Gratitude, Vietnam, and the story of Flower

I was sitting in a restaurant in nearly 100 degree heat admiring the array of oysters, clams, and crab on our dinner table. It was blistering hot and I was sweating as I was cracking open another crab leg. The smell of lemongrass and Vietnamese spices were strong. I was in heaven.

Unfortunately this is 2020 and I was not in Vietnam… I was in Sacramento California. Little Saigon is probably as close as it gets to Vietnam for this Californian in this global pandemic and political unrest. It was a somber of the times we live in. Many out there are longing for more than just the ability to travel internationally for leisure and it was a good time to reflect on being grateful.

Of course, there’s few countries out there that resemble gratitude than Vietnam. My last trip to Vietnam was in 2016 and it was… well eventful. My best friend and I landed in Hanoi for the first stop of our trip in the fall of 2016.

The minute we had gotten back to WiFi, our phones blew up with notifications that one of our good friends from high school was involved in a severe accident and he was in a coma. Our first day of my vacation was spent trying to figure out our plans to return home. We ultimately decided to stay as we heard that our friend’s condition was stabilizing. Needless to say, this was on the back of my minds for the entire trip.

On the second day, we were roaming the tourist area where we met Flower. She was a young “tour guide” looking to sell us greeting cards that folded open. Unlike the other “tour guides” in the area, she was fluent in English so we actually stopped to speak with her. We’re glad we did as Flower became a friend of ours for the next few days in Hanoi. She organized “locals only” tours for us. Took us to the best restaurants. She even hung out with us in the evening at dinners and for drinks.

Admittedly, it did feel a bit transactional. She was very much only doing this for a paycheck at the end of the trip and she remained somewhat closed off for being our “friend”. It wasn’t until one of the last days of the trip that Flower opened up to us.

Flower had organized a motorcycle tour in the northern part of town with her and her friend. This was also going to be election night in the U.S. Like most, we thought we would go on the tour and come back to wifi to see Hilary being announced President. Of course, we were wrong and quickly grappling with the thought that Donald Trump was President of the United States.

Clearly heartbroken and scared, Flower decided to take us to one of our spots we identified on our hit list: Bun Cha Obama or the Bun Cha restaurant that Obama ate at when he visited Vietnam. It was a sweet move that improved our mood slightly but she could tell that we were deflated and non-talkative. Flower could sense this and did well what only Flower does best. She made us feel better.

Flower decided to open up and decided to tell us the story of her life. Like many in Vietnam, her life was not easy, but I did not expect what I was about to hear. She grew up poor in a tiny village outside of Hanoi.

In her late teenage years, she fell in love with someone in the military and had a child with him. Their love lasted many years with her boyfriend’s wealthy family paying for their lives. Ultimately, Flower’s boyfriend’s family decided that falling in love with a poor villager was not in their son’s best interest so overnight, they were broken up and Flower was left with their child.

Flower was devastated but needed to provide for her child so she learned English while working odd jobs to provide for her family. Heartbroken, she trudged into Hanoi every day to sell goods to tourists. She worked 12 hour days and then drove back 2 hours back to her village. Every. Single. Day.

While not easy, her life started to stabilize. She soon met another man that she quickly fell in love with. Things moved fast and they quickly began to build a life together. Years of hard work had paid off and Flower and her boyfriend bought land and began to build a house for their family.

The ground work for the house was set when things started go sour in the relationship. Her boyfriend was accusing her of being a prostitute as her job was to work as a tour guide for tourists. He became abusive and ultimately decided to take the rest of their money and run away.

Again, Flower was devastated. She described sitting there on the empty second floor of her half-built home thinking if she should just jump head first. She knew she had a child to take care of and knew that life goes on.

At this point of the story, my jaw was on the floor as I realized how much heartache and devastation one young woman has gone through in her years on earth. Yet, I was in constant awe at her outlook on life and how she handled these issues.

“I thought about jumping off the floor and ending it, but I realized that my life is good. I have been through a lot, but I am happy and I am healthy. You can’t think that one thing is the end of your life. You can’t control everything. There will be better days and you have to just be happy with what you have. ”

I don’t think I’ll ever look at life the same way after that day. Yes, we were devastated that Trump was elected President. Yes, our friend in a coma was on top of mind and we were in constant worry. At the end of the day, one of the strongest things we have as humans is our resiliency.

We had a couple more great days in Hanoi with Flower. We were still shook but we learned to live in the present and just be grateful for where we were. Our friend eventually made a full recovery and while Trump has set us back many years, the country isn’t dead yet.

Whenever I think that times are rough, I think of what Flower taught us. Be grateful for what you have.

Feedback

I’ve been swamped all week with work but today’s checklist was particularly difficult. Yes… it’s bi-annual review time. I’ve grown to realize the importance of feedback over the years, but I do admit that writing up feedback forms and reviews are a bit of a slog.

Giving the feedback is not the issue. Rather it’s the process of ensuring that I am comprehensive, thorough, and thoughtful. It’s not easy writing performance reviews and giving genuine constructive feedback.

Lots of people say they love receiving feedback, but few truly have grown to love it. We’re trying to change that at Secfi with more regular feedback sessions and much more candid discussions. Part of this process is ensuring that everyone takes the process seriously and that starts with me.

It may have been a long afternoon and evening working on feedback, but it’s all worth it. Feedback and team improvement are long-term efforts that must be started early on in the process. If you don’t create a culture around feedback and continuous improvement early on, it will be much harder to enforce down the road.

Little Saigon

I spent the end of last week and part of the weekend in Lake Tahoe. A couple friends, Sophia, and I rented out a house for June and July as a place to escape the city. We were very fortunate for the opportunity and I loved my time up there. In a sense, it was an escape from the realities of today’s world and issues.

On the way back to San Francisco, we decided to stop in Little Saigon in Sacramento for an outdoor dinner. Little Saigon is a recent discovery that I’ve made a point of visiting nearly every time I drive back from Lake Tahoe. It’s a long road of strip malls with amazing restaurants and stores. The best way I can describe the place is that it feels like you’re in Asia. I love everything about the place.

Last night we ate at Seafood House Quan Oc and it was one of my favorite meals in recent memory.

Viet-cajun style crab and crawfish. Vietnamese style clams and oysters. I sat in nearly 100 degree heat eating amazing seafood and I couldn’t help but feel like I was back in Vietnam traveling. I had a lot of thoughts, but I couldn’t help but remember my last trip to Vietnam in 2016. It was an eventful one to say the least so I plan on writing a longer post about that trip and our friend Flower later this week.

Earnings week!

It’s a big rest of the week for the stock market. Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Alphabet are headlining on Thursday.

Is tech really immune to COVID-19? Are they all overvalued? When is the bubble going to burst. This week’s earnings won’t answer all those questions, but we’ll have a much better idea.

I got caught chasing a bit the last couple of weeks and I’m largely sitting on my hands right now on the defensive. Things are frothy and buying the potential earnings release bump is a dangerous move that I’m not willing to risk right now.

My prediction: earnings are going to disappoint a bit across the board. Market will take a slight tumble in response to earnings but recover over the next few weeks.

Q1 earnings turned out better than expected for most, but we’re all quick to forget that the blunt end of the COVID-19 impact happened in Q2. Yes, even tech companies can feel the hit as well.

I’m headed up to Lake Tahoe tomorrow for one more weekend at our summer house and to help pack up our things. Looking forward to catching some sun and taking a bit of a break from work.

Stock option education

We’ve been making a big push into some of the large companies that are headed towards IPO in the next year. It’s always fun working with employees at these companies as their dreams are starting to become reality and they can see the light at the end of the tunnel with the IPO.

On the other hand, it’s also a bit terrifying as it makes me quickly realize just how little the vast majority of employees know about their stock options. The default action is to do nothing and unfortunately that’s mostly what I hear from our clients.

For most of our clients, their stock option package is the majority of their net worth, but people don’t typically treat it as such. Those that do not plan end up leaving a large chunk of money on the table upon exit. Those that have been through this almost always say the same thing, “I wish I had known about Secfi at my last company that had an IPO.”

We know how valuable our services can be for our clients, but we know we have a long ways to go to accomplish our mission. Most startup employees do not know services like Secfi exist and we need to change that.

Meditation and yoga

It’s been another hectic week and I’m ready for the weekend already. Lots of long nights this week that I hope isn’t the norm going forward.

One thing getting me through is my meditation and yoga. I have been meditating for years, but just started doing yoga during quarantine to get a mindful workout in. I have tried yoga on and off for years, but like most things, I didn’t truly start enjoying it after trying it long enough.

In a sense, yoga is just like meditation. Both require you to focus on the present moment so you can relieve your mind. In yoga, there’s a physical aspect to it that involves your body.

Yoga has proven to be an amazing escape from my work day and stresses of life. Today, I did a 45 minute sessions at home before dinner. When I was done, it felt like the weight of the world was off my shoulders.

The webinar roadshow

I’ve written a decent amount about the webinars that we have been hosting at least monthly since the beginning of quarantine. At the beginning of the year, our strategy was to go on a roadshow and do a lot of educational webinars at many of the startups in the Bay Area. It was meant to be a great way to get our name out while helping fellow startup employees with their equity.

Of course since the start of quarantine, we’ve had to make a pivot to webinars. The change has been interesting but welcome so far. It was a much more seamless transition and we quickly found out that organizing a webinar was much quicker and easier than organizing an in-person event.

There are a lot of downsides. Nothing can replace the in-person socializing or trust building. I miss meeting people and developing deeper connections. Unfortunately I don’t believe that will be happening for at least a year so we’ll make do. The webinar roadshow goes on.

Tomorrow I’ll be presenting at a webinar for the women’s group at a leading tech company. Our contact at the company is a passionate individual that we have loved working with so far and we’re really excited. I’m always excited for webinars, but you get especially pumped when you help contribute to closing the gender pay gap.

We have always maintained that startup equity is a large part of your compensation. Unfortunately, the vast majority of our clientele is still men. One way we can help achieve equality is through educating women so they can make the most out of their equity and compound wealth. I’m looking forward to doing that tomorrow!

The religion of tech

I am late to the party here as always when it comes to books, but I am finally going to start Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. I was skimming the book Q&A by Yuval at the end of the book when I came across this question.

I like to joke about the cult-like tendencies in the tech world, but Yuval explains what I’ve been missing. Tech has become some sort of religion complete with both the good and bad of traditional religion. The parallels are a bit uncanny.

At the most basic terms, both religion and tech promise a better future, a symbolism of hope if you will. Many tech companies have mission statements catered to change the world for the better. Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Uber all refer to everyone, world, or earth in their mission statements.

And yes, tech has their cults and people who think they are demi-gods too. No need to list names here, but you don’t have to go far to find your cult-like leaders out there.

Like traditional religion, technology will have the power drive people to madness and kill, or even worse, start wars leading to the deaths of millions.

For better or for worse, tech has become the most important and popular religion in the world right now. Whether the promise of the better future comes through is still TBD. I am an optimist and believe that tech can be the driver of a better tomorrow.

The great Twitter hack

Yesterday, Twitter was hacked. Many influential figures including Elon Musk, Barack Obama, and Bill Gates tweeted and asked individuals to send Bitcoin to an account in which they promised to return the favor and pay back double.

News today revealed a lot of rumors including that this was possibly an inside job by a Twitter employee and that about $120,000 was lost to the scam. Yes, $120,000 not million. I’m by no means saying this is not a large sum of money, but for an elaborate scam, this was pennies.

Consider this. These hacker(s) devised a plan to hack into one of the largest social media companies in the world. Not only that, they were able to get into the accounts of some of the top Twitter accounts in the world. This was not just an elaborate scheme, but a very impressive one that could not have been thought up by some amateur hackers. These hacker(s) are impressive to say the least.

These presumably brilliant hackers came up with this scheme and the best they could do was Tweet the following:

Holy hell. For an elaborate scheme this complicated, the best they could do was Tweet the same message asking people to send them Bitcoin. In the day and age where a single tweet can send a firestorm through the stock market or much simpler, create enough fomo to have people buy an absurd amount of goods, they decided to do this.

We dodged a bullet. These hackers may have been brilliant in many ways, but man are they god awful at the business side of things.

The scary part behind all this is how much worse this could have been. Yes, much more money could have been lost. But Twitter is one of the most important platforms in shaping global politics today. If these dumb-brained hackers orchestrated this joke scheme, imagine what some real hackers may be able to accomplish one day.

What keeps me up at night

What keeps you up at night?

One of my favorite questions asked on almost all our due diligence calls we have with companies. We used to ask it quite a bit back in my consulting days as well.

It came up on a big diligence call we had earlier this week and I thought about how I would answer it if an investor asked me that question.

Truth is that a lot of things keep me up at night. Husky football woes. Hunger. FOMO on stocks that I didn’t buy. But when it comes to Secfi, it’s a really good question.

I get a lot of friends who aren’t at startups who ask me if I’m ever worried that we’ll fail. That doesn’t really keep me up at night. I came in with the expectation that joining a startup is risky and that I’d be happy no matter what happened. I know a lot of founders and employees unfortunately do wrestle with that reality quite often.

While I don’t fear failure, what keeps me up at night is letting my team down. The last few times I recall waking up in the middle of night and resisting every urge to open my laptop has been related to worrying if I got something done for someone on the team.

Are they going to be stuck for a day because of me? Are we going to lose the deal because I forgot to do something? When you’re part of a small team, everyone is such an important cog in the machine. There’s seldom someone else on the team that can do what you do. This is the nature of startups and something that every great team player deals with.

I’m okay with failing, but if we go down, I want to be known as a great teammate who gave it his all.

There's always more time

Today at 5:00pm, I stopped working and went for a run. After I got back, I prepped dinner, put it in the oven and took a nice shower. I ate dinner with my girlfriend and then did a 10 minute yoga stretch. No, my day today wasn’t light or my day off. My inbox is as big as ever on Mondays and my to-do list is over 10 tasks long.

This may seem like a pipe dream to many who work demanding jobs and I get it… I used to feel that this wasn’t possible back in the day.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about time management, it’s that there’s always more time. This may seem counter intuitive because the point of time management is to prioritize tasks and appointments in your limited time every day.

You can’t create more time, but there’s always more time in the day. Say what?

Think about your busiest day of the last week. I’d assume it was filled with back to back meetings while your inbox and to-do list piled up. Everything feels urgent and if you don’t get your tasks done now, then your clients will leave you and you’ll be fired.

Now think about your time spent that day and think about how many of those things you did were truly urgent and would’ve resulted in something utterly awful happening to you or your job. Maybe 1 or 2 things. Likely none.

Not everything is urgent. You can let it sit for awhile and likely no one is going to die. (Except if you’re a ER doctor, you should probably get back to work)

If you come to terms with this fact, you’ll find more time in your day. You don’t always have to take that call right now. You don’t have to clear your inbox just this minute. The proposal likely can wait another day.

In fact, if you apply the 80/20 rule to your calendar, you’ll probably find that you’re better off shelving 80% of your schedule and planned tasks for those 20% high value add items.

As for leisure activities. That’s part of your day too. Exercise, family time, and breaks are all part of your time. Plan for it as if it’s another work task. There’s always more time in the day for these things if you look hard enough.

New energy

It’s amazing what a little bit of time off can do to your mental and physical health. I’ve had the best week of work in recent memory after taking a few days off for July 4th. Sure some of it was created by external factors, but this week just felt great. My energy levels were at seemingly all 2020 highs and work came easy.

The start of a new quarter is a great time to adjust and refocus on our priorities and goals. Q2 was difficult due to COVID-19. This past week we had a lot of planning meetings with the team to discuss our goals and initiatives for Q3. It’s hard not to feel the new energy roll in as we kick off Q3.

Energy and optimism are contagious. I’ve been doing my best to project my new energy this entire week and will continue to do so. Something is brewing in the team. You can sense it and see it. “Pumped” and “excited” are common words in Slack. There are a lot more smiles on our Zoom calls.

The entire team has new energy and it feels great.

For Secfi to have the quarter that we all hope, we need the entire team’s buy in and focus. We’re off to a great start already.

Strategic aggression

Like every other company, Q2 was a quarter of dealing with the COVID-19 fallout and making sure we are set-up for the future. The virus hasn’t gone away, but we are in a much better position to deal with a potential second wave of the crisis as Q3 starts.

Right now, our focus for Q3 is be strategically aggressive. We know there are a lot of opportunities out there for us and it’s out there for the taking. We also know we have limited resources and COVID-19 is still very much alive.

We are going to be aggressive this quarter, but we’re going to do it with a lot of proper thought and planning. We’re going to team more than we’ve ever done before to ensure that we make the right decisions going forward.

We’re going to pick our battles and attack those with full force. We’re also going to shelve other projects and initiatives that are better suited for another day.

It’s going to be a great quarter for us and I am excited.

New utopia?

One of the best parts about my job at Secfi is that I get to know brilliant and interesting people at startups all over the Bay Area and world. I am always humbled by the intelligence and drive of our clientele and I’m very lucky that my job is to help them.

I meet some awesome people and end up being friends with some of them. Today, I spoke to a long-time friend of Secfi who has been working with us and giving us feedback for about 2 years now. He’s been great and is now in need of assistance with his options. It’s always great catching up with him, but today he told me that he left his job as he’s looking to start a new city.

Yes, you heard that right. A city. Not a startup, but a new city.

As most, I was initially really taken aback by this. Did my friend lose his mind? Is he trying to start a cult? What the fuck?

The crazy part? The more I listened to him, the more the idea started to make more sense.

Perhaps city is not the right term. My friend is looking to start a community that may one day grow into a city. These types of communities exist already, they’re called communes. He wants to create a new community built around tech and an economy around remote work. This community may one day grow into a town, and perhaps one day a city. Not so crazy anymore is it?

Sometimes when we hear grandiose ideas, such as starting a new city, we tend to dismiss these things ideas for the simple fact that it is just inconceivable at this point in time. Most are also quick to dismiss how far society has come along. Internet with you at all times at all places seemed inconceivable just 15 years ago.

Perhaps in 15 years, I’ll look back at this blog post in my buddy’s new utopia community/town/city and laugh at the day.

Niksen - the Dutch art of doing nothing

My colleagues in our Amsterdam office got me a book called Niksen by Olga Mecking. What is niksen? Well it’s the Dutch art of doing nothing. I suspect my colleagues didn’t get me this coincidentally as well I am really bad at doing nothing.

My personality tests almost always land me as Type A as they come. I believe this comes from my Dad who is really high strung and loves to live life as a ball of stress. I’ve gotten better over the years due to meditation and wine, but relaxing has always been a bit of a struggle for me.

To understand niksen, you likely have to understand a bit about Dutch culture. I am very fortunate to work for a startup with an office based in Amsterdam due to Dutch co-founders. I’ve been lucky to be out to Amsterdam many a times as the Dutch have one of the coolest cultures in the world. They are some of the happiest (and tallest) people in the world.

As Olga mentions in the book, the Dutch don’t really talk about doing niks or nothing. It’s just simply part of their culture. It’s something we Americans could probably learn a lot from. Many of you are probably thinking that you do niks all the time when you mindless scroll through Instagram or watch Netflix. In reality, that is not niks because you’re still doing something albeit one that requires little brain activity.

Niksen can be many things to different people. Perhaps it’s walking without aim through a park. Maybe it’s sitting and just people watching. It could just be laying on your bed staring aimlessly at the ceiling. For me, niksen is that ultimate feeling when you’re just sitting or walking somewhere without any major thoughts just enjoying your surroundings.

We all know that doing nothing is hard. Work and the availability of distractions through technology and other mediums have made it even harder. Reading Niksen isn’t going to make you suddenly good at doing nothing, but it’s a start.

Like many things I’ve learned in Dutch culture, niksen is something I’m hoping to adopt. Whether it’s taking a break in the work day or leveraging the weekend, the beauty about niksen is that you can really do it anywhere. Maybe if I do it enough, I’ll make my way to a hybrid Type A/B personality one day.

Time for a break

There hasn’t been a lot of vacationing lately due to the global pandemic. I know that can impact morale and work productivity so at Secfi we’re trying to encourage people to take time off.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been a good lead by example here as things have been busy as ever and I find myself still working long hours.

Given the long weekend, I plan on heading up to Tahoe today and taking the weekend through Monday off. Everyone needs a break and I fully expect to be recharged and much more productive come Tuesday.

There’s a lot of schools of thought on vacationing. I’ve spoken to a lot of people who completely unplug and that’s how they recharge. I know a lot of happy and successful people who like to work a little bit every day even on vacation. I have historically been in the latter category but might try to unplug completely this time around.

I’ll see if I can keep my hands away from my inbox the next few days.

The power of fomo. It is what it is.

I started to realize that I was much more introverted than I thought right after graduating college. I value a lot of alone time where I can be by myself, be selfish, and do everything that I want to do. Of course, that’s always easier said than done due to the phenomenon of FOMO.

We’ve all been through the traditional fomo situation. You are feeling tired or simply just don’t feel like doing something with your friends, but the fear of missing out on a fun activity or night leaves you going anyways.

Of course, fomo comes in all shapes and sizes. Fear of missing out on that hot stock/company forces people to make poor investment decisions. Fear of missing out on the perfect opportunity forces companies to release products early prior to being ready.

The latest fomo trend in the tech world has been Clubhouse. The voice app is some sort of country club for the Silicon Valley and tech elite to host discussions about business, life, and politics. The problem? There are only 5,000 invites sent and you’re probably not part of the list.

Exclusivity seems to be the latest trend in tech and I can see why. Hundreds of thousands have flocked to Twitter to try to find invites to Clubhouse. The fomo is real and a powerful marketing tool.

Enter 👁👄👁. What is it? It is what it is.

Okay okay, had to get it out of the way. Sorry. But really what is eye lips eye?

Put simply, a clever bunch of tech employees decided to band together in a sort of satirical marketing campaign. What started as an inside joke turned out to be a viral Twitter campaign where people were added 👁👄👁 to their Twitter names and replying “It what it is” to nearly every mention of the emojis.

There were fake app screenshots and the website collected hundred of thousands of email addresses over the span of 48 hours. It was clearly a mockery of the recent fomo in apps such as Clubhouse.

Upon release, the truth was revealed and there was no app. No product release. It was simply a link to donate to one of three BLM causes. Once you did, you were granted the ability to buy merchandise that would further support these causes.

A brilliant and hilarious marketing campaign that weaponized unreasonable and childish fomo in adults ended up raising over $100k for some amazing causes.

I am not sure what the legacy of 👁👄👁 will ultimately on the industry. I am hoping for positive change as we realize just how powerful our tech community can be. I also hope that it’s a wake up call to our community that perhaps there are more important things in life than being on a list for an app.

Fomo is real. It is what it is.

Can you speak the language?

I made the jump from large firm to tech world about two years ago. At some point after signing my offer letter, I remember meeting my CEO and some of our investors for drinks and dinner while they were in New York. A normally talkative person, I ended up sitting around the table barely uttering a word.

I wasn’t shy. I wasn’t intimidating. I just had no freakin’ idea what these guys were talking about. They used tech and VC jargon I had barely heard of before and it was common language to them. I just didn’t get it back then.

Given my job was to talk to people in tech everyday, I knew I had a challenge in front of me. I had to learn to speak their language. I set out to sign-up for newsletters. I started following the right people on tech and VC twitter. I read and read and read.

Looking back on that time seemed like a long time ago. Once you’re in the tech world, you have to start living it.

Perhaps the first time when I realized that I got everything was when I rewatched Silicon Valley for the first time a few months ago. I was shocked at how much more relevant and funny it was the after getting more of the jokes.

This of course isn’t a blog post about me finally fitting in with the cool kids. In fact, I would argue that it’s quite the opposite of the “cool” crowd, but I digress.

You have to be able to speak the language of your clients and industry. Whatever that industry may be, tech, investing, healthcare, etc. if you can’t relate to your customers, you’re going to be treated as an outsider. In a world of relationships and belonging, you don’t want to be treated as an outsider.

We’ve made some great hires from both people traditionally outside the tech world and from those that have been in the industry for awhile. As part of our training, I tend to inundate our new hires with tech/VC news and recommend different blogs for them to subscribe to.

At Secfi, we provide valuable financial services for those in the tech, startup, and VC world. Our team needs to be able to speak their language so they can provide the best service.

The wild world of market caps

One of the most humbling aspects in my experience investing in the private and public markets is how much I tend to underestimate the potential market cap for a company.

There are so many times when I have said, “I can’t see this becoming a $X dollar company”, only to be pleasantly surprised in the next few months/years. It’s a very humbling experience but one that is well worth studying.

There’s likely a few not mutually exclusive explanations for this.

Mathematically a market cap is infinite while you can only go down to 0. Of course, the total addressable market is finite though.

It’s much easier to find losers than it is to find winners. A lot of people can take 10 minutes, look at a financial statement or latest business deck, and determine that this company is likely destined for bankruptcy. It takes much more skill/talent/luck to find the winners, i.e. unicorns.

People are inherently more conservative when it comes to calculating the addressable market and potential for growth. We live in bubbles and sometimes forget how many people there are in the world. We tend to think of ourselves and why we would or wouldn’t use the product and extrapolate that to the world we know.

Of course, these are very simple explanations to a complex world of markets and investing but if there’s one thing the last couple years in the public and private markets have taught us, it’s never say never.

There is more money in the world than ever before. The internet has made a company’s addressable market infinitely times bigger. Technology has injected steroids into companies. Expect market caps to continue to grow and surprise you.

Immigration in America

My parents were both immigrants who came to the US in their late teens to go to school here. Trump’s latest executive order to ban visas for foreign workers through the end of the year hits close to home.

At best, the executive order is a misguided and stupid attempt to protect American jobs. At worst, it’s a racist proclamation meant to rally the America first crowd. Given who we are dealing with in the White House, we can assume this is the latter.

Regardless, I’m not gong to write about evidence showing that Trump is a racist. Anyone with half a brain can see his agenda and goal to divide the country. Instead, I’m going to focus on what immigration means for this country.

Immigration means more jobs for Americans. Immigrants come to America to start businesses and chase the American dream. Sometimes they are forced to start businesses based on discrimination. Sometimes the entrepreneurial spirit is in their blood. More businesses, more jobs.

Immigration means economic growth. Immigration of highly skilled workers allows us to gain a competitive advantage over other countries. Diversity has proven time and time again to increase performance of high quality teams and businesses. The country’s most successful companies would not be here today if it were not for immigrants.

Immigration is part of why America is great. Let’s hope we can elect a leader who understands this before too much damage is done to our economy.