Acqui-hires

There’s a big trend going on right now in tech where the large tech companies are out there effectively doing a ton of "acquihires”. I say that in quotes as this has been the the traditional way of acquiring smaller startups for the talent.

In the past, companies would buy out the entire smaller company usually with stock. It’s usually not the happiest outcome meaning that the product often never got off the ground, but these large tech companies would acquire the IP and all the employees. Yes, sometimes some employees got cut as part of it but at least there would be some conclusion or endgame to that startup.

Nowadays with the regulatory environment, many of these tech companies are changing their methods to bypass those regulations. For example, they’ll acquire a stake of the startup primarily to get access to that startup’s talent pool and IP. The big companies will spin out the top talent of that team.

Unfortunately this often means that the other employees who don’t make that cut are left in a weird situation. Their company is still running and often the IP of that company is being licensed to the big tech company. Meanwhile most of their top talent now works at the larger company. This effectively leaves that small startup continuing to operate but kind of left to dry out there.

Most employees receive common stock and they often do not get a payday out of it. They’re also left running effectively a zombie startup with seemingly little hopes of growing much and getting that big payday.

It’s an interesting and weird trend going on right now with the fight for AI talent.

Mid-summer

We’re in the heat of summer literally and figuratively. I’ve been sweating uncontrollably the last few weeks and have really struggled readjusting to the east coast summers which also feels like a particularly bad one. It’s also the MLB all-star game tomorrow which is dubbed the “mid-summer classic”.

It’s always this time of the year where things get really difficult to grind things out. For the next 6 weeks or so, there will be a ton of people out of office or “working remotely”.

We don’t really have summers in San Francisco so things were a bit different the last few years while living there. But being out here in New York, it’s hard not to notice that things are a bit more quiet in the office. A lot of the locals are gone, but the tourists are out in full force. My meetings are getting pushed back or I’m told that we’ll circle back in August.

For myself, I suppose I should be happy and take advantage of the relative quiet. While things never fully slow down completely for me, it is a great month to relax a bit and take it easy. There’ll be many more months ahead for me to go back into stress mode.

Startup and investor mode

It’s been a great week of meetings and building at Secfi. We kicked off the week with a management team “offsite” and then had some team events. Then we spent the rest of the week doing in-person meetings hashing out some of our plans for the rest of the year and going forward.

Secfi is such a unique business in that I feel like I’m always switching between “fintech startup” and “investor” mode. For better or worse, we are a bit of both.

In some meetings, I have my startup hat on where we’re figuring out different marketing strategies to reach more users, or how to grow a new product line. In the next meeting, perhaps we’re discussing a new company that looks promising.

It’s a lot of fun and I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to have my hand in both. Of course it’s a double edged sword and there are complications as well.

Cost of living tradeoffs

For better or worse, I’ve only lived in the 3 most expensive cities in the US. I grew up in San Francisco, went to school in Seattle, and then moved to New York. After a stint back home in San Francisco, I’m now back in New York (Brooklyn to be specific).

I’m unfortunately no stranger to the high cost of living. As such, I am 35 and have had a pretty good career overall and still don’t own a home. There are times where I talk to friends who lived in lower cost of living cities and are now buying their second homes and I do get envious at times. It’s nice to own.

At the same time, I don’t regret my decision. One of the trade offs for the opportunity to live in New York in your early to mid 20s is that even with a good salary, you’re typically not saving that much money. I’d imagine it’s similar for those who moved to San Francisco after school.

It’s definitely a pay to play world in SF or NY. In order to experience the big city life and all the best food and bars, you need to open up the bank account a bit. Of course, there’s a lot of pros versus the obvious con in that it’s expensive. You can accelerate your career in these cities. You get experiences that others do not as well.

There’s no right or wrong answer and I have friends that are very happy to not be living in NY or SF. But for Sophia and I, it’s been an awesome experience. The house and property can wait a few more years.

Office culture

It’s been a really fun week of work so far. We had the management team in town for an offsite on Monday and Tuesday, and then we went out for drinks and dinner with the broader team in New York.

Personally, this in-person connection is exactly what I’ve been missing the last few years in San Francisco. Being able to connect face to face with your colleagues and get to know each other on a much more personal level is just game changing. Working at a small firm is tough and being around your colleagues live is just simply a lot more fun.

It’s also just a much more efficient way to work. Even in this day and age where everyone is seconds away via Slack or Zoom, there’s just something about being able to turn around to someone on the team and ask a question, or grind through a problem together in-person.

The heat and humidity aside, it’s been a great few months back in New York and I’m excited for the years ahead.

Tokenized stocks

The newest trend in crypto is tokenized stocks. Given everything going on, I have been following from afar but have yet to do a full deep dive into this. All that said, I am very worried at the potential downsides here.

For the most part, it seems that companies are launching tokens to mirror private company shares without actually owning the shares or having rights to them.

One of my fears is that many retail investors will be buying the token thinking they own SpaceX when in reality all they own is just a token. Without anything actually backing the token, they could be completely exposed.

The implications of companies spinning up tokens could also cause private companies to further tighten up restrictions causing a lot of downstream issues. On top of that, I fear that when something inevitably does blow up, it could be a big negative to advance the legitimacy of crypto.

New quarter, same old BS

I’m back at it after taking the last 5 days off. I’m proud of myself for making sure that I truly took the time off and spent nearly no time in front of my laptop. There were a few things that I needed to get done, but for the most part, it was the longest break from work I’ve had this year.

Sophia and I finally had time to ourselves last week to explore New York. It was a nice break from parenting and both of us decided that we really need more time to ourselves away from Colin at times.

We officially kicked off Q3 this morning with the team. It’s the most optimistic start to the quarter in many years. We had a great Q2 and things simply just felt a bit different and more normal. Rather than trying to beat the bear market the last few quarters, the end of Q2 felt that things were starting to normalize. And stability and normalcy is a welcome sight.

Of course, as I get back from lunch I see that Trump is back at it again with his trade war imposing a new tariff on Japan and South Korea who happen to some of our biggest allies and trading partners. Where does this end up and how will it ultimately affect us in the private tech space? Who the hell knows.

The good news is that the team and I feel battle hardened at this point. We’ve been through so damn much over the last 3 years that nothing surprise me anymore and it’s almost busy as usual. Of course, I reserve the right to complain about everything, but at this point, I’m choosing to stay on the optimistic side of things. New quarter, same old BS.

Break time

Starting this afternoon I’ll be off for the rest of the week to unwind and recharge. I’m especially looking forward to these next 2.5 days as Colin will be in daycare. That means that Sophia and I can actually hang out and do some things by ourselves which will be incredibly nice. With both of us working demanding jobs and not having family locally, we don’t really get out much together.

My plan for the next 2.5 days is to simply just enjoy New York. I hope that I can relive some of my younger days when I lived in the city more carefree exploring and just living. We may go check out some museums, eat at some new restaurants, and just generally explore like we’re on vacation.

What I want to make sure we do is definitely not do many errands or work. These days are incredibly important for us both to recharge. It’ll be good to get away from my computer, the news, the markets, etc. and live a little.

Final push

It’s the last day of the quarter and we’re all spent and exhausted. Needless to say, I’m excited to wrap up today and tomorrow morning then take the rest of the week off. I told the team that they should follow suit.

Unfortunately, there’s still a ton of things I need to get through. While none of these things are urgent per se, getting everything to a really good spot will allow me to freely take the week off. It’s never really a vacation when you have work on your mind, so it’s best if I just power through the next day and get things to a good spot.

With the way this quarter has gone, it’s evident that it’s time to start the hiring conversation once again. It was part of this year’s plans to add to our team, but unfortunately with the way the macro environment was, we wanted to thread carefully. It was the right decision at the time.

Lots has changed in the last 1-2 quarters though. We are seeing IPOs come back. Secondary activity is picking up. We have powered through with an efficient and lean team, but it’s time to start planning on growth again.

For now though, I’m going to drink some coffee and power through my remaining checklist.

Time for a break

The signs that I need a break started coming out a few weeks ago. The all familiar signs which include:

• drinking much more coffee than normal during the workday

• taking much longer to finish tasks than usual

• frustration with pretty much everything and everyone

The list goes on and I’ve been through this so many times over the years at this point. Luckily the end of the quarter is near and with the 4th of July it becomes a natural time to really unwind.

It’s been a tiring year with my move to New York and a baby to care of. Work has been going well, but it’s always been exhausting. Top of mind right now is making sure I take the majority of next week to unwind and really recharge.

Early career moves

I had a fun night out with some old friends from PwC. I left the firm almost 7 years ago to this day and I spent 5 years at the firm, so at this point I’ve been gone longer than I was there. It was yet another time flies moment when I realized that.

I was excited to see them and I’m glad that we all remain friends to this day. They have all advanced in their careers and have moved up the ladder at the firm. My closest friend who I met during my internship in college and started at the same time is now close to making partner at the firm. He’s on track to becoming a lifer at PwC and he still loves the firm.

Obviously, I decided to take a different path than him and that was the right decision for me. I do think what my life could have been if I stayed, and I do think I would have a good life. But ultimately it was the right move for me to move on and do something different. Building something that was more like my own was what I needed in my life and career.

All that said, I am incredibly appreciative of my 5 years at the PwC. While I gave a lot of my life and time during my 20s to the firm, I truly believe I got just as much out of it. My years there set my career up for success and I learned a ton. While I personally don’t recommend staying at a large firm too long, it was a great place to be in the early part of my career.

Zohran-mania

Zohran Mandani pulled a shocker in the NYC Democratic primary yesterday beating out former Governor Cuomo. As someone who just moved back to New York, I’m just learning about the race and Zohran.

It seems that Zohran just ran an amazing campaign that put himself out there and aligned his messaging with the people. He campaigned on things that lost the Democrats the election in 2024. He was personable and approachable, and he’s very young. He was the anti-Cuomo and Trump.

Now I’ll be frank in that I don’t necessarily agree with all his policies. I remain skeptical in that they will actually work and I fear that he is the classic case of someone who says a lot of things, but nothing actually gets done.

All that said, I’ve grown to actually like the guy in my limited knowledge of him. At least on the surface, he seems like a good person who actually cares about people and wants to make a positive change. If he does indeed become Mayor, I hope he tries to enact change while ensuring that his policies are well-thought out.

My fear is that this is another situation like what has happened in San Francisco the last few years. But I remain hopeful that he can be someone that is different.

Can't escape the local politics

The last few years of local San Francisco politics has been tiring. We dealt with a handful of politicians that lacked common sense and it sent San Francisco into an awful few years especially post-COVID. Just as things started to turn around, I of course decided to move to New York.

As such, I’ve found myself in yet another brutal local political situation. With corrupt Eric Adams leaving office, we are now left to choose between Cuomo and Mamdani. I’ll be honest in that I just don’t know as much about this election given I have been in San Francisco.

My high level views are that Cuomo is that crafty politician that got things done, but was creepy and used his power to get away with being a creep. Whereas Mamdani is the classic young progressive who appeals to the younger generation by saying a ton of things that is just downright not going to work.

I suppose I still identify as a left leaning progressive and I welcome change, but I have also seen what happens first hand when these changes are not well thought out and we don’t analyze second order effects.

This ranges from common sense situations such as not prosecuting crime. Yes, that is unfortunately going to welcome more crime. We saw that in San Francisco. But it also extends to progressive policies such as raising the minimum wage to $30 which Mamdani wants to do.

Yes, I want people to get paid more and live better lives. But we perhaps have forgotten that many small businesses cannot survive running on a $30 minimum wage.

Again, some of these things Mamdani is saying sounds great. Fast, free buses. Freezing rent increases. I can see why young people like him. But I’m incredibly skeptical that any of this will happen. He sounds like an inexperienced individual who may win the election by saying a lot of things that just won’t work and we likely will be worst off from it.

I don’t have a vote in this election given when I moved, but I can see why New York is nervous right now given the two options.

Grateful

I’m feeling very grateful on this Monday after a great weekend with friends and Colin.

We had friends from San Francisco visit us and Sophia and I had a nice night out in Williamsburg. I almost fell asleep at the bar after dinner, but it was a fun night regardless.

On Saturday, I hung out with another old friend in town from Seattle and we had a great day hanging out at the pool with Colin. Despite probably being able to go to bed at 8pm, I decided to go out in the city and grab dinner. It was my first actual night out in Manhattan since moving back.

Life is obviously much different nowadays. Even without Colin, I’m not sure how much I’d still be going out or even if I can make it much past 10pm anymore. But it was great to just have a night out like the good old days and see old friends.

After a nice morning jog, I’m back at the grind for a bit. It’s going to be a tough week and half as we close out the quarter, but things are looking real great. Quarter-ends are never fun but the end of Q2 is nice because we have the 4th of July weekend. and I plan on ensuring our team takes at least a few days off to recharge.

Going international

It’s that weird Friday after a Federal holiday where it doesn’t really feel like a work day, but it is. I just dropped Colin off at daycare and it was pretty much empty except for one other baby. I need to make a note to myself that perhaps we should just make a long weekend out of this next year.

I worked the first half of the day Thursday and then took over baby duties in the afternoon. It was far from a half day off though as I just felt like I was basically working on my phone while also having to take care of Colin. But we made the best of it.

I’ve been doing a lot more work with non-US folks lately. It’s been really fun meeting people from all over the world from Australia to Dubai to nearly every country in Europe. Working internationally has it’s benefits for sure, but it also introduces a hell of a lot of complications.

Regulations, security laws, and tax laws are not fun to navigate through. Luckily most of the regulatory is covered as we’re based in the U.S. and don’t have a home base in any of these other foreign countries. However, the tax and security laws are a headache.

As first steps, we’re building out a good set of tax advisors and attorneys in each jurisdiction. It’s a tedious process and quite expensive, but we need to be sure to cover ourselves. Being on the right side of regulatory has always been our stance here at Secfi and we don’t plan on changing that.

Juneteenth

It’s Juneteenth and a Federal holiday. Unfortunately I’m quickly learning that these holidays aren’t really days off for parents as daycares and nannies are also off meaning the kids are home. It’s great to spend time with Colin but a Thursday “day-off” doesn’t mean the work stops unfortunately.

In world news - the situation in the Middle East is intensifying and it’s a bit terrifying to see where this will go. It appeared that the Trump administration was initially trying to stay out of the Israel-Iran conflict by publicly stating that the U.S. was not involved.

Just a few days later though, Trump seems to have injected himself squarely back into this. It’s pretty obvious to me that the unexpected welcome response from most of the west in regards to Israel attacking Iran is an open opportunity for Trump. If things go well, he’ll undoubtedly look to take credit for organizing the whole thing.

The one thing I do agree with Trump on is that we need a long-term solution here. Israel and Iran exchanging missiles and attacks every other month isn’t driving much stability either. I don’t know how this will all end up, but I hope this isn’t another conflict in the Middle East that the US has to get involved with.

On this day, I do need to remind myself of the progress that we’ve made as a country. It’s not a perfect country, but it’s my country and I still remain optimistic that we will make progress to bettering the country, albeit with a few bumps in the road.

End of quarter

End of quarter is always a tough time for us. In our world, naturally a lot of deals happen at the end of the quarter because of changing 409A valuations and perhaps a mental block for people to get something done. Yes, the metrics matter a bit for us, but it’s a bit different than a SaaS startup trying to meet their goals.

So we’re at the point where everything is a sprint and everyone is at capacity unfortunately. It’s not a fun place to be but it’s the reality of the job and at least it’s expected. For myself, I’m trying to make sure to prioritize accordingly.

There’s only so many hours in the day and while everyone thinks their needs are urgent, some things take priority. That’s easier said than done when everyone wants to hop on a call as soon as possible in this world. Priorities are priorities though and it’s important to keep our sanity as the same time.

I’m looking forward to a nice long extended period off after the quarter end for the 4th of July.

Father's Day

My first Father’s Day weekend was exactly what I needed.

We had a lazy Saturday morning and after a quick workout, I went to the city to eat and explore solo. Sophia had a friend come over and it was rainy so it was a great opportunity for me to have some alone time. Exploring the city and finding amazing things to eat was one of my favorite activities when I first lived in New York.

I ate lunch at one of my favorite restaurants in the city, Szechuan Mountain House. And then walked through the East Village and Chinatown for a bit. I was able to sneak in for a quick massage and then brought some food home for dinner. I cooked a delicious seafood feast for us.

On Sunday, Sophia let me go golfing. I’ve always loved golf, but I had an especially great time as we played a money game. Making things competitive made things a lot more interesting especially on a long and slow round. It was a bit of a reintroduction to New York golf as we had a 5 group backup and teed off 30 minutes late.

The best part of my Father’s Day was coming back and seeing Colin though. After I was gone all day, he was especially excited to see me and was being amazing. He was laughing and reaching for me, and all the Father’s Day emotions really hit me then. As great as it was having some time to myself this weekend, I love being a Father and being around Colin.

Fatherhood hasn’t been easy. Even having a relatively easy kid like Colin has pushed me significantly. The adjustment period has been a challenge for me. On top of that, I can list many more complaints about being a parent. However, the pros vastly outweigh the cons and being a Father is the best thing I’ve done in my life.

Being present

I have a friend who told us that she doesn’t schedule any social events for Friday as she’s just too exhausted by the end of the week with a young kid. I’m feeling that nowadays unfortunately.

With all the craziness in the world right now on top of work and an infant, it’s been a bit of struggle for me to stay present at times. I realized this last night while watching the Top Chef season finale.

Despite being perhaps Sophia and my favorite TV show, I felt like I never fully got into it the entire season despite being a great season. I thought about it and realized that I spent most of the time watching the weekly episodes while also on my phone or laptop distracted.

With Colin, the time that Sophia and I have to just sit on the couch and hang out is severely limited. If we’re lucky, we get maybe one hour of leisure time an evening to just unwind. Unfortunately for me, I’ve been spending that time mostly just multitasking whether it’s preparing for the next day, checking emails, or simply just catching up on text messages.

It’s a bad habit and likely contributing to my exhaustion. I need to be cognizant and do my best to stay present. Like my work time, my leisure and unwinding time needs to be protected as well.

Social media

I’ve done a pretty good job getting off social media lately. It’s been refreshing to try to focus on the present and the people around me, especially Colin.

I still have an Instagram which I check maybe once or twice a day to kill some time. And I have a Twitter account which I rarely use nowadays. Contrast this to a couple years ago and I was constantly doom scrolling Twitter during my downtimes, and I’m pleased with where I’m at nowadays.

For me, it’s just helped me become a bit more present and keeps me more focused. The constant context switching between work to get a 5 minute scroll in is quietly tiring on my brain. I’m much more productive nowadays.