Back at it

I had a good solo weekend to myself. The covid symptoms were nearly gone by Friday so I was able to just relax and catch-up on things. I put together a puzzle, watched football, and played some video games. Obviously, it would’ve been nice to spend it with family and friends, but maybe this was an odd sign that I really needed a break.

I’m back in the office today after testing negative this morning. It feels great to be back to my second monitor and my set-up. I already feel more productive and ready to go.

At this point, I have a less than a month to rally some things together and close out the year strong. We’ve got a few things in the works that I’m excited about. I want to be ultra focused on the next few weeks and ensure that we close out 2023 strong to build momentum for 2024.

From there, I hope to take a week or two off and really just unwind. It’s been a long year and it’ll be great to have a reset.

Me time

There’s something a bit soothing about being forced to do nothing by yourself. I think it’s because I’m someone that always needs to be doing something and I’m terrible at doing nothing. So sitting here with covid by myself has been kind of nice actually. I can’t remember the last time I had 3 straight days of being by myself and not doing anything.

My days have been mainly just sitting on my couch watching football. I busted out a puzzle to help get me through some of the boring games. And I downloaded Grand Theft Auto V for some video game fun in between games.

Things aren’t so bad. I’m not sure how often I’ll have another time like this again so I’m just trying to enjoy it and take it in stride. I told myself I’d do a quick 30 minutes of work just to catch-up this morning, and then it’s back to me time.

Lots to be grateful for

It’s been a tough month for me. As much as we were able to make the best of it in Croatia, it was more difficult than I thought. We had to cancel trips that we were excited for. I did not get the rest that I was hoping for and really needed. Needless to say, I was excited to get on my flight home today. I was going to make it back in time for Thanksgiving dinner with the family.

Unfortunately, we had more bad news. Sophia texted me mid-flight and let me know that her Dad and Mom both tested positive for covid. I had thought I was battling a cold the last couple of days, but my excitement of finally getting home was nullified with a positive covid test. The good news is that my father in-law is asymptomatic, and my mother in-law and I only have mild symptoms and we’re getting better.

So my tough month continues as I’ll be home by myself over Thanksgiving weekend. I’m not going to lie. This really sucks and I’m bummed. After 4 weeks away from home dealing with a scary situation, the last thing anyone wants is to be bound to my apartment. But that’s life and I also realize that I have a lot to grateful for.

I’m grateful for my wife and her family that I have been lucky to be part of. I am grateful that I have a job that was supportive of me working remote for the last month so I could be there to support. I am grateful for the ability to travel to Croatia and meet some amazing people. I am grateful to be home in my cozy apartment and have the chance to relax and recover in comfort.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Good people

One of the main nurses looking after my father in-law has been the sweetest ladies these past few weeks. Her name is Miriam. Her English isn’t amazing by any means, but over the last few weeks she has really developed a bond with my father in-law.

We had a really heartwarming moment here today. As we went to thank her for being amazing, she just mentioned that she wanted to made sure that my father in-law was never lonely. She apparently has been singing to him every night. They also chat about art, ballet, and politics.

Miriam is one of those good people in the world that just loves people. She has no motivation besides wanting to help. The world would be a better place if there were more Miriam’s around.

I have a few more work calls and to-dos to wrap up and then I’m off to see some friends that I’ve made in the last few weeks. I’ll say my goodbyes as I start to make my journey back home tomorrow.

It is a bit bittersweet. When you stay someone for a prolonged period such as we have in Zadar, it’ll also be a place that has meaning to me. Sophia and I are talking about doing a trip back to Croatia next summer/fall. I hope we make it happen.

Wrapping up

It’s officially been 4 weeks here in Croatia today. Sophia decided that it would be best if I left and went home back to San Francisco for Thanksgiving which was nice. Her mom and her will hopefully be headed back to Baltimore later this week as well as the insurance company figure out the best way to get her Dad home.

I leave Wednesday morning for Zagreb. I’ll likely take a 4 hour bus ride as there’s only one flight a day. That will give me the afternoon and evening in Zagreb to check out the city. Then I’ll catch a 6:30am flight to Amsterdam and connect on a flight to San Francisco.

Thankfully it’s a bit of light week of work due to the Thanksgiving holiday. I’ll have a few calls and things to wrap up, but I’m going to try to enjoy the next few days in Croatia a bit. I’ve got a massage scheduled today before my work starts. Then tomorrow, I’m planning on eating my favorite things out here - spitfire roasted lamb and then a sushi dinner. I’ll wrap things up with going to my favorite bar here and saying bye to my friends that I’ve made.

European Healthcare

We’re wrapping up our time here in Croatia as my father in-law’s doctor is writing up a report to send to the insurance that he’s ready to fly home. We’re excited to finally have a date and book a flight. If all goes to plan and we’re out of here next week, we’ll have been here over 4 weeks.

We went to the billing office to check in on the medical bill. Luckily my father in-law had traveler’s insurance so that should cover all their bills for getting home so we weren’t too stressed about the hospital bill. But regardless, it was something that we were worried about as we’ve heard horror stories.

The bill was sent to us and was 2000 Euros. That covers over 4 weeks in the hospital for my father in-law. I honestly couldn’t believe it. I thought they meant 200,000 which candidly is what I’d expect from an American hospital. To put this into perspective, 2000 Euros is less than what Sophia and I paid for our Airbnb here for a month.

It’s obvious that the American healthcare system needs a lot of work. And yes, there’s cost of living adjustments, etc. But it’s honestly ridiculous how much cheaper it is to get proper care here. I hope that we can figure things out. Americans deserve it.

Zadar and the Croatians

After 3 weeks here in Zadar, most of it in Old Town, we finally got a tour of the city from a local. It was something we’ve been talking about for a couple weeks but candidly have been making excuses to do. I’m glad we did. We of course have seen pretty much everything in the city already, but getting a history lesson from a local added a lot more color to the this city we’ve been calling home.

This is a city and country that has been attacked and in war for a large chunk of it’s existence. Perhaps the most devastating attack on the city was by… us during World War 2. In our quest to get rid of the Fascists that originated in Italy, we decided to bomb Zadar. The Fascists soldiers were largely gone and the victims were mostly innocent Croatians. It was a brutal story to hear.

After the war, the area became socialist Yugoslavia. While perhaps it was not the worst victim of communism comparatively to some neighbors, it was very obvious that things did not progress as many Croatians hoped. This all culminated in a brutal war with the Serbs in the early 90s. After the war, Croatia finally became independent albeit losing a lot of land.

Nowadays, Croatia seems to be doing well. Like many people who have experienced recent war, the Croatians just seem happy and content to be living in peace. Things move a lot slower here than back home in the U.S. and the Croatians are happy with that pace of life. There’s a lot to learn from the Croatians.

I’m incredibly grateful that I’ve had the chance to be here. The Croatians have treated me incredibly well and I’m almost like a Zadar local by now. Although I do think I’m ready to go home at this point, I’m still enjoying my time here and I know I’ll be back.

Year-end planning

I couldn’t believe the meal we had yesterday for dinner. Fresh bluefin toro (belly cut) for 24 euro led to about 16 pieces of o-toro and chutoro nigiri, 4 maki rolls, and perhaps a pound of poke. It wasn’t the best made sushi in the world, but we didn’t have all the right tools or ingredients. Regardless the nigiri melted in my mouth and it was great to have some legit Japanese food again.

I felt like I was just doing my year-end financial planning last year, but here we are in November and I’ve got to sit down and do it again for the year ahead.

I’ve got to crunch the numbers this week, but on the surface, we’ve had a good year of savings and should have hit our budget. I’ll be proud if that happens.

I’m also really looking into the tax situation this year. Every year seems to get a bit more complicated when it comes to my capital gains management which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But I’ve got some losses I need to harvest to offset some gains and that’s money on the table.

I run my analysis around this time of the year to give myself a final look and plan going into the last 6 weeks of the year. That way I can spread out my trades a bit more.

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.