Deals are in the air again

For the second month, we’re starting to see an uptick in activity in the private markets which bodes well for all of us.

Investors are coming back to the table amidst optimism of lower rates and reset valuations. March seems to be a big month for us as Reddit has a potential to hit the public markets. Many are watching closely to see how they perform.

I suspect that if things go decently well, we’ll see a lot more companies start their IPO process and try to hit the market before investors take off for the summer.

Of course, this is all cautious optimism. But the private markets lag behind the public markets, and the public markets have been looking good for the last few months.

Doing things that don't scale

This year, I want to go back to focusing on doing things don’t scale. The phrase was coined by Paul Graham in a essay written in 2013 and it’s something that resonated with me back in 2018 when I first joined Secfi.

While written primarily for early stage startups getting off the ground, Secfi is now in it’s second phase where a quick reset is needed. We grew significantly since we started in 2017 through the 2021 bull market, and then have been in a steady state since the market pullback. We’ve launched new business lines and have had to keep things afloat on the existing lines as we waited out the bull market.

Now that we’re in 2024, we’re looking to build off our learnings from the past 6 years and take the company to it’s next phase. That’s where we need to go back to our startup principles and start doing things that don’t scale again.

Paul Graham’s essay can be summarized simply in that to get going as a startup you need to recruit users manually and give them an overwhelmingly good experience. Both of those things don’t typically scale. However, the experience should lead us to a clearer picture of what we need to build and how we should do it.

Secfi is a fortunate position and the last 6 years have given us enough brand recognition that we don’t necessarily have to recruit users manually. However, we do want to put extra focus on delighting our users more and learning from them. That’ll take a lot of work, but it’s worth the time and effort.

I suspect that we’ll look to make significant changes in our processes and products in 2024 and that’s a great thing as we look to improve.

The remote future

I’m back home from Hawaii after a short flight delay and a long wait at baggage claim. Despite sleeping under 4 hours, I feel pretty good and motivated to get shit done. It was a good vacation.

My friends and I talked a lot about remote work in Hawaii yesterday at the beach. My friend who had been living on Oahu since prior to the pandemic had mentioned that the local surf spots during weekdays has spiked significantly presumably due to remote work.

Unsurprisingly, Oahu has become a top destination for remote workers. My friend who lives in the upscale newly built Ward Village says there’s constant construction and I counted two new big residential high rises going up.

He’s also there temporarily just enjoying life while working remote. He says there’s quite a few people in the same boat that he’s met in his coworking space. It’s a great life for sure. He surfs a couple times a week. Plays a couple rounds of golf a week. And then participates in various other activities like dance classes and barbeques throughout. He often works remote from his rooftop pool.

He’s admittedly just coasting out there and knows that the peak of engineers taking advantage of remote work is behind us. My friend’s got a great situation as he’s a talented engineer who is incredibly effective. My guess is that these opportunities for the majority of individuals will start to disappear significantly in the coming months and years.

The cost of engineering talent is going down due to the global workforce and AI. Tech companies also know that their employees have been living fairly cushy life styles over the last few years with high pay and very modest work hours.

Wrapping up Hawaii

And just like that I’m down to my last day and half here in Hawaii. Time does fly when you’re enjoying life. I’ve had a great mix of time with old friends, family, and alone time.

These trips are starting to look much different in our mid-30s. We are no longer going out to the bars late at night anymore and I’ve been up at 6 or 7am every day this week. It’s been a nice and welcome change of pace.

It’s been nice taking some time off from work to refocus my energy. Luckily, unlike some of my last vacations, things seem to be slow and I haven’t had the need to do much work at all. I’m starting to get the itch to get back to it. That’s a sign of a great vacation.

City energy

I made it to Hawaii yesterday after a long 6 hour flight. I was obviously very happy to be here and see my sister and friends. I did feel a lot better after checking into my hotel and getting some awesome poke. But I did feel a bit… well off. Part of this is likely because I was tired from the day and night before, and then the flight.

The bigger part I believe is that I needed to shake off the “city energy”. This is a concept that has come up in my meditation a bit. Most of us who live in big cities will run from thing to thing, always busy. It creates this mindset that I always need to be doing something and be productive.

When I landed yesterday in Honolulu, I definitely had a lot of that city energy. I immediately got back to my hotel, unpacked and organized. Got my laptop connected to the WiFi and closed a few workstreams leftover from the flight. Then immediately started building a checklist of things I needed to buy tonight.

I feel a lot better tonight after getting a good nights sleep. I’m finally starting to shake off that city energy and getting excited about lounging and doing a whole lot of nothing. I told myself that I would have an hour or two of laptop time just to get settled in and feel good. Then vacation mode can finally begin officially.

Lessons from my break from alcohol

After a 4.5 week break, I started drinking against last Thursday. I ended up having a few drinks each night of the weekend and then had a bigger day for the Super Bowl where we reserved the top floor of a bar. I learned a lot in the last 5 weeks of giving up alcohol and then restarting drinking again.

While I get the benefits of not drinking, I do believe I am in a good spot where I can drink again and be okay. So for now, I will continue to drink every now and then. I wanted to write a final blog post about those learnings and put an end to this experiment.

• The biggest difference in giving up alcohol for me was clearly the sleep. I fell asleep easier. I had a much more consistent sleep schedule. And I overall felt more rested. Sleeping sober 6-7 hours felt better than sleeping 8-9 hours with drinking the night before.

• On a similar topic, it’s brutally obvious that I need to cut back on my drinking solely for the sleep benefits. I have struggled with energy and sleep the past two years and it’s clear now that alcohol has been the biggest contributor to that.

• My overall mood has generally been happier. I would often struggle with Mondays and would go as far to say I felt depressed a lot of Mondays. Giving up alcohol revived my Mondays significantly. I still had a lot of stress but my base level was much better consistently.

• I had a lot of more energy and enthusiasm for work as well.

• I also noticed that I dreamt a lot more when I was sober. This is likely a sign that I was getting to REM sleep much easier.

• My skin was also noticeably better. I’m not a skincare routine nut like my wife, but I noticed that my skin cleared up. After this weekend of drinking, I can notice myself breaking out a bit.

• Like most Asians, I suffer from a bad gut. Not drinking for sure helped out with that significantly. I felt healthier overall. Given that Sunday was the Super Bowl, my last couple of days have been rather tough on the gut.

• I felt that I had more energy during my workouts for sure. But it wasn’t night or day. I think a lot of it had to do more with the better rest. I do feel much less bloated though.

• Overall though physically, I felt great. I golfed better when I was sober. I had more focus on my golf game and I had a lot more confidence. It was great to see this.

• My biggest fear of not being able to be social without alcohol was largely false. I went to parties. I went to bars. I had fun. Of course it was incredibly tempting to drink when everyone else around me was also drinking, but I also was able to manage quite well. This was perhaps one of the biggest surprises. I was not as reliant on drinking as I thought.

• I didn’t miss alcohol nearly as much as I would’ve thought. At the end of the day, more energy and a better overall mood consistently outweighed the benefits of drinking for the most part. I now know I need to be more conscience when I do drink… that extra drink at night is not worth it.

• In terms of stress relivers, I didn’t need alcohol as much as I thought. It was nice to be able to battle stress in healthier ways.

While I don’t believe I need to go fully alcohol free, I am feeling a lot more aware and conscience of the downsides of alcohol. I’m glad I took the 4.5 weeks off from drinking.

A great weekend and more football pain

I had an overall nice long weekend. I took Friday off to hit the slopes for the first time this season and remembered why I love snowboarding. The snow was great and I’m glad that we went on Friday as the crowds were in full force on Saturday. Sitting in hours of traffic is something that is just too costly for me nowadays.

On Friday night, I hung out with high school friends and it was great to see everyone. We’ve been friends for almost 20 years at this point. Then Sophia came back home on Saturday and we had a nice dinner at The Progress for an early birthday celebration.

Of course, I was hoping for a perfect ending to the weekend with a 49ers win in the Super Bowl. But it wasn’t meant to be. We played a great game, but eventually had one too many mistakes. Against Patrick Mahomes, you have to be nearly perfect and we were one notch below that.

It was another brutal loss and the 2023-2024 season for both my college and pro teams will always be known as the 2nd place year. Losing in the Natty and Super Bowl is always hard, but in the same year, it’s devastating. I know I’m far from being a tortured sports fan… even getting to the championship games in both college and the NFL is something that most people dream about.

Both the Huskies and Niners will be back. There’s always next year.

The guilt of taking time off

I’m taking tomorrow off to go ski for the first time this season and then head out next Wednesday to go to Hawaii for five days. While I’m excited, I can’t help but feel a bit of guilt right now for taking the days off. It’s something that I’ve always felt since starting my work life and something I’m actively working on.

Things have picked up significantly since the new year and we’re in a busy period. Things are looking, well really great for us right now. When you work at a startup, you want to maximize on these opportunities because they don’t last forever.

Given that, I do feel guilty that I’m taking days off when I’m probably needed the most. It’s not a new thing - I’ve kind of always felt this way. In reality though, it’s incredibly hard to time vacations for when things are slow. Inevitably, things always seem to pick up right when you’re supposed to be leaving for a trip.

I also try to remind myself that I haven’t taken a lot of PTO in the last 6 months since my last trip and that we’re in a marathon, not a sprint. I’ve unfortunately grown accustomed to working on vacations and staying in touch. But I also need to remember that it’s also critical to properly recharge on these trips.

F*ck cancer

I have a call with a doctor today to talk about hereditary cancer screening. Sophia and I are starting the process of perhaps having children so we wanted to make sure we run the appropriate tests and be informed.

My Mom passed away from breast cancer in 1997 when I was 7. It was a different day and age back then and it pains me to think that through better education and resources in today’s day and age, she most likely would’ve lived and beaten it.

I am grateful that science and tech has advanced so far in the last 27 years. We can now test if people are genetic predisposed to cancer and can take a lot of preventative measures. I can only imagine how many lives have been saved.

There's lots of ways to make money in the world...

I just saw that Adam Neumann is looking to buy back WeWork with the help of Third Point today. In a weird way, this may be the best case scenario for shareholders at this point. Regardless, I hope it happens because I’m curious to see the outcome.

On another note, I finally feel that I’ve got my entrepreneurial itch back again. I had been so heads down with Secfi the last 5 years that I’ve been solely focused on the startup and VC world.

One of my goals this year was to get back to learning about all kinds of businesses out there, not just VC backed tech companies. I want to know how the rest of the business world works, not just the tech bubble I’m in.

It’s been a fascinating month doing a lot of reading and learning. Cash flowing businesses are my new interest right now and I’m not limiting myself to any specific industry. I’ve read about everything from IT service businesses to security guard contractors to dog babysitting.

I have no idea if that’s where my future will be, but at the minimum having a well rounded view on business can only help.

This weekend concluded my 4th and likely last weekend of my sober experiment. I decided to take a break from drinking after coming back from Houston on the 9th of January and I haven’t had a drink since. I wanted to run an experiment and see how I would feel after a month of taking a break from any sort of alcohol.

Well, in short, I feel great. The benefits from not drinking are clear as day.

The major improvement in my life has to do around sleep. I am sleeping just significantly better than I have, perhaps since I was a teen. First, I have a much more consistent sleep schedule. I am in bed around 10:30/11 and am up at 6:30/7 every morning. On the weekends, the schedule shifts back an hour. Despite not getting a full 9 hours that I hope for, I wake up feeling more rested.

Similar to the above, I just feel much more motivated and energized to attack the day. I was really struggling with Mondays over the last couple of years as I felt I was slow out of the gates to start the week often. But my Mondays are completely different nowadays after getting good rest over the weekend.

In regards to overall health, obviously more energy is a net positive for my fitness and I’ve had great workouts the last few weeks. My gut health is one area that is definitely improved as well and I feel just overall much healthier.

In terms of my social life, I’m definitely staying in a lot more. This past weekend, I stayed home on Friday and Saturday night to play video games and watch TV. My friends who are also not drinking right now are more or less doing the same. This is admittedly a lot easier when there’s no major sports events right now.

All that said, my social life hasn’t taken that big of an impact by not drinking. I still go out to dinner with my friends and have fun. I went to a bar to watch the 49ers game last weekend and had a great time. I find myself more present when I’m not drinking and actually trying to get to know the people around me.

However, I’m definitely purposely not being as social as I used to be. I am doing more activities during the day. But overall I’d would probably say the effects of removing alcohol on my social life has been neutral.

Perhaps most important on this experiment the last month is that I’m hoping to have a healthier relationship with alcohol going forward. The break has confirmed that my life does not revolve around social events that involve drinking. I am no longer 23 and drinking consistently every weekend is just not worth it.

I will have my first drink again sometime this week. When I start drinking again next week, I will do so in a much more controlled manner. Perhaps I don’t need to drink at every social occasion I go out or maybe I should just get a Diet Coke when on a company work trip. My body will thank me later.

Bring it on 2024

It’s been a long week so I’m glad that it’s Friday. I’m tired and could use a couple days to recharge.

We’re one month in in 2024 and the year feels a lot more optimistic in general. Tender offers are back and the secondary markets should pick up. Liquidity is slowly coming back for startup employees. The IPO may open up a bit at the end of Q1 and Q2. We’ll be watching that closely.

I know there will be setbacks this year. It won’t be linear progress back, but we’ll start to see more of a normal environment in 2024 hopefully. I’m incredibly excited to see what’s happening in the startup world. It’s going to be a great year for us.

The business of advice

I’ve been working with a lot of people making decisions on their tender offers these past couple of weeks. I’ve written a lot about how hard the business of advice is. Lots of people feel as if they don’t need help, and unfortunately those are most often the people that need the most help.

Secondly, lots of people seek advice as a transaction - something comes up and they have an immediate need and they want someone to answer their questions and be done with them. The best financial advice is not transactional and is more long-term, just like investing.

Of course, most importantly underlying everything is trust. There’s just a general distrust of a lot of advisors out there and I get it. In this day and age, we have Tik-Tok advisors tell you to do illegal things and yolo your savings to get rich. It’s a brutal stigma.

All the above issues with the business of giving advice, often leads to clients coming to us who have been given just straight up shit advice. Simple and minor calculation errors can lead to thousands of dollars of extra taxes. People are convinced what they’re doing is the right decision and end up making a bad that could go horribly wrong.

Sometimes we’ll work with people who want to get things corrected. But often times I feel like I’m speaking to a brick wall and speaking to someone who wants to hear what he wants to hear.

Taking L's and moving on

Any Founder or early startup employee will tell you that you’ll need to used to rejection and pain. After doing this for 5 years, I’ve become accustomed to taking L’s often, but it’s only become marginally easier every time. It’s still painful and beats me up.

I had a situation earlier this week that I felt great about, but the ball just didn’t bounce our way. Deep down I knew I played my cards right and the effort was there, but even two days after, I’m still thinking about what I could have done better to win. I’m starting to get over this one and move on, but I probably won’t fully get over it until I get a big win under my belt again.

The good news is that there’s no offseason to sulk in startup world. You take the L and then you’re forced to move on. Every L I’ve taken has created a greater sense of urgency to get shit done and work harder.

I’m back on the grind today and looking forward to getting back in the W column soon.

Remaining disciplined and patient

The last six months have been very interesting as someone who deploys capital for a living. As a startup and small fund, we always want to do more deals. However, the market is still what it is right now. There are deals to be done but the opportunities are not as abundant as we’d like.

The theme the past 6 months is that there are a lot of great companies out there, but timing wise, it’s likely better for us to wait a year or two. Admittedly, it’s been difficult to be disciplined and patient as we wait for the right opportunities.

You spend a lot of time learning about a company and meeting their people. You’d prefer to get involved today, not 2 years down the road. But ultimately, the right investment decision is to wait.

The reality of this job, even in normal and bull market times is that you pass more much more often than you say yes. Unfortunately those passes are more common right now as the market recovers. We need to be even more disciplined and patient than normal.

Super Bowl bound

My third sober weekend is in the books. This one was probably the most challenging in terms of trying not to drink as I decided to go to a bar to watch the 49ers play the Lions in the NFC Championship game. The energy of the bar was incredible and it definitely made me want to party.

I held firm though and had a great time drinking some non-alcoholic beers for about 4 hours. I had a great time still and it didn’t feel that much different not drinking. I was just a bit less rowdy and quiet during the game. I do feel good on this gorgeous Monday morning so I’m glad I held strong.

As for the game, things looked bleak for the 49ers at the beginning. We finally put things together and capitalized on some Lions mishaps to go on an epic run in the second half and win things.

If you had told me at the beginning of the year that the UW Huskies would go to the Natty and the 49ers would be in the Super Bowl, I would be beside myself. Losing in the Natty has unfortunately put a damper on things, but my other team does have another shot at the big game.

I’ll be honest in that I’m not feeling super confident in the Niners right now. We haven’t looked amazing the last couple of weeks and the Chiefs have been beating great teams for 3 weeks. Perhaps it’s just a bit of disappointment in losing the Natty, but I’m managing my expectations this time around for the Super Bowl and just trying to enjoy the ride.

You can't help everyone

While there are many descriptions of Secfi and what we do, I try to simplify things to the core of what we’re about. Secfi is in the business of helping startup employees achieve their financial goals. We provide advice and products that set-up our clients for the best chance at financial success in the future.

The business of financial advice is a really difficult one. Finances, stock options, and startup math are all complex topics. We also pretty much work solely with incredibly smart individuals. This can often create problems as quite a bit of people can be resistant to advice nowadays.

There’s a lot of stubbornness in this world. Some of that can be good and part of the reason why people are as successful as they are. Often times though, it can be really detrimental. Unfortunately I’ve seen the situation play out the same many times - we advise a client of something and they refuse to take our advice and it comes back to bite them in the ass later.

It’s frustrating as our goal is to put people in the best positions to succeed. Over the years, I’ve learned that sometimes you just can’t help everyone and that’s okay. You need to focus on the success stories not the failed stories, no matter how frustrating it can be. The success stories are why making at Secfi worth it.

Embracing the craziness

Life has a funny way of working. At many points of last year, things were incredibly quiet and almost boring. Yes, there’s always things to do in startup world, but 2023 was easily the quietest year we’ve had. There weren’t many moments when I felt overwhelmed throughout the year. Compare that to previous years where I felt like I was just trying to survive until Friday.

Well we’re not even a month into 2024 and it feels like I’ve already lost control of my work and personal life. I’ve felt like I’ve barely had a chance to breathe the last couple of weeks. And of course, on top of that we got a call this morning that’s going to add even more to our plate in the coming months. When it rains, it pours.

If this happened to me 4 years ago, I would’ve probably had a breakdown many times today. But one of the benefits to being a startup veteran is that I’ve somewhat learned to embrace the craziness. Over the years, I’ve even grown accustomed to liking the craziness. At bare minimum, it makes life a bit more interesting.

Slow but steady

I’ve been reading a lot of materials from the bankers on 2024 predictions lately. The common theme is that growth rates have stalled significantly. This is largely driven by the broader market as companies overall have cut down on cost and sales pipelines will now be longer. Focus has obviously shifted from growth to profitability.

I do think a lot of growth was pulled forward significantly in the madrush of 2020-2021. But for the most part, growth rates will likely settle closer to what they are today versus to what they were in 2021. A lot of startup employees and investors, including myself, are learning what it really takes to build a long standing company.

For the vast majority of companies out there, growth will be slower than we all want, but steady. It takes a long time to build a company that will last. Startup employees looking for a quick get rich equity package are going to be disappointed in the new normal.

This is something I need to remind myself of almost everyday. We’re building Secfi to be a company that last decades, not one that is a flash in a pan.

Fulfilling weekends

I had a nice weekend which marks sober weekend #2 for me. On Friday, we got a nice dinner out with our close friends. We joked about how long it’s been since we went out to dinner in which none of us were drinking. It was a bit sad, but at the same time it just goes to show just how much alcohol has been ingrained in our lives.

On Saturday, we did a sober hangout at my friend’s place to watch the 49ers game. This was probably the biggest test for me as I almost always associate football with drinking, but I held firm and we ended up having a fun night of watching football and playing board games without any drinks.

On Sunday, Sophia and I went and explored San Jose. We got some amazing food at Pho Hanoi for brunch. Then checked out Valley Fair Mall and Santana Row for a few hours before heading to Japan town for some bomb poke at Aloha Fresh. It was a fun day of exploring and we decided that we needed to explore the Bay Area more.

After I got home last night, I was thinking to myself about what the odds of Sophia and I actually going to San Jose were if we were drinking this month. We would’ve had a few drinks Friday night, and definitely would have drank for the 49ers game on Saturday. While we wouldn’t have been out late, our sleep would’ve been impacted. We likely would have just decided to stay on the couch all day on Sunday, especially given the rain.

Drinking alcohol is definitely a short-term happiness filler. It feels great when you’re in the moment drinking, but it can really suck the happiness out of you the following day or two. As I write this on Monday, I feel a lot more fulfilled from my weekend than I have in the past. I sense that a lot of that is because I would lose a day or so of happiness because I drank the night before.

Tomorrow marks the 14th day of my month long alcohol free experiment. Along with feeling more fulfilled and happier in general, I’m pleased to say that I don’t miss drinking really. I’m still having fun with my friends on the weekend and my social life hasn’t taken a hit. I am curious to see if the urge to drink will intensify or disappear in the next few weeks.