The fomo market

I was having lunch with some people from the team today and making fun of myself for being a sissy and not buying more $SHOP before the earnings release. It went up almost 10% since and I had been looking to buy in for over the last month.

I barely got “it’s up 10%” out of my mouth when my coworker said, “it’s been up 30% since you started talking about it and I bought in.”

I’m glad I gave someone a good buy tip at least, but I’m of course kicking myself for this. I wrote about the month of fomo last week and nothing has changed.

The market so far in 2020 has been amazing. Seemingly everything is going higher. It’s good to be a long investor in this market.

This of course is the dangers of investing. It’s really easy and you can even say human nature to get greedy in this environment. I look at 10 and even 20% gains in short periods as the norm and it’s easy to start thinking about doubling down thinking it’ll happen again.

We’re in a historic bull run, but we need to remember to take profits and properly diversify. Yolo trades are fun until they’re not.

Over the next month, I’ll also be looking to take profits and diversify away from some of my heavily appreciated tech positions. There are some great value stocks out there and I don’t own enough at this point.

Thanks Andrew Yang

I just read an op-ed on CNN titled Thank You, Andrew Yang by Jeff Yang and I felt the need to write about it. Andrew Yang announced today that he was suspending his Presidential campaign.

I first heard about Andrew Yang on Joe Rogan’s podcast. I read the description of the pod and instantly declared him to be a crazy socialist. I listened to the full pod with every intention of trashing him and dragging him along the mud to my friends and inner circle

I finished the podcast and not only did I like the guy, but he jumped to the top of my candidate list. Yang needed a miracle to win the Presidency and no one including myself ever thought that he would be a serious candidate.

That is not the point however. Andrew Yang represented something different.

Yes, he was Asian American and I’m not going to lie and say that did not have a minor impact. As an Asian American, I would love to see a fellow Asian American in the white house one day.

However, the thing that impressed me most about Andrew Yang was his practicality and his thought leadership on tech among his democratic candidates.

Yang was the only candidate to understand the coming of robots and automation. People will be out of jobs in 10 years. Yang was not afraid to preach that.

He understood that the issue with big tech companies is, well not the companies in itself, but the data they controlled.

I don’t know Universal Basic Income (UBI) will ever work. It tethers on socialism and I am a believer that if you give a little, it may be too much of a slippery slope for us to stop. But if Yang was running it, I would entertain it and be open to trying it.

The unfortunate reality is that Yang may have been too intelligent to appeal to the masses of America. As we saw in 2016, the uneducated unfortunately dictated the course of the election and led to our current “President.”

I’m not sure if Andrew Yang will be a candidate in 2024, but his legacy is set in stone. If he does make a run, I’ll be there to follow and support him. He paved the path. Thanks Andrew Yang.

Otsukaresama

I meditate almost every morning using the Calm app. I learned to meditate using Headspace, but switched to Calm because of the Daily Calm which is a new meditation every morning. I find it refreshing and the narrator always ends with a new lesson and/or fun fact for the day.

Today’s meditation was called Otsukaresama which is a Japanese word. If you translate this directly to English, it translates to “you are tired.” This is one of those words that no direct translation can justify though.

The Japanese use the word Otsukaresama to greet each other in a positive light. When you show up to work, you use it as a way of saying thank you for your hard work. After work or when you are leaving, the word is used to express that you worked hard today so you are tired so thank you.

The work is hard so thank you. You have worked hard so thank you. A lot of Japanese culture comes down to showing gratitude and that is one of the reasons that I love Japanese culture.

I write this in the evening in my office where many of us are still grinding. Many people can feel sorry for themselves in these situations, but I am lucky to be in this situation. To have this opportunity to work on building a great company with amazing people is a dream come through.

The hard work will come and go. Otsukaresama.

Secfi family

Things are a bit weird at home. Usually Sunday nights consist of sitting on the couch with Sophia and our cat Toro. The house feels a lot emptier. I know things are going to be difficult for awhile as we adjust.

On to the next…

I didn’t know what I was getting into when I joined Secfi almost a year and half ago. One of the best surprises was that I gained a family.

Between trips to our Amsterdam office, company off sites to Norway and Austria, and visits to San Francisco, the Secfi family is going strong and we’re getting closer than ever.

Today we decided to take a quick day trip up to Sonoma for lunch and wine tasting. It was a short 6 hours together, but it reminded me that if we’re doing this right, we’ll be more than co-workers.

We discussed a Dutch word at lunch called gezillig. There may be no direct English translation, but it’s a word used to describe that feeling of a cozy situation. After the events on Friday, going to Sonoma with the Secfi family and friends was gezillig.

Eat in Peace, Toro

Our cat Toro has been battling with lymphoma over the past month. We had last saw the vet on Thursday and although Toro has not been himself, we made the plan to put him down sometime after the weekend if he was not doing better. The vet said he was not suffering and I figured we would take the weekend to say goodbye.

Unfortunately, Sophia called me last night when she got home from work and said Toro was not doing well. I canceled our dinner plans and rushed home. I knew right away that it was time.

This was the first time in my life that I’ve had to put a pet to sleep. It happened so quick. I hardly had time to process all my emotions. I felt happiness for the years we had, sadness for the thought that he was not going to be around, and of course relief that he was headed to a better place.

I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on our life the past 7.5 years together. I adopted Toro one weekend on an impromptu visit to the Seattle Humane society. It was a silly college decision made without too much thought but ended up being one of the decisions I made.

I have never been a cat person. I had always thought I would get a dog soon after college, but the appeal of a lower maintenance pet was appealing. I suppose it’s true that the best things in life are unexpected.

Toro was everything I was looking for. He was a dog-like cat that quite possibly might be the most affectionate animal I have ever met.

We had striking similarities including our love for food. I shared many meals with Toro and his favorite meal was Costco rotisserie chicken.

I learned a lot from Toro. I learned what it meant to care for someone else besides myself. I learned patience and gained fatherly instincts. I learned that sometimes it’s okay to just sit all day and do nothing.

I’m going to miss him a lot. I adopted him when I was 22 so you can say we grew up together. He was around for some of my highest highs and some of my lowest lows. You could always count on him for a cuddle at the end of a long day.

The vet asked if I wanted to keep his ashes and I surprisingly said yes. I was initially against keeping my pet’s ashes, but I realized that I wanted his legacy to live on. He’s had such a big impact on my life, and I wanted to make sure that I never forgot him.

Eat in Peace, Toro. I hope the Costco rotisserie chicken buffet is as good as we had hoped.

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast

I borrow a lot of terms from the military for use in my business and personal life. One of my favorites is “Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast”.

The quote is used by the US special forces to wage combat against an enemy. In the fog of war, the first instinct for the layman is usually to move as fast as possible as that’s the best way to avoid getting killed. In reality, moving too fast will cause you to lose focus, training, and likely your goals as well. The fastest way is to move slow and smoothly.

Of course, there’s a large application of this to business and something I’m currently practicing right now. This last month has been nothing short of amazing for Secfi as we’ve hit many major milestones.

Our team and investors have so many great ideas for taking this company to new heights. Marketing, growth hacking, hiring, etc…. all insanely exciting stuff.

It’s times like these that we need to remind ourselves that “Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast.”

Exciting as it may be, trying 50 different things without executing properly leads us nowhere. Rushing products to market without proper planning and testing will lead to failure. Hiring as fast as we can will lead to more trouble down the road.

Things move fast in the startup world. We brainstorm, create, iterate, fail, and try again. These things take time and patience.

Secfi did not get to this level of success by throwing darts on the board and seeing what sticks. We went slow in development, marketing, and hiring. That resulted in a smooth process that we are proud of and that our clients love. Now our growth is much faster than we envisioned.

Now is the time to grow, but while we do, we need to take a step back and remember, “Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast.”

A backbone?

I was not surprised to see Trump get acquitted today by the Senate. I was surprised to see one Republican senator actually vote to convict Trump. Kudos to you Mitt Romney, you have a backbone and earned a lot of respect today.

Yeah I know… this could all be a political play and Romney just has his eyes set on the 2024 election. Time will only tell. Regardless, this may be the only time I’ll give props to a Republican senator in the near future so let’s end on that.

I reflected a little bit on this today after reading this and realized how important it is to have a backbone to be successful in the business world. When discussing a “backbone”, I can’t help but think about one of my former bosses at my last firm who would yell at people, “Do you not a have a backbone?”

She was a very stereotypical crude New Yorker and I never would recommend that you need to be like her to be successful although she was undoubtedly very successful. With that said, it’s an important takeaway and piece of advice.

Being passive and going with the flow only gets you so far. You need to learn to stand up for yourself and what you believe in. Have a backbone and don’t let people walk all over you.

Month of the fomo

The big news in the markets the past week is obviously Tesla which has closed today at $887. On August 4th, the stock closed at $228. You can do the math on that gain.

This is purely anecdotal but Tesla is quite possibly the most talked about stock on social media. Memes and jokes on FinTwit are absolutely hilarious.

People love talking about shorting Tesla as much as people love talking about being long Tesla. Well known investors love to have Twitter arguments over whether Tesla is a giant scam or the future of transportation.

I have no position here, but my good friend who sold his Tesla shares months ago has been browsing Reddit and sending me posts of people making money hand over fist on Tesla. The fomo is real. If only I had the cojones to put $100k into call options on Tesla months ago….

I’m going to continue to sit this one out. It’s too volatile and risky for my taste. Congratulations to those that made a killing and best of luck to those who are buying into positions this week.

End of January goal check

I wrote about my 2020 goals on January 1st. One of the the things I wanted to do was check in a monthly basis on my goals to help me along and keep myself honest. Overall, progress has been good, but I’m not close to being there yet. Still lots of room to grow.

My written goals for 2020:

1. Continue to deepen my meditation practice including meditating more on weekends and on vacation

2. Develop a habit of writing daily even if it’s a sentence long

3. Eat more vegetables and less bad carbs

4. Make learning about markets a priority and catch up on activity at least weekly

5. Develop better email/work and home/leisure habits

My end of January 2020 check-in:

1. I have good but not great on my meditation this month. I started meditating more on weekends, but I still put my meditation on the back burner when I am in a rush or on weekends when I have things to do. In February, I want to focus on meditating on the weekends more.

2. I have missed days of writing here and there, but I have largely avoided long stretches of missing blog posts. Step in the right direction.

3. I’m happy with where I’m at, but data is a bit skewed as I was in Amsterdam for half the month. I lost 8 pounds and feel healthier overall, but the real test will be when I’m home for the entire month

4. I’m making progress here. Again, stats are a bit skewed as I was abroad for much of this and my routine was thrown off. February will be the real test to develop better habits.

5. Not too much has changed for me here unfortunately. I still check my email first thing when I wake up, and have not be able to fully unwind when home. One I really need a lot of work on.

Niners played 50 of 60 minutes and blew it

Yesterday, my 49ers took on the Chiefs in the Super Bowl. Another Super Bowl and another disappointing outcome for the 2nd time in 7 years. First of, congratulations to the Chiefs who haven’t been to the Super Bowl for 50 years. They’re a very likable team and Mahomes is easily the best quarterback in the NFL right now.

Of course, this will be another loss that I will remember for awhile. Again, I felt like we were the overall better team evidenced by our 20-10 lead with 11 minutes left in the game.

On one hand, the Chiefs have been doing this and coming from behind in each of their last games so you can’t be too surprised or shocked. On the other hand, well we were up by 10 and had so many chances to put the game away or win.

We were the best running team in the NFL this year and we failed to run the clock out. Jimmy Garroppolo showed that he was not an elite quarterback. He made mistake after mistake and missed Emmanuel Sanders who was wide open for a touchdown on the last drive.

This the Super Bowl and you need to play all the full 60 minutes at an elite level to win. Whether in business or sports, you need to be full go all the time. Never assume that something is a done deal until the clock shows 0:00 or the ink is dry.

The Chiefs suffered a devastating loss in last year’s AFC championship game and came back to win it all this year. I’ll remain optimistic and hope that the Niners can also be on that same trajectory.

Veterinary disruption?

My cat Toro was trending for the better in the latter half of the week, but he is back to being lethargic and not eating. He could just be full and wants to have a lazy Saturday, but this could unfortunately be the final trend down. I have my fingers crossed and I’m staying optimistic, but like I mentioned in my previous blog post, I know the time is coming sooner than later.

Toro has had many vets. He had a vet when I adopted him in Seattle that was great, a couple vets in New York that were more or less worthless and just wanted to charge me for anything possible, and now I have been taking him to the San Francisco SPCA for his emergency visits.

The SPCA is a wonderful organization. They are a non-profit so anything we pay goes to help run the hospital as well as pay for pet adoptions and getting pets fixed. Like any organization, they aren’t perfect and I believe this is largely in part due to the lack of funding. The organization runs mainly on donations.

I was not happy to see my bill for Toro’s two emergency room visits, but I understood and paying money to the SPCA made me feel a lot better. Being a vet, like a doctor is mostly a thankless job. One vet tech at the SPCA said, “we’re the red headed step child of the medical industry.” Unfortunately, I can see how this is very true.

I’m not well versed in healthcare and my suspicion is that this is more of the norm, but the software they were using looked like a Windows 95 application. Pet hospitals are overwhelmed. Vets do not have room for appointments within 2+ weeks. There is a lack of technology to help vets do their jobs better.

This is an industry prime for disruption.

Unfortunately, the big problem here is that disrupting an industry does not always make a good business. As I understand it, being a vet is a highly stressful job without the pay of a highly technical job.

As a consumer, I would love to see more startups try to take on the pet healthcare industry and improve the lives of our pets and owners. Unfortunately, as an investor or entrepreneur, I don’t see how this could be a very profitable industry to take on at the current moment.

There are too many issues. Medicine and hospital care is brutally expensive and consumers just don’t have that kind of money to spend on their pets.

I hope there is a day in my life where I can write a check for an investment in a startup that I think could truly disrupt the industry and make a good business. There’s a lot that needs to happen in the healthcare industry overall before we get there though.

The long term hold

One of my best friends reached out saying that he needs to learn how to keep his money in things he believes in. He was early on in Bitcoin and sold really early before the huge rise. And he’s been an avid supporter of Tesla for many years now, but sold his stock well before the stock 3x’ed in a span of 3 months.

He’s now got major fomo, but has a great learning experience. Most new investors have to get burned to really learn how to invest.

My recent streak has not been great either. I had targeted 3 stocks to buy in January. $CDLX, $DIS, and $SHOP. I bought into $CDLX and $DIS and both have been down since then. On the flip side, $SHOP hit new all-time highs today. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. That is investing.

Despite this, it’s important for myself to hold true to my thesis on these companies. The longer you hold stock, the more room there is for growth. Whenever I buy into a company, I look to hold long-term for at least a year if not many more.

I’m not a skilled enough investor to be a day trader and I don’t ever intend to be. We’ve all heard famous investors have different quotes such as “investing is easy” and “investing is simple”. My take is that investing is as easy or as hard as you want it to be.

I choose the easy route and follow trends. I stick to my theses and hold stock long-term so my potential for error is much lower. There’s no right way to invest, but you need to stick to your guns and your beliefs.

Life, death, and taxes

One of the smartest people I’ve known and someone I consider a mentor once said, "There’s 3 truths in life: Life, Death, and Taxes”. RIP Bill, we miss you.

Over the last few days, I’ve been dealing and coming to terms with my cat’s inevitable death. I mentioned that I took Toro to the vet last week and it appeared that he was turning a corner over the weekend. Sophia and I came home on Monday to see a constipated and really weak Toro. We took him to the ER and had him hospitalized over night to get tests done.

The doctor isn’t 100% sure, but the diagnosis appears to be lymphoma or a form of cancer. If true, the absolute best case is Toro lives for another few months to a year and at worst, we’re going to have to put him down soon.

I had never really thought too hard about Toro dying. I have had him for the majority of my adulthood since I was 22 and he is an older cat at around age 12. He’s been such a big part of my life and I had thought that he would live to meet my first born child or at least that was the goal.

Unfortunately life likes to bite you in the ass sometimes. Life is full of amazing highs and some miserably painful lows and I feel like one of the lows will be coming shortly. I suppose that is the beauty of it all. Life without death is life without happiness. We can’t feel highs without feeling pain at times.

It’s been a weird week between Kobe Bryant’s death and Toro being diagnosed with terminal cancer. Writing about death may go down in history as one of the weirdest blog posts I ever write, but this is perhaps my way of coping and dealing with death.

If you’r reading this, you’re experiencing life right now. You’ve also likely experienced taxes and will continue to experience taxes for the rest of your life. The one unknown is death and if there’s one thing for certain is that we will all experience it at some point.

Now comes the happy part. We’re all going to die anyways so might as well love one another, make an impact in someone’s life, and have a lot of fun while we’re here.

What Kobe meant to me

Just like much of the rest of sports fans in the world, I was really shook by news of Kobe’s death. It was surreal and my first instinct was that this had to be some kind of hoax.

I never thought this day would come. Kobe seemed damn near invincible. The fact that he died at age 41 is incomprehensible. This is easily the most devastating death of our generation.

Like many in my age group, Kobe was a hero and inspiration. He was someone that we all wanted to be like when we were older. He inspired an entire generation of basketball players.

Possibly the worst part about everything was that his life was just getting started. His post basketball life was going to be just as great as his accomplishments on the court. He won an Oscar award just last year and has been huge in moving forward women’s basketball.

He’s going to be missed. He was my childhood hero and inspiration. Even though I was never close to becoming a professional athlete, I learned so much from Kobe in many ways. His life will continue to inspire mine for the rest of my life.

I wanted to write some thoughts on some lessons that I learned from Kobe.

• Compete. Although he may have seemed like an asshole on the court, Kobe was one of the most competitive people on the planet. He competed in everything he did. We know what he did on the court, but stories of him off the court are just as crazy. He wanted to win and he won a lot. Life isn’t about winning or losing, but you need to understand that to be the best, you have to compete.

• Inspire the next generation. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment in life is about inspiring others to also be great. Despite being one of the most competitive humans on the planet, he understood that his records would be broken by those that he inspired. In the end, it isn’t about records or winning for Kobe, it was ultimately the impact he had on others. We must continue to understand that our lives will be measured by the impact we have on others, not our own accomplishments.

• Over prepare. Kobe’s greatest asset on the court wasn’t his natural athletic ability although he had a lot of that, but his intelligence for the game and his preparation. He knew the ins and outs for every player, every tendency of every team, and every referee on the court. He prepared, and then prepared more. There will always be someone smarter than you in the room, and you can never control that, but what you can control is how much more prepared you are.

• Be a good father. Kobe’s genuine love for his children was well documented. I don’t need to write a paragraph on why this is important in life, but perhaps this was one of Kobe’s most underrated accomplishments.

I’m going to miss Kobe. The best thing I can do in my life is to do what Kobe would want: live his legacy through my actions.

Secfi's $550 million raise to help employees of private companies

I don’t write directly about Secfi very much on this blog. I imagine that’s mainly due to the fact that I use this blog as personal therapy and after living and breathing Secfi 5-7 days a week, it’s a nice breath of fresh air to write about other topics.

I’ll break that trend for now as I wanted to discuss a significant milestone.

About two weeks ago, we went to the press with our $550m capital injection by Serengeti. You can read about it in the Financial Times here.

The cash was raised as a facility for us to provide more financing opportunities for employees of private companies. Having a dedicated facility allows Secfi to focus on our efforts on the important parts of the business: helping employees with their equity.

While this was just announced a couple weeks ago, we have been working with Serengeti for almost 2 years now on deals. They have been a very valuable partner and I am excited to continue to work with them to solve equity compensation for all.

This is undoubtedly a significant milestone for us as a company, but it really is just the start. We have helped thousands of people with equity compensation over the last two years, but that is barely even scratching the surface of the gigantic market of private company employees with stock options.

This may be the first large facility we raise, but if everything goes to plan, this won’t be the first. We have a massive opportunity ahead of us and I personally am looking forward to taking this head-on. Time to my head down and go to work.

BTFD? Credit card data analysis

To buy the dip or not. That was the question I was pondering as I caught up on the market this morning. Coronavirus scare has the market pulling back a bit and naturally I found myself as a potential buyer. I’m not a doctor or scientist, but I don’t believe the coronavirus is as big as an epidemic as some people make it out to be.

One company that I started to follow this morning was Cardlytics ($CDLX). I am a bit late to the party here as the company went public in January 2019 at $17. The stock is trading at around $88 at the time of writing.

The stock fits nicely in one of the criteria I like in stocks: unsexy that not many people know about. The average person does not know that Cardlytics exist or can explain the business model without deep research.

I simply love the business model. Cardlytics creates software that helps marketers analyze credit card spending. Every major bank is a customer or will likely be a customer as Cardlytics helps analyze their customers’ spending habits and identify trends so that they can better reach their customers.

The stock has already 5x’ed since IPO and is definitely a bit overvalued. With that said, the business model is strong and major financial institutions with lots of cash are their primary customers so I see this growing quite significantly.

I’ll be monitoring this one and be looking to add to my portfolio when there’s a dip.

Day from hell and home

I’m officially back in San Francisco after nearly 3 weeks and words can’t describe how good it feels to be back at my desk.

Overall, it was a great trip mixed in with a lot of unfortunate events such as a bad cold turned worse after landing and a stomach bug for an entire day. Yesterday’s travel day was no exception. Here is a bullet point recap of my day:

• Flight was slightly delayed. No harm, no foul as we took off 45 minutes after expected.

• Seat in front of me decided to see how fast he could lean back and slammed my headphones against the back of laptop and broke them.

• Got a lot of work done, but my laptop charger broke so my laptop ran out of battery half way through my flight.

• I finally get home, but find my cat looks frail and skinny. My girlfriend said she was worried as he seemed to have a cold, but this seemed much worse. Brought him to the vet almost immediately after and spent 4 hours in the ER.

By the time I got home at 8pm, I was on the verge of collapsing in stress and exhaustion. Seeing my cat looking that frail and weak perhaps pulled the “father” out of me for the first time in my life. It was brutal watching him like this and not being able to help, and I can imagine this is what a father feels like when they see their children in a similar situation.

Everything seems to be okay. He started eating a bit this morning after receiving a few shots and we’re hoping to hear good news from his blood tests.

Unfortunately life is going to present these days quite often. It’s important to stay positive and realize that everything is going to be okay. I had a good meditation this morning and then went to a workout class and I feel much better on my outlook on life right now.

Simplicity and overcomplication

One of my favorite football coaches and personalities in the world is Mike Leach. He was formerly the head coach at Washington State University which is one of UW’s rivals. I loved him for many reasons, one of which is that he never had much success against us. He’s an eclectic personality and quite possibly one of the weirdest people alive.

His twitter account is pure gold. A friend of mine sent me this Athletic article where they interview current and former WSU players about Coach Leach. It’s aptly named.

What the %#$@ is going on right now?

It’s a highly entertaining article, but has a lot of great insight on his style of “leadership” and how he coaches. One of sections in the article discusses Leach’s offensive philosophy and his “playbook”, or lack thereof.

Several players comment about how they didn’t have a playbook and how insanely simple the offensive scheme was. Leach’s coaching entailed telling his quarterbacks to throw it to the open man, not the ones that were covered.

As major college football as offensives get more complex every year to keep up with the times, Leach has been remarkably successful in taking under skilled players and taking them to new levels.

Over complicating matters can be a killer of talent. Sometimes you need to let your players just go out there and play football.

This is what Leach does. He sets the simple groundwork and let’s his most trusted players call plays, adjust on the fly, and just play ball.

We can all be guilty of over complicating matters in our day to day life. Sometimes we don’t need to run a complex analysis to get to the right answer. Most times the best answer is the easiest and simple one right in front of us.

Remote Work Trips

I am currently sitting in my hotel room in Amsterdam at midnight watching the end of the AFC Championship game waiting for my 49ers to come on in about 40 minutes. I had planned on flying back home today, but decided to extend until Thursday for some meetings this week.

While I am happy to get the NFL games on TV in my hotel, I am a bit homesick. I wish I was in San Francisco for the game. It’s been over 2 weeks since I’ve been home. Modern technology such as FaceTime makes things as easy as it has been to keep in touch with loved ones and friends, but it obviously does not replace in-person time.

Unless aviation technology moves quicker, I don’t see a world in my lifetime where flight travel can take a 10 hour SF to Amsterdam flight and make it that much quicker or better. I hope to live long enough to see this, but we’re just not there yet.

Something in our lifetimes that we can look forward to is remote work becoming ubiquitous in our work culture. These long work trips would be much better if our family would be able to come with.

The tech world is much farther along in the remote work space for obvious reasons, but I look forward to the day when other industries catch up.

This standard of course starts with us who work for innovative companies. We have to set the standard going forward and perhaps even encourage this future of work.

The short attention span trend

Took a few days off from writing so I can enjoy my time with the team in Austria. We had an amazing time snowboarding for 3 days and then doing a lot of socializing. We have a lot of new team members that I had yet to meet in person so it was the perfect opportunity to get to know everyone.

I am very grateful and excited to be surrounded by this amazing team. A year and a half ago I joined Secfi in search of something new, but I did not know I was gaining a family. I am back in Amsterdam for a few meetings before taking off back home on Thursday.

Onwards…

I don’t watch a lot of television or movies. I do enjoy a lazy day every once in awhile, but generally Sophia and I have trouble sitting for 2-3 hours at a time. We lose attention, start checking our phones, and our minds began to wander.

I suspect that this is a generational thing. Millenials have so much access on their fingertips and we’re always looking for something to stimulate ourselves.

Enter Quibi. The new short-form video streaming service is set to launch in April led by founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and CEO Meg Whitman. The duo has raised a $1.4b to help create content to be delivered to your mobile devices in 7-10 minute chapters.

When you think about the decision to sit down and watch a TV episode or a movie, you are entering in a bigger commitment. Many of us, myself included, enjoy the occasionally content splurge but do not often have the time for a full movie or episode. This is exactly the trend that Quibi is trying to fulfill.

While someone is waiting for a train, in a short Uber, or perhaps just waiting for someone at the bar, they can watch a short chapter in a much more digestible format.

The streaming wars are going to get more interesting and it will be interesting to see how Netflix, Disney, and others change their content strategy to match what Quibi is doing.

A few of us at the top of the mountain in Austria.