Gamification

I’ve had a very relaxing weekend with a lot of rest, limited drinks, and not that many activities. It’s been awesome to rejuvenate especially since I’m headed to a bachelor party in New Orleans from Thursday - Monday.

I took an interactive spin class this morning at Equinox that measures each biker’s ride and uses that data to put everyone in mini-games.

Throughout the 50 minute class, you will warm-up, do a traditional one song ride, mini-game, one song ride, next mini-game, and so on for a total of 3 games.

I am not a big cycling fan as I feel like I get much better workouts in other exercises like running, but this is the one cycling class that I truly love.

The mini-games are fantastic as it encourages competition among your classmates while doing a great job of not embarrassing the slow riders. The games today were an individual game, followed by a 2 team competition, and then a 4 team competition.

I have always been a competitive person and nothing gets me going more than trying to win. Reflecting after class, I realized that I’ve never cycled this hard in my entire life.

This is a successful use case of “gamification” and I love the idea of “gamifying” everyday tasks.

Superhuman founder Rahul Vohra describes how his team designs products with the same video game principles that create joyful experiences.

I’m planning on writing about my recent foray into using Superhuman this week, but reaching inbox zero daily feels like a game. One that I need to win every single day.

Everyone is motivated differently, but for me, nothing works better than competition through games. I’m very excited to continue to see the trend of companies and software moving towards “gamifying” everyday tasks that lead to efficiency.

In the case of cycling classes, I’m going to need to practice a lot more as I came in 7th out of 8th of the men in the class and on the bottom quartile including women. The winner by far in this class including both men and women was Anne. After class, I glanced over to bike 39 to get a glimpse of this superwoman expecting to see a jacked lady who could probably break me in half.

To my surprise, Anne was a middle-aged fairly built woman who looked closer to a grandmother than someone who just biked 20 miles faster and harder than the entire class. Needless to say, I was very impressed, but it makes me want to work harder and beat Anne one day.

Meditation

I started meditating back in 2014 during my first year of work. I had always been an antsy person and felt that meditation might help me relax, calm down, and be present.

It ended up being one of the best things habits I’ve formed.

Many of my friends who I recommend to meditation are almost always very skeptical. I think the problem is many don’t realize that meditation isn’t about blocking out your thoughts, but filtering and analyzing those thoughts in a more mindful way.

For example, one morning I can be agitated and easily irritable. Meditation helps me understand the reasons that made me agitated and irritable. It’s almost like teaching your mind to be introspective and forces you to analyze your thoughts.

This of course can lead to great benefits. Being self-aware of the reasons for me being a prick one morning may help me find the root cause of it, and not let it ruin my day.

The benefits for my sleep schedule have been great as well. We all have sleepless nights where we lay in bed thinking about work or something that happened the past day or week. I used to have mild to severe insomnia as my mind likes to run at a million miles per hour.

Nowadays, my mind still runs at a million miles per hour, but meditation helps me view these thoughts in a much different lens. In a way, it makes me realize that everything is okay and this is how my mind is and I shouldn’t let it bother me.

I started using Headspace many years ago to teach myself how to meditate. I’ve since switched to Calm and use it almost daily. Both are great products and I would highly recommend both apps.

Troops in War

You go to war with the troops you have, not the ones you want

This was a popular saying among leaders at my old firm. Being one of the world’s largest firms, we had thousands of employees in New York alone.

The quote was always brought up whenever we’d have a struggling new team member. Of course, we all hoped we got the best staff and managers, but quite often we’d be stuck with people who had underwhelming performance reviews.

While that quote may hold true in a very large firm where recruiting and talent placement is someone else’s job, I’m happy that at Secfi we have control of who we go to war with.

We’ve got 3 new team members starting in our SF office in the next few weeks, and I couldn’t be more excited.

It’s been a long road the past year at Secfi. I was the sole member in SF for 4 months. Then it was the two of us for the last 9.

Things will change. Hopefully for the better, but there will be obstacles with a growing team. I’m just happy that I got to choose the troops that I’m going to war with.

WeWork: A Success and Failure Story

One question I’ve been getting from clients and friends is whether we’ve invested in WeWork and have had to deal with the severe valuation cuts.

We have not directly invested in WeWork, but we are definitely dealing with the fallout that comes along with the WeWork and Softbank fiasco.

People that want to seem smart will just see everything that Softbank has invested in and assume that the company is the next WeWork.

This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Yes, there are many companies out there that are overvalued. Yes, there are companies out there that are mismanaged. But assuming everything Softbank touches is an easy to make and harsh assumption.

On to WeWork.

First, the good. You just have to be impressed with the unprecedented growth. Never has a company scaled that fast. We’ll get to the bad about Adam Neumann in a bit, but he is an impressive storyteller and negotiator. His vision for WeWork was impressive and if you ever heard him speak, you wanted to believe him.

Those are some impressive qualities for a start-up founder and CEO. What he achieved in his time frame as CEO of We is going to be talked about for the rest of my lifetime. Unfortunately, this will all be overshadowed by the failed IPO and the end of his tenure.

I don’t believe Neumann was a terrible CEO like some are painting him out to be. I believe this to be a classic case of mismanagement by the board of directors.

Adam Neumann had a vision. A pretty darn good one. Softbank and the board didn’t just give him a loaded gun, but a fully automatic machine gun to accomplish his vision. This was the problem.

The job of the board of directors is to supervise the activities of the company and management. Rather than do this, they gave him everything he wanted (including an insane parachute!).

When the scandals of alcohol abuse, private planes, mismanagement, etc. started coming out, the board didn’t remove Neumann as CEO or replace him. Rather they appeased him by giving him more.

Softbank and the board rode Neumann out thinking that the IPO was a means to the end. And well, we know how that ended.

I have yet to sit on the board of a company so I can’t say I’m the expert here, but what I do know is that everyone and everything needs checks and balances. Giving a CEO free reign to do what he wants, when he wants to will lead to dire consequences.

I am not defending Neumann as a person. Afterall, it was his actions and mismanagement that led to his employees getting screwed while he walks away with $1.7b. I just wonder with proper guidance and checks and balances, what Neumann and WeWork could have been.

Google, All Time Highs, and Earnings Szn

I’m in the process of rewatching Silicon Valley and in the beginning of Season 3, Action Jack Barker shares an anecdote about Google and discusses how Google is now worth over $400b.

This was presumably filmed in 2015/2016 and aired in mid-2016. Google is now worth over $800b. It’s amazing to think how one of the world’s biggest companies doubled in size in less than 5 years.

Part and parcel to Google hitting all time highs is the S&P 500 also hitting fresh all time highs.

I’ve written about how there is without a doubt a bearish sentiment right now and people are more scared of the markets than perhaps ever before, but yet we keep seeing fresh all time highs and the fed is looking to cut rates again.

Perhaps the most important thing to keeping the markets on this upward trajectory is the Q3 earnings releases that most major tech companies will be releasing over the next couple weeks.

The tech industry has been under fire with news of overvaluation of SaaS companies and of course, WeWork. A negative “Earnings Szn” will undoubtedly further scare investors off tech companies.

It’ll be an interesting few weeks and I look forward to writing about it.

City of Angels

I have been in Los Angeles for the FINRA Small Firm Conference in Santa Monica. Since we are in the business of securities, we have to be sure to be compliant with FINRA and it was a good chance to get updates from the agency and network with folks from other firms.

I reluctantly flew down on Wednesday morning. I’ve had a few long weeks and weekends, and I really didn’t want to go through the hassle of another short 2 day trip while getting behind on my work.

As I write this at the airport on Thursday afternoon, I’m really glad I made the trip. The weather was absolutely gorgeous and heading to LA, getting my mind (mostly) off of work was exactly what the doctor ordered.

The networking event at the Bungalow was great as I met some great people and the nigiri sushi bar was on point. Afterwards, I had some old friends come meet me at the Bungalow and we went to a sports bar to watch basketball and catch up.

On Thursday, I left the conference early as the afternoon sessions were not applicable to our line of business and decided to take some personal time.

I grabbed lunch with another old friend from high school, and then spent a couple hours as a tourist walking around the Santa Monica boardwalk and promenade with my email shut off.

I find it funny that a FINRA conference being the cure for my recent rut, but catching up with old friends and enjoying the sun was exactly what I needed.

It’s a gentle reminder that everything in life is a mindset, and I need to always attack things with a positive mindset.

The Business of Sleep

I wrote yesterday about rough couple days and I’m happy to report today that I’m feeling better. A good night of sleep does wonders both physically and mentally.

It reminded me of a great article I read on the Business of Sleep by Stuart McGurk. The article starts out with quotes from a sleep expert on the importance of sleep. Lots of the research merely confirms what most people already know — getting enough sleep is good for your health.

Stuart then dives into the rapid rise of consumer products and sleep coaches. He describes how tiredness has become the new norm and capitalism is coming for our sleep.

Here is a list of the various devices, gadgets, lamps, apps, earplugs, blankets, trackers and, in one instance at least, creepy sleep robots that I will invite into my bedroom while writing this story.

I read using a SomniLight Amber Book Lamp (“specifically designed to mimic the amber wavelength of candlelight without sacrificing the safety and convenience of modern lighting”, £30). By my bed sits a Philips Somneo Wake-Up Light, which mimics the rise and fall of the sun (“with light-guided breathing and personalised sun settings”, £190). Splaying me to my mattress is a Mela Comfort weighted blanket (swaddle, baby, etc, from £125), while below me is a Withings Sleep Tracking Mat (“offers sleep cycle analysis, heart-rate tracking and snore detection”, £100). I use a pillow from Nanu that’s been created just for me based on an algorithm (“designed by you, made by Nanu”, £30). I wear Tom Brady TB12 Under Armour Athlete Recovery pyjamas (“the key is the ‘far infrared’ print inside... Far infrared is a type of energy that benefits the human body”, from £42). In my ears are Bose Noise-Masking Sleepbuds (“sleep better. Cover unwanted noise with soothing sounds”, £230). On my finger sits an Oura Ring sleep tracker, sampling my pulse 250 times per second (“you learn your optimal times to move, eat and take a break to get that restorative sleep”, £280). Every night an app called Sleepzy attempts to nag me to bed at 10.45pm. I use the Somnox Sleep Robot exactly twice (“by using breathing regulation, sounds and affection, the Sleep Robot offers...”, £549).

On the surface, this may seem like excessive consumerism and perhaps some good ole fashioned turning off devices one hour before sleep may work just as well. But as someone who has always been a bad sleeper, I’m all for this consumer trend.

I’ve never been someone who has been able to sleep on command or been able to sleep early. Perhaps this is partly due to my bad habits or maybe I’m just wired a bit different. I know my best friend has the same problem. I am always truly jealous of people who are good sleepers.

As mental health issues are on the rise in America and we gain more and more access to things such as Netflix that keep us up at night, I’m going to be following this trend of the rise of sleep aids.

Exhaustion and Back to the Basics

One thing I have been working on in the past year is listening to my body, not overdoing it, and getting more rest.

I have generally been getting much better at it, but this past week and weekend proved to be a major failure and I’m paying for it today.

We had team members visiting San Francisco last week so we have a jam packed schedule of meetings, dinners, etc.

I started to feel the exhaustion hit on Thursday evening after a dinner. On Friday, I took off on a preplanned trip to Seattle to catch-up with friends and watch my Huskies take on Oregon.

It was a fun, but terribly exhausting weekend filled with late nights, early mornings, and partying with friends. I did my best to recover and relax on Sunday night after I got home, but the pure exhaustion and anxiety kicked in.

I felt mentally, physically, and emotionally drained. Sleep was hard to come by despite being exhausted.

The bad vibes carried over to today and I was very sluggish to say the least. I made to to the mid-afternoon when I crashed and decided that I needed to listen to my body and take care of myself. I was inspired by a tweet I saw yesterday that the best care in life is the basic things in life: rest, working out, eating healthy, etc.

After leaving work, I got a quick run in to try to sweat things out and get a natural mood boost. Now I’m at home, getting some rest, and taking a bit of time away from work.

In retrospect, I wish I had just taken the day off rather than try to power through. While I have been getting better at listening to my body, I still have a long ways to go.

I’m looking forward to a week and weekend of rest. Back to the basics.

Fintech Disruption

Last week I wrote about why I love the fintech industry. Coincidentally, last week Charles Schwab also announced that they were getting rid of stock trading commissions. Interactive Brokers, TD Ameritrade, and E*Trade quickly followed suit.

Robinhood has been one of the fintech darlings when they launched with completely zero commission trades many years ago. Millenial investors like myself began our investing on the Robinhood app and the amount of users on the app is astonishing.

The start-up has been so successful it has forced the other traditional brokerages into their business model. Many are saying that Robinhood is no longer a disruptor because of this, but I believe the opposite. This is disruption at it’s finest—Robinhood broke the traditional system!

It’s going to be interesting to see where Robinhood goes from here. I find it hard to believe that they were not expecting this for many years now. Yes, they may lose a portion of their top part of the funnel, but I have a hard time seeing many Robinhood users now switching brokers and millenials/Gen Z using anything other than Robinhood.

Howard Lindzon writes about Schwab and Robinhood in his blog and I thought it was really interesting and insightful to hear from a primary Robinhood investor.

Sadness and Gratitude

I started off this Monday morning with a great meditation. I use the Calm app and today’s theme was gratitude where we ended the meditation with a reflection on people that we’re grateful for.

It was a great morning until I started catching up on my phone. There was some bad news from a friend regarding her mom’s declining health and then I read news about one of my favorite athlete’s mom suddenly passing away.

On my walk to work, I was able to reflect a little bit on the bad news that I just read and started to really notice the suffering from some of the homeless people around me in the financial district.

The news had me a bit emotional and made me realize the day to day struggle that some live through. A very positive morning turned into a somber, sad, and emotional morning for me.

I wish happiness is a permanent thing in life, but the unfortunate reality is that life is full of both happiness and suffering. There’s a lot of luck and bad luck in this journey of life.

Reflecting back on my morning, I think it’s good to turn back to gratitude. It’s important that I remain grateful for everything I have in this life. There’s nothing guaranteed in life and you don’t remain lucky forever.

The Fintech Shakeup

I love my industry of fintech. I have been involved in the financial world since I started my first job out of college and I love following fintech trends and updates.

The financial industry is one of the few industries left where the incumbent(s) have not been disrupted by start-ups. For example, Walmart was disrupted by Amazon, cabs/limo by Lyft/Uber, etc.

This hasn’t happened in the financial space. The big banks and firms are still the big boys on the block and prime for disruption.

It’s easy to see why fintech is one of the hottest industries in VC investing. Access for all to financial advisors, loans, financial products, and investments is now becoming a real thing.

This is why I am so excited about working for Secfi. We’re in a very niche part of fintech, but we’re part of the trend that is democratizing financial access for all.

Morning Habits

One really bad habit that I’ve recently redeveloped is checking my phone in the morning right when I wake up. I used to do this a lot, but was able to curb the habit during my last couple years,

It’s pretty easy to point out why I started this bad habit again. By the time I wake up between 6:30-7:30am, our team in Amsterdam is almost done with their workday. I get anxious thinking about what’s happened and if there’s anything pressing.

This is a terrible habit. I tend to stress myself out by overloading myself right when I wake up. Furthermore, I lose productivity. Rarely does much get done while I am in bed and instead of getting on with my morning routine, I procrastinate with no progress done.

It’s time I put my phone away and live in the present in the mornings. This isn’t a complicated experiment, but I can imagine I’m going to be much happier and productive. Looking forward to writing about the results soon.

The Days are Long but Years are Short

I wrote last week about my one year anniversary at Secfi. I can’t believe it’s been an entire year here.

I signed a lease to move into our office space at the Spaces on 3rd and Mission in December. We started with a tiny one person office for myself and slowly kept moving offices. Earlier this week, we moved into the corner suite complete with our own conference room.

Here’s a picture of my current view from my desk. I decided to put some Thursday night football on while I finished up work.

While it’s a testimony of our team’s hard work and success to have this great office and working conditions for our team, I am also writing this at 7:24 pm while still in the office.

It’s been a long day for me. I spent nearly 10 hours in the office so far today and probably have another hour to go after I finish this post.

With that said, I still can’t believe how fast the year has gone. It felt just like yesterday I was on a flight to Amsterdam to meet the team for the first time.

Despite the long days and hours, I couldn’t be in a better position. It has been an amazing year and I am even more excited for the year ahead. Time to crack open a beer to celebrate.

Market Watch: Is this the End?

The start to October hasn’t been great for the markets. Fears of economic slowdown, Trump impeachment, the list goes on.

The 2.99% drop in the S&P 500 is the fourth worst start to the 4th quarter, just shy to the 3.01% drop in the 2009 4th quarter.

Is this the end to the greatest bull run we have ever seen?

The fear is reaching near all-time highs. My friends have been talking about the eventual recession for seemingly ever now. The political environment sure doesn’t instill a lot of confidence.

Given all this, the S&P finished the 3rd quarter of the calendar year just below all-time highs hit in July.

So what’s to make sense of all this? Perhaps it’s time to slow down a little bit and slowly start pulling back. Signs are trending downwards, but the world and markets are not ending.

We saw what happened last Q4 and we now hit all-time highs just half a year later.

I’m not putting cash under my mattress, but it’s time to air on the side of conservatism at this point in time.

Forever Busy

One of the executives at my old firm that I used to work for used to always say, “you know you made it when you lose complete control of your inbox.”

Perhaps I just never gave it thought or I was just naive, but I suppose I always thought that if I worked hard enough, I could always keep my head above water, meet all deadlines, etc.. I mean, I like to think I work very efficiently and ensure that I stay on top of things, so why do I have to fall so far behind that I lose control?

As my career progressed and I was given more responsibility, I started to realize that fighting the constant busy is an unwinnable battle.

The reality of most demanding jobs, yet alone at a fast growing start-up, will force you to constantly work with your head underwater.

There’s always more projects and more revenue to chase. Part of figuring out work-life balance is to not always be on top of everything, but making sure that you know how to deal with the constant sense of busy.

Embrace the busy and the grind. It’s part of the job and won’t change.

The Stuff You Didn't Know About

One of the things that makes working at a start-up interesting is the unpredictability of what you’re going to be doing on any given day.

Of course there’s the fire drills like any normal job, but I’m talking about the random stuff that fall outside your normal job scope. These task can range from mind-numbing but must be done tasks for the business to random odd jobs.

While shopping for TVs for our conference room today, I started thinking about all the side tasks that I’ve been responsible for:

• Finding an office in San Francisco for the company

• Researching and comparing company benefits

• Stocking the office with snacks, drinks, and beer

• Planning offsite meetings at hotels

• Team social events

• Determining company policies

• Designing company “swag”

• Helping determine locations of company trips

I always welcome these tasks as it’s a bit different than the normal business development tasks I do 90% of my day and quite frankly, it’s a lot of fun.

Investing in Unsexy Companies

I am and have been particularly interested in investing in companies tackling unsexy problems.

As a consumer, I love the travel or food industries as much as the next person, but there’s a dime a dozen companies out there trying to solve every single niche problem associated with these traditionally “sexy” industries.

While I don’t believe competition is necessarily a bad thing for a start-up, some industries just have no defensible moat leading to an undifferentiated market. How many personal finance apps or meal kit companies are out there at this point?

As someone who has done small fun consumer side projects in the past, I understand the appeal. It’s fun starting that food, travel, or clothing company. Fun doesn’t always make a good business though.

Tackling the unsexy problems of the world may prove to be an easier path to success with much less resistance.

For one, there’s less competition naturally as people tend to gravitate to solving only the sexy problems.

And two, people are much more willing to pay to take care of problems they don’t want to deal with, i.e. the unsexy problems, e.g. I’d much rather book my travel or spend time researching where to eat dinner than researching what soil to buy for my garden or dealing with my overfilled garbage can.

So bring on the waste management, soil, and other obscure start-ups of the world. There’s lots of problems in the world to be solved and they don’t always have to be sexy.

Start-up Growing Pains

One of my favorite subjects that I enjoy reading about is start-up growing pains and the issues people have when getting the company off the ground. The stories always seem to a follow a theme. Initial success mixed in with “failures” or “disasters” followed by triumph through hard work and perseverance.

At Secfi, we experienced similar issues earlier this year which we like to label as the growing pains of becoming a more mature company.

I’m not going to divulge too much information here, but I do hope to write in more detail about this one day. Long story short is that we lost a relationship with a key business partner earlier this year.

As a small start-up, we rely on a lot of key business relationships and this one proved costly. We lost multiple deals and clients because of this. We had to have a lot of difficult conversations with potential clients. It was a frustrating experience for all parties and during the time it was happening, it was hard to envision how we were going to recover.

Looking back at this experience, I truly believe that losing this relationship is going to be one of the best things that happened for Secfi. Yes, we lost revenue and deals because of this, but it allowed us to take a step back and reevaluate how we were handling all aspects of the business.

We decided we needed to get more defined processes in place. We started diversifying our business relationships to ensure that we have back-up plans and options. It allowed us to focus on product and automation. We had the difficult conversations with clients and learned how to handle these situations.

In theory, we all want our companies and start-ups to go perfectly, but the reality is that is never the case. There will always be hiccups and roadblocks along the journey. The question isn’t whether these growing pains will happen but rather how you respond and handle these situations.

Recovery

My general strategy to battling colds and minor illnesses is to get a good workout in and power through. It’s generally worked over the years. I can’t remember when the last time I was sick enough to keep me home or stop me from my normal day minus some sniffles here or there.

Well sure enough I started to feel a cold coming along this week with a sore throat starting on Tuesday and affecting my nights and mornings. Given the week’s events, I decided to power through with all events mixing in normal workouts here.

I started to feel the effects Friday after work and a workout. I thought I could sweat this one out and get on with my Friday evening. I wasn’t feeling too hot and still decided to keep dinner and drink plans with friends. On Saturday, it was a gorgeous day so I thought the beach, dinner, and drinks would kick the cold.

This wasn’t my smartest idea. I woke up this Sunday morning feeling like I was hit by a train. I’ve been home all day recovering in what feels like the worst I’ve felt from a cold in recent memory.

It’s an important lesson that I need to learn how to take care of my body and get proper rest. My body fought and fought for days, but at some point it was going to give.

This is my own fault of course. If I got some rest earlier this weekend, I probably would’ve been fine and not have lost a day to this cold. Next time, I’ll refer back to this post and tell my stubborn self to sit out some events and get some rest.

This is What I Signed Up For

Our CEO was in town this past week for meeting and such. Having a team spread out between San Francisco-London-Amsterdam definitely poses it’s unique challenges, but it makes times when we all can get together that much better and more valuable.

We had a week packed full of meetings, brainstorming sessions, interviews, meet and greets, and a lot of fun in between. Reflecting back on the week, it’s amazing to see what we accomplished in just a week when time is limited.

We had a final lunch Friday afternoon with the entire team including our newest hire who will be starting with us in November. By then, we were all a little burnt out of discussing hard strategy and deal flow, and conversation naturally turned towards dreaming about the future of the company.

We talked about the future design of the office, funny marketing tactics, and ridiculous swag that we all wanted. We joked about Silicon Valley, billboards, and shared hilarious hypothetical situations.

I remember sitting there at that lunch table after an hour of good laughs, and thinking that this is what I signed up for. We worked our ass off all week. Made great plans and strategies for growing this company. And now we are sitting here on a sunny Friday afternoon celebrating our wins and discussing the future dream goals of the company.

There’s going to be a lot of hard work ahead and we need to execute, but that Friday afternoon was a great reminder of why I made the right decision to join Secfi.