Change is the only constant

I’ve realized that this year is going to be one of big change for me both personally and at work and that scares me a bit.

On the personal front, Sophia and I have been married almost a year and half now. We are thinking about starting a family soon. Our parents are getting older as well. I know that things will look a lot different by the end of the year.

On the work front, this company will be a lot different than what I’ve known it to be the first 5 years. It’s part of business to grow and evolve and we’re doing that. But change isn’t always easy. It may mean a painful and sad transition to that next phase.

My friend’s parents told him that life only gets better. In the 20s, we thought the 30s were going to suck, but it gets better. Same with the 40s. Same with the 50s. That was awesome to hear and made me excited for these big changes in my life.

While it may not seem easy, the only constant in life is that there will be change. Everything will be okay.

Congrats to Reddit!

There’s a lot of great news for all of us in tech this morning as Reddit goes public today. The price was set to $34 per share last night, and as of right now, the rumor is that it will open 50% up over $50.

I’ll refrain from going full Bill Gurley and ignore the commentary on the pop, and how the company and employees who sold lost out for now, but that’s hard to ignore.

For now, we’re just celebrating the successful IPO. My prediction is that there will be many companies filing S1s in the next few weeks and months. Liquidity is hitting the markets and employees and investors sorely need it.

Degenerate Time

It’s the best time of year for degenerates as March Madness sets to start tomorrow. I’m not sure if I qualify as a full degenerate. While I love gambling and I get in some bets through friends from time to time, I refuse to have a bookie or download a sports gambling app solely because of fear that I’ll get addicted. I’ll call myself a degenerate in training.

I do have 4 different brackets going though and I’ll sneak a few bets in with friends in the next few days. I’ve been following the degenerate economy for awhile now and even I could not have predicted that it would have grown this big. When I first started watching the sports gambling trend 5 years ago, we still had the major sports leagues and networks taking an anti-gambling stance.

Fast forward to today, and ESPN has sports segments dedicated to gambling, and the leagues are partnering with sports gambling books. It’s amazing what a bit of extra revenue could do to change your stance.

Anecdotally, I’ve seen more and more of my friends get in the world of sports gambling. I expect things to grow rapidly in the next few years. It’ll be fun but scary. Perhaps I should set-up a gambling rehab startup in the future.

In the meantime, bring on March Madness.

Planning around optimism

I saw that optimism for stocks has been the highest since 2022. That’s obviously a good thing as the sentiment continues to trend upwards the last few months. We may finally be putting the COVID and ZIRP issues behind us as inflation seems to be stagnating.

Unfortunately, it’s the market and anything can happen. We’re staying cautiously optimistic and hoping that things work out, but also planning for the worst case scenario. We’ve learned from our mistakes in the past and know that most parts of our business should operate as if the worst case scenario happens.

We’ll continue to invest in our people and growing as needed, but we’re going to be very cautious going forward. We have a great thing going right now with the current team that we have, and we do not want to get ahead of our skis.

Epic weekend in St. Louis

I got back yesterday afternoon after a long morning traveling. I was absolutely dead after 3 days of full meetings sprinkled in with a lot of socializing. I’ll be taking the rest of today off to rest and recover, but it’s been hard to keep me away from work this morning as I’m absolutely excited to get to work on the future of Secfi.

We spent the few days we had going through nearly every aspect of the company from our culture to our office plan to our long-term vision. All 6 of us on the management team were incredibly on the same page and while we didn’t agree on everything, the long term vision is set.

There was a ton of reflecting back on the past few years. It was great to get it all off our chest. We made a lot of mistakes… like everyone at a startup. It was good to vent about it but it’s about how we grow and learn from that. I saw this as a weekend to put the past behind us and move forward on building a long lasting generational business.

I’m pumped.

Excited for long meetings

We had a great productive meeting yesterday. And I’m excited for today’s discussions. These meetings are long and there’s a ton of things to discuss and get through. It’s definitely tiring for sure.

However, it’s what we’re all here for. We all want to build something amazing and that will be here for generations. These few days we have together will set the direction for the company for the next few years.

It’s probably one of the few times I’m excited for long all day meetings.

Finance for the layman

Hello from St. Louis, Missouri. I haven’t been to Missouri before and I get the vibes it’s a state that’s caught between being norther and southern with influences from both. We’re here for work, but I hope to have some fun while I’m here.

One of the hardest parts about working at Secfi is that most of what we help and advise on is inherently complicated. On the flip side, the majority of our clients do not have a finance background. Some pick things up quickly. Others really struggle to understand fairly basic concepts.

For example, I was on a call the other day and a client was evaluating a financing offer, but was stuck on simple vs compounding interest. I’m not saying this doesn’t matter, but of course it’s an additional cost to the client. But ultimately in the grand scheme of things and at the levels we’re talking at, it’s a relatively immaterial difference compared to other aspects.

Most don’t understand that however and tend to panic when they hear compounding interest. We have to run the numbers side by side to show them in dollar terms.

Bringing my A game

Every now and then I need a good reminder that I am no longer young and spritely, and I need to get proper rest over the weekends. Yesterday was that reminder. I had a big weekend with activities on both Saturday and Sunday. Combine that with daylight savings time on Sunday and it was a recipe for a tough Monday.

Luckily these Mondays don’t happen too often anymore, but it’s a great reminder that I need to take things easy. I’ll especially want to make sure that I get good rest on this trip to St. Louis for our management team offsite. I’ve never been someone who sleeps well and gets good rest on the road. Part of that is that I just enjoy seeing new places and another part of that is that I just don’t sleep well in hotels.

Regardless, it’s not an excuse and I need to make sure I prioritize my rest over fun. I owe it to my team to make sure that I bring my A game every day. We don’t get many in-person meetings to work together and I want to make sure to maximize our time together. There’ll be time to have fun on this trip of course, but we’re there first to get shit done.

Planning in a startup

We’ve got our executive team offsite this week. We’ll be together as a management for the first time in over a year in person and I’m excited to see everyone. There’s nothing like face to face interaction.

Obviously the big thing that we’ll need to discuss are our long-term and short-term plans. I’ve learned in my 5+ years of startup world that you need to have a long-term vision for where the company wants to be, but also realize that plans will change quickly and often.

The long-term vision will always be there and won’t change much. But how we get there and our priorities are always shifting. For that reason, it is a bit difficult to do a lot of planning and forecasting as a startup. Things will never go according to plan for better or worse.

Sometimes there’s just too good of opportunities to pass up and we’ll need to shift our plans. Other times, something crazy will pop up and throw us off course and we’ll need to adjust to keep the ship heading in the right direction.

Embracing and enjoying the ups and the downs and the unpredictable journey that comes with it is part of the startup adventure.

Change of scenery

I was pretty tired yesterday and generally had low motivation. I had an early start to the day and I hit a wall at around 4pm. I think we all probably go through something like this once a week most times.

I miss the days of my youth when I used to grind for 12 hours plus a day for multiple weeks at a time without any issue. That doesn’t really work for me anymore. Call it getting older. Or perhaps my tasks nowadays are just a bit more exhaustive.

I’ve had to turn to other means of finding energy and last night I decided to go to a bar and work on some of my planning for the next week. I ended up getting about 3 more hours of productive work in over a couple of beers. I suppose there is some benefit to alcohol after all.

While drinking and getting work done is probably not an ideal pairing for 95% of the situations. I’ll need to remind myself that a good change of scenery to perhaps a cafe or in our office lobby may be a nice way to drum up some energy.

Writing online

English was my worst subject growing up. I always had a thing for numbers and found learning the intricacies of English incredibly boring. I do love reading, but my vocabulary isn’t particularly great. It was no surprise I always tested lower in the English and reading sections of all my standardized testing compared to the math and science parts.

I’ve always felt that my writing has always been just okay. I got by with great grades in college and did fine on my essays, but I would’ve always much preferred an accounting course. Fortunately, going into the business world meant a much more direct way of writing which was more more my speed.

I started this blog about 5.5 years ago partially because I knew I had to improve my writing. I wanted to write on the internet more and be proud of the things I was putting out there. I didn’t want to be afraid or ashamed of writing online. I’m glad I started doing this when I did.

I’ve had the opportunity to spearhead Secfi’s biweekly newsletter and it’s been a fun experience. I still panic a bit after I write my first draft and send it out to others for feedback. Compare that to when I send out an excel model for feedback and it’s night and day.

Fortunately, the newsletter has been a great success for us at Secfi and we get some awesome feedback every time one goes out. We’ve learned a lot over the last couple of years writing it, but I’m glad I started writing publicly many years ago as it’s helped build my confidence.

34

I turn 34 today and I’m feeling blessed. I’ve lived an incredible life so far and I feel fortunate that I was able to win the lottery of life. I’ve got an amazing wife, friends, and family that care about me. I have enough to live a very happy and fulfilling life. Most don’t get to say that, and I don’t that it for granted.

One thing that has resonated with me recently as I’ve gotten older is my time left here. I know it’s a silly thing to say at age 34 when the average age of death in the US is 77, but at the same time at 34, I know how fragile life can be and how fast life can go. I hope to be here a long time, but I also know that the only thing that is guaranteed is that we will all die eventually.

That may scare some people, but there’s some comfort in knowing that for me. If I’m fortunate to live until I’m 80 then I have around 46 years left of life or 16,790 days left. That seems like an eternity for some, but if you start counting down the days… things move a lot faster than you’d like.

In another perspective, I only have 46 birthdays, Christmases, football seasons, or wedding anniversaries left. Looking at life that way and counting down makes me look at life in a different but positive perspective. I need to live, do good in this world, and most of all enjoy my time here with those that I love.

Super Tuesday

It’s Super Tuesday and it’s a largely uneventful one on the national stage. We all know that this election will be between Trump and Biden. There are a few things I am following on a local and state level that could be interesting.

I used to like election years as I enjoyed some level of politics and moving our democracy forward. However, the last 10 years or so have been brutal. The country is completely divided and elections/politics tend to bring out the worst in people.

Social media has undoubtedly contributed to the political discourse. Everyday I see posts on social media from friends or acquaintances labeling the other side as this or that. It feels like we’ve lost our ways to have educated discussions and see each others viewpoints and we’ve settled to finger pointing.

Election years will always bring conflicts but for the sake of our country and democracy, I hope we can get back to a level of understanding and cooperation. Maybe one day I’ll be excited for an election year agian.

Getting my personal finances back in line

I mentioned last week that I was in the process of rebalancing my portfolio. In order to do that, I get an update on Sophia and my balance sheets. I try to do this “asset check” every quarter at minimum but sometimes I’ll do it as frequently as monthly.

It’s a tedious process to get all my accounts lined up and I don’t love the process of counting my money as often as I do. However, it’s necessary for two reasons.

The first is to make sure that my portfolio is in line with my targets. My investments go up and down and I need to rebalance to make sure that I don’t go over or underweight too much. With the rise in crypto the last month, I especially wanted to check that my crypto allocation has not gone too far or else I’d need to rebalance.

Secondly, it helps get things in line and ensure that I’m on track for my savings goals. I use the opportunity to also track how much money I’m putting into the market versus spending. A year ago, I made the goal to split my earned income into 1/3rds. A third goes towards taxes, a third goes towards rent and spending, and another third goes into savings.

It’s a lofty goal for sure but I was able to deliver on it in 2023. Unfortunately, things have been a bit off in 2024. We’ve been spending quite a bit a bit more recently and dipping into my savings allocation quite a bit. The market performing well has masked quite a bit of our spending habits.

Some of this is personal as we’ve had to travel a lot the past few months due to my father in-laws illness. That of course is okay. But on the other hand, I find myself splurging a lot more on other things such as meals out and my hobbies. It was a good reminder to myself that I need to reel things back and start being more conscious of my spending.

Counting our blessings

It’s been a little over 4 months since my father in-law had a stroke. It was an incredibly scary moment and resulted in Sophia and I spending a month out in Croatia as he recovered enough to fly back to the U.S. If you told us that on March 1st, my father in-law would be where he was at back in October, we’d be ecstatic.

Back then, we had no idea if he’d be able to walk or even eat by himself again. Today, he’s pretty much at around 90% of his physical and cognitive level that he was at before. We’re incredibly fortunate to have him here, yet alone be in a position like this to live a normal life again.

I’ve learned a lot over the last few months. It’s again another reminder that life is precious and we can never predict when things can change quickly. Our parents are unfortunately getting older and they won’t be here forever. If things go well, I’ll outlive my parents by many years. That’s a sad thing to think about, but it’s the truth.

Hanging out with my parents or in-laws is not always easy. Whether it’s travel cross country, less than ideal working conditions, or just simply a long winded story that leads to nowhere, most of us have a lot to be annoyed by when hanging out with family. But at the end of the day, it’s family.

I’ve had a new found appreciation of my family and in-laws in recent years, especially in light of the almost tragedy. I’m trying to enjoy all the time we have left with them. Perhaps one day I’ll be lucky enough to have children that want to spend time with me as well.

Another crypto bull run

I’ve now been part of two cycles now so it’s been two big bull runs followed by two crypto winters. Seems like we’re starting another cycle here with Bitcoin over $60k and ETH approaching $3.5k.

I bought my first Bitcoin and ETH in December of 2017 during the first bull run. The price was $17,235.73 at the time. I had really no idea what I was doing but wanted to participate. I promptly lost it all as the crypto winter began.

Fast forward a year and half later to 2019. We were doing a lot with Coinbase at the time and I had a feeling that things were setting themselves up for another run. I ended up buying a decent amount of Bitcoin at $5,000 and some more during the runup. I also bought some ETH. Things ended up working out well of course this time around.

I was able to sell a good amount in the last bull run and made a nice gain. I also took some of the winnings and doubled down into some projects. Some of those worked out, and some did not.

As I sit here today, I still have not bought any new crypto in almost 3 years. I still hold a good amount of Bitcoin, ETH, Arbritum, some smaller tokens, and still hold onto to a few NFTs. I plan to continue to do just that… nothing but hold.

While I do believe in the potential and future growth of crypto, my stance is that the majority of the big gains are likely gone at this point. Putting more money in and hoping for another 10x situation in the short-term is a foolish bet. I like gambling as much as the next person, but at this point, I don’t see gambling in Bitcoin or ETH as the appropriate payouts.

Rather, I’m treating crypto as a long-term hold and a percentage of my balance sheet just like any other stocks. It is a bit outsized at about 10% of my balance sheet right now due to growth and I’d like to keep it at about 10% or less going forward.

The daily grind

In my opinion, one of the hardest parts about work especially at a startup is the daily grind.

We get to do some awesome things at startups like build new products or take on interesting projects often. Those jobs are hard in the sense that you want to do well and they take a lot of thinking. However, they’re usually intellectually stimulating and I look forward to doing those projects.

The daily grind on the other hand is having to do the same thing day in and day out. Unfortunately, you don’t get the luxury of hiring people to take these roles as they don’t warrant a full time position at a startup. So it falls on your plate.

I’m talking about reviewing the CRM and pipeline every morning. Reviewing all inbound leads. Answering inbound contacts. Putting together stats for the broader team. These are the hard tasks as they are monotonous and you just have to grind through them on a daily or weekly basis.

These are the tasks I see a lot of people who don’t come from startups struggle with. They think they are above it and tend to ignore the daily grind tasks.

Why personal finance is hard

A few weeks ago, I had a great chat with someone who runs her own human behavior consulting firm. It was a fintech happy hour and she has done significant work for many of the large fintech companies.

It was a fascinating discussion and I wish I had a lot more 1:1 time with her in a better setting to really dig deeper into her insights. One of her simple insight points was that personal finance is difficult because people want immediate satisfaction. They don’t want to do something now that will benefit them in 10-20-30 years. Of course, this makes sense. We’re humans and we crave immediate gratification.

It explains why a lot of personal finance apps never really take off. Typically, personal financial planning puts off immediate gratification like buying that nice car in favor of saving for the future. On top of that, it takes a decent amount of work to get up and going. That work is easy to put off in light of other things in life like watching Netflix.

While Secfi isn’t a personal finance app, we have a lot of growth when it comes to human behavior. At a little over 5 years in, I’m taking this as an opportunity to revisit some of our existing processes and deliverables with a human behavior lens. We’ve done well, but we have a lot of room for improvement.

Rebalancing after a quick 2 months

I’m back in Baltimore spending the week at my in-laws. My father in-law is finally home after a long journey since his stroke in October. I can’t imagine being stuck in hospitals and rehab facilities for almost 4 months. Fortunately, he was well taken care of and we feel blessed that he got the rehab he needed.

He’s now walking great and cognitively, it feels that he’s like 90% of the way back. Sophia and I hope that we get back to a sense of normalcy and her parents can go back to living their lives mostly normally soon.

On another note - two months of 2024 has gone by quickly. I had barely checked my portfolio since tax-loss harvesting in December. Everything in my portfolio from value, to growth, to crypto seems to be up.

I’ll need to take some time later this week to check my portfolio and make sure things are balanced out. My crypto exposure has likely gone above the levels that I’d like. As hard as it is to sell crypto in this bull run, I want to make sure to keep things in balance.

I like to do this at minimum quarterly, but with the market up big, it’s important that I check into things earlier.

Secfi Secondaries

We launched our Secfi Secondaries offering in early 2023 as our Advisory and Wealth clients had asked for it. While it will never be our primary business, having another revenue stream and product to offer our clients is a good thing especially for a small startup.

The brokerage and secondary business is definitely a tough one to be in however. You’re unfortunately bound to acting on what 3rd parties want to do and serve as effectively the middle man in the equation.

At Secfi, we always love working with clients who are open and want to be educated. We can serve as partners to our clients who are looking out for the best for them. More often than not, that’s who we end up working with on the secondary front to generate liquidity for our clients.

As we develop this new offering, we want to make sure to make this as great of an experience for our clients as possible. We’re going to do things that don’t scale at first and figure out how to best eliminate the pain points in the secondary process.

The first thing on the docket is making sure we work with the right partners who are committed so we can offer the best transparency to our clients. That’s easier said than done and it’ll be a big task.