Back to Cali

My two and half week east coast trip is coming to an end as I fly back to San Francisco tomorrow. It’s been a great trip and almost made us forget that everything is happening around us in the world.

I only have one regret on this trip and that is that I worked too much. I always try to do trips where I work a reduced schedule and strategically take days off, but it never really works out that way and I end up working just as much if not more than usual. It’s something that I’ll need to learn from for next time.

Given my work schedule this week, I didn’t get a chance to start studying so I decided to push my test back a few days and just take the long weekend to enjoy with Sophia and her family. I always need a reminder that there’s more to life than finishing work and I’m glad I was able to spend the weekend work free.

The next few weeks will be tough and rewarding. I have already mentioned that I am taking the Series 24 exam, but we are also starting to plan for Q4 as a management team.

Every day matters in startup land, but finishing this year off strong is going to be especially important. We’ve got momentum on our side and we are in a prime position to make up for a lot of our yearly goals that were pushed back due to COVID-19.

Stone cold

This year has made us all stone cold. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing long term just yet.

The market sell-off on Thursday or Friday normally would’ve had me freaking out last year, but yet it is just 2020 so events like these are almost expected. We’ve almost become immune to these large dips and raises.

I’m not positive that this volatility will continue in a normal year. This year has been anything but normal and at the same time we need to start realizing that is a new day and age in the markets. How many times have we heard “all-time” or “unprecedented” in regards to the stock market this year?

I will continue to stick to my guns and keep investing in tech-focused businesses that I hope to be able to hold for the next 10 years.

Compliance

I am in the process of taking my Series 24 test which allows me to be a “General Securities Principal” which effectively means that I can supervise the activities of a broker dealer as I will be overseeing our broker dealer going forward in October. It’s more responsibility and just makes sense for our business.

For those in this space, starting a broker dealer is a long process and comes with a lot of work. At Secfi, we went through the process in 2019.

It was painful but a necessary part of our business. Given the industry we are in, we always want to make sure we keep everything above board and in regulatory compliance. It has been our stance at Secfi since we started, and we will continue to take that stance going forward.

This is just one way we create and maintain trust with our clients. Admittedly, there are a lot of players in our space who do things under the table. This is risky not only for the company but for the potential clients that decide to use their services.

Organizations like FINRA exist for a reason: to protect the consumer. Although I wish the process wasn’t as long and arduous, I understand why it is this way and we’ll continue to invest time and effort to making sure we comply with the regulations.

Back to routine

My daily writing goal has suffered greatly in August due to a busy travel schedule. I hope to write that ship in September — okay I’ll stop.

I’m in Baltimore at Sophia’s parents’ home for this week through Labor Day. It’s been a great trip overall. I had a great stop in New York to meet up with friends and eat some good food. I miss New York already and wish I could have stayed longer.

Baltimore has been a nice place to get settled and catch up on work. Unfortunately, the first couple days were rough as we were catching up on sleep and realized we never really adjusted to east coast time. Fortunately, I feel like I finally caught up last night and feel good for the first time since Saturday today.

September is going to be a crazy month for me. I am studying to take the Series 24 so I can take over Secfi Securities, LLC which is our broker-dealer. In addition, there is a lot of pressure to close the quarter out strong and carry the momentum to Q4.

I realize that if I’m going to survive this month, things will need to change. I will need to rely on my team even more so and be disciplined in terms of work and personal matters. There is going to be a lot of sacrifice this month. Hopefully I’ll still have time every morning or evening to write.

Looking forward to the challenge.

I Love New York

I’m writing this from an empty cafe of my East Village hotel. We wrapped up our Cape Code excursion and drove to New York today to get some of our favorite foods and see some friends.

I was expecting the city to be a bit dead given the pandemic. To my surprise, the streets are filled and almost all restaurants are open for outdoor dining.

There of course is a bit of a concern given the global pandemic going on but New York has come along way from being the epicenter of the virus to a very low infection rate. Most people are wearing masks and generally being safe… at least on the surface.

I love this city. I’m glad to see that it’s still fairly lively. There’s just no city in the world that has the energy that New York does. A friend of mine once called New York an adult playground and I think that’s a great way to describe it.

After staying for 5 days in a relatively sleepy town on Cape Cod, it’s a different energy to say the least. You know the minute you hit the outer buroughs as the highways get narrower and people just drive a lot crazier. After being gone for 2 years, it was a bit of a shock driving through this mess, but rest assured, I was wide awake the minute we got to the city.

First thing after checking in to my hotel was grabbing Hanoi House and a big bowl of pho. Best pho in the world. Sophia and I are going to go to Fish Cheeks which is one of my favorite Thai restaurants in the city tonight.

I love this city.

Changes

Before I knew it, I’m now nearly 2 years in officially with Secfi. It’s been a crazy 2 years, but we are hitting that point where people will be moving on and looking for new opportunities.

It’s always a bit weird to me. I used to work at a large firm where seemingly every week there was someone who was leaving for a new opportunity. This is a bit different as a we’re small team of 40 right now.

One of our early stage employees that was there even before me that he was moving away from Amsterdam and looking for a new opportunity out back in his home country. Another employee emailed us over the weekend saying he was taking a new opportunity elsewhere.

I’m very happy for them both and wish them the best, but it’s always sad. Coworkers and colleagues are just different when you’ve built something with them. I feel like Secfi has been a family over the last 2 years and it feels like we’re losing part of that family.

This is a natural part of the work life, especially in tech companies where the average time at a company seems to be 2 years, but it’s never easy to deal with when someone decides to leave.

Life is good

I’m writing from the back porch of our inn on Cape Cod right now. We’ve been here since Friday and plan on staying until Wednesday when we’re headed down to New York, and then to Baltimore.

Traveling during this pandemic has been a testy subject and we were back on forth on it for a few weeks. We ultimately decided that we felt safe enough given the recent research and both of us being low risk.

We still plan to take all precautions. We’re staying outdoors, keeping our distance, and getting tested regularly. It’s not zero risk, but we’re comfortable with it.

We both were feeling a bit on edge with the last few months of work and everything going on. We’re just happy and grateful that we were in a position to get out and unwind a bit. There has been a lot of beach time and biking around mixed in with many lobster rolls.

We both plan to work a little bit this week, but taking a couple days off with reduced schedules. The one benefit that was probably available to me, but not available to Sophia prior to the pandemic was the option of remote work. We can now work from nearly anywhere and we plan on doing just that for the next couple weeks.

We both brought portable monitors with us so we’re going to test out the remote work life style and determine if this is something that we want to take more advantage of in the next few months. There’ll be a few challenges, but I am excited to try and see if we can make it work. Perhaps we’ll use this to our advantage and be digital nomads for the rest of the year.

I plan to eat at least a few more lobsters between now and when I leave on Wednesday. Life is good.

The death of SF and NY?

Today, we’re finally moving out of the Spaces co-working spot in SOMA and moving to CANOPY in Jackson Square. I have a love-hate relationship with Spaces. It’s where I’ve been working out for almost 2 years. It’s our first San Francisco office and I’ve had a lot of great memories (and late nights) here. It was time to leave however and we’re excited as ever to call Jackson Square our new home.

We may be the only company in San Francisco to sign a lease during this time, but we’ve decided as a company to double down on office work and hope to make a full return once COVID is over. I know a lot and perhaps the majority of people don’t feel the same way however.

The talk of Twitter has been the death of major cities like San Francisco and New York. I understand a lot of people’s frustration with two of America’s most iconic cities. Cost of living is through the roof and there is no shortage of issues including homelessness, cleanliness and safety.

My take on the situation is that these cities are not for everyone. People that would prefer to live in suburbs or quieter cities now have a perfect excuse to leave and hopefully a job that will allow them to do so. There’s nothing wrong with that and I believe the acceleration of remote work will be great opportunities for those to achieve what makes them happy.

For the rest of us that enjoy the hustle and bustle, connections and entertainment that a city has to offer, we can also look towards better days. There will be short-term impact from COVID and unfortunately we all have to live it. But we can look to rebuild SF and NY the way it needs to be built. Forced mass migration to the city for jobs will hopefully be over and we can make a better SF and NY.

I grew up in San Francisco, moved to Seattle for 5 years, then New York for 5 years, and now I’m back in San Francisco. I have lived in cities my whole life and I have no plans to leave a city anytime soon.

The next few years are a pivotal point for both SF and NY. There will be struggles and bumps along the road, but I am hopeful. I have heard the “Death of SF” before and I refuse to believe it. I am long SF and NY and I know a lot of others are too.

Golf and work

I haven’t written much in the last 2 weeks. Just 5 blog posts including this one. That’s unfortunately been a product of a longest few weeks at work since joining Secfi.

This weekend was about recharging and clearing my mind. I got a lot of that.

I golfed for the first time in over 3 years today with my two best friends. I didn’t have high hopes for my performance on the course, but it was probably my best day of golf since my college days. Go figure. I’ve now got the golf bug and looking forward to growing this new hobby.

Golf is an interesting game. It’s as much of a mental game as a physical one. You might be good enough that you can go up to the tee, swing away without much thinking and if you’re talented enough, perhaps it’ll all work out. Unfortunately for the vast majority of golfers, this isn’t the case.

Most golfers including myself will shave many strokes off their score simply by having a plan for each hole and playing the long game. Going for the distance with a driver will likely lead you to a world of trouble. Often times, your best bet on the course is going for the layup shot rather than trying to get there as fast as possible.

Of course this is easier said that done. I’d love to be on the green with a long straight drive and a nice approach shot on every par 4 or 5, but this is rarely the outcome unfortunately!

I had a lot of time on the course to reflect on my last few weeks of work and I couldn’t help but think how this similar this is to building a startup. We’re always trying to find that easy path to success. We make plans for that path and how we can get there as fast as possible, but rarely does that plan actually work out as expected.

This is a startup and things go wrong. A lot and often.

Sometimes going for that layup shot to set yourself up for success is the better route. Things don’t happen overnight and they take time. As much as we all want to succeed and get there as fast as possible, we also need to play the long game here. At the end of the day, getting to the green in 3 shots is still getting on the green.

When things hit the fan at work, I’ll need to remind myself to take that layup shot at times.

You have to be a little crazy

I’m sitting at my desk that looks out on downtown San Francisco and there’s currently a Bollywood movie playing on the top of the Salesforce tower. Not a bad background as I write this blog post.

Anyone that has worked at a small startup will probably tell you that the most important thing in growing the company is the people you hire. That experience has held true so far in my two years here. We haven’t been perfect in our hiring, but I feel like we’ve done a damn good job overall.

There’s no one right way to hire, but there’s a lot of wrong ways to hire. One trait that I am always looking for in people is what I call the crazy trait.

You have to be a little crazy to be a difference maker in a startup.

If you think about what you will be subjected to on a daily basis, this starts to make a lot more sense. There is generally no structure. You are told to execute on something and expected to do that task at a high level. There are also no rules. In the world of disruption, you can bend or break the rules to accomplish your task. On top of all this, you have to deal with a constant oscillation between highs and lows sometimes on a daily basis.

Yes, you have to be a little crazy to want to do this at a high level for a long time.

For those that love and embrace the grind, Secfi is an amazing place. It’s not for everyone, but I’m as excited as ever to start finding the next wave of “crazy” employees.

The startup rollercoaster

I haven’t written anything here in about a week. I haven’t had much energy lately with a lot of long hours and my attempt to try to unwind from work as early as possible. Unfortunately the last couple of weeks of work have been the craziest since my time at Secfi… and that’s saying a lot.

Last week was especially crazy with seemingly everything that could go wrong going wrong. I somehow decided to convince myself that I could take Friday afternoon off to try to catch-up. Not sure why I got my hopes up as I had two deadline deals that came through in the morning which took up the rest of my day.

Of course, not all is bad in Secfi land. This week has been a reverse in fortunes with good news after good news seemingly pouring in starting yesterday. I finally feel caught up and energized again after some big wins today.

For those that have been through the ups and downs of startups, this story probably sounds all too familiar. No day is the same at a startup. You have to always be able to turn on at any second and learn how to take breaks when it’s time. You can never get too high and never too low.

Working at a startup is a rollercoaster ride through your emotions. The ones that can handle the ups and downs are the ones who will succeed in this environment. Working at a startup is definitely not for everyone and there’s nothing wrong with people who prefer a much more stable ride. I love it however and even despite the last two weeks, I am feeling as energized as ever.

Gratitude, Vietnam, and the story of Flower

I was sitting in a restaurant in nearly 100 degree heat admiring the array of oysters, clams, and crab on our dinner table. It was blistering hot and I was sweating as I was cracking open another crab leg. The smell of lemongrass and Vietnamese spices were strong. I was in heaven.

Unfortunately this is 2020 and I was not in Vietnam… I was in Sacramento California. Little Saigon is probably as close as it gets to Vietnam for this Californian in this global pandemic and political unrest. It was a somber of the times we live in. Many out there are longing for more than just the ability to travel internationally for leisure and it was a good time to reflect on being grateful.

Of course, there’s few countries out there that resemble gratitude than Vietnam. My last trip to Vietnam was in 2016 and it was… well eventful. My best friend and I landed in Hanoi for the first stop of our trip in the fall of 2016.

The minute we had gotten back to WiFi, our phones blew up with notifications that one of our good friends from high school was involved in a severe accident and he was in a coma. Our first day of my vacation was spent trying to figure out our plans to return home. We ultimately decided to stay as we heard that our friend’s condition was stabilizing. Needless to say, this was on the back of my minds for the entire trip.

On the second day, we were roaming the tourist area where we met Flower. She was a young “tour guide” looking to sell us greeting cards that folded open. Unlike the other “tour guides” in the area, she was fluent in English so we actually stopped to speak with her. We’re glad we did as Flower became a friend of ours for the next few days in Hanoi. She organized “locals only” tours for us. Took us to the best restaurants. She even hung out with us in the evening at dinners and for drinks.

Admittedly, it did feel a bit transactional. She was very much only doing this for a paycheck at the end of the trip and she remained somewhat closed off for being our “friend”. It wasn’t until one of the last days of the trip that Flower opened up to us.

Flower had organized a motorcycle tour in the northern part of town with her and her friend. This was also going to be election night in the U.S. Like most, we thought we would go on the tour and come back to wifi to see Hilary being announced President. Of course, we were wrong and quickly grappling with the thought that Donald Trump was President of the United States.

Clearly heartbroken and scared, Flower decided to take us to one of our spots we identified on our hit list: Bun Cha Obama or the Bun Cha restaurant that Obama ate at when he visited Vietnam. It was a sweet move that improved our mood slightly but she could tell that we were deflated and non-talkative. Flower could sense this and did well what only Flower does best. She made us feel better.

Flower decided to open up and decided to tell us the story of her life. Like many in Vietnam, her life was not easy, but I did not expect what I was about to hear. She grew up poor in a tiny village outside of Hanoi.

In her late teenage years, she fell in love with someone in the military and had a child with him. Their love lasted many years with her boyfriend’s wealthy family paying for their lives. Ultimately, Flower’s boyfriend’s family decided that falling in love with a poor villager was not in their son’s best interest so overnight, they were broken up and Flower was left with their child.

Flower was devastated but needed to provide for her child so she learned English while working odd jobs to provide for her family. Heartbroken, she trudged into Hanoi every day to sell goods to tourists. She worked 12 hour days and then drove back 2 hours back to her village. Every. Single. Day.

While not easy, her life started to stabilize. She soon met another man that she quickly fell in love with. Things moved fast and they quickly began to build a life together. Years of hard work had paid off and Flower and her boyfriend bought land and began to build a house for their family.

The ground work for the house was set when things started go sour in the relationship. Her boyfriend was accusing her of being a prostitute as her job was to work as a tour guide for tourists. He became abusive and ultimately decided to take the rest of their money and run away.

Again, Flower was devastated. She described sitting there on the empty second floor of her half-built home thinking if she should just jump head first. She knew she had a child to take care of and knew that life goes on.

At this point of the story, my jaw was on the floor as I realized how much heartache and devastation one young woman has gone through in her years on earth. Yet, I was in constant awe at her outlook on life and how she handled these issues.

“I thought about jumping off the floor and ending it, but I realized that my life is good. I have been through a lot, but I am happy and I am healthy. You can’t think that one thing is the end of your life. You can’t control everything. There will be better days and you have to just be happy with what you have. ”

I don’t think I’ll ever look at life the same way after that day. Yes, we were devastated that Trump was elected President. Yes, our friend in a coma was on top of mind and we were in constant worry. At the end of the day, one of the strongest things we have as humans is our resiliency.

We had a couple more great days in Hanoi with Flower. We were still shook but we learned to live in the present and just be grateful for where we were. Our friend eventually made a full recovery and while Trump has set us back many years, the country isn’t dead yet.

Whenever I think that times are rough, I think of what Flower taught us. Be grateful for what you have.

Feedback

I’ve been swamped all week with work but today’s checklist was particularly difficult. Yes… it’s bi-annual review time. I’ve grown to realize the importance of feedback over the years, but I do admit that writing up feedback forms and reviews are a bit of a slog.

Giving the feedback is not the issue. Rather it’s the process of ensuring that I am comprehensive, thorough, and thoughtful. It’s not easy writing performance reviews and giving genuine constructive feedback.

Lots of people say they love receiving feedback, but few truly have grown to love it. We’re trying to change that at Secfi with more regular feedback sessions and much more candid discussions. Part of this process is ensuring that everyone takes the process seriously and that starts with me.

It may have been a long afternoon and evening working on feedback, but it’s all worth it. Feedback and team improvement are long-term efforts that must be started early on in the process. If you don’t create a culture around feedback and continuous improvement early on, it will be much harder to enforce down the road.

Little Saigon

I spent the end of last week and part of the weekend in Lake Tahoe. A couple friends, Sophia, and I rented out a house for June and July as a place to escape the city. We were very fortunate for the opportunity and I loved my time up there. In a sense, it was an escape from the realities of today’s world and issues.

On the way back to San Francisco, we decided to stop in Little Saigon in Sacramento for an outdoor dinner. Little Saigon is a recent discovery that I’ve made a point of visiting nearly every time I drive back from Lake Tahoe. It’s a long road of strip malls with amazing restaurants and stores. The best way I can describe the place is that it feels like you’re in Asia. I love everything about the place.

Last night we ate at Seafood House Quan Oc and it was one of my favorite meals in recent memory.

Viet-cajun style crab and crawfish. Vietnamese style clams and oysters. I sat in nearly 100 degree heat eating amazing seafood and I couldn’t help but feel like I was back in Vietnam traveling. I had a lot of thoughts, but I couldn’t help but remember my last trip to Vietnam in 2016. It was an eventful one to say the least so I plan on writing a longer post about that trip and our friend Flower later this week.

Earnings week!

It’s a big rest of the week for the stock market. Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Alphabet are headlining on Thursday.

Is tech really immune to COVID-19? Are they all overvalued? When is the bubble going to burst. This week’s earnings won’t answer all those questions, but we’ll have a much better idea.

I got caught chasing a bit the last couple of weeks and I’m largely sitting on my hands right now on the defensive. Things are frothy and buying the potential earnings release bump is a dangerous move that I’m not willing to risk right now.

My prediction: earnings are going to disappoint a bit across the board. Market will take a slight tumble in response to earnings but recover over the next few weeks.

Q1 earnings turned out better than expected for most, but we’re all quick to forget that the blunt end of the COVID-19 impact happened in Q2. Yes, even tech companies can feel the hit as well.

I’m headed up to Lake Tahoe tomorrow for one more weekend at our summer house and to help pack up our things. Looking forward to catching some sun and taking a bit of a break from work.

Stock option education

We’ve been making a big push into some of the large companies that are headed towards IPO in the next year. It’s always fun working with employees at these companies as their dreams are starting to become reality and they can see the light at the end of the tunnel with the IPO.

On the other hand, it’s also a bit terrifying as it makes me quickly realize just how little the vast majority of employees know about their stock options. The default action is to do nothing and unfortunately that’s mostly what I hear from our clients.

For most of our clients, their stock option package is the majority of their net worth, but people don’t typically treat it as such. Those that do not plan end up leaving a large chunk of money on the table upon exit. Those that have been through this almost always say the same thing, “I wish I had known about Secfi at my last company that had an IPO.”

We know how valuable our services can be for our clients, but we know we have a long ways to go to accomplish our mission. Most startup employees do not know services like Secfi exist and we need to change that.

Meditation and yoga

It’s been another hectic week and I’m ready for the weekend already. Lots of long nights this week that I hope isn’t the norm going forward.

One thing getting me through is my meditation and yoga. I have been meditating for years, but just started doing yoga during quarantine to get a mindful workout in. I have tried yoga on and off for years, but like most things, I didn’t truly start enjoying it after trying it long enough.

In a sense, yoga is just like meditation. Both require you to focus on the present moment so you can relieve your mind. In yoga, there’s a physical aspect to it that involves your body.

Yoga has proven to be an amazing escape from my work day and stresses of life. Today, I did a 45 minute sessions at home before dinner. When I was done, it felt like the weight of the world was off my shoulders.

The webinar roadshow

I’ve written a decent amount about the webinars that we have been hosting at least monthly since the beginning of quarantine. At the beginning of the year, our strategy was to go on a roadshow and do a lot of educational webinars at many of the startups in the Bay Area. It was meant to be a great way to get our name out while helping fellow startup employees with their equity.

Of course since the start of quarantine, we’ve had to make a pivot to webinars. The change has been interesting but welcome so far. It was a much more seamless transition and we quickly found out that organizing a webinar was much quicker and easier than organizing an in-person event.

There are a lot of downsides. Nothing can replace the in-person socializing or trust building. I miss meeting people and developing deeper connections. Unfortunately I don’t believe that will be happening for at least a year so we’ll make do. The webinar roadshow goes on.

Tomorrow I’ll be presenting at a webinar for the women’s group at a leading tech company. Our contact at the company is a passionate individual that we have loved working with so far and we’re really excited. I’m always excited for webinars, but you get especially pumped when you help contribute to closing the gender pay gap.

We have always maintained that startup equity is a large part of your compensation. Unfortunately, the vast majority of our clientele is still men. One way we can help achieve equality is through educating women so they can make the most out of their equity and compound wealth. I’m looking forward to doing that tomorrow!

The religion of tech

I am late to the party here as always when it comes to books, but I am finally going to start Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. I was skimming the book Q&A by Yuval at the end of the book when I came across this question.

I like to joke about the cult-like tendencies in the tech world, but Yuval explains what I’ve been missing. Tech has become some sort of religion complete with both the good and bad of traditional religion. The parallels are a bit uncanny.

At the most basic terms, both religion and tech promise a better future, a symbolism of hope if you will. Many tech companies have mission statements catered to change the world for the better. Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Uber all refer to everyone, world, or earth in their mission statements.

And yes, tech has their cults and people who think they are demi-gods too. No need to list names here, but you don’t have to go far to find your cult-like leaders out there.

Like traditional religion, technology will have the power drive people to madness and kill, or even worse, start wars leading to the deaths of millions.

For better or for worse, tech has become the most important and popular religion in the world right now. Whether the promise of the better future comes through is still TBD. I am an optimist and believe that tech can be the driver of a better tomorrow.

The great Twitter hack

Yesterday, Twitter was hacked. Many influential figures including Elon Musk, Barack Obama, and Bill Gates tweeted and asked individuals to send Bitcoin to an account in which they promised to return the favor and pay back double.

News today revealed a lot of rumors including that this was possibly an inside job by a Twitter employee and that about $120,000 was lost to the scam. Yes, $120,000 not million. I’m by no means saying this is not a large sum of money, but for an elaborate scam, this was pennies.

Consider this. These hacker(s) devised a plan to hack into one of the largest social media companies in the world. Not only that, they were able to get into the accounts of some of the top Twitter accounts in the world. This was not just an elaborate scheme, but a very impressive one that could not have been thought up by some amateur hackers. These hacker(s) are impressive to say the least.

These presumably brilliant hackers came up with this scheme and the best they could do was Tweet the following:

Holy hell. For an elaborate scheme this complicated, the best they could do was Tweet the same message asking people to send them Bitcoin. In the day and age where a single tweet can send a firestorm through the stock market or much simpler, create enough fomo to have people buy an absurd amount of goods, they decided to do this.

We dodged a bullet. These hackers may have been brilliant in many ways, but man are they god awful at the business side of things.

The scary part behind all this is how much worse this could have been. Yes, much more money could have been lost. But Twitter is one of the most important platforms in shaping global politics today. If these dumb-brained hackers orchestrated this joke scheme, imagine what some real hackers may be able to accomplish one day.