Relationships matter

Relationships matter in personal, work and life in general. This may seem like the most obvious freakin’ saying on the planet, but yet I see people ignore this concept on daily basis. Quite often, this is due to people thinking short-term gain instead of nurturing those long-term relationships.

Sometimes it can be as silly as a young sales person being overly pushy due to a sales quota at month end. They are looking to close quota and may end up burning the relationship trying to force a customer to spend more money without solving any problems for them.

Even a lot of executives I work with need a good reminder that relationships matter. I was recently told to basically fuck off by an executive as we weren’t ready to invest and open an allocation for his company. He “kindly” told me that he’ll go with a competitor and will not be looking to work with us in the future.

I’m immune to these comments at this point as it’s part of the job and I understand people not being happy that we can’t invest right now. But truth is that quite often, they come back needing something from us in the future and I’m much less inclined to help someone who was a jerk to me earlier.

People don’t forget how you treated them in the past. Relationships matter.

GSD anxiety

Well, it finally happened after almost 10 years… I got called into report for jury duty. I’ve been getting summoned consistently every 2 years but have not been called to report since my first time in New York. While I do get a bit excited to do my civic duty, I’m also getting a bit of anxiety for my to-do list.

For lack of better terminology, I call this my GSD anxiety. This all stems from years of focusing on work and building. I believe anyone who has built or currently building a startup or business probably gets this quite often. It’s the feeling that you need and should be getting more things done at work. In a way, it’s a never ending loop as there’s always more to get done when you’re building a startup.

While being a great driver of getting shit done (GSD), it’s also a double edged sword as it can give you a feeling of shame when you are not as productive. For myself, this lack of productivity could be due to life events like jury duty or personal obligations, work related blockers, or probably the worse of them all, burnout.

My anxiety started to hit yesterday. I was in the office and didn’t have the most productive day. I had meetings starting in the early morning to the early afternoon and afterwards, I felt a bit lethargic and tired. I tried to power through and was able to get through some, but not all the work I wanted to be through. Then in the evening, I got the notice that I was to report for jury duty the next day.

Anxiety filled my brain and I immediately felt awful about not being more productive that day. This of course is all fabricated in my head. In fact, I had been in the office from 8-4pm and did a bit more work in the evening. Perhaps it wasn’t the most productive day, but I got a lot of shit done. As for jury duty, that’s something that I can’t really control and just part of life.

It took a good night sleep and a nice meditation this morning to stave off the GSD anxiety. I don’t really have an amazing solution for this other than recognizing when it happens and trying to calm my brain out of this mindset. The first step in solving it though is recognizing when the GSD anxiety rears it’s ugly head.

Taking VC money

I believe there’s a bit of an aura of raising VC money. It functions as a validation for your business idea and gives you a bit of breathing room as you grow your company and hopefully find product-market fit. Undoubtedly, a lot of businesses will need VC money to grow. Those businesses are typically in software where you need to hire a good amount of engineers to build your vision.

Taking VC money definitely has it’s upsides, but carries it’s downsides as well. Most importantly, you’re giving away a chunk of your company and inviting another “boss” into your life. VCs look for significant upside and you will need to grow the business significantly for them to meet that upside they are looking for.

Quite often, I read through a deck for a company looking for investors or meet a founder looking for investors and have no idea why. It’s becoming more and more common as the aura of VCs grow. A lot of companies are making strategic mistakes really early on by taking on VC money when they really do not need to.

A lot of these business ideas that I see are not capital intensive and can be bootstrapped or funded via a small business loan. These companies will be much better off in the long run operating as sustainable businesses versus the growth at all costs that a lot of VCs have typically searched for.

Not every business or company needs to have a significant exit event by like an IPO. As a founder, you may not get the halo effect of being a VC backed founder, but you can still run a very successful business and retain the majority of it and it’s future profits.

Big sports weekend

I had a lot of fun this long weekend. It was much needed after a really week in tech.

It all kicked off with my LinksDAO Bay Area golf outing on Friday. I played with ~19 other LinksDAO members at Harding Park. I really did not know what to expect going into this. I’m happy to report back that everyone was normal and pretty damn awesome to hang out with.

I didn’t play well and definitely left a lot of strokes on the course. My short game failed me when I needed it the most, but that’s beyond the point. I’m more excited than ever to be part of this community and I’m definitely going to be attending as many of the events as possible.

On Saturday, my Washington Huskies upset Oregon at Autzen stadium. Big fans of college football know that there is no love lost between our two schools and teams. Simply put, we do not like each other. The Ducks have really had our number the last 20 years unfortunately.

This UW team came into Autzen with a whole lot of heart and fight. They ended up pulling out a 37-34 nailbiter that included a few heroic throws by Mike Penix. My friends and I went absolutely crazy when we pulled it off. We event decided to go out to the bars for a few drinks afterwards.

Of course beating Oregon is always important, but this was also a program defining win for first year coach Kalen DeBoer. The impact this will have on the fan base, recruiting, donations, etc. will be immeasurable in the short-term.

And last, but not least, the 49ers pulled off a win on Sunday on primetime. I’m not sure if it’s going to get better than that for a sports weekend for me so I’m going to relish this for as long as possible.

LinksDAO

In a week of really shitty news for crypto, I’m happy that I’m ending the week on a positive note. Tomorrow, I meet up with 19 other folk from the LinksDAO project to play a round of golf.

One aspect of NFT projects that I have always loved is the community part. Each project aims to create a community of believers typically on Discord. The LinksDAO community has been one of my favorites so far given the real world application on our shared love of golf.

I’ve gotten swing tips, gear recommendations, and discounts from partners. Most importantly, it’s been a lot of fun so far participating in this project. Hopefully my golf game holds up and I don’t embarrass myself too bad out there.

This sucks.

It’s a hard day in the crypto, web3, and yes, the tech world. Binance’s bid to rescue FTX has been retracted amidst reports that the company is facing a shortfall of $8 billion. It appears that FTX is about to hit bankruptcy.

This is awful news for those working on crypto and web3 projects. I fully acknowledge we are still in the hype phase of web3 where there will be a lot of grifters and scammers, but there are legitimate people and companies out there working on amazing projects that will undoubtedly be affected.

SBF was seen as the savior of the industry. He’s an incredibly brilliant dude who was goofy but relatable. He looked like your typical Silicon Valley coder. He has a great upbringing and a seemingly straight moral compass with ambitions in the world. He had an aura around him.

When Luna and Celsius blew up, I and pretty much everyone else didn’t think that there could be anyway that SBF and FTX could be next. He seemed to be doing all the right things including actually asking for more regulation. FTX was different than the rest…. or so we thought.

This one will be puzzling for some time. On the surface, it did not appear that FTX needed to put themselves in this position at all. SBF had just witnessed the debacle at Celsius and Luna… surely he had to realize that getting absolutely rekt was in the realm of possibility right? Was it ultimately greed and money that drove SBF to put FTX in a position they are in now or had this been happening all along?

Whatever the answers to the above, I do know one thing… this is going to have ripple effects across the entire tech ecosystem even beyond crypto and web3. Top tier VC firms just lost hundreds of millions each investing in FTX. That’s a lot of money that could have went to other builders.

This sucks for all of us right now. FTX blowing up was the last thing we all needed in a bear market.

Binance buying FTX?!?!

Well looks like I’m a complete idiot as my blog post yesterday seems to have crashed crypto. I kid obviously, but I did say that Bitcoin and Ethereum have held up comparatively well. It appears both are in a free fall right now as I write this as the news of Binance buying FTX has gone public.

The CZ (Binance) and SBF (FTX) “beef” started many days ago and I don’t think many would have guessed that it would end with Binance signing a non-binding LOI to acquire FTX.

I don’t think many know the full details yet, but it appears that Binance’s CEO declared FTX insolvent many days ago and decided to sell FTX’s token $FTT on the public markets which would crash the price. SBF defended his company and called the accusations lies.

Well, CZ was either correctly protecting his company or he was planning to start a bank run at FTX all along. Whatever the reasoning, FTX has liquidity issues and has to be “rescued” by Binance or perhaps another buyer.

This is a bit of a scary situation right now especially for those in web3. SBF is considered a legend that many in the industry looked up to. The thought of FTX being acquired in a fire sale was incomprehensible months ago even in midst of a crypto bear market.

There’s going to be a lot more details in the next few days, but I don’t like where this is headed right now.

Is web3 still alive?

It’s pretty fascinating to watch just how many people have flocked out of web3 camp in less than a year since the bear market began. This was all expected as the “get rich quick” folk would be the first ones to flock once things started going south. Nonetheless, I still find the data absolutely mind boggling.

A lot of the NFT marketplaces are seeing less than 5% of daily volume compared to last year. The crypto brokerages are seeing large declines as well. Surprisingly, Bitcoin and Ethereum have held up comparatively well.

As for myself, I trimmed my overconcentrated crypto positions significantly about a year ago and only stayed in NFT / DAO projects that I was genuinely interested in participating in. I luckily was never in a position to buy really expensive NFTs nor would I likely have even if I had the money. But I did buy into a few projects that piqued my interest and I’m still involved with most of those projects today.

Notably, I’m really enjoyed my LinksDAO membership where I will hopefully be part of a DAO that buys a golf course. More than the potential for returns, I’ve joined a really fun community where we all share a love for golf. It’s a fantastic community and I’ve gotten a lot out of joining the project.

I am meeting up with a group of 20 that live in the Bay Area for a round of golf this Friday. Surprisingly this will be my first web3 community meetup although I was close to joining a few other local meetups over the last year. I’m excited and glad that I stuck around.

Layoff mania

I started writing about layoffs beginning early this year and have occasionally mentioned the layoffs while discussing the economy and markets over the year. I knew earlier this year that we were just touching the tip of the iceberg when it comes to layoffs. Pretty much company over hired last year and the market environment has done a 180. My prediction is that almost all tech companies will need to right size in this down market.

This past week was unfortunately a big week for layoffs. Specifically in FinTech, Chime had a 13% layoff and Stripe just announced a 14% layoff. These are two of the biggest players in the fintech startup space. Last year, it was hard to imagine Stripe becoming victim to layoffs. They are a darling in the fintech world and the Collison brothers are some of the most respect tech entrepreneurs in the world.

The markets can be humbling and this is a tough situation for everyone right now, even the most well-funded startups with amazing leadership.

While I surely hope that we don’t have too many more layoffs in the future, I do think there’s likely still more pain ahead for us in the tech world. This could be a really long winter for all of us.

For myself, I am focusing on building Secfi to become a sustainable long-term business. That may mean sacrificing some short-term goals in this market, but I believe that it’ll pay dividends in the long run when the market turns.

The Twitter saga begins

Week 1 of Elon owning Twitter has proven to be more entertaining than we ever expected. Here’s my notes on the happenings about Twitter that I found just casually strolling Twitter:

• Two trolls name Rahul Ligma and Dan Johnson trick a bunch of reporters outside Twitter HQ into thinking they were laid off. The internet goes crazy.

• Elon brings over some of his top Tesla engineers to review Twitter’s code and manage the teams

• Engineers were instructed to print their code that they have written over the last 30-60 days, then instructed to stop printing and shred the documents

• Elon has brought over friends Jason Calacanis and David Craft as temporary executives to help manage the company

• Elon debates charging people to use Twitter to make it the internet’s town square and champion of free speech

• Elon is currently soliciting feedback from Twitter users and then trolling them about how they can provide their input but that they’ll need to pay $8 for it

It’s hard to doubt Elon Musk at this point after building PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX. All that said, holy shit I have no clue where Twitter is headed but it’s not looking great.

I love Twitter… I find it much more intellectual than scrolling Instagram. I don’t use TikTok as I refuse to add another addicting app on my phone - my sleep has suffered enough. Twitter is where I go to get ideas from others and it’s an amazing source of education.

For the sake of saving Twitter, I hope Elon succeeds. I have to give him the benefit of the doubt at this point, but things are not off to a great start.

I saw that Titan Vest was providing an opportunity to invest in private Twitter through one of the ARK Invest funds. 17 vigs/fees aside - I will not be investing in Twitter. In a year or two, I hope that I regret not investing.

Big misses

Today, I spoke to some executives at a company I had been following for 3 years and did some math on the biggest missed investment opportunity I’ve had to date. It was painful.

Back in 2019, I got introduced to an early employee at a company that was valued at around $500M. He was looking for help with exercising his stock option which is what we do at Secfi so it was a perfect fit.

Problem was his cash need was really low for us at Secfi at $25,000 and we had not yet underwritten the company he was at, nor was the company willing to support us at that time. Nevertheless, the employee was a good person and I wanted to try to help him so I told him I’d look into doing this personally.

I spent a weekend day and night researching the company and industry and immediately fell in love. The company had visionary founders solving a problem in an antiquated unsexy industry. Those types of companies typically work out. I underwrote it to about a $1.5M exit in 5 years.

Unfortunately, I got absolutely slammed with work and just couldn’t get it all together to do the deal. I was going to split it with a coworker and it would’ve taken some administrative to get the entity set-up. Given the time of the year at Secfi, I ended up passing despite loving the investment.

Today, that company is now worth $12B. I ran the numbers today and my unrealized IRR would have been around 130%. If the company exited today at the last valuation, that $25K investment would have been worth almost $700K. Of course, you can’t eat your unrealized gains and lots can happy until this company exits, but it was painful nonetheless.

Any investor is going to have misses. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and I wish I would’ve done this deal. Some of them are going to be incredibly painful like this one. But it’s an amazing learning lesson for myself. I’ll do better and make sure to get the next one.

Mask off

Happy Halloween! I’ve never been a big costume person, but I do remember how hectic Halloween was during college and in our 20s. Living in New York and going out during Halloween was always a shitshow that was fun but awful.

I was out working at coffee shops with Sophia on Saturday and realized that we were caught in a middle of a gigantic pub crawl on Polk Street. I was happy to see San Francisco have energy again, but it was also another reminder that I am past my partying prime.

On another note, my daily meditation on my Calm app today was Halloween themed. Tamara Levitt discussed living life with your mask off, as your true authentic self. This has and always will be one of the keys to happiness in life, but I believe it to be even more relevant in today’s society.

In the age of social media and clout, I often see individuals (myself included) chasing things for the wrong reason. Status, likes, followers, etc. I like to think I don’t get caught up in this, but deep down as I meditated through this, I realized that I do succumb to the pressures of today’s society.

We can probably all forgive ourselves for occasionally chasing clout occasionally, but I thought this meditation was a timely reminder to live life as my true self, not to please anyone else. It was a great start to the week after a great weekend of rest and productivity.

Catching up

I’ve had the most relaxing weekend in at least over a month so far. It’s been exactly what I needed. September was a busy product launch month and I went straight into traveling for personal and work almost all of October. A weekend of rest, sleeping and catching up on work/life was exactly what I needed.

I spent yesterday with Sophia going over a lot of the details of the wedding and we made a huge dent. There’s still quite a bit of work to do in the coming weeks, but I feel really good at our 1 month away mark. We’re through the hard parts of the planning and now just focused on the fun stuff like the music and the welcome party.

As for today, I plan on holing myself up at the office to catch up on work and research. I’ve got one major item on my list that’s been killing me the last two weeks. I need a solid 4-5 hours of uninterrupted time to just grind it out… time which has been nearly impossible to find the last couple of weeks.

After I grind that out, I’m going to spend some time researching the Generative AI space. It’s too interesting of a space to ignore right now and I feel already behind.

Earnings szn

Big tech earnings came and went this week. And they unfortunately largely disappointed. Apple may have been the savior of tech as it bounced 7.5% today. Nevertheless, the markets see trouble in the slowing growth of tech as Google, Amazon, Meta and Facebook lost over $350B in market cap.

This does not translate well for us at tech startups. The trouble will continue as investors grow vary and multiples continue to shrink.

I was hoping that the waters would calm toward the end of the year, but all signs point to more turbulence ahead. We’ll need to continue to hold on and make adjustments to weather the storm.

Money2020 Recap

I got back from Money2020 yesterday and as expected, I was absolutely drained. It was absolutely worth it though and I was absolutely impressed by the turnaround and the show. Money2020 is FinTech’s premier event and it absolutely lived up to it’s billing.

After TC Disrupt last week and Money2020 this week, I’m going to playing catchup for the next couple days and over the weekend on life and work. In the meantime, I figured I’d do a brain dump of some of my notes from over the week.

• There seemed to be significantly more people attending this year than last year. I want to say that it was probably 4x the amount of attendees and possibly more.

• FinTech has taken it’s blows over the last year, but based on this event, we’re on the rise.

• Crypto was much less noticeable compared to last year, but there was definitely a big web3 presence

• Many notable web3 companies that were present last year were missing from the event this year

• There are so many companies issuing credit cards

• I noticed quite a bit of Latam activity, especially from Brazil. The Nubank effect?

• A lot of Neobanks that I saw last year were missing at the event this year

• I need to do a much better job planning meetings next year. There were a lot of people that I wanted to see that I didn’t. I figured that I could just run into them and go grab a beer, but everyone is busy and schedules rarely line up.

• Time with the team in person is invaluable. Next year, we all need to come in early and do some working days.

• There’s a lot more to Vegas than the strip and I had a good weekend coming in early, but 5 days in Vegas is quite a bit of time

• Chinatown Vegas has some absolutely fire food

Money2020

I’ve been in Vegas since Friday hanging out with my childhood best friend who moved here four years ago. We’ve spent most of our time golfing, hanging out, and just eating good food. There’s a lot more to Vegas besides the strip and it’s been cool to see.

Money2020 officially kicks off tonight and I am excited. There’s a lot of old friends I’m pumped to see and lots of opportunities for Secfi as we finally go big at Money2020. Our CEO, Fred is on a panel on Tuesday which will be fun to watch. We’ve also got a big booth and hope to introduce Secfi to those who have not yet met us.

I need to ensure to pace myself. There’s a lot of fun to be had in Vegas and I need to remember that I can’t hang like I used to in my 20s. Top of mind for me today and tonight is to get a good nights sleep so I can be well rested for a long day tomorrow and Tuesday.

TC Disrupt

I’ve been swamped the last two days at Techcrunch Disrupt. On top of meetings, I hosted 4 roundtable discussions where we discussed equity compensation and the changing landscape with the market.

I was really pleased with the attendance at the roundtables. All sessions got to the point of standing room only and it was really cool to see founders and investors really care about the future of equity compensation.

I was admittedly a bit worried as there were some really interesting speakers and talks that were perhaps more “intriguing” to the younger generation. I had expected NFTs, crypto, interoperability, etc. to be the headliners of these roundtables but perhaps I underestimate how cool stock options and taxes can be.

A lot of really awesome people came up to speak to me after the sessions. It was inspiring seeing a lot of young talented builders wanting to ensure that they are setting up equity programs the correct way at their companies.

I forgot how exhausting these conferences can be. I came into the week tired from the weekend but after a good workout Monday night, I was ready to go Tuesday morning. As I write this on Wednesday evening, I am absolutely dead mentally and physically. I had tried to go on a quick run to rejuvenate couple hours ago but my legs felt like tree trunks and after a sad 1.5 miles, I decided to walk home.

Once again, it’s another reminder that I am no longer in my 20s and I need to give myself and my body a bit of break more often.

Conference szn

It’s October which means that it’s conference season for Secfi and I.

We kick things off this week with TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. I’ll be hosting 4 roundtable discussions at TechCrunch Disrupt on Tuesday and Wednesday. And have a few meetings with some potential partners.

Next week is Money2020 which is fintech’s super bowl. I went to M2020 last year and I had an absolute blast and met some awesome people who I still speak to today. We’ve decided to go big this year and we’re bringing 12 people and have a booth in the exhibition hall.

I’m excited to see some old friends and make some new connections. Perhaps if I have time, I’ll also sneak off to the craps table for a couple hours and let off some steam.

These conferences are a lot of fun but draining. I’m not sure if it was the pandemic or just being in my 30s now, or a combination of both, but every time I go to one of these conferences, I need a solid 3 days to recharge my batteries. I’ll need to be cognizant about getting sleep and proper rest these next 2 weeks.

Tired

I’m dead today after a big weekend. I had a long week at work and by the time Friday came around I was pretty brain dead and was ready for the weekend. I took the night to relax and go to bed early.

Saturday morning was filled with work and wedding planning. It was a stressful morning and I didn’t get as much done as I had hoped before I had plans to meet up with friends.

I ended up going out with some old friends and didn’t get home until 2am. It was a big night for me and while it was fun, I was absolutely dead this morning.

A friend from out of town wanted to golf today and I should’ve canceled to rest and get some things done, but I felt bad and ended up powering through.

As I write this on 7:44pm, I am absolutely zapped and realized that I definitely overdid it this weekend. I’ll be paying for it tonight, but hopefully will be catching up on some sleep tonight in light of a big couple of weeks. It’s another reminder that I need to be treating my body better.

Four years at Secfi

October 1st marked four official years at Secfi. It’s been remarkable to think how fast the years have gone by. It’s even more remarkable to look back and realize how much we’ve accomplished and what we’ve had to overcome in those years.

I couldn’t see myself at any other place besides Secfi and I’ll forever be grateful that I got introduced to these two Dutch guys starting a company from a friend of mine. When I joined Secfi, I was coming up on five years at PwC and was really lost. I had thought about starting my own business, traveling for a year, and going to business school.

I had met Fred and Wouter, the co-founders of Secfi, at the perfect time. I was ready for a change and a new challenge. Secfi was a startup at the perfect intersection at everything I knew and wanted to be part of. Secfi fell on my lap at the perfect time. One thing I’ve learned over the years in my career and learning about other people’s careers is that when you work hard, you set yourself up to get lucky. That’s exactly what happened to me and I couldn’t be more grateful.