The finance world rests for the holidays?

I’ve decided to fight boredom here in Croatia with learning how to prepare and cook different kinds of fish for dinner. I’ve especially taken a big interest in in the fresh bluefin tuna in the fish market every morning. For 24 euros this morning, I bought a 2.2 kilo slab of bluefun tuna belly, aka toro. I plan on making some poke from the leaner pieces, sashimi and nigiri from the really fatty belly pieces, and maki rolls with the scraps.

Speaking of boredom, things are relatively quiet in the finance world. There’s always shit to do at a startup like Secfi, so it hasn’t been a vacation, but it’s definitely a bit quiet compared to some years. The bankers have seemed to call it for a year as the IPO window is shut down. Investors seem to be taking some extended breaks as we head into Thanksgiving.

There are of course, always deals to be done and we’re fortunate to be in a great position to close out the year strong at Secfi. As always, I expect there to be a pickup in activity post-Thanksgiving as people rush to get things done before year-end.

We’ll see what the next month and half brings.

Monday musings

It’s officially week 3 here in Croatia. I’m doing okay overall. The weather is turning and we’ve hit the point where it feels like everything is the same. I’ve also been running on fumes the last week. I want to take this week to get back to feeling good again. That means more sleep and a more consistent schedule. I perhaps got away from that a bit this past week.

Back home in San Francisco, we have the APEC conference beginning. Apparently San Francisco has looked amazingly clean as we prepare for world leaders like President Xi coming into town. Pretty much every San Francisco resident including myself is really freakin’ confused why the city hasn’t gone this earlier. It’s been clear that we’ve needed a bath for the last 10 years.

On another note, it’s been really disheartening to see what’s happening in the world right now. There’s blatant anti-semitism being displayed in every major western city. Yes, not every supporter of Palestine is clearly anti-semitic and I do believe there are plenty of anti-Hamas peaceful Palestinians out there. But over a month into the recent war, and it’s blatantly obvious there there’s a large number of supporters who do believe the Hamas mantra that Jews should be eradicated.

Between ripping down of posters of the hostages to just outright chanting it, I’ve unfortunately come to the realization that a large part of the world is just straight anti-Semitic and that number seems to be growing. It’s been awful to watch this happening from across the world and I feel for my Jewish friends.

It's Friday

For better or worse, I find myself sleeping a lot more out here in Croatia. I don’t know if it’s just pure exhaustion from the past few weeks / months or if it’s just my schedule makes me more tired than usual. One of the benefits to being out here and working mostly west coast hours is that I can sleep in a bit more.

I’m mostly taking today off to relax, get stuff done, and enjoy the town. I just got back from visiting the hospital and it’s been business as usual for my father in-law. Things are still trending in the right direction, but the limbo of when and how we’re going to get home is looming over us and it’s a bit frustrating. We just have to take it day by day I suppose.

We’re going to try to have some fun today and this weekend. There’s not too many activities to do right now in the late fall. We’ll try to go wine tasting and perhaps get a tour of the city to learn a bit of history. But more than anything, it’s sitting and relaxing with each other. I could probably benefit from doing that a lot more.

Venture scale vs bootstrapped businesses

It was another beautiful day here in Zadar. I felt exhausted so I slept in a bit and started my day later. It was much needed. I was able to go to the market and grab groceries, workout, and sit down for a nice lunch outdoors before starting my workday. I absolutely hate working until 11pm every night, but I suppose it’s not all so bad. Flexibility goes both ways.

I was reading discussions on Twitter in the FinTech circles on Intuit’s close down of mint. There seems to be quite a few loyal users of Mint and now many are looking for that new app. On the surface, there seems to be some need here for better personal finance management apps and tools. There seemed to be some people building in this space as well.

All that said, I’m really not a believer of VC backed personal finance apps. Put simply, you just have to acquire too many users for this to reach the revenue that VCs seek. I’ve said this time and time again, but I feel that too many people try to build businesses with VC money when their best option is to just bootstrap the business.

Personally, I am very interested in bootstrapped small businesses. I’m not sure what my journey after Secfi is but if I had a guess, it likely will be starting my own small business or acquiring one. Maybe personal financial management is one of those areas.

Settled and living like a local, sort of

I’ve finally got my routine going here in Croatia. I wake up tired at around 8:30am PT and make breakfast. I get up and go to the market to pick up vegetables and a protein for dinner. I also pick up something nice from the fish market for some day time snacking. I’m then to my cafe off the Roman Forum to get caffeinated, catch-up on emails, and write. That takes me to about 11am.

From then, I either get another hour of work done or head to the gym/go on a run. Then I grab a nice lunch somewhere and then head to the hospital to see my father in-law during visiting hours of 2-3. From there, I head back to my apartment and get my 2nd workday started. I go strong until about 10pm, sometimes 11pm, with a break for dinner. Then I struggle to fall asleep, and usually end up crashing around 12:30am. Rinse and repeat.

It’s honestly not a bad schedule. I enjoy waking up a bit later in the mornings and having casual mornings to get caught up and work out. I will say that working right up until bedtime has been difficult and has impacted my sleep. That part definitely sucks.

I’ve also really enjoyed the whole, go to the market in the morning thing. Of course, in the U.S. you don’t typically go to the grocery store daily. The whole idea of fresh ingredients every day is pretty awesome. I go to the fish market or meat market and see what’s good for that day. Depending on what’s available, I’ll decide what to buy for dinner. Then I go to the produce section to find some sides.

The thought of fresh fish daily is something that excites the hell out of me. On Monday, I bought some fresh squid to cook for lunch. Yesterday, I bought a few tuna steaks, and also made some tuna sashimi. There’s a stand with fresh bluefin tuna that sells great cuts of fish for 18-20 Euro a kilogram which is a steal compared to Japan or the states.

I’ve become almost a tuna expert at this point and I may end up just getting a cut of tuna everyday just for fresh sashimi. Tomorrow, I got some of the fresh langoustines in my eyes.

There’s admittedly not that much to do in Zadar, especially in the late fall/winter. I’ve made up for that boredom by indulging myself in the local fish. It’s been pretty fun.

The WeWork saga

Just like that, it kind of hit me that my time in Croatia may be coming to an end. If we’re lucky and my father in-law continues to make good progress, we should be out of here in about a week. Of course, I’m ready to be home, but yes there are definitely some nice parts to being out here and I’m just starting to get the hang of things.

On another note - seems like the media has been having fun reporting on WeWork’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. I get it of course. It’s been a fascinating ride watching Neumann take WeWork to $47B and watching everything come crashing down before the failed IPO.

Of course, this is not the end of WeWork. This is likely a large strategic strategy to effectively get out of a lot of the unprofitable leases that WeWork holds. They may come back stronger than ever. They are effectively trimming all the fat off the business and while they may not nearly the foothold they once were, their financials may be in the best shape in a long time.

It will be interesting to see the downstream effects of this. I’m not a real estate expert by any means, but I can imagine commercial real estate has not been doing amazing in a lot of regions post-pandemic. I can only guess a lot of long-term leases will be coming available in the coming months.

Grateful

Sophia and I had a fairly “normal” weekend out here in Zadar. After Friday’s great CT scan news, we had a nice dinner and then went out in the Old Town afterwards. We ended up meeting an American living in Zadar named Victor. He was a very friendly guy and has been all over the world working in the fish industry.

As a single man with no kids in his 60s, he decided to move to Zadar after the pandemic. He’s now retired and living the dream in Zadar. His cost of living is significantly cheaper and he goes around and he’ll take some extended vacations every year. He introduced me to some of his friends who worked at the bar and Sophia and I had a fun night out.

On Saturday, I stayed up late watching my Huskies take down USC in an great offensive showdown. I felt exhausted on Sunday. Two nights of drinking, especially the latter which I stayed up until 4am was not fun. I’m glad next week’s game against Utah will be at 9:30pm local time. My body can’t handle another 4am night.

Today, it’s back to the work grind. I want to make sure to have a good and productive week of work. I may have to take some time off next week to get my father in-law back home, so I want to feel good about where I’m at going into the weekend.

As I kick off the week, I’m feeling incredibly grateful. I don’t know if Sophia or I will look back on this Zadar trip as a pleasurable memory, but we have had some incredibly experiences. Hopefully by the end of it, we’ll be able to look back on this trip as a pleasurable one.

Some good news

We had a great hospital visit today. My father in-law had his weekly CT scan done and everything is very positive. The bleeding in the brain is subsiding and all the other tests run are positive as well.

He is now sitting up and both speaking and moving well. He starts physiotherapy on Monday and hopefully will regain a lot of his strength in the next week or so. The doctor said that after next Friday’s CT scan, we may be in a position to have him fly home.

Nothing is guaranteed of course and there is a chance that he has a set back. But if you told me a week and a half ago that we’d be in this position, I’d 100% take it. We had initially planned to be here all of November. Now we’re looking good to get him home by Thanksgiving. I am obviously ecstatic.

I’m going to try to enjoy the next week and half here as much as possible. We may take a quick trip to Split next week as it’s only an hour away. I look forward to getting home, but in the meantime, I hope to live like a local here in the Old Town Zadar.

2024

I wrote a bit about the Q4 sentiment changing from cautiously optimistic to pessimistic in a matter of a few weeks. Today, I wanted to write a bit about the year ahead in 2024.

We’re headed into the new year with a lot of macro uncertainty. Interest rates are still high. There is war in Europe and the Middle East with risk of conflicts escalating. As we head into November, the public markets have been on a downward trend. On top of that, we’re heading into an election year.

In the private market space, VC fundraising is at a 10 year low. The secondary markets are nearly dead. There are a huge group of growth stage companies that may be in peril.

I hate to admit that things don’t look great heading into the new year. Yes, there’s a big backlog of companies waiting to go public. We may see the window creek open in March/April for a little bit. But that will effectively be closed again due to the election. Depending on how things go, we may see another window in November after the election ends.

For us, we’re planning on unfortunately another down year. To a certain degree, you should always plan for the worse especially at a startup. But going into 2024 will be a bit different for us. The prolonged downturn has had an impact on startup employees. We need to adjust significantly to account for the bear market sentiment.

I really hope I am wrong. I hope I can look back on this post a year from today and laugh at the stupidity I just wrote. That would be great for me, Secfi, and the entire startup ecosystem in general. Of course, we can’t plan for that, but we can hope.

Q4 sentiment

Just 45 days ago, there was a good amount of cautious optimism going into Q4. There were rumors of IPOs that may creak the window open and there were hopes that things would stand trending upwards again.

Fast forward to today and unfortunately the only positives may be that the bankers get to spend the holidays with their families and not at the office. Things have not gone as the optimist had hope for. Instacart and Klaviyo went public and while neither IPO went poorly, they didn’t go well either.

For now, the IPO window is completely shut. The other companies rumored to go public in Q4 seemed to have shut things down for the year. The public markets continue to struggle with the $QQQ down 2.72% in the last month. It’s been an up year overall for the public markets, but the trend has been reversing the last few months.

The secondary markets have further contracted and I suspect that Q4 may have a chance to beat Q2 for the lowest volume quarter in a long while.

None of this is great news of course. We’ll have to see what February of next year brings in terms of IPOs. There is a large backlog and I suspect that some companies will give it a shot.

A reset month

I’m at this amazing cafe in Old Town, Zadar right now. I got up early and got some work done in the morning. Afterwards, I decided to get out and change my work scenery for a bit. It’s about 70 degrees, sunny, and life is good right now. Maybe my opinion will change after my string of calls from 3-9pm today, but for now, I’m enjoying this change of work pace.

I’ve had a lot of mixed emotions about being here. There’s moments of sadness and the feeling that I am indeed “stuck” in a small town in Croatia for likely another month at least. Then there’s moments of joy and adventure that hey, I get to live in this cool ancient town in Croatia for a month.

There’s undoubtedly a lot to be excited about this month amidst all the difficulties that my family will be going through. One positive that I’m excited about is that I can use this month as a bit of a reset. While not a vacation by any means, I can use the month to get back to better habits.

I found a gym here yesterday and I plan to get back to a better schedule of working out. Being in the Mediterranean naturally allows me to get on a better diet that I’m excited about. I also plan to get more sleep and rest more now that I don’t have many morning obligations.

Working schedule

Last night I sat down and figured out how I was going to work while out in Croatia for the next month. My job requires me to speak to U.S. based clients, so being 9 hours ahead isn’t the easiest time zone shift. I am fortunate that we have a large number of our team out in Amsterdam so being in the same time zone as them for once adds a nice benefit.

I thought about a few different arrangements. The most tempting was just working the late afternoons through late in the night, and then sleeping later into the morning. The 3pm to 1am schedule sounds good in theory, but I think it would ultimately be too difficult for me to manage long term. I’d likely end up working mornings too and my days would just get too long.

I decided to go with a sort of a split schedule for now. We’ll see how long this lasts, but I thought it was the most balanced.

9am - 1pm local - Take calls with Amsterdam office, if needed. But using this time to catch-up on previous days emails and have some quiet work time to get stuff done.

1pm - 5pm local - Visit hospital and help our my wife and mother in-law with anything they need. Maybe sneak in a quick workout if there’s time.

5pm - 10pm local (8am - 1pm PST) - Normal PST work hours and calls with team/clients

Setting the schedule is the easy part, but sticking to the schedule will be the difficult part. Anyone that’s worked in a startup knows that work never ends, so I’ll need to be flexible. At same time, it’s about setting the right boundaries so I’m not outdoing things.

Staying strong

We’re rounding out our first week here in Zadar. This afternoon, we went and found a new apartment in old town which we will be renting for all of November. In a different time, I would normally be stoked to get this awesome apartment in a historical ancient Roman city.

Now I’ve got to temper my excitement as we’re here to take care of my father in-law who has a long recovery back and my mother in-law who is grieving and stressed. There’s no great fix here. It’s becoming evident that my father in-law is going to have a long recovery back even once he gets back to the states. My mother in-law is not handling that well.

I know I need to be strong and support in every way I can. My friends may be the first to say that patience is not my strong suit, and I know I’ve got to be extraordinarily patient in these next few weeks. I know it’s my role to be there for my wife and the family right now.

Difficult situations

We had a lot of great news yesterday after my father in-law got his CT scan back. The bleeding has stopped and it looks like things are trending in the right direction. He is alert and chatting with us. That’s the most important thing.

The difficult part with all this is that the recovery is likely a month or two for the blood to fully get out of his brain. It’s undoubtedly going to be a difficult situation for my mother in-law, Sophia, and myself. We’re still working out details, but I believe the most likely scenario is that we’re all going to be here for at least November together.

This obviously was not part of our plan for November. But I’m choosing to taking things in stride and staying positive about everything. It’s really easy to spiral and complain about being here. Being in a coastal summer vacation town in November is less than ideal. But there’s also a lot of positives.

We can have fun and live a normal life. The Croatians and Zadarians are great and welcoming people. Our work has been very understanding. It will require a lot of flexibility on everyone’s part, but we’ll make it through and hopefully bring my father in-law home healthy with some great stories and experiences.

Why does the world need another X?

Many months ago I was on a tour visiting a bunch of the brand name VCs in Palo Alto. One of the sayings that I kept hearing from multiple investors was, “why does the world need another X?”

That one really resonated with me then and especially now as I’ve gotten more and more into angel investing. Perhaps this is just the nature of Silicon Valley and tech. We are a copy cat world after all. Facebook was not the first social media provider. Google was not the first search engine.

But it’s hard not to see just how many similar companies there are attacking the same problems and competing with each other. In a lot of markets, there would definitely be room for multiple players to be successful. In some, it’s hard to see more than a couple dominate the space.

Of course, sometimes the market just expands much bigger than anyone could imagine… but that’s in rare situations. Nowadays, I’m really looking hard at the market when it comes to my investments as there’s only so much to capture especially in crowded spaces.

Zadar

My schedule and life this week has been weird to say the least. Obviously being here to tend to my father in-law who is bedridden in a hospital has been strange to both Sophia and I.

This is first time in our adulthood that we’re dealing with an immediately family member being seriously sick. Unfortunately, we’re getting to the age that this is likely going to be more common than we’d like. It’s a harsh reality of growing older. Luckily, my father in-law is stable and making good progress every day. Hopefully we’ll be able to get him home in the next week or two.

Both Sophia and I have been battling weird jet lag and odd hours. We’ve been trying to get to bed at normal times, but have been waking up for a few hours, and then falling back asleep until the late morning. That’s been annoying as we haven’t really been able to take advantage of the day, and then we end up working at night.

So far, the city has been kind to us. The lodging here is cheap and we found a great Airbnb host who was very understanding of our situation. He blocked off the entire week for us at his 1 bedroom Airbnb at a great price. The apartment has been a godsend as we can work and have a sense of normalcy.

The Croatians have also been very pleasant people. It’s safe here and there’s no worry about walking around at night. Most people speak good English. And the food is pretty darn good at cheap prices. It is definitely a coastal beach tourist city though and that comes with some drawbacks.

Overall, we are making it through and making the best of the situation. It’s not vacation, and we are still working and tending to the situation, but we’re trying to enjoy our time here as well.

Life and Croatia

I landed in Croatia last night. I wish I was here for more pleasant reasons, but unfortunately Sophia’s father had a stroke while on a cruise in the Mediterranean. He was fortunately able to be brought ashore to a hospital in Zadar. He’s currently stable, but still going through a bit of internal bleeding so things are not in the clear yet.

Sophia and I were debating coming to Croatia or not. We’re glad we did. It’s good to be here for her Mom and help provide some support. We’ll know a bit more today when we visit in a couple hours.

I was able to walk around the town a bit today and this city is beautiful even in the late fall. I don’t know what the next days ahead will look for, but Sophia and I are trying to stay positive. We’re hoping for some better news ahead, and then perhaps we’re able to enjoy Croatia a bit more.

Home

I had a good last day in New York. We had some good meetings and got some work done. At night, I went to see an old friend from college for a drink. That led to meeting some more college friends who were in town. And that led to a very late New York night.

I had purposely booked an early afternoon flight so I could get some sleep so I was thankful to be able to sleep in a bit. It was unfortunately a long journey home though and I couldn’t have been happier to crawl into my bed last night. Even after sleeping nearly 10 hours, I’m still feeling sleepy sitting here writing this at Noon.

After making the New York-San Francisco trip many times over the last 10 years, it unfortunately does not get much easier. The 6 hour flight feels a lot longer and rest comes at a premium. I’ll need to find better ways of traveling going forward if I’m going to continue to make that journey.

NY Tech Week

The exhaustion from the weekend, travel, and long days of meetings finally caught up to me yesterday. I hit a bit of a wall in the afternoon and really had to do my best to power through. I ended up grabbing a quick dinner with a couple people from the team and took the night easy. I feel great today and I’m ready to have a great day to close the week out.

I’ve gone to a couple NY Tech Week events, but admittedly skipped out on a few I registered for as well. There’s definitely a noticeable tech crowd around the city, but being such a large city makes the events a bit spread out. Unlike some of the events in San Francisco when there’s a real concentration downtown, the NY one seems to be a bit more all over the place.

In terms of events, I will say that I always end up enjoying them more than I expect. I went to a talk with the Founder of Rent the Runway and COO of Reddit at the Reddit offices yesterday, and I really enjoyed what both of the presenters had to say. I met a few awesome people and even met a client randomly in person from many years ago.

Generally, these conferences and events are not usually very helpful for Secfi as a business. We work typically with late stage companies and these events almost always skew early stage. With that said, they are definitely great networking events and serve as a good excuse to get a lot of partners and investors together in the same area.

I’ve got one big day today of meetings and getting stuff done. Then I’ll take tomorrow morning off before I fly back home.

The year ahead

New York has been good to me so far. We’ve had a lot of meetings and planning yesterday. And plan to do more of that today.

One prevailing sentiment that we’re consistently hearing from other investors and veterans in the industry is that 2024 is likely going to be another tough year for us in tech. Surely, there will be some IPOs, but the macroeconomic events combined with an election may force a lot of companies to wait for 2025.

Of course, everyone hopes they’re wrong. It’s not what we want to hear, but it’s a very real possibility that we all need to prepare for.

The good news is that strong companies will continue to grow and hopefully start getting close to their 2021 valuations in the coming year or two.

We’ll see how things go.