Launching versus scaling

I’m officially over 3 years at Secfi and quite a successful one. I’ve learned a whole lot, met some amazing and smart people and have found a niche that fits my interests and background. Naturally, a lot of tech employees tend to move around jobs every 2-3 years but I’m loving my time at Secfi and I decided to double down and take on the next project at Secfi.

The last few weeks have been an interesting change of pace going from a scaling a business to a building/launching a brand new product. It definitely takes a different mindset and admittedly has been a bit of a transitional challenge.

My first year at the company was really centered around building and launching our core financing product. Things were a lot more unknown and open-ended. There was a lot of individual work and brainstorming. Many days would go by when it would just be me and my computer screen as I thought through the product and our best go-to-market strategy.

As things developed and we started selling the product, things shifted to a growth mindset. The building blocks were set and we just needed to scale. That’s largely how I’ve spent my last two years. I built teams and playbooks. We made mistakes and iterated. We focused on process improvements and brainstormed cross-functionality on how to streamline everything.

Now I’m back to building and I’ve loved the new challenge, but it has been a bit of a transition to a new mindset. There is largely no immediate gratification when you’re building something brand new. When we were scaling, we saw numbers come in. Big deals were closed and we were able to quantify success with revenue. When you’re building and launching a product, there are no immediate sale numbers. You have small wins combined with a lot more roadblocks.

The beauty behind launching a product is that these small wins start to get bigger and bigger over time. I’m really excited for that. The first dollar that comes in from this new product will be a monumental milestone. The key here is reminding yourself to get those small wins every day… they’ll add up even though you may not get that immediate gratification.

The metaverse

If you’re sick and tired of hearing about the metaverse, I’ve got bad news for you. It’s coming and it’s here to stay. We may be a lot closer to that online virtual world than most of us probably think - in many ways, it’s already happening. We’re all living in some form of a metaverse whether it’s through video games or working through Zoom. We just don’t realize or call it the metaverse yet as it hasn’t all been tied together.

A lot are probably going to be scared shitless reading the previous paragraph. There is legitimate fear that we’re all going to just move to online lives, ignore each other in person and all end up becoming human hermits programmed by Mark Zuckerberg.

I for one have a lot more of a positive outlook on what the metaverse is and can do for us.

First, I think it’s important to establish what the metaverse is. I don’t believe there will be one dedicated world like Ready Player One portrayed. The metaverse will be a term used to describe specific experiences or services. We may log onto the Fortnite metaverse to play video games in the morning and then go into the Nordstrom metaverse to go online shopping with friends in the afternoon. This may all be capped with a concert at MSG that we would attend virtually.

The hope is that these metaverse experiences will supplement our current lives, not replace. The metaverse has a real chance to enhance our lives while making things much more convenient.

Going back to the concert example above. Let’s pretend the Warriors are playing the Knicks at MSG and I live in San Francisco. I could fly to NY, book a hotel and buy tickets - but it’s going to be a really expensive trip. Would I typically prefer to go in person? 100%. Would I still be able to enjoy myself with a virtual experience through the MSG metaverse? 100%.

I can still attend with friends and have a great time from my living room. Nothing can replace a live experience, but when faced with not going or going virtually, I’d take it.

This all sounds pretty damn good to me and I’m excited to see what the future may bring.

Are we living in a Scenius?

I just finished reading Packy McCormick’s piece titled Sc3nius and it’s fantastic. In summary, Packy describes how we’re living in a Scenius which is the communal form of the concept of genius. The idea behind Scenius is that the periods of greatest human progress have been a product of communal genius fostered by multiple factors.

The Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the emergence of Silicon Valley and now…. web3.0. Packy writes that we may be living in one of the biggest moments of human progress. Our grandkids will be writing about today and how building blocks of web3.0 helped shape the future.

I’ve written quite a bit about the times we’re living in. It’s hard to ignore that tech has hit an inflection point fostered by the blockchain. I don’t doubt that we’re living in extraordinary times right now and that the future may be looking at this time as a Scenius.

Perhaps another and perhaps simpler way to view these times. The last few years have been hard for many of us. We’ve seen political turmoil, civil unrest and of course a devastating pandemic strike. Many have been looking to tech as the future for creating a better society - so far that has been a mixed bag. We need some positivity in this world and web3.0 may be that answer for all of us.

Web3.0 knows no borders or race, at the most core sense, it empowers the individuals and rewards them for banding their collective intelligence together. In essence, Web3.0 may be that tech we’ve been looking for in the last century that can actually unify the world. That’s exciting and something everyone should get behind.

Regulation is coming

I’ve been interviewing for a Head of Compliance at Secfi and it’s been a welcome change to my usual interview cycle. For one, I’m interviewing more on current knowledge so I get to pick the candidates’ brains quite a bit.

I’ve had a lot of interesting conversations over the last few days discussing Gary Gensler, crypto and where the SEC goes from here.

Crypto companies v. Regulators will be an interesting battle to watch in the coming few months and years. Gensler isn’t wrong when he says this is the wild west right now and perhaps some fair regulation is actually needed. Key to that is that it needs to be fair.

I don’t love how the SEC picked a fight with Coinbase by issuing the Wells Notice preventing them from starting crypto lending. It seemed like they wanted to target Coinbase and didn’t provide much background as to why.

I’m not sure how this all plays out, but one thing I am certain of after speaking to some senior compliance folk is that regulation is coming. It’s going to get harder for companies to launch, especially in the crypto and blockchain space. Startups and companies should prepare accordingly.

Money2020

I’m finally getting my head above water after my vacation and Money2020. A week and half away from my “desk” is never fun to catch up on, but it was well worth it.

I had a bunch of thoughts on Money2020 and I’m too brain dead to formulate them into a cohesive blog post so I figured I’d just bullet point them for simplicity sake.

• I forgot how much fun it is to meet people in person. There’s a level of personal connection that you get in face to face meetings.

• I also forgot for 18 months that network = net worth. It’s amazing how many connections and intros I made in 2 days.

• Networking is exhausting. There were definitely times where I hit a wall and had a hard time.

• Holy crypto and blockchain. I couldn’t believe just how many crypto and blockchain companies are out there right now. It’s undeniable that web3.0 has arrived.

• Everyone is an investor. All my Uber drivers wouldn’t stop talking about trading crypto, stocks or FX. I’m not sure if I should be scared or impressed. My driver to the airport told me to buy Shiba Inu coin but warned me that it’s a pump and dump.

• Seems like everyone at the conference has made at least 1 angel investment. It’s pretty impressive with how many are investing in startups.

• $50 minimum at the craps table is a fast way to lose everything. Stay away. $25 on the other hand is manageable.

Overall, I had a great time. Made a lot of new friends and potential work connections. I wish we went all out this year for Secfi, but it was tough with the pandemic. Next year, we’ll definitely have a bigger presence.

Time to go home

It’s usually hard for me on the last day of vacation as we travel home. Often there’s a feeling of dread of going back to work and feeling like you didn’t do enough. I’m happy to report that today feels a lot different.

I feel good about everything we did on this trip. We had a great mix of activities and relaxing. I feel refreshed and rejuvenated and I’m excited to go back to work.

Of course, one side of me wants to just quit my job, free lance and live in Baja for as long as I can, but I know myself and not having something to build would bother me.

We’re going another quick beach session in the morning, grabbing some tacos and then heading home. I’ll be home a grand total of 14 hours though as I have to get up and go to Money2020 in the morning. Busy week ahead but I’m excited.

A great week

They always say you don’t realize you need a vacation until you have a vacation. Well I realized I needed a vacation and I now realize that I need vacations more often.

It’s been largely an amazing week. Work has been minimal to just a few calls/texts here and there. I’ve done 6 dives in Isla Espiritu and Cabo Pulmo. I’ve done a lot of relaxing and have slept a good amount all week. We’ve eaten some great food and hung out with close friends.

The week long trip has been perfect and what I needed to unwind. More importantly, this trip was good for me to realize that a health balance of work-life is sorely needed. After a week, I’ve started to get excited to go back to work.

I’m back to San Francisco tomorrow and then headed to Vegas for Money2020 for a few days. It’ll be a good trip and I look forward to being nice and rested. In the meantime, I’m headed to the beach all day today and tomorrow morning before my flight. Cocktails and Tiger Wood’s book is on my agenda.

Unwinding

Weekend 1 of vacation has started off with a bang. After a drive from San Jose del Cabo to La Paz on Friday, we went diving in Cabo Pulmo on Saturday and Isla Espirito Santos on Sunday.

The highlight was Saturday when we dove a wreck in Cabo Pulmo and saw a goliath grouper as well as a bull shark. I joked with the team and on Twitter that the bull shark said the bull market continues for another year!

On Sunday, we dove with sea lions and then checked out another wreck. Diving has become an amazing hobby that both Sophia and I picked up together and it’s been great for our relationship as well as meeting new friends. We don’t have anymore dives planned, but we’re thinking we may head back to Cabo Pulmo on Thursday or Friday to do another dive.

So far, the vacation and unwinding has been great. I’ve been able to unplug largely and despite doing about an hour of work this morning to clean things up and push things along (as well as buy some stocks and crypto), I’m happy to report that my stress level is at a YTD low.

Today, we’ll be wrapping up work this morning and then just going to have a day to relax, explore and eat. I may look to get a massage and take a nap on the beach. I need to do this more often.

Trust

You have to have a lot of trust when you’re a leader in a startup. Compared to big companies, at a startup, there are often no guardrails. Often times, you’re just going after it with the little to no guidance you have. Most of what we’ve done at Secfi hasn’t really been done before - there’s no way to figure out the best way to do things without actually going out there and doing it.

I think leaders often forget of the mistakes they made while they were learning and getting things up and going. I often have to remind myself how much trial and error there was to get to this point.

I’m entrusting a lot of my team to handle things while I’m out on vacation this next week. Yes, it scares me a bit, but I have full trust that they will execute. They are smart and we’ve armed them with everything we can. Sometimes the best way for people to learn is just to learn by doing. It may not be perfect, but they’ll be even better coming out on the other side of it.

This admittedly has been one of the hardest parts about growing Secfi. I’ve gone from doing pretty much everything to having to hire people who will take over these functions. It’s tough to let go often, but it’s also a beautiful thing to watch when someone takes what you’ve built and makes it even better.

I’m lucky to have an amazing team that’s going to keep things rolling while I’m out. I expect to come back to a lot of wins in just the week I’m gone.

Time to chill the f out

It’s been amazing week from a work perspective.

We held strategy sessions as a management team and planned for the next year.

We had a big win with a partnership opportunity.

We won big from a sales perspective and jumpstarted our aggressive Q4 goals.

After a shitty last week. Things are coming along.

It’s a perfect time for me to check out for a bit and recharge my batteries. I’m headed to Baja on Friday and plan to check out for a week and some change.

I’ve written a lot about burn out and exhaustion on my blog over the last year. I tried to take some time off in June but ended up working a lot. This time I vow to take time off, relax and enjoy life.

The team is in a great spot, and I’m excited to come back recharged and crush Q4. In the meantime, I’ve got big plans to do a lot of diving, eating and relaxing on the beach.

Talent

We’ve been holding strategy meetings as a management team this week and the one thing that continues to come up is talent. We’ve done a good job recruiting lately with over 20 new hires in Q3, but it has taken a village to get to this point.

The world has changed since the pandemic. There are perhaps more open jobs than ever before across all industries and pay classes. Tech employees now have the ability to work from anywhere and can demand maximum flexibility.

Like most startups, we realize that winning the talent war will be the most critical aspect to our success as a company. We’ll need to continue to recruit and retain talent at a high level. In order to do so, we’ll need to adapt to the demands of the modern tech employee.

We’ll need to make some strategic decisions when it comes to the future of our employees and location. The future is remote and we’ll need to find the right balance between fully distributed and in the office.

One trend that will be admittedly difficult to overcome is the rise of the gig economy. Workers are turning towards the gig economy versus full time jobs and we’ve run into employees who have decided to stay free lance versus join us. We’ll need to control what we can and look to foster an environment that allows flexibility and the chance to work on new exciting projects. We’ll continue to build a culture that celebrates team work, camaraderie and mutual goals towards building something great.

There are and will continue to be a lot of challenges as the future of work evolves. At Secfi, we’ll continue to adapt and evolve as a company to stay in front of the talent wars to come.

Mental Health Day

The US team at Secfi had the day off for Indigenous People’s Day/Mental Health Day. Unfortunately only a fraction of workers I know had the day off - I’m hoping to see that change in the future as we prioritize worker health and happiness.

I took full advantage of the day to hang out with my 10 year old half sister. We had a great day going to Scandia which is a small family fun center with go-karts and an arcade which is what my sister loves doing. It was well worth the hour drive to Santa Rosa.

There was a long list of things that I wanted to get done over the weekend which included tasks such as rebalancing my portfolio and catching up some reading. I made a big dent on that list Saturday morning but personal things caught up and I unfortunately didn’t get to where I wanted to be going into this work week. I thought about cutting my day with my sister short to get back to catch up on my list, but then remembered the spirit of this day off.

It was a good reminder that while productivity is generally a good thing, there are often times more important things in life like spending quality time with my young sister. My to-do list can wait another week, but days like today are worth much more than checks on my list.

Pissed

Today was one of those days where seemingly everything is going wrong and we received bad news after bad news. If you do this startup thing long enough, you’re going to have these days and unfortunately they happen more often than you like.

It sucks but it happens. The ups and downs is one of the many really hard things about startups. I’ve had many of them over the last few years and while these days are not nearly as bad as when we were in the early stages, they always suck.

You invest much more than your worklife into your startup. It becomes almost part of your life for better or worse. When things go bad, it’s really tough on your psyche. The beauty behind all this is that when things go well, there may be nothing more satisfying from a work standpoint.

Days like today suck, but the most important thing is to put your head down and get back to work. There are better days ahead.

Worldwide Web3.0

I’ve forced myself to carve out a few hours tonight to dedicate to doing more research on web3.0, crypto and recent projects. I know, I am severely behind on the trends. Work and personal life have been priority recently and I haven’t been keeping up with the latest trends.

There’s only so many hours in the day and I’ve realized tonight that I need to peel some personal/social life hours back for more alone time to do research and learning.

Exploring the wild west that is Web3.0 is fascinating. I honestly feel like a kid discovering the internet for the first time all over again. It’s fun and exciting but confusing at times. There are so many cool projects going on right now and it’s hard to keep track of everything going on.

A lot of these projects will fail. A lot of these projects will gain traction and then fail. And a lot of these projects will be the face of Web3.0. I’m excited as ever to dig in more and be part of the Web3.0 revolution as a consumer and an investor. It’s an amazing time to be alive.

I know I won’t be at the forefront of many of these projects, but just like Web 1.0 and 2.0, we’re just touching the tip of the iceberg and it’s better “late” than never.

NL West Champs

I’ve written a lot about my battle with exhaustion and burnout. Lots of this was due to a crazy summer travel schedule. After a few weeks home, I’m happy to report that I’m feeling a lot better. I’m sleeping more and getting back to a much more consistent schedule. I’ve got a couple of weeks of work before I go on vacation to Cabo. I can’t wait for a much needed vacation.

The Giants clinching the NL West today saved an otherwise terrible sports weekend for my teams. The Giants won 107 games, the most in franchise history, and were picked to finish on the bottom of the division in the preseason.

Winning the NL West is a testament to the Giants organization. We have a group of veteran leaders that are playing some of the best baseball in their careers. We have under the radar stars exceeding their potential. This is a product of the culture of this team and organization. This team believes in each other and does not give up.

It’s been amazing to watch when a team and organization fire on all cylinders. It’s going to be fun to watch them make a run at the world series. I have no idea if they will win it all - there are undoubtedly more “talented” teams out there. One thing I do know though is that everyone in that club house believes they will win it all and when you have a culture like that, anything is possible.

This is 31

I often need to be reminded that I’m no longer in my 20s. Yesterday and this morning was one of those reminders.

I went to the Giants game last night with a few of my old high school friends. It was a relatively tame night because well it’s a baseball game, but we had a few drinks before and during the game and ended up getting home around 11:30.

I woke up this morning feeling like I slept 2 hours and went to a rave all night. It’s a bit embarrassing to admit that I feel hungover after a few beers and sleeping only 7 hours, but that’s your 30s for you I suppose.

While I was still productive today at work and got a lot done, days like today are a good reminder to be conscious of rest and drinks when out and about.

The best ideas

I’m always amazed by how nearly all my best ideas come from when I’m in the shower, at the gym, eating, etc. My best ideas pretty much come to me anywhere besides when I’m actually trying to think about it in front of my desk.

Today, I was hitting a bit of a lull at my desk. I decided to take a long gym break and eat lunch out by myself. Sitting down at lunch today, it all started to come to me. By the time I got home, I had pretty much everything mapped out in my mind.

This isn’t a brand new discovery by any means, but it’s a good reminder that work doesn’t always need to be in front of a computer.

Shifting mindsets

As I move onto to my next project at Secfi, I’ve had to start to adjust my work style quite a bit. When I first joined Secfi and we were first going to market with our financing product, there was a lot more strategizing, planning and research involved. I had to be a lot more creative and a lot of what I was doing was strategic planning.

After awhile when we got up and running, my work started to shift to more of an execution role. Our playbook started to become more and more defined and we focused a lot more on just executing that playbook. Think lots of calls, meetings, emails, etc. with clients. Of course, there was still a lot of strategy and planning involved but it was different than the early days.

Now things have come full circle as I’m back to a brand new project at Secfi. While I’m still involved in our financing product, my day to day is a lot more free. There’s a lot more research and brainstorming on a day to day basis. I no longer have 8-9 hour days of client calls.

It’s a welcome change, but definitely a big shift back. It requires much more discipline and deep work which is something I’m still getting used to again. There’s not a lot of immediate results or gratification like closing a deal so it’s much more of a slow grind. It may be months until I start to see the fruits of my labor on this new project.

There’s a lot of perks however - my days are much more free and I can work from nearly anywhere since I’m not on calls. It’s going to be real nice to take advantage of not being on Zoom all day.

Web3.0

I may be the last person to write about web3.0 on their blogs on the internet. It’s of course been the talk of the town in the tech world for the last few weeks.

Web3.0 is the overarching term that covers nearly everything popular in the tech world including cryptocurrency, blockchain, NFTs, creator economies, work from anywhere, etc. It combines all these things under a simple umbrella that the future of the internet (and world) will be decentralized in which the people have the power.

Power out of the hands of institutions and back in the hands of people. That’s a powerful statement that should get pretty much everyone excited… unless you’re the CCP.

We’re at an amazing time of the world. Fresh out of a once a century pandemic, we a plethora hungry individuals with more resources than ever before out in the world building. The promise of tech building a better world may never be more true than today.

We’ve got a long ways to come until we achieve the future we want, but I don’t think I’ve been this optimistic about the world since I was a child. What a time to be alive and building.

The cycle of life within a startup

We had a blast last week with nearly the entire US Secfi team in the office. It was evident that everyone sorely misses colleagues and work events like these. We’re hoping to do this once a quarter and hopefully do a larger trip with the broader European team once a year.

I caught up on a lot of rest over the weekend finally. I got two rounds of golf in with my Saturday round being some of the best all around I’ve played and Sunday being one of the worst outings I’ve had. Golf will do that to you. One day everything seems to be working and you’re thinking you're going low the next day, and of course it all comes apart.

I’ve written a lot about how much we’ve grown over the last few months. One thing that is inevitable with startup growth is that people will start to have their roles narrowed. The earliest employees of a startup will need to be like Swiss Army Knives in which they can do a little bit of everything. As we grow, we start hiring more and more steak knives. Roles and responsibilities get spread out amongst other employees and early employees will have to give up a lot of tasks.

This can be a sensitive subject as early employees have taken a lot of pride in building their team/product. It’s not easy giving up the thing you’ve spent so many hours building. Seeing your successor run it her or his way as well can also be tough. But this is part of the growth path and it’s necessary for the company to continue to grow. There comes a time for everyone to move on and we need to put aside our own egos and let our new hires bring in their own thoughts and ideas to help grow the company.

You build, you grow and then you move on to the next task. That’s the startup cycle of life.

As for myself, I’ve been experiencing this a lot as I look to transition my team and role to someone we hired to take over. It hasn’t been easy, but I know it’s what best for the company. The beauty behind these transitions is that it opens up the door for new opportunities within the company as well. My new found time post transition will be spent working on new strategic projects that I am excited about.

It’ll be a new era for me starting Q4, but I am just as excited as I was since I joined.