Robots are coming

Last month, Sophia and I went to go watch a popular Broadway show called “Maybe Help Ending”. It was about two “helper” robots that are in retirement and ended up being a romantic comedy. It was a fantastic show, albeit a bit too long.

This morning I was reading about CES in Las Vegas and apparently the hot thing was the humanoid robots on display. Our sci-fi dreams (nightmares) are coming true and robots are coming.

I do believe we’re many years away from actually seeing a humanoid robot doing chores in our homes. There’ll be many more baby steps on the way there though. We are starting to see self-driving cars hit major cities. Robot vacuums are getting smarter. I had a coffee from a robot barista in San Francisco a couple weeks ago.

I’m personally excited as I think there’s plenty of things I could use help on. How about a robot for:

• Security around your home. One that actually can move and would scare away package thieves that enter your property.

• Mise en place. I like cooking, but I hate chopping vegetables and ingredients. It would be great if I could put things in a box and then let the robot handle it and I just need to put things on the stove / oven.

• Massage. I know these exist right now, but I have yet to see one that’s good enough for me to pay for. If I could, I’d get a massage everyday. It needs to get better than just a vibration or a rolling ball though and this may be a ways away.

Money

One of the unfortunate things I’ve realized in the last few years as I’ve started to learn how the world works is that money often motivates and changes people in ways you wouldn’t initially think.

Of course I’ve heard the saying that money makes the world go around, and you read into stories of insane greed out there often. But it never really hit me until I saw it in-person as I grew older.

Some of the things I’ve seen range from your standard grifters — people who are clearly lying and doing what they can to make a dollar off you. Those folks are easy to spot. But unfortunately, I see it in normal unsuspecting people all the time as well.

People have great jobs, families, etc. and seem like normal caring folks, but when there’s money on the line, they maybe start to navigate the gray or perhaps maybe start stabbing friends/colleagues in the back.

Part of my job is making sure I spot this and avoid working with these people. For better or worse, I’ve gotten very good at it over the years. Unfortunately there’s a lot of shit to look out for when money is on the line.

Bigger than one person

It’s been an interesting 12 hours for me.

Last night, I found out that my school’s star quarterback, Demond Williams, is entering the transfer portal 4 days after signing a new contract with us. I could write pages on why college football is broken, but I’ll just leave it with that this is an unprecedented situation that’s going to get ugly and could very well be the straw that breaks the camels back.

This morning, I found out that my wife’s new manager just resigned on the second day of her new job. Fortunately, this wasn’t a situation of being misled or greed like it was with our quarterback so it’s a much different situation albeit unexpected as well.

Schools, athletic teams, and companies are always bigger than one person.

A key player leaving your team for more money and stabbing everyone in the back is always going to hurt, but it’s important to remember that the University of Washington will always be beyond one player or person. We’ll be fine and get through it, and perhaps even be better on the other side if we allow ourselves to get there.

Similarly, I do not envy the position my wife is in as she was incredibly excited to work for her manager. But her job goes well beyond who she reports to and I reminded her this morning that she joined the company for reasons beyond her manager. This could be a great opportunity for her and she needs to keep an open mind in order to take advantage.

My 2026 Goals - the year of treating my body better

After sitting down and thinking through last year’s goals and reflecting back on the year, it was clear to me that the biggest thing holding me back from growing further personally was my inability to consistently get rest. My physical and mental state tends to fluctuate significantly. One day I’m feeling rested and positive and everything comes easy. The next day I feel tired and irritable and I’m a horrible person to be around.

Unfortunately a lot of this is self-inflicted. I tend to stay up too late mindlessly scrolling on my phone. I did way too many social activities in the last year exhausting myself on the weekends. I had too many unnecessary drinks also on the weekends which greatly impacted my sleep.

In 2026, I want to become a much happier person and that leads to me being a better partner and father. To do that, I want to finally address a major issue for me and that’s making sure I treat my body better and get more rest. So here are my 3 simple goals for myself in 2026:

Get back to a consistent sleep schedule

Being a father has forced me to a more strict schedule in that I am up by 6:30am everyday rain or shine. The one inconsistency is the time I actually go to bed. I try to be in bed by 10am but I often stay up on my phone until 11am. It’s time to kill this bad habit. I can noticeable feel when I go to bed at 10am versus 11am. In addition, I want to make sure to keep the schedules on the weekend as well where we’ve made a lot of exceptions.

For this goal, I plan on implementing an earlier schedule and building better habits with Sophia. It’s going to take both of us and a lot of discipline but once we get to consistency, things will be much easier.

Limit the social events

2024 was like a last hoorah before I became a father. 2025 became a year of slowing down on the social events, but towards the end of the year, things picked up again once we got to a much easier state with Colin. It was definitely hard to say no — we are in a big transition phase and we still enjoy going out with friends often.

Being a parent comes first and sometimes being bored is the best thing for our mental states. In 2026, I’m hoping to limit our social events and perhaps make adjustments to a much more parent-friendly social life. That likely means less dinners and nights out, and much more brunches and daytime events.

Slow down on the drinks

And finally, related to the above goal, I want to slow down on the drinks. I noticed that in 2025, we went out less as parents but that often led to more drinks at home on the weekends and that had a major impact on my sleep. Alcohol definitely is one of the major impacts on my rest and sleep quality, and in 2026, it’s time to start peeling things back.

Unfortunately a big part of this is just getting older and our bodies not being able to handle the alcohol as well. While I don’t have those excruciating hangovers in the morning again after those late nights, even having a few drinks can really impact my sleep. That extra beer at 9pm is not worth that extra exhaustion the next morning. I’m almost 36 now and it’s time to transition to that next stage of life where alcohol is not the main driver of every social event.

2025 Goal Recap

I’m a bit late on recapping my 2025 goals, but I really did my best to try to stay off my laptop most of the second half of December to really recharge.

My annual tradition is to grade myself and see how I did, and then set new goals for the following year.

Be Present

I give myself a C here. I started the year wanting to put away my phone and really focus on spending time with Colin when it came to it. It was hit or miss for me. Overall, I did feel like I was on my phone less and actively tried to put my phone away. But of course, it’s easier said than done at times.

I felt that most of my success usually had to do with whether I was in a good head space or not. When I woke up after a good night of sleep and in a good mood, it was much easier for me to be present. Perhaps going into 2026, I should focus more on that part of my life.

Be more Patient and Chill Out

I give myself a D+ here. Patience has always been something I’ve struggled with and that reared it’s ugly head again in 2025. Being tired and stressed clearly amplified things and like the previous goal, I felt that I was a much better person when I was rested and in a good mood. It’s clearly a trend for me.

The only reason this wasn’t a F for me is because I did try my best to chill out more and I did make progress in making sure certain things didn’t bother me as much. But it wasn’t enough and I need to continue to work on this in 2026 for the sake of my colleagues and family.

Teach more

I give myself a B here. Being in the New York office has made work tougher, but it’s overall been a blessing in many ways. The biggest benefit is being in person with most of my colleagues and be able to communicate and teach directly. At the start of the year, I felt that I needed to step up for my team and do a lot more teaching rather than doing.

I do feel like I am being much more hands on with the team and trying to be more of a teacher. It’s not perfect and sometimes my own work gets in the way and takes priority. Overall though, I’m pleased with the progress made and hope to continue to becoming more of a teacher and enabling my team.

Overall. I felt that 2025 was a year of growth. I became a better partner, father, and person overall. I learned a lot more about myself and my limits, and for the first time, spent the entire year as a father. It wasn’t perfect and I had a lot of bad weeks and months especially in the middle of the year, but I am proud about how I grew and learned from those tough months.

All that said, I don’t think I was fully satisfied with the rate of my growth. Maybe I’m being harsh on myself, but towards the end of the year, I did feel a lot of two steps forward, one step backwards.

Going forward in 2026, I want to focus my goals on addressing the major causes of these issues. That is getting enough rest and making sure I’m in a good mental state. More on that later this week.

Let's go 2026

It’s our last day in San Francisco as we head back home to Brooklyn tomorrow morning. Both Sophia and I are both very much ready to head back. Two weeks and some change back in SF has been great but we’re all starting to go a bit stir crazy at my Dad’s place. We’ll all be sad to leave, but I know everyone in this household is probably ready to get back to a normal schedule.

This trip has been good for us. Obviously, spending time with family and friends for an extended period like good old times has been great. The constant rain was a bit of a bummer though as I was hoping to escape the winter and take Colin to parks and a bunch of outdoor activities. Instead, we were stuck inside most of the time here and that contributed to the struggles.

At the end of the day, I am leaving with a lot of gratitude that we even had the opportunity to escape New York for over 2 weeks. With my Dad turning 70 next year, I’d be lucky to have another 15 more Christmases at his home. Knowing our limited time together, the minor annoyances really don’t matter as much anymore.

I did a great job limiting my time on the laptop and my work hours. In the last 16 days at home, I only had two days of “work” and I’ve largely avoided opening my laptop for most of the time here. I’m feeling recharged and ready to get back to it. You know it’s a good vacation when you start to look forward to getting back to work, and I’m at that point.

January is always a nice time for us at Secfi as it’s a bit slower for better or worse. It allows us to get back together, recap the previous year and plan for the year ahead. It also allows us to have a bit of fun and we’re planning on doing just that with our trip to Austria next week. There’s busier months ahead for us in 2026 and we should enjoy January while it’s here.

Balance week

I’m not sure where time has gone but I feel like I got back on my computer for the first time in awhile and I’ve been home in San Francisco for 10 days now. Time seems to be moving faster and faster nowadays as I feel like I’ve been running around either doing things with or for the family or chasing Colin.

So far, it’s been an overall good trip with a lot of highs and some annoyances as well.

It’s been really nice seeing family. Having my sister back for the last week has made things a lot more fun. I was sad to see her go this morning and I felt like she literally just got here. A week goes by quickly when you have lots of things to do.

Of course, family isn’t perfect and being anywhere with your broader family for an extended period is always going to be tough to a certain degree. Seeing how my family functions gives me anxiety and even makes me sad at times.

Being stuck in my Dad’s house without your things also adds to the stress levels, especially with a kid. We’re all going a bit stir crazy after being here for 10 days with 7 more days to go. If the first part of my trip was about family, I need to make sure the last part of the trip is for Sophia and I.

I hope to have a bit more balance in this next week. I want to make sure to get more rest and start to feel better overall after an up and down week. I also want to make sure that Sophia and I take advantage of being back here and actually go out and do things both by ourselves and with Colin. This opportunity to be home for an extended period of time won’t happen often for better or worse, so we need to enjoy our time here.

Not everything is a sprint

I’m loving being home in San Francisco right now. Life has slowed down quite a bit the last few days that we’ve been here and it feels great to relax a bit. Everything is just a lot slower in San Francisco which has been a great change of pace. In addition, having the extra hands at home to help with Colin has been awesome.

My work has slowed down and at this point, I’ve got my remaining 7 things I need to get done before I can not think about work much. In classic fashion, I’ve got some weird anxiety about those items and I keep finding ways to stress about it. But for the most part, I have the next week or so to tackle them and get it done, and I’ll definitely have a lot more downtime in the next week.

I need to relax a bit and remember that not everything is a sprint, especially at this point. The most important thing for me right now is to just enjoy the slower lifestyle and embrace doing more of nothing.

Home

It’s our last day in New York and we’re headed home to San Francisco tomorrow for the next 2 weeks. I am excited for a couple reasons.

First, I really need a break after a long year and going to my parent’s in San Francisco will be a home away from home in a sense. I’m hoping it’ll be like a vacation feel with all the comforts of home.

Second, I’m excited to see all my family and friends again. Admittedly, it’s a long time at my Dad’s house and I’d imagine there’s going to be a point where we regret being away from home that long. But the reality is that the years go by quick. Colin is growing quickly and our family and friends that live across the country do not get to see or spend much time with him anymore.

As sad it sounds, the reality is that if we’re lucky, we’ll have maybe 15 Christmases with my Dad. Perspective really changes when you look at life that way. While some may not want to have that thought, I’ve decided to really embrace our impermanence on this planet to ensure that I’m maximizing the time I have with the people I love. That’s what the holidays are about for me.

Personal finances

I’ve spent most of my free time the last couple nights working through my family’s finances to figure out our new healthcare elections. My wife is switching jobs and we needed to figure out whose health plan was better and where Colin would go, and whether we should we should put the entire family on one plan.

Of course, part of this was figuring out our personal plans for next year and also doing a sense check on cash flows for next year. I used to update my family’s balance sheet monthly, and then it went to quarterly, and now it’s more on an as-needed basis usually 2-3 time a year. This exercise helps me check in on our plan and keep things in check.

We are fortunate that I don’t need to run the exercise nearly as often as I used to. It’s a fairly cumbersome exercise all done via Excel. I’ve tried various platforms and tools, and there just isn’t anything that has the flexibility that I need or want. I do suspect that as our net worth grows to a certain point, we’ll be more inclined to focus on the bigger picture and no longer need the flexibility in Excel.

Even for someone like myself who is very knowledgeable in the financial world and works in finance for a living, it’s a tedious task. Figuring out which insurance plan(s) to pick and how to best allocate between the members of our family including HSAs, FSAs, etc. can get a bit complex with thousands of dollars of tax implications.

I’m lucky to work in this world and be able to run the numbers fairly easily, and that still took hours out of my evenings the last couple days. ChatGPT helped, but was clearly still riddled with errors and provided a recommendation that was impossible.

If I’m perhaps in the 1% of people that is qualified to handle these financial matters, and it still took me this long, then it’s evident to me that the 99% out there likely need a ton of help still. This is why financial advisors exist and the industry is booming. There is still a ton of room for improvement in this industry and AI is going to be the catalyst that helps serve the masses.

Finishing strong

It’s the week before Christmas week and admittedly the main thing running through my mind is 2 weeks off back home in San Francisco. Myself and the rest of the team all deserve a much needed break after a successful but long year.

My hope is that we can all mostly take the next two weeks off save for minor clean-up and administrative work here and there. I would hope that none of us would have to work more than a few hours over the course of those two weeks.

With that goal in mind, this week is critical to make sure we stay on top of everything and get things done so we can indeed enjoy the holidays. I am proactively expediting as much as I can to this week and also pushing as much as I can back to January so we can focus on what’s needed.

Luckily, we are already at a very good quarter, but with a bit of a push, we can get it to an amazing quarter and really close out the year strong with great momentum heading into 2026. That’s going to take a bit of discipline and push this week with everything slowing down, but it’ll all be worth it when I’m at home in SF next week relaxing.

Camaraderie at work

We had our holiday party on Thursday and it was a blast. We had almost the entire US team in town and a couple folks from Amsterdam. It was the first night I went out and really stayed out late maybe this entire year. Getting home at 1am wasn’t intentional and I’m still recovering from it as I write this on Monday, but we all need these nights where we feel like we’re 25 again sometimes.

My colleagues and I had a ton of fun together. I’m not sure what’s normal anymore in this day and age of holiday parties, but we decided to have a night out like you would with your friends. That made things special in the sense that despite the fact that we work together, we actually want to hang out with each other. I can say confidently that is not always the case. And unfortunately, we’ve had times at Secfi where it felt like that wasn’t the case either.

I’m feeling grateful that the vibes are great at work again and we have a great thing going right now. I am convinced that there’s no company worth building if you aren’t having fun doing it and your colleagues are a huge part of that. I feel grateful that I have colleagues that I trust and like which makes my job easier and my enjoyable.

Secfi in New York

We have the US team here in New York for our annual holiday party. I always love when the team can get together. Obviously a big part of the trip is having fun and bonding with each other, but the amount of work that gets done in these few days together cannot be overlooked either.

Productivity goes through the roof and it feels like we get through things multitudes faster than we would over Zoom. It is a bit of a shame that we do not get together with the Amsterdam team more. Logistically, it is just a bit of a challenge and makes sense for why we don’t do that on the regular basis. But going into 2026, I do want to focus on doing more work in person and that may mean traveling much more than I did in 2025.

Baseline

It’s amazing how different I can feel from one day to another. I woke up this morning after a great night sleep feeling refreshed. I did a running class this morning and was at my desk with a positive attitude and energetic.

That was night and day from yesterday where I woke up feeling like shit and basically just trying to survive the day after a horrible night of sleep.

Of course, I know it’s impossible to have a great night of sleep every night and feel amazing all the time. Life and things happen and sometimes it’s unavoidable. Right now, it feels like my life is peaks and valleys.

I’d like to find a way to get back to standard baseline. The consistency will make things a lot easier on my life and happier overall.

The Monday sleep issue

One weird but consistent thing in my battle against sleep issues is insomnia on Monday nights. It doesn’t happen every week, but when I have trouble sleeping, it almost always falls on a Monday night. It happened yet again to me last night as I lay awake most of the night trying to sleep. It also happened again last week.

It’s something that’s been going on for years and I can’t explain it. I almost always sleep like a baby on Sunday night, but no matter how tired I am on Monday, I feel like I struggle to fall asleep. This includes good days where it’s a low stress day and I worked out, and had a nice meal.

By process of elimination, I have tried a lot of things to combat it. I have tested many theories that I felt could be the culprit including making sure I exercise on Monday, staying consistent on sleep schedule on the weekends, not drinking over the weekend, going to bed earlier, staying off the phone, etc.

At this point, my only thought is that it is just simply mental at this point. The idea of it being Monday makes me think it’ll be tough to fall asleep which gets in my head and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I look forward to the day that I can put this behind me. Having a day of the week where I sleep terribly is not a great way to live.

The college football mess

Yesterday, Sophia and I hired a nanny so we could go to my friend’s birthday party at a bar in the late afternoon. This was a friend from college who I’ve known since freshman year, and it was a bit of a reunion of our college friends in New York.

It’s funny how much things have changed in the last few years. There were a handful of us that have kids and we mostly congregated with each other to talk about parenthood. The others without kids were all still talking about their epic weekends. One of my friends went out to 4am on both Friday and Saturday. That gave me a ton of anxiety just thinking about it, but at same time I do miss those days a bit.

On another note, the news headlines dominating the sports world has been the college football playoff selection committee particularly around Notre Dame being snubbed out of a playoff spot. In addition, we have multiple teams opting out of playing bowl games and a coaching carousel controversy.

Despite a lot of calls for why college football is broken, we are actually in an interesting era where there is a ton more parity than ever before given the transfer portal era. We could be entering the golden ages where more teams can actually compete for the National Championship rather than the same 3-4 every year who previously bought their way to a title.

While I am actually excited about the future of college football, there does need to be some wholesale changes to the game I love to ensure that the system does not break. We need to fix the transfer portal and coaching carousel issues first and foremost.

There should be no reason that a team like Ole Miss in the playoffs has their head coach leave in the middle of the season. The transfer portal also needs to be AFTER the full season ends or else you risk a situation where players will leave contenders in the playoffs.

Finally, we need to some sort of regulation around NIL. We cannot turn this into a situation where the best team is the highest bidder always. That was the issue in the previous years of college football where teams in the SEC would pay their players and buy their rosters before it was legal. NIL becoming legalized paved the way for more parity, but we can quickly turning into a money war again as teams find ways to sidestep the rules.

The next few months will be interesting. I feel like we are at a bit of a fork in the road. We are either headed towards the golden age of college football or we are headed to a bad place that is unsustainable and will eventually hurt the sport.

Diversifying access or dumping on retail?

I just read this troubling article about YieldStreet which is a VC-backed platform play that looks to provide access to alternative assets such as real estate for retail investors. It turns out that up to 30% of the real estate investments that YieldStreet provided are in risk of default and the company is now rebranding to Willow Wealth alongside removing historical performance numbers.

In general, I’m fairly supportive of giving folks access. I would like to believe that the folks at YieldStreet had the right intentions in mind when they started the company. But when you go to retail, the risks are higher. These are everyday folks with jobs and families to support. Who knows how much of a person’s portfolio was put into these types of investments. The losses could be a material impact on one’s financial future.

I don’t know what went wrong with YieldStreet. I am not well-versed in the real estate space and I do not own any real estate at the moment. But I do know that there is a troubling trend right now with more and more platforms seeking out money from retail.

Audio tapes to live video to ?

I remember when I was a kid, I would often record audio tapes which we’d send to my Uncles and Aunts in Indonesia. I’m not that old so the phone did exist, but it was still a normal thing for audio tapes to be shared so loved ones could hear it.

It’s pretty crazy to think that just 30 years later, we are now doing live video calls from almost every corner of the globe at a price cheaper than it would take to record an audio tape. My son Colin is going to grow up being able to talk to any loved one with 2 clicks at any time and nearly anywhere.

At the pace technology is evolving, I wonder what Colin will have at his disposal. Is it that crazy to think that he may actually be able to go from San Francisco to Indonesia in an hour or two versus the nearly 24 hours now?

The future is fun and scary. There’s undoubtedly a lot of problems my generation and Colin’s generation will need to solve. But I think if there’s something to be excited about, it’s the prospect of technology making our lives better.

I’m glad I get to be in a job where part of my role is trying to predict what the future will hold.

Prediction markets

Fanatics announced that it was entering the prediction markets game today by launching in 24 states. It’s no surprise as Fanatics has been moving into gambling the last few years. But the big trend right now is these prediction markets which effectively utilizes a loophole to create legalized sports gambling.

Our current government does not seem that they are looking to regulate at all. As such, these startups like Kalshi and Polymarket now find themselves competing with the largest casinos of the world for their cut of the degenerate sports gambling market.

I don’t know how this will end up. I can only imagine that the casinos have these startups and this loophole in their cross hairs and they will spend billions of dollars trying to fight for their right to the market. It’ll be fun to watch from the sidelines.

What I do know that is that gambling is not going away. Whether it’s done through casinos, government regulated companies, offshore, whatever, people will find a way. There is too much of a demand for it.

I’ll do my best to limit my own willingness to sports gamble to vacations to Tahoe or Vegas. As anyone can tell, it’s incredibly addicting.

All quiet in the private markets?

It’s a bit of an interesting time right now in the private markets.

On the surface, you have the largest AI and AI adjacent companies raising round after round at large valuations. These companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks, etc. dominate the headlines day after day. It feels like every other day there is a new mega round into one of these AI companies.

But what about the rest of the market? There are hundreds (thousands depending on how you see them today) of other “unicorns” sitting underneath the top names.

On the other end of the spectrum of the incredibly fast growing AI companies are the startups that have plateaued in the last few years. They may be profitable, and possibly growing but doing so slowly. Many of them are going to have to effectively reinvest themselves in order to get back in the race to an exit. I suspect what will happen is that many of them will just turn into self-sustaining SMBs over the years as they are left by the VC market.

Somewhere in the middle, there’s a handful of these companies doing well albeit a bit more under the radar and much slower than what’s happening in those AI companies. These companies have been quietly growing towards an IPO and offering liquidity to their employees. The PR angle with these companies have seen to be to stay under the radar whether that’s by their choice or not.

For a fan of technology, the AI companies are the ones that I find interesting. It’s fun to learn about them and see how they are going to change the world.

From an investing standpoint, I’m more focused on the companies in the middle right now. There are a ton of great companies being built that are being overlooked. Joining the circus of the thousands of people chasing the top 15 names is something that does not make great business sense for us right now although that may change.