The GameStop saga

I have no position in GameStop and have no real desire to participate in any memestock, but I found myself rooting for Roaring Kitty as he tried to rally GameStop’s price up. I simply thought it was hilarious that something like this was happening and wanted to see if they could actually pull it off.

Unfortunately, it was for naught and the stock tumbles 40% after earnings release and announcement that the company was selling more stock.

Of course, most people probably could see this coming. These situations almost always end up the same with retail getting shafted the most. I can imagine a lot of ordinary working class folks lost a lot of money today which is sad. Degens will be degens.

I have no idea what will happen to Roaring Kitty. This does feel like market manipulation and seems like an easy target for the Feds to go after.

Regardless, it was entertaining at least for me who was sitting on the sidelines. I can’t imagine this will be the last time we see something like this happen.

Fintwit Influencers

I don’t really tweet anymore ever since Elon acquired the company as the platform has gone to shit. I used to love Twitter as a place to learn and meet interesting people. I’ve met a good number of people from Twitter in real life over the years. Nowadays, it’s basically all ads and porn. Clicking on a viral tweet basically confirms that you’ll be seeing some gross stuff in the replies.

I still get the urge to scroll through during downtimes. One of the latest trends is that there’s a user going after the Fintwit folks like the sweaty startup guy, Peter Schiff, and Codie Sanchez. Now I don’t know any of these people and I have no desire to dive deep, but these are folks who have built large followings on the platform based on their successes in investing.

I am always wary of folks on the internet. It’s easy to pretend like you are someone you’re not and there’s a ton of that. Of course there are a lot of wildly successful people who provide amazing insights as well. So it’s a hard balance to figuring out what’s real and what’s not.

The fact that there is a parody account going after these purported grifters has been absolutely hilarious if this account is even half correct. There’s some bold claims like these influencers have effectively lost their LPs money and never worked at where they said they worked before.

The problem with fintwit influencers is that they have developed a bit of a cult following and often times will utilize their following to raise money. They are great marketing themselves and people start to worship them on the internet. Then they often capitalize on that base. If this account is right, I sure hope that the retail investors did not get shafted too bad. Maybe that’s wishful thinking.

Decisions and life

Sophia and I have been discussing some very big life decisions since the weekend. We are undoubtedly at a fork in the road right now. We’ve been in San Francisco for 6 years. We love our apartment but with a child on the way at the end of the year, we know we need to move to a new space.

On top of that, we’re starting to build out our office in New York and will be focusing our hires there from now on. I’m not required to be there, but I know it’s the best thing for the company if I’m there working with the rest of the team on a day to day basis.

For most, the idea of moving a newborn to New York City sounds counterintuitive. But it’s something that I’m embracing as an opportunity. I know that it is likely the best decision for my career and for Secfi.

However, the career aspect is just one piece of things. There’s the personal aspect as well. I’d be leaving behind my parents and teenage sister who would for sure would like to be around our child and also help out. We’re closer to Sophia’s parents so that’s also something to consider.

I’m also leaving behind my closest friends who I know will be upset that they won’t be able to be around our new child on a regular basis. It’s a brutal reality that we’re dealing with right now and weighing.

There’s a ton of time still and a lot more thinking that Sophia and I will have to do before making a decision to stay in SF or move to NY. On the plus side, I know deep down that both decisions will be great and there’s no bad route here.

Closing the quarter

It’s almost 80 degrees here today in San Francisco. We don’t get a typical summer here in the SF, but this short heat wave has got me in the summer mood. It’s nice to be able to wear shorts and a t-shirt to the office.

I’ve got 3 weeks until my trip to Maine and Spain and I’m already counting down the days. I’m feeling especially rejuvenated after our offsite to Chicago last week, but it’s pretty telling that I feel like a new person after taking some time off. A couple weeks away from a laptop after closing out a monster quarter is exactly what I needed.

In the meantime, we’ve got a lot to do to close out the quarter strong. We’ve already hit our major goals, but have a lot of smaller goals that we’re lacking behind. Perhaps more importantly, I’m going to need to spend a lot of my time these next few weeks recruiting.

In the past, I’ve found it relatively easy to slack off a bit during summer especially in a quarter when things have gone well and goals have been hit early. However, these are incredibly valuable weeks to get everything on track so we can have yet another great quarter ahead.

The immigrant mentality

Sophia and I went to watch the Lehman Brothers play on Saturday. I’m not a Broadway junkie, but I do love a good show every now and then. I was worried that Sophia who has next to no interest in finance or business history would be asleep by the halfway point of the 3 hour show. Thankfully she ended up enjoying it.

I love stories about how our immigrant ancestors came to America with literally next to nothing. Henry, Emanuel, and Mayer Lehamn came to America in their 20s in the 1840s from Germany speaking little to no English and not much money. After weeks at sea, they would land in a foreign land with nowhere to turn but themselves.

It’s incredibly inspiring to think how a small goods store in Montgomery, Alabama would eventually turn into one of the largest banks in the world over 150 years later. In the first 20 years of operations, the original Lehman brothers would deal with a devastating fire in Montgomery and then the Civil War.

One of these setbacks may have been enough to devastate any business, yet they kept going and rebuilding. That’s the beauty behind the immigrant mentality - you’re forced to keep moving forward as there is no one else to bail you out. It was inspiring to hear their story.

My Father came to this country when he was 19 to go to college. Like the Lehmans he would eventually started his own business. He worked 6 days a week like clockwork and still runs it today from home.

Immigrants are the backbone of America. They come here with little to no money in hopes of chasing the American dream. While I am fortunate to have grown up in this country, I hope to make sure to never lose that immigrant mentality and I hope to build Secfi with that menality.

Sunday catch-up

This weekend has been a godsend to get caught up after a long week in Chicago. I feel like I’m just starting to get halfway decent at saying no to things, getting proper rest, and trying to feel good going into the week.

As hard as it is to say no to friends and social events at times, I need to remember how good it feels to wake up feeling well rested and productive. It’s not even 1pm and Sophia and I have had a nice breakfast and gotten all our errands out the way.

I’m planning on spending an hour or two getting caught up on everything personally and at work this afternoon. This used to be a Sunday ritual of mine. I would effectively start my work week off on Sundays so I could ease into my work day on Mondays.

As the years have gone on, I’ve gotten either too busy or perhaps just wanted more time to recharge. I will say it does feel damn good to be productive over the weekend again. Perhaps my ritual will start to come back as I enter this new phase of life.

Celebrations in Chicago

I had a fun and productive week out in Chicago with the US team. Our primary goal for this trip was to simply just spend time with each and celebrate some of the wins we’ve had. Of course, a lot of work will naturally get done as well.

We had a perfect schedule of some light planned activities mixed in with just enough downtime for all of us to sit down and chat through things with each other. We had a few great meals planned together mixed in with a river boat tour as well as the Cubs game.

I always find it amazing just how much stuff gets done when we’re all in person together. Besides the obvious lack of scheduling, discussions and decisions just happen much quicker. People are just more open when meeting in person and we can’t ignore just how much better it is for the team to get together.

I personally took the opportunity to unwind a bit, relax, and celebrate getting out of the last couple of years. I was absolutely exhausted by the end of the trip and glad I had this weekend to recover before getting back to the grind.

Chicago

I’m here in Chicago after taking a red-eye on Monday night. I was able to get 9 holes in with one of my teammates which was both fun and helpful in getting to know each other better. We unfortunately got rained out and was not able to finish but the face to face time definitely helped with the camaraderie considering we work with each other very closely.

I was able to see one of my close friends from college and his newborn in the evening. It was great catching up and also getting a preview of what’s to come for Sophia and I. The tips from people who have gone through it is really invaluable.

The Secfi events start today with a team lunch followed by a team-building exercise. It’s a crazy realization but I haven’t met a handful of my colleagues in person yet. I can’t wait to see them and get to know them better on a personal level.

I do need to make sure that I don’t overdo things and ensure I get enough rest. I was able to get pretty good sleep last night, but I can already feel the red-eye lack of sleep from Monday hitting.

Secfi hits Chicago

I’m gearing up for the long weekend followed by a trip to Chicago for our US offsite. I’m incredibly excited for the week ahead. I haven’t seen most of my colleagues for over a year now in person and there’s nothing like getting good face time.

We spend so much time with each other on a day to day basis working largely remote. We do our best to make those connections remotely and build a bond. However, it’s just not the same as when we can get together and really bond in person.

We have a few hours per day reserved to get work done which will be nice. But most of the time reserved just to hang out and have some fun. We’ve all been through a lot these last couple of years and being able to get together, bond, and just enjoy being with each other is incredibly important.

Lastly, we have a lot to celebrate. We’ve had some big wins this past week and I can’t wait to celebrate with everyone in person. The Zoom and Slack celebrations just do not hit the same. It becomes more real when we’re in person together.

For now, I have a long weekend with not too many plans. My sister is in town so I plan on just relaxing. It’s going to be a fun week.

Thursday random thoughts

Things have slowed down significantly for the long weekend. Downtown SF seems like a ghost town today especially with the nice weather. My inbox is nice and quiet. The long weekend and summer vibes have kicked in early and I plan to take off early to meet an old coworker.

With a slower week, my sleep has significantly improved and I feel great. I know it’s fairly obvious, but the days when I can actually get to bed and get 8+ hours of sleep are night and day from the days when I get 7 or less. The biggest challenge for me is getting to bed earlier on nights where I have to be up early the next morning. I just have never been a good sleeper that can fall asleep early. It’s something I need to continue to work on.

We’re wiring a good chunk of cash out for an investment we closed this week. It feels amazing to start writing bigger checks again. We’re in the business of allocating assets and the past two years have been slow given the markets. There’s no better thrill of closing significant deal flow.

As Q2 starts to get wrapped up, I need to start looking into my portfolio and savings once again. Sophia and I have done an okay job 5 months into the year, but I do feel the pressure of increased spending a bit. We haven’t been investing as much as we should be and I want to make sure the 2nd half of the year pans out differently for us. Life style creep is something I’m always battling.

PE in college athletics

I just read that private equity seems to be coming to college athletics soon. RedBird Capital and Weatherford Capital have announced a program for athletic departments. There are scant details so far, but my guess is that these firms will work alongside a handful of athletic departments and provide a line of credit in exchange for future revenue splits.

This could make sense for some select athletic departments. For better or worse, my school the University of Washington is likely a top candidate given that we are entering the Big10 at a 50% revenue cut for the next 6 years until 2030 when we get the full cut. PE money could help level the playing field for the next 5-6 years while giving up some of the future upside when we get a larger cut from the conference.

Of course, this won’t always end happy. Some companies may be eager to get their hands on capital today which won’t result in a happy payout in the future. I can see many of these desperate ADs looking to make a splash and taking out a line of credit to pay some highly talented recruits who won’t pan out. A lot of college athletics are unfortunately not good investments. Lots of schools will learn the hard way…

The SynapseFi mess

I’m unfortunately one of the thousands of users with money stuck due to the SynapseFi mess right now. I had some cash with a fintech neobank called Yotta which used Synapse as their BaaS provider. Unfortunately this is an ugly fintech mess that will result in millions of dollars being locked up until Synapse can figure things out.

In a nutshell, my understanding is as such:

• Synapse is the Banking as a Service (BaaS) provider that builds the infrastructure to connect many fintechs to banks.

• My fintech neobank Yotta used Synapse to connect to Evolve which is a bank.

• Synapse filed for bankruptcy in 2023 and was going to be acquired by TabaPay, but that deal fell through earlier this month.

• There is only a skeleton crew of 6 people at Synapse working now due to the bankruptcy.

• Synapse has since cut-off any access from the fintechs to Evolve and is not longer processing transactions. Since Synapse effectively builds the piping and infrastructure from these fintechs to the banks, no one including myself can get their money out.

• The FDIC cannot step in because this isn’t an issue of a bank going bankrupt. My money is supposedly safe with Evolve which is FDIC insured, but the piping is not broken to get the money out.

As of now, there does not seem to be a resolution in place. Synapse and Evolve are both blaming each other for the issues. The fintechs such as Yotta are blaming Synapse and Evolve.

Someone is going to have to step in and fix the mess to get users their money. While this is not a big deal for me, it appears that thousands of users relied on these fintechs as their primary banking solution for direct deposit, paying bills, etc.

People are asking if this is fintech’s FTX. There’s already a chain reaction of other fintechs also shutting down because of this. For everyone’s sake and for the sake of the industry, let’s all hope that this gets resolved as soon as possible.

Family First

I had a fairly relaxing weekend primarily hanging out with family. My cousin and his family were in town from Indonesia for the weekend. I hadn’t seen them in 10+ years since I last visited Indonesia. We had a nice dinner and drinks at my parent’s house on Friday catching up on life and family matters. Then we spent Saturday in Napa.

Being in America when the vast majority of my extended family is back in Indonesia has always made me a bit of an outcast in the family matters. On top of that, my Dad is 1 of 11 and one of the youngest in the group. At 34, I’m one of the youngest cousins in the family.

My cousin has always put family first as one of the oldest in the group of cousins. He’s always the one organizing things for the family and making sure that everyone gets taken care of including myself. I was excited to spend time with him and his family.

When I was young, I would visit Indonesia every summer and have the opportunity to see and hang out with family. As I got older, those summers became every two, then three years. Now I haven’t been back for 10+ years so I feel a bit disconnected.

As Sophia and I start our own family, I want to make sure my kids realize the importance of putting family first and making sure we don’t lose our culture of being Indonesian. I know it’s unlikely that we’ll get to go to summers in Indonesia every summer, but I need to make it a point to get out there at least on a regular basis.

Feel good Friday

I didn’t have Scottie Scheffler getting arrested on my bingo card for the PGA Championship. What a weird and kind of funny sequence of events.

I’m in wrap up mode today on Friday as I’ve got a long checklist of things that I wasn’t able to get done the last couple of days due to a busy call schedule. I blocked off my schedule just so I can tackle my checklist and ensure that I go into the weekend feeling good. I call these Feel Good Fridays.

In a job where I am on calls or meetings for a large portion of my day, I need these days to catch up on everything. It feels good to have time to myself to work through everything.

Stop and smell the roses

Like many who work at a small business or a startup, I get caught up a lot in the ever increasing goals. You work your ass off to hit a target or a goal. Then you quickly move onto the next one. That’s the reality of growing a company.

We hit a big goal here at Secfi halfway through the quarter. And already we’re starting to think about the next quarter and our goals there. My CEO gave me shit when I reported the good news yesterday in our management team meeting. I had a very business as usual demeanor as I reported what should be ecstatic news.

Six years into building a company and I feel like I’ve almost lost my excitement for winning! I’ve suddenly became the disgruntled veteran at the company. That’s not a great place to be. I’m vowing to change that.

I have so much to be grateful and appreciative about both in my work and personal life. I need to stop and smell the roses. I’ll start by celebrating this big win this weekend.

Chat GPT 4o

After some morning calls, I spent a good 30 minutes playing with Chat GPT 4o. While Chat GPT 3.0 and 4.0 was jaw dropping, I believe 4o will be the reason that I sign up for ChatGPT Plus.

The chat bot and image generator were great and provided a lot of help in certain areas for me mainly around research. However, I struggled to find use cases to use it consistently throughout the day.

With 4o, I now can input nearly anything to output into nearly anything. I can input my legal docs I need to review and get a summary of the document in less than a minute which will save me time.

The voice chat will become my personal assistant that I can speak to in my day to day. It’ll be a much more advanced Siri.

I am probably late to the game in using ChatGPT on a regular basis for work and personal reasons and I’m ready to join the club.

Fintech will rise again

We’ve been taking our lumps in the fintech world for some time now. The rest of tech has recovered decently well but fintech unfortunately is still sitting in a tough position both in the public and private markets.

Multiples in fintech are generally lower than pure play software companies, but the public companies out there are sitting at fairly depressed levels.

In the private market space, there unfortunately is not a ton of activity. Primary rounds that are coming in seem to be mostly down rounds. Secondary buyers are typically staying away from buying into fintech right now.

I myself am caught personally in an annoying fintech issue. I had a relatively small amount of cash with Yotta which is a neobank on top of Evolve/Synapse. With Synapse announcing bankruptcy and a potential buyer pulling out, the bank is in a freeze right now. No one including myself can get our cash out and direct deposits are bouncing.

I am fortunate that I do not need this cash now and of course it is FDIC insured so I don’t expect to lose it. But if this drags out, we could see a situation where it may take months for me to get my cash out. I know others are not in a fortunate position like myself so they are going through worse troubles getting paid, paying rent, etc.

I hope this is resolved ASAP as it’s yet another stain on fintech.

Overall, I still remain bullish on fintech for the same reason I was 6 years ago when I joined Secfi. The incumbents in finance have yet to be disrupted and there is a lot of work to be done to enhance both business and consumer experiences. Our money system operates on decades old code and going deeper, we still have a long way to go in terms of fixing the plumbing in fintech.

Innovation will come and fintech will rise again.

Monday musings

I had written quite a bit about feeling the burn last week. Small and relatively easy tasks were just difficult to accomplish. I felt lethargic and my energy levels were just not there. Instead of fighting it, I decided to take Thursday and Friday off and I’m glad that I did. I feel much more like my normal self today.

Again, I need to do a much better job in making sure I don’t get to this point. Part of that is making sure that I don’t overdo it at work. Another part is making sure I take enough breaks throughout each quarter. Holding out for a vacation in a few months like I did previously was not the right answer.

I spent most of my Thursday and Friday visiting my high school friends up in Healdsburg. The combination of sun and friends was exactly what the doctor ordered. It’s always great hanging out with my high school friends who have an amazing perspective on life. They are far removed from the tech scene and the corporate rat race and hanging out with them always reminds me of what’s important in life.

It seems like GameStop is back as Roaring Kitty has resurfaced on social media. The stock is now sitting at close to an 80% gain. Memestocks are back it appears. I can’t believe I just wrote that and I look forward to watching this from afar. Grab your popcorn.

Everything will be fine

I’m headed up to Healdsburg this morning to hang out with my high school friends for the next couple of days. It’s going to be gorgeous and we plan on spending it all outdoors.

For the first time in maybe 8 years of work, I’ve decided to leave my laptop at home while I go on a trip. It’s incredibly weird to think about and even write about it, but I’ve had my work laptop with me nearly on pretty much every trip… just in case.

Inevitably, when I have some downtown or I’m bored, I’ll go through work emails and Slack just to “catch up”. It’s a bad habit and contributes to my burnout.

It’s going to be a weird feeling, but I got a good feeling that everything will be fine at work without me for a couple days.

Gold bars are the new crypto

My coworking space in SF is a ghost town today with the 75 degree weather. After being in coworking spaces for the past couple of years, I find it absolutely hilarious just how much good weather impacts whether people come in. The remote work aspect is great and of course I support people taking advantage when they’re not busy. But I do wonder how much less people actually work when it’s nice out here with the remote work aspect.

I read an article on CNBC that gold bars are selling like crazy in Korean convenience stores and vending machines. I have been told no less than 5 times in the past few weeks that Costco is selling gold bars and have been selling out.

I’ve been joking with friends that I’m converting my entire portfolio to gold. Some people took that literally and asked if they should be buying gold as well. Gold is starting to become the new crypto which is pretty funny as Bitcoin is meant to be the new digital gold.

For novelty purposes, I’ll go out and buy a few bars for fun once the bubble bursts a bit. I do think it’ll be cool to have a gold bar or two just to show off at dinner parties.