Healthtech

I’m seeing so many startups in the healthtech industry right now seemingly doing well. I wrote about the business of sleep almost a year and half ago and discussed why I’m bullish on the industry. Sleep is just one area of the booming healthtech sector.

I’m also particularly interested in healthtech startups tackling healthier eating. There’s a startup called Levels which monitors your glucose levels and helps you adjust your diet to maintain your glucose levels. I haven’t tried it yet as it seems like a lot to take in, but as someone whose energy fluctuates greatly throughout the day and week, I’m interested to see how it could help affect my performance.

I’ll look to give it a shot in the next few months and see how it affects me.

As a whole, a big reason that startups like Levels are booming is that people are looking to utilize science and tech to maximize their productivity and efficiency in today’s modern and demanding life. It started with simple diets over the last few years and now we’re seeing tech-enabled solutions. It’ll be fun to watch how this evolves.

People are too soft for this

I’ve been going back to the gym lately and it’s been awesome lifting free weights again. I don’t consider myself a big or heavy lifter. I have no desire to get jacked or anything, but I’ve been lifting weights since high school during my football days and it’s therapeutic for me.

It’s a time when I can zone out from work and get some natural endorphins. It’s an hour of my day where I can do whatever: brainstorm business ideas or day dream.

Today was my first day working out my legs and I was thinking about my old football coach. He was a character to say the least, but I always remember when he used to scream at us during weight training to motivate us.

“Look at those people outside. They’re too soft for this!”

While I don’t think football was for everyone, I was always surprised by how many people had desires to play football but were indeed too soft for it. I’m not talking about the contact, but rather the work that’s required.

We all dream of catching touchdown passes and getting a big sack to end games, but not many can put up with the two-a-days, conditioning and weight training required to get to that point. Football is a grind that never ends until the end of your last season.

There’s a lot of parallels to the startup and business world when I think about football. Everyone wants to be an entrepreneur and a key contributor, but very few actually are willing to put in the work to get there. Behind every successful company is hours of hard work, grind and sacrifices. Not everyone can do it - no matter how much they say they can. It takes a special kind of person to go through this grind day in and day out.

Like coach said… some people are just too soft for this.

Human interaction

On Saturday, my friend hosted a small backyard going away shindig for one of our friends. It was a small party but it started to feel like normalcy again. I was a social butterfly the entire night bouncing around from person to person including people I’ve barely met.

I’m normally a person who hates small talk and generally avoids speaking to random people when I can avoid it especially during lunch. Today, I ended up chatting to a random stranger for about 10 minutes while waiting for my food.

When I left, I had realized how uncharacteristic this was of me. It was the moment when I realized just how starved I’ve been for human interaction.

Last week I wrote about how 2021 could be the year of consumer apps. Some of these apps born during the pandemic such as Clubhouse facilitate human interaction. It’s no wonder why these consumer social apps have become so popular during this time.

I’m hoping my social interaction in the next few months will be beyond Zoom and Clubhouse. We’re close and the light is at the end of the tunnel.

Everything is moving faster

Everything is moving so fast right now. Everything is moving at a much different pace than in 2018 when I made the leap to tech.

Companies are being built faster. Tools and resources to build a company have enabled entrepreneurs to launch a business in a matter of hours. Technological advancements have made launching a business seamless and easier than ever.

Companies are growing faster. Remote working and globalization has allowed access to a wider range of talent across the globe. Recruiting times are going down and people are hiring faster.

Companies are going public faster. The emergence of SPACs have enabled companies that were not public ready to go public in record speeds. I wrote a few months ago about the trend of companies going public earlier. Companies like Hims&Hers born just 4 years ago is now public.

Valuations are rising faster than ever. I remember when the unicorn valuation mark was a big deal. Nowadays it seems like every other day there is a new unicorn being crowned. Call it a bubble, but this is different than the dotcom era. Tech companies are achieving growth and revenue rarely seen before in history. We’re in a new era of tech valuations both on the private and public market.

We’re going to have to get used to this speed. Tech growth is exponential and everything will continue to get easier and grow faster as time goes on.

The average day

Back when I was in college and going through my first job recruitment interviews I remember speaking to a young professional who was describing what post-college life was like. He said that the average day in college is way better than the average day of working. It was an interesting take and it always stuck with me.

(I’ve found that to be largely true as I do miss sleeping in and creating my own schedule which I don’t have the luxury of at work.)

I’ve been doing a lot of recruiting lately as our team has been growing like crazy and a question I often get is what the average day at work is like compared to my last job at PwC which is a gigantic firm.

In matter of transparency, I always tell candidates that life at Secfi isn’t always rosey. Startups are hard and I often feel like I’m getting punched in the face every day. There’s a lot of work that candidly I don’t want to do and we don’t have a workforce to pass the work off to. With that said, my bad day at Secfi is still better than my bad day at PwC. That’s a great thing.

On a more positive front, my good days at Secfi are way better than my good days at PwC. There’s no better feeling of fulfillment than growing this company and celebrating wins as a team. Our work is magnified here and it definitely feels that way all the time.

There’s still bad days like anywhere you work but the average day at Secfi is way better than the average day at PwC.

Is 2021 the year consumer is back?

Feeling good again today after a great night of sleep. My energy level is high and I’m running on a lot of positivity which was sorely missing the last couple of days.

I started playing around with Dispo last night with Sophia. I didn’t get the concept at first which is typically the norm with me and consumer apps. Why would I not want to see my pictures instantly? Of course after about 5 minutes playing on the app, I got it.

The app creates a feeling of nostalgia for the good ole days of disposable cameras. With everything being tracked or documented nowadays, people are longing for that feeling of surprise and uncertainty. Dispo provides you with just that in the form of a modern disposable camera. No more taking 500 photos and taking the best one. I love it.

On the topic of consumer apps, it seems that the pandemic has created a sort of resurgence of consumer products. The old saying is to build for consumers for fun but build for businesses to make money. There’s a lot of truth in that saying, but it seems there’s a big a second wave of consumer startups are making rounds.

I’m not sure if Clubhouse, Dispo, etc. will make it to where Facebook and Instagram are today, but early results seems that these may be the most promising apps on the consumer side in awhile.

I wrote last year how this will be a fascinating and interesting time to build startups and we’re starting to see that first wave of new startups hit the market.

Growth and patience

I’ve been in a weird funk the last couple of days. I think it’s probably that I’m just a bit tired from the long birthday weekend. I didn’t even stay out late on any night or anything, but I was active pretty much everyday. When you’re 30+, a full day doing activities can feel like you were out at a club until 4 am. Hoping I can catch up on some sleep tonight and get back to my groove tomorrow.

On another note, I was on an interview call with a candidate this afternoon. He had previously worked at a PE firm with a VC arm and he guessed that we were in the bucket of startups making close to $50m in revenue. I was flattered, but told him that we had a long way to go until we get there.

Growth is one of if not the most important metric in the VC backed startup world. Every startup generating revenue is looking to grow as fast as possible. Of course that’s easier said than done.

I often get stuck in own thoughts when it comes to growth. Why aren’t we growing faster? What else should we be doing to grow? I know a lot of my friends at startups often face the same questions even if they’re growing at a healthy clip.

I’ve seen a lot of numbers for these fast growing startups and the reality is that most companies take awhile to hit consistent growth numbers on the revenue front. It takes awhile to carve out a new industry or launch a brand new product.

I’m guilty as anyone of being impatient when it comes to growing my startup and I need to often remind myself that this is a marathon, not a sprint.

I heard an impressive VC once say that “we should be long-term greedy” and I’ll be reminding myself when thoughts about growth come to mind.

Turning 31

I turned 31 on Saturday and had an amazing weekend with friends and family.

I took Friday afternoon off and hung out around the city. Then Sophia and I got an omakase dinner at Robin in Hayes Valley. It was an all-around great experience with fantastic food. It had been awhile since we had a chance to experience fine dining so that made it all the better.

On Saturday, we went to McInnis golf center with friends and hit a bunch of golf balls with my close friends. It was a blast and we ended it with a crab dinner at Crustacean. There’s no better way to celebrate a birthday than garlic noodles and crab.

Yesterday I went to play Half Moon Bay Ocean Course and it did not disappoint. I didn’t play well and my swing was all over the place, but the views and experience were second to none. It was the best golf course I’ve ever played.

My birthday was nearly a one-year anniversary of when the pandemic started. Last year, we got a crab dinner which ended up being our last dinner out for many months because of the lock down. It was a bit surreal to think that it’s been almost an entire year since that happened. It felt like the slowest fastest year ever.

This year’s birthday was a great reminder of just how lucky I am to be here. The year has been anything but easy, but if the pandemic taught me one thing it’s that my family and friends mean the world to me and I’m lucky to have them. It would’ve been terrible getting through the pandemic without them.

30 was a unique year but a good one. I’m looking forward to 31 being even better.

The rise of gaming

I like to think that I grew up in the wrong generation. My childhood dreams of becoming a pro-gamer would have been much easier in this day and age.

It’s crazy how much gaming was taken over the world. When I was a kid, we played video games quite a bit, but the thought of going to a tournament or being on a e-sports team was well… weird.

We now live in a day and age where e-sports are blowing up. People are viewing e-sports athletes like heroes and watching hours of people playing video games on Twitch. Colleges are starting to recruit players to join their e-sports team.

Needless to say there’s a lot of money right now in gaming and the industry is growing fast and I don’t see much stopping it anytime soon.

If you wanted proof of whether our kids will grow up and be gamers, you can look no further than Roblox which is slated to go public through a direct listing next week. The company which caters to children gamers primarily under 18 has almost 40m daily active users. To put things in perspective, there are about 74m children under 18 in the United States. Of course, not all users are in the US, but it’s a crazy number nonetheless.

I’ll be all over Roblox as they direct list next Wednesday and taking a very long position. It won’t be the only gaming company I’m looking to add to my portfolio as well in the next few years. Gaming is growing and I’m looking to ride the wave.

Growing up as a company

I had a due diligence call today about a company in the space industry. Staying purposely vague, but it was fascinating to say the least. I’m not sure when people will start going to Mars and if it will be in my lifetime, but given how fast space technology is moving, I wouldn’t be too surprised.

On another note — I’ve noticed just how much we’re growing up here at Secfi. Yes, there’s still a lot of move fast/break things, hack things together, fake it till you make it, etc. but we’re starting to operate like a bigger company.

It really hit me today as we started talking about hiring project managers and outside consultants to prepare sales materials for us. My work here is starting to look a lot more like my work at PwC at my prior life. It’s awesome to see and scary at the same time.

I know we can’t be in startup mode forever and there’s a reason why big companies and firms do things the way they do, but it’s admittedly hard to let that startup feel go at times. It’ll be important for us as a company to keep

Turning the page on a new week

Last week was stressful. It was one of those weeks where nothing was working and everything was going against us. We took some L’s as a team unfortunately. I was tired and irritable for nearly the whole week.

By Friday afternoon, I was exhausted and braindead. I drove to Lake Tahoe with my family and my body started giving me hints that it was not happy. I had aches and the start of a fever.

I’ve always stressed mental toughness and having short-term memory when it comes to business. Things will not go your way all the time and that’s just part of life. On a sales/BD front, we run into losses frequently and we need to overcome them quickly before the hangover hits and affects new deals.

Last week was one of those weeks where we had a string of bad luck and nothing seemed to work. It was easy to be down and negative about everything. When this happens, sometimes a bit of time away from work is probably the best thing you can do yourself.

I took the weekend largely off and spent time with my parents and step-sister up in Lake Tahoe. I hadn’t been on a family vacation in probably almost 20 years, but it couldn’t have come at a better time.

A couple good nights of sleep and time on the mountains was the recharge I needed. I feel like a new man today and my outlook is back to being positive. I’m looking forward to starting this week off on a better foot and ending it much stronger than last week.

Light at the end of the tunnel

I had a blast speaking at StartupGrind 2021. The event was virtual this year but everything was well done. I can’t wait until next year. Hopefully we get to do it in person and I get a rider.

I’m giving a similar presentation to a group of MBA students at Wharton tomorrow and I’m excited for that. These presentations are always fun despite the circumstances but I would really enjoy doing this in person.

I’m starting to see a lot of chatter of pandemic spikes settling down at a a lot of businesses. Pimp your home business numbers which had a lot of pandemic tailwinds seem to be settling down and other industries seem to be on the same trend.

People seem to be booking a lot of travel for the summer and fall. I know there’s a lot of optimism that we’ll have live events in the fall again as well.

Just like we needed to look ahead to the pandemic and how that’s going to affect businesses, we should also look ahead to how to adjust to life after the pandemic. Lots of things will go back to normal, but there will be a lot that will permanently be different because of COVID.

We’ll need to reevaluate businesses and valuations in the post-pandemic world. Just like some companies and industries that got a COVID bump, there’ll be some that’ll experience a post COVID drop or perhaps a post COVID accelerator.

It’s going to be an interesting new few months as the weather warms up and we start to turn to spring and summer. The light is at the end of the tunnel and I’m cautiously optimistic.

Startup Grind 2021

I’m on the list of speakers presenting tomorrow during Startup Grind 2021. I’m really excited for the opportunity to present to fellow builders and leaders in the startup community. I’ll be talking about startup equity compensation and how to properly exercise your stock options.

The pandemic fatigue is kicking in and Startup Grind 2021 is a much needed change of pace. I’ve really been needing a jolt of energy recently and the presentation tomorrow will fill a much needed void.

Of course, I wish I could do this in person. I love networking at conferences and meeting other driven individuals. I miss the days of big conferences no matter how exhausting they are.

I hope we’re all back to doing this in person sooner than later and these conferences don’t become permanently virtual.

Golf weekend and consumerism

I took Friday off and had a great day despite being a bit hungover from one too many drinks at happy hour on Thursday. I had an iron fitting in the morning and then played TPC Stonebrae in the afternoon. It was a cloudy day but the course was pure. I had a 5 hole stretch where I had 2 birdies and 3 pars (one of which was 1cm away from being a birdie).

Today, I played Indian Valley up in Novato today with the usual crew on a gorgeous day. I shot a 98 but I felt that I played the best I’ve had in a long time as my driver and short game was on point. My irons weren’t awful, but I keep pulling all my approach shots. I’m going to blame the fact that I’m too good for my old clunky irons at this point. My new clubs can’t come soon enough.

I’m officially addicted to golf as evident by my splurging on custom built new irons and 3wood. As I was paying for the clubs, I realized just how much of a splurge this was for me. Spend thousands on something that’s not a vacation seemed a bit excessive, but I’m fortunate to be in a position to afford it.

I wonder if I would have been a bit more hesitant to spend that much money on golf clubs prior to the pandemic. I have noticed that my spending habits have changed quite a bit since the pandemic started. I’m much quicker to pull the trigger on consumer goods and hobbies. I know I’m not the only one as spending has seemed to skyrocket across many industries.

The amount of companies I see approaching record sales is insane. I get emails from DTC brands that I follow all the time saying they are backordered or delayed. It really does feel like we’re heading into the Roaring 20s again.

I’m excited but at the same time a bit scared.

When things start to get real

We just hired someone for People Operations here in San Francisco. I always said that when we hire a HR person, that’s when things start getting real.

The word startup can mean a lot of things nowadays. People use it to speak about private companies who have hundreds of employees and some use startup to only speak about early stage companies.

Right now Secfi is coming up on two years since our Series A financing round. I have been associated with the company for over two and a half years as employee #8. We’re getting close to being at over 50 people and growing rapidly.

By all means, I still view us a startup. I don’t think I’ll get rid of the startup label until we’re well over 500 people and running a stable business. With that said, things are starting to get real here.

We’re implementing new policies, adding new benefits, hiring new executives… all the things that have to happen before we knock off that startup label.

I’m excited for the new team members and for our new People Operations hire to get going, but I don’t think I’ll ever get used to having HR-sponsored meetings about expense policies here at Secfi.

Crypto collectibles

One really awesome application of the blockchain is non-fungible tokens or NFTs. In short, they are crypto tokens which are meant to be unique. Naturally, a great application of NFTs is for collectibles such as art, virtual trading cards, etc.

I’ve been a beta user of NBA Top Shot since last July. NBA Top Shot is a platform that allows users to buy virtual trading cards on the blockchain. The company has partnered with the NBA so everything is properly licensed. Each “moment” is a NBA play or event featuring one player. For example, you can aim to collect one of the 5,000 moments of Steph Curry hitting a 3 pointer or the limited 10,000 moments of a sweet Draymond Green assist.

The name of the game here to create value is scarcity and NBA Top Shot achieves that by limiting the amount of moments they create. Users can buy packs of moments at special release dates. Each pack contains multiple and random moments so you may be lucky enough to draw one of the “legendary” moments or just get average common moments.

The platform comes with a marketplace where you can buy and sell specific moments to complete your collection.

Unfortunately despite being a user since July, I sat on it and never went out to buy any packs or moments. Yesterday, I finally caved and waited in the queue to buy the “Cool Cats” pack.

I honestly had a lot more fun than I expected. I was like a kid again collecting trading card/pokemon card packs. This time though, I can see the real value of each of the cards I collected in the marketplace and aim to sell it. I wish my childhood had the blockchain for my Pokemon card collection days.

I’m not positive where NFTs like moments in NBA Top Shot will be in the future. I hope I can view my moments as investments long-term but realistically this could all be a fad that fades before it picks up steam.

Given that, I am bullish on the future of NFTs and think there are many other applications out there. Simply put, everything is going digital and it’s naive to think collectibles won’t follow that trend.

NFTs are one of the best applications of the blockchain that I’ve seen so far and I’m excited to continue to participate in this even though my “investment” may not materialize in the long run.

Countdown to reopening

To be honest, I have no idea what we actually celebrate on President’s Day. I’m just happy we don’t have a racist bigot in the office anymore.

It was Sophia’s birthday on Saturday and then we did a small Valentine’s Day dinner at home on Sunday. The weather has been crap all long weekend.

Crap weather and the pandemic restrictions really make things tough. I feel like we’ve been playing the “so what do you want to do?” game all weekend long.

I know I can’t complain too much. I know others are struggling through the pandemic as well.

I hung out with my 10 year sister yesterday and she has been out of school and away from friends for over a year now. I feel terrible for kids and can only imagine how their development is being impacted. Parents are also struggling through things right now waiting for their kids to go back to school.

I’m counting down the days.

The future of food is...

I just blocked off an hour each day for the next two weeks so I can Tweet. It’s not always rosey, but working for a startup can be pretty cool at times.

On another note, I stumbled into a Clubhouse room where a bunch of guys were talking about the future of food. Like most things on Clubhouse, I found it interesting at first but quickly got bored. It did get me thinking about tech advancements and how they are going to affect food in the future.

There’s some exciting stuff going on and being built right now.

Delivery services like Doordash have enabled cloud kitchens so more cooks can produce food catered towards delivery. I can get a bowl of pho in under 20 minutes now. That’s awesome.

Robot cooks are just freakin’ cool. Yes I’d prefer a hand tossed pizza from an expert pizza maker, but heck the next best thing is a pizza made by a robot.

Tech is going to drive down the cost of food and create massive efficiency in how we get food in the future.

That sounds great right? Not necessarily.

While efficiency and cost cutting is great, I’m also genuinely worried about the inevitable future of food because of the impact it will have on mom and pop shops.

Small family restaurants that I love may not be able to survive in this not too distant future.

Delivery services will push people towards cloud kitchens because it’s more profitable for them.

A shift towards delivery over in-person will eliminate a lot of the small 2-4 table restaurants or small counter restaurants.

Lower costs due to automation by robots at competitors will outprice small restaurants who cook the old fashion way.

I hope I’m wrong. The optimistic and probably best case scenario is that these small mom and pop restaurants start to go more upscale and start charging more. I’m okay with that but I’m not sure if others will be. Regardless, I’ll miss my $8 bowl of pho in a 5 table restaurant.

Giving people what they need to succeed

I started my morning with a couple of hours of calls and then headed to the driving range to get some practice in. I had blocked off my calendar between 10-3pm to get some work done, but I wasn’t feeling great so I figured I take my mind off of work for a bit.

After a good session of 100 balls, the weather was great and I decided to go for a run around the Presidio. I got back around Noon feeling great with the sun shining. I was driving back when I made the spur of the moment decision to go and grab lunch at Japantown. That lunch ended up being extended when I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things.

I got back to my apartment to eat and the by time I was back at work it was 2pm. Oops.

It was odd as I felt a sense of guilt for taking a 4 hour break in the middle of the work day, but I felt great afterwards. I proceeded to conduct two interviews and made up the work in the evening quickly and efficiently. My to-do list is now the shortest it’s been all week.

It’s time to start rethinking the 9-5 workday. While I don’t condone everyone taking a 4 hour break everyday, we shouldn’t be looking down on people for wanting to take a break. Sometimes the best things for productivity is to take a break and today was a great example.

I plan on making sure my team has what they need to succeed. I want them at their best and each person needs to decide what they need to be at their best. Today, I needed a 4 hour break to be at my best.

Random musings

I just got done working close to a 12 hour day where I had calls starting at 7:30 and kept going for nearly 9 hours. It was exhausting and I don’t really have the mental capacity to write a complete blog post, so I figured I just write down some thoughts from today:

I just joined the “Baddies Only” room on Clubhouse. Unfortunately I wasn’t invited to speak and had no idea what they were talking about.

My Doordash driver took a photo of my food on his bike on the street to say it was “Delivered” and then never left the food. I would love to know what happened here. Perhaps my poke bowl looked that good that he just decided to eat it?

I’ve been meeting a lot of amazing people interviewing for positions at Secfi. Pretty amazingly, I haven’t interviewed anyone in 2021 that I believed should get the worst rating (1 out of 4). Even my “no” entries are getting at least 2/4. Are we that good at filtering or are my standards too low?

Ghost/cloud kitchens are popping up everywhere. It’s the future of food, but will it be the end of mom/pop restaurants that we all love? If it is, I don’t want the future of food.

Scheduling 3 interviews back to back to back is a terrible idea and I should never do it again.