than on Market Street in San Francisco. They may actually achieve cost cutting and automation in this case.

Zume Pizza, the company that makes robotic pizza has announced that they are cutting 50% of their staff and refocusing efforts on packaging and helping restaurants automate production and delivery systems. This seems to be the end of the pizza vans with robots making pizzas in the back. As another SoftBank company, this is another blow to the SoftBank reputation as most of their portfolio companies continue to cut staff.

Perhaps we’ll look at these companies 10 years down the line as the first pioneers of the robotic service industry as we may be ahead of time at this point. Hopefully the future robots focus on doing things better than humans at less of a cost or this trend will never catch.

"Medicine" vs rest

Being jet lagged sucks. Being jet lagged and sick is miserable. I woke up at 4am today and I’m feeling a lot better than yesterday, but I’m ready to start feeling good again so I can enjoy my Amsterdam trip and have my wits back.

I’ve been fortunate in my past travels to Europe and never been sick. Well one difference in being sick in the Netherlands (and most of Europe)? There is no cold or flu medicine. You can’t just walk to a Walgreens or CVS and buy DayQuil or Mucinex.

It turns out that if you even go to a doctor here, they won’t prescribe you any such medicine either. Instead they’ll prescribe a game-changing European medicine called fluids and rest.

On the surface you might just chalk it up to European ways, but it gets a bit more interesting once you start digging into the “why”.

The easy and widely used explanation is that “medicine” like DayQuil doesn’t help you recover any faster which makes sense. The active ingredients in OTC cold medicine is usually a mix of pain relievers and things that help alleviate your congestion. There’s actually no healing properties in this drugs.

This all makes sense to me, but heck if I’m going to be sick and miserable for 7 days, why not make it better with some drugs? Well I think this has to do a bit more with cultural differences.

Truth be told, being sick and resting at home is not all that bad. You rest, catch up on reading or TV, and heal as you should. Unfortunately this isn’t the way Americans operate.

Americans, like myself, always have an on motor. When I start to get a cold, I go to the drug store and load up on DayQuil to get me through the workday. As I right this with cold, I am preparing to go into the office later today.

Europeans on the other hand take being ill very seriously. My European colleagues take more sick days than we do in the SF office. They don’t get sick more than we do, it’s just much more culturally appropriate to be out multiple days from work.

This is an American culture problem. We fear being left behind in work, social, etc. and experience a fomo so we power through with the help of strong drugs. I myself am very guilty these last few days.

As we build our company culture, we need to encourage sick days for people to get well. Happy and healthy employees make the best employees. I plan on taking these lessons learned and even encouraging people to take days off. I could use some days off myself to recover.

Connecting with our generation

I was a jet lag high yesterday when I woke up at 4am and had an incredibly productive morning. That didn’t last long as after lunch I crashed hard and made my pesky cold come flaring back up. I ended up sleeping poorly with cold aches. Hoping for a much better night of sleep and recovery tonight.

Onwards…

I started listening to the Robinhood Snacks daily podcast today. It’s really freakin’ well done. The one part that got me was how relatable the podcast is to our generation. Markets and investing is an antiquated industry that needs a face lift.

The podcast starts out with a FINRA disclaimer as per usual, but the team got creative and put the disclaimer in a catchy rap. This is quite possibly the first time I have ever been entertained listening to a legal disclaimer.

I wouldn’t expect rap songs at Secfi anytime soon, but I had great discussions with our product team on how we can connect to our generation much better.

Workout wars

One nice benefit of jet lag whenever I fly to Amsterdam is waking up at 4am. I have never been good at falling asleep early and I’ve never been a morning person. The jet lag makes me a morning person and gives me an extra 3+ hours in my day.

I woke up fresh at 4am, watched the Husky basketball game, made breakfast, meditated, and then headed to a workout class at 6:30am. I am writing this at 8:30am and I’ve already had a very productive day. If only this could last!

Onwards…

I bought a 5 pack of workout classes at Saints and Stars here in Amsterdam. This is the Dutch copy of Barry’s Bootcamp and they have since added another class with treadmills and boxing to mimic Rumble. The cultish workout craze does not seem to be as popular as it is back in the states, but it’s starting to catch on here in Amsterdam.

The luxury boutique workout scene has been growing strong in cities such as NY, SF, and LA. Despite the high price, $20-$40 per class, there seems to be more and more studios opening up every month.

The trend of people paying more and more for their health and wellness has been going strong. Whether it’s workout classes or diets such as juice cleanses and smoothies, consumers are all in and there seems to be no end in sight.

I am interested in the products and services that come along with this craze. I wrote about the business of sleep and similarly I am growing more and more interested in the business of health.

Friends have splurged and paid hundreds for massage guns and other tools to loosen your muscles. CBD muscle cream is gaining a lot of traction. If I could, I would buy a sports massage once a day.

As someone with tight muscles, I am personally interested in seeing this market grow. Of course, like any health business you must be careful of temporary fads. I want to see high end products with sticking power. If I am going to pay $300 for a massage gun, I want to not be able to live without it on a daily basis.

The tailwinds in the industry are trending and we’re going to start seeing an onslaught of high end workout products. I can’t wait.