Secfi New York City

Today I signed a short-term lease in a co-working space in the Flat Iron in NYC. We had been thinking about opening up an “office” in New York for some time and decided to pull the trigger while I am out here. Candidly, I had no idea that we would doing so when I decided to come out here for April and May, but it made too much sense for us.

New York is very much in between San Francisco and Amsterdam where our other two offices are. It’s a great spot in the middle of the two cities to fly to and meet when we need. We have some key partners in New York as well. Last and but not least, there is a lot of great talent out here in New York that would be hesitant to move to San Francisco. It just made sense to get an office out here.

We got a great spot in “Silicon Alley” aka the Flat Iron district. The co-working space is great as it’s catered towards Fintech startups and investors. I feel right at home here and am happy to call set-up shop here until it makes sense to get our own space somewhere else.

NYC Golf Bus

I played 18 at Van Cortland today in the Bronx. It’s not the nicest course, but it’s a fun one and probably one of the easiest courses to get to from Manhattan. Apparently it’s the oldest public course in the country.

I’ve been enjoying my time out in New York but getting out to the golf course is really difficult. Everything is at least an hour away by train. Ubering to a course isn’t an economical option.

I feel like there is a good business opportunity somewhere in this space. There’s a lot of folks who live in Manhattan that love to golf but complain about the inconvenience of it.

I know people like myself would gladly pay a bit of a premium for some sort of service to take me to golf courses within the area. I’d imagine it would be like an airport shuttle.

Biden Tax Plan

I see a lot of people freakin’ out about Biden’s proposed tax plan both on the corporate tax rate proposal as well as the capital gain rate proposal. I think the big thing is that everyone needs to calm down a bit and let things play out.

Proposal does not mean policy. I have a hard time seeing Biden getting his way with increasing the corporate tax rate to 28% and nearly doubling the highest capital gain rates. It’s likely a negotiation chip as he goes to a very divided Congress about these issues.

Furthermore, even if the proposals did go into effect, we will all have time to plan around it.

I have friends who are panic selling to lock in long-term capital gains. This is a severe overreaction at this point and likely will result in worse consequences for the individual.

Everyone needs to relax a bit and let things play out. These things take time and reacting to a proposal that is far from policy is not a great strategy for anyone.

West coast hours on east coast

I got absolutely whacked by work and calls last week and I’m mad at myself for not making the time to write. I started this blog to write daily to improve my writing, keep track of my thoughts and provide a therapeutic outlet. I failed last week, but hoping to learn from it.

I’m almost an entire month in my time in New York. It’s been a jam packed trip and I felt like today was the first Sunday where I wasn’t absolutely floored and exhausted. It feels good.

My experiment of working west coast hours on the east coast has been a mixed bag. Admittedly it has been a lot more difficult than I was anticipating and I don’t believe I have been as productive.

On the positive side, I have been working out on a more regular basis. I have steadily been going to the gym and workout classes 4-5 days a week and it feels great. I feel the healthiest I’ve been in awhile.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get in a great routine of sleep. The thought of waking up with no alarm clock has been difficult as I’ve either needed to sleep in late resulting in me scrambling to get going in the mornings. That’s been the most unfortunate part that I was hoping would be better. I’m hoping to get on a more regular schedule, but I haven’t been able to.

From a work standpoint, it’s been difficult with meetings/calls and a typical east coast schedule. My lunch and dinner hours vary greatly which affects my mood quite a bit. The worst part has been working late until 10pm or later to make up for lost time. Both Sophia and I are struggling a bit with this part.

I’m going to continue the experiment for a couple more weeks and see if it improves with a better schedule. If it doesn’t, I’m just going to shift to working an east coast schedule to start to normalize my schedule.

The Super League

I’m not the biggest soccer fan, but I found the Super League stuff to be really fascinating. If you haven’t heard, the top 12 teams in Europe have decided to branch out and start a Super League. These 12 teams include the household names when you think of club soccer. They are the cream of the crop and the ones who have the most money, the best players, the most fans, etc.

So why would the top 12 teams set out and look to go against tradition and create a Super League? Money.

The clubs have enough power to launch their own league generating far more revenue for themselves as clubs individually. By pitting the best teams against the best teams every week, there will be much more revenue at play to be shared amongst the top teams.

Most fans from what I’ve read are completely against this idea of a Super League. They think that it’s going to ruin football as we know it and as a limited soccer fan, I would tend to agree.

We’re not far from a Super League forming in college football where the teams with the most money and revenue will look to create a Super League. We were close many years ago when the Pac-12 was close to merging with the Big-12 to create a super league.

I know there are a lot of passionate fans out there very upset about this soccer Super League and many who legitimately think this will ruin soccer. I feel similarly when considering a Super League for college football.

Unfortunately, I think that money will ultimately win out here. The rich will get richer and tradition will go out the window when money is on the table.

I hope I’m wrong, but I know how things go when there’s this much money at stake.

What a time

What a time to be alive. Dogecoin is now up 16,000% over the last year. It’s now impossible to ignore meme stocks/coins.

NFTs, collectibles and meme stocks are all the rage right now. I don’t know how this is all going to end, but I’ve been saying that this is a new world of investing. Things are frothy and a bit scary, but I don’t see this coming to an end anytime soon.

Two weeks in New York

Two weeks in New York and well time is flying.

My west coast hours on the east coast experiment is a mixed bag for a few reasons:

• I haven’t been able to get to a consistent sleep schedule. Some nights I sleep 10 hours, some I sleep 6. I’ve been sluggish a lot of days and overenergized other days.

• Work has slowly expanded to east coast hours as well with some calls “needing” to be schedule during early morning PT.

• Working until 10pm at night isn’t all that it’s cut out to be. It’s hard to enjoy the energy and fun in New York while working the whole time.

I’m not ready to call it quits yet though. I’m hoping to get on a more consistent sleep schedule and more rest and then see how that affects my overall mood.

Regardless, I’ve been having a lot of fun out here in New York. It’s energizing to be in a new place and see the city come back to life. I have no regrets.

Hoping that I can stabilize my hours a bit. The mornings without work have been nice to be able to go workout, go to the driving range or take care of errands.

Coinbase goes public

The Coinbase direct listing is finally here tomorrow. Reports say that it’s going to list at $250 per share or a $65b valuation. I can only imagine it’s going to open much higher than that once it hits most retail trading apps.

I’m really happy for all my friends at Coinbase. There’s a lot of people that worked their asses off to get the company to this point and it’s always great to see the employees benefit.

Coinbase going public is a major milestone for crypto. It further adds legitimacy and builds trust which is what is needed for a cryptocurrency to well… become a currency.

I’m going to follow the stock price closely but regardless of trading, I know there will be a a lot of happy employees tomorrow and I’m excited for them.

Productive Sundays

After a week and a half in New York, I’m finally starting to feel settled in and back to a routine. New York is starting to feel like home again. As much as I like spontaneity and unpredictability in life, I’ve started to realize that I need more of a routine for maximum productivity.

Part of that routine is aiming to have productive Sundays where I catch up on work and aim to get my week off to great start. It was a long week where I didn’t feel my best as I was fighting off vaccine side effects and adjusting to the east coast.

I have a long laundry list of things to get through including laundry, taxes and work. Hopefully the Master’s in the background will make things a bit more tolerable.

I’m looking forward to the upcoming week when I’m a bit more settled in and back to a routine.

Fintech valuations

It’s been an up and down first week in New York for me. I was absolutely exhausted yesterday throughout the day - I felt as if I could take a 5 hour nap at any point throughout the day. I’m not sure if it’s directly related to the vaccine side effects, jet lag, or just a bad night of sleep in Monday… more likely a combination of all the above. I feel much better today however.

There were a lot of rumors going around for awhile, but Plaid announced that they just raised a $425m funding round at $13b. This is just about a year after they announced a deal to be acquired by Plaid for $5m which was called off.

The original Plaid deal was seen as perhaps the catalyst for fintech valuations going through the roof over the last year. Since that acquisition was announced, we have Stripe at $95b, Chime at $14.5b, Marqeta at $4b and Robinhood nearing $40b just to name a few.

It’s a good time to be in fintech. Perhaps we can look back and thank Plaid for paving the way for us.

Flexible work hours

Everyone seems to be talking about office versus remote post-pandemic. Most people are most interested to see how companies, specifically big tech will react. Will they force employees to be in the office or let them go remote full-time? I suspect most will fall somewhere in the middle.

Perhaps the more important debate topic that we should be discussing is changing work hours. The pro-remote work crowd is quick to call office culture archaic, but fail to mention perhaps the most archaic topic which is a predefined 9-5 workday.

Out of the remote/office debate, there’s one thing that’s universal and no one can disagree on: everyone wants flexibility. One way to provide that flexibility is accommodating flexible work schedules. The 9-5 workday was invented as a product of manufacturing to ensure that all cogs in the machine are there during defined hours.

I don’t believe that forcing someone to work a standard 9-5 M-F is the best way to get the most out of an employee. I am a great example of this as my best work hours are between 6-9pm. I’ve never really been a morning person.

I’m going to run an experiment as I live on east coast time for the next 3 months. My plan is to work west coast hours while living on the east coast.

Today, I woke up without an alarm clock at 8:30am ET. I made breakfast, meditated and ran 5 miles. I was in front of my computer feeling great by 11am ET ready to work. On the surface, this accommodates what I feel can make me the most productive, but only time will tell.

My hope is that by the end of this 3 month experiment, I’ll find out if the better question we should be asking is whether we should offer flexible work schedules rather than whether we should return to the office full time.

Vaccination relief (sort of)

I got my first dose of the vaccine on Saturday. I got lucky and signed Sophia and I up for appointments when I saw that Duane Reade released a bunch on Friday.

I’m feeling like I’ve got some mild side effect symptoms today. After a great round of golf with my homie Alex, I started to feel fatigue and out of it. I got home and decided it was best to stay in and relax. Right now, I’m feeling a bit tired and a bit achy.

Of course, this is all worth it. I’m ecstatic that the end is almost near and I largely stop worrying. I spoke to a few friends of mine yesterday who have been vaccinated for a bit and they say it’s like a huge weight off your shoulders. I can’t wait until things are back and I can stop worrying.

New York New York

I got to New York on Thursday and I can definitively confirm that the city is not dead. It’s as alive and crowded as I remembered it when I left almost 2.5 years ago.

There’s just a different energy in New York City that you can’t find anywhere else. We’ve been slowly eating our way through the city and I suspect that we’ll leave in 2 months and still not be able to hit all the places that we’ve wanted to go.

Besides seeing some old friends, there’s a lot of work related things I want to get done when I’m out here. I got my first dose of the vaccine today so I’m hoping that I’ll be able to meet some new people at some point when these antibodies kick in.

It feels great being back.

Sapiens

After possibly almost a year, I finally finished Sapiens. It was a book I had to read, stop reading for a bit and then pick back up to truly appreciate. There’s just so much information and thought packed into each page of that book that it took me an abnormally long time to read through it.

I’m going to reread the book soon at some point in time. It’s that fascinating and thought provoking.

I loved how Yuval Noah Harrari ended the book to tie everything together. He posed the question: what do we want to want?

Humans are achieving feats at an unprecedented rate, but despite these accomplishments, we likely are not much happier today. On our quest to accomplishment, humans have largely destroyed the well being of other animals and our ecosystem.

So we have no idea what we are trying to accomplishment and we are destroying everything along the way. That’s a terrifying prospect.

The optimist in me wants to believe that we can right this ship as a human race, but only time will tell.

I can do this everyday

We’ve hired an amazing moving company to get our stuff and move it to storage. I’m thoroughly impressed by how efficient they are going especially with 4 flights of stairs. Two of the taller guys are literally stacking boxes and carrying them on their backs. It's pretty amazing to see.

As one guy was carrying some boxes, he said to me that “I can do this every day.”

It was amazing to me as moving boxes up and down a staircase for a living might be my worst nightmare. It’s great to see that these guys enjoy what they’re doing and do it with a smile on their face.

I wish I could say I could do my job every day. In truth, there’s some parts to my job that I love and I can do all day every day, but there’s a whole lot of my job that is tedious that I’d love to offload. That time will hopefully come eventually — soon enough we’ll find some people that can do those tasks every day and do it happily.

Timing

It’s funny how life works sometimes. This week is one of those weeks where timing and luck are definitely not on my side.

On top of packing up my apartment and moving to New York, I’m involved in 4 large proposals/deals this week. It’s a week that would’ve been stressful even without moving, but it’s some added stress. I’m definitely feeling it now, but trying to stay positive that it’s only a few days of hell and then I’ll be in New York.

It’s pretty obvious that we need to hire like crazy. It’s been a big focus of mine in Q1 and we’ve hired some great talent, but there’s so much more work to be done. I’ve written extensively about it but it’s become even more evident throughout Q1 that we’re understaffed and we need to add significant staff at all levels.

It’s going to be a wildly different company by the end of the year. I’m excited for it, but I know things will likely get worse before they get better so I’m mentally preparing myself for a hectic year.

Back to New York

Sophia and I are packing up our apartment in San Francisco to travel for 3 months. We’re going back to New York for the first two and then headed to Playa del Carmen for a month before coming back to San Francisco.

We signed into a lease at the beginning of the pandemic for more space. In retrospect, I wish we had taken advantage and traveled more but it was tough to pull the trigger considering the uncertainty.

We’re really excited about being back in New York. It’s the city we met in and it’s our favorite city in the world. I can’t wait to get the best food and see New York come alive again post-pandemic.

I’m also really excited to work west coast hours in New York. While I have some flexibility, I’ve decided I’m going to try to stick to my west coast work day. I want to take the morning to wake up without an alarm clock, go to the gym, and then start my work day around 11am ET.

It’ll be an interesting experiment as I’ve always felt I’m a much better evening worker. I’m interested to see if I’m more productive overall.

We just finished the majority of our packing. I’m going to try to make it to the east coast with one golf bag, carry on suitcase, and a backpack. I’m going to try (likely unsuccessfully) to limit Sophia’s bags.

Tired but excited

There’s a lot of chatter on social media nowadays about work hours for Goldman bankers. Apparently some analysts took a survey of their colleagues and published the data revealing that work hours are brutal and the environment may even be worse.

This is no surprise. The hours and work culture of investment banking is widely publicized and maybe even celebrated.

I’ve never worked in investment banking, but I do remember the days of working long hours for a large firm. My experience is nothing compared to what they go through, but 80-100 hour weeks were common at times. The work always seemed endless and I never truly felt rewarded from completing those weeks.

I also write this on hour number 12 in the office right now working for a startup. Most people who have been through it know that startup life isn’t easy. Hours are long and you find new ways to get punched in the face every day.

With that said, the amount of reward I get from work is unparalleled. I’m controlling my own destiny and I have skin in the game. That’s something I never had in my last job. I’m tired… it’s been a long day and I’m ready to go home. Tomorrow is an even longer day of calls and meetings.

Despite all that, I’m still excited. Tomorrow is another opportunity to win as a company.

Resilience

I really loved Fred Wilson’s blog post today titled Resilience. It was exactly a post I needed to read this morning.

Sticking with something, even when the chips are down, is hard. Many people (most?) can’t do it. They are impatient. They want the easy money.

I often get impatient with how things are going. We all want growth and success and we want it now, but in reality things take much longer.

This is amplified in this ridiculous market where seemingly every company is going gangbusters and raising money at ridiculous valuations. Even though we’ve had some great success at Secfi and we’re growing quite fast for a startup our size, it’s easy to look ahead and compare ourselves.

While the world has been going through a painful and deadly global pandemic, the tech sector has experienced a bull market of epic proportions that has lifted all boats and made some incredibly wealthy. But that bull market will eventually end and things will get harder for founders and CEOs and investors.

I’m not sure where this bull market will end, but I do know that every company has a different story and journey. Things don’t happen overnight and I’ve felt the need to focus on enjoying the journey much more rather than focusing on the eventual outcome.

Time off

I’ve been writing a lot about taking time off and work-life balance. A lot of this is due to the pandemic where boundaries are down and seemingly everyone is working more. Another part of it is that I’m constantly trying to learn how to better balance work and life.

I’ve been hearing that “you don’t realize how much you needed a break until after you take a break”. It’s coming up a lot with my colleagues and even my clients.

Our leadership team at Secfi gave the team Friday and Monday off. It was a much needed break. A lot of us have been feeling burnt out and I thought it was a much needed break just about 1 year into the pandemic.

Personally, I felt great and even started to get excited about getting back to work on Monday evening but it was obvious that I really needed a vacation. I spoke to Fred our CEO earlier today to catch up after the break and we both agreed that I need to take more time off.

It’s great to work for a company that is supportive of work-life balance. I’m looking forward to more time off in the next coming month, but in the meantime I’ve got a hugely busy week ahead. Time to get back to it.