Viewing entries in
Investing

NightLife Lessons: Why I Wrote My First Business Book

NightLife Lessons: Why I Wrote My First Business Book

A lot of people ask me why I wrote my first business book, NightLife Lessons. The answer is simple: it was mostly a bucket list item for me, and not about making money. Sure, I wanted to help myself by looking back and writing down what I’ve learned over the years, in the hopes of helping other startup entrepreneurs on their journeys. But for the most part, I just wanted to see if I could write a book…and then hold it in my hands.  Below, I'll share a bit about the process of writing my book and what it was like for me.

Telling Stories 

I’ve been funding and advising startup founders and entrepreneurs for almost a decade now. As part of that role, I often find myself telling stories from my own experiences building startups, to help founders not only deal with their current struggles, but also avoid pitfalls that might lie ahead of them. 

More …

December 2022 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

December 2022 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading:

Bear Market Investing Strategies
“Harry Schultz has been identifying bear market warning signals and teaching people how to prepare a profitable survival portfolio in light of these signals for over thirty-five years through his highly acclaimed newsletter, The International Harry Schultz Letter, which reaches subscribers in over ninety countries. The 1960s' classic book Bear Markets has been fully updated and revised to reflect the unprecedented changes taking place in today's volatile economic environment-making it extremely relevant to the current financial market. This book provides the necessary tools for investors to construct a portfolio that will allow them to protect and grow their money under the most severe bear market conditions through technical analysis and models of numerous bear market variables. Bear Market Investing Strategies offers practical and approachable strategies that every investor needs today.”

How scientists want to make you young again

“Research labs are pursuing technology to “reprogram” aging bodies back to youth.”

Old Frugal Habits Die Hard: Why I Force Myself to Spend More

“Why enjoying your money is so damned hard!”

October 2022 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

October 2022 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading:

You weren’t supposed to see that

“Widespread prosperity, it turns out, is incompatible with the American Dream. The only way our economy works is when there are winners and losers. If everyone’s a winner, the whole thing fails. That’s what we learned at the conclusion of our experiment. You weren’t supposed to see that. Now the genie is out of the bottle. For one brief shining moment, everyone had enough money to pay their bills and the financial freedom to choose their own way of life.

And it broke the fucking economy in half.”

We now know the big bang theory is (probably) not how the universe began

“The Big Bang still happened a very long time ago, but it wasn’t the beginning we once supposed it to be.”

Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective

“Why does modern life revolve around objectives? From how science is funded, to improving how children are educated -- and nearly everything in-between -- our society has become obsessed with a seductive illusion: that greatness results from doggedly measuring improvement in the relentless pursuit of an ambitious goal. In Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned, Stanley and Lehman begin with a surprising scientific discovery in artificial intelligence that leads ultimately to the conclusion that the objective obsession has gone too far. They make the case that great achievement can't be bottled up into mechanical metrics; that innovation is not driven by narrowly focused heroic effort; and that we would be wiser (and the outcomes better) if instead we whole-heartedly embraced serendipitous discovery and playful creativity.

Controversial at its heart, yet refreshingly provocative, this book challenges readers to consider life without a destination and discovery without a compass.”

September 2022 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

September 2022 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading:

Five Things I Know about Investing

In this essay, Dartmouth finance professor Kenneth R. French explains five investment principles that he uses as the foundation for a holistic approach to portfolio design.

The Key to Behavior Change is Identity Change

Use the psychology of self-image to transform your habits for good.

How Unboxing Elaborate Packages Became an American Pastime

American consumers can’t resist the lure of a well-designed container.

What I am Watching:

Who made these circles in the Sahara?Deep in the Sahara, far from any towns, roads, or other signs of life, is a row of markings in the sand. There are dozens of them stretching for miles in a straight line in central Algeria, each consisting of a central point surrounded by a circle of 12 nodes, like numbers on a clock. And when we started making this video, no one seemed to know what they were.

August 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

August 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading

The Power of the Marginal
“If you really want to score big, the place to focus is the margin of the margin: the territories only recently captured from the insiders. That's where you'll find the juiciest projects still undone, either because they seemed too risky, or simply because there were too few insiders to explore everything.”

The Tacit Knowledge Series
“Tacit knowledge is ‘knowledge that cannot be captured through words alone’.

This series explores how expertise is tacit, why the research around extracting tacit knowledge is more important than the literature on deliberate practice, and how to go about acquiring tacit knowledge in the pursuit of skill acquisition.”

More …

Give Your Heirs Some GRAT-titude

Give Your Heirs Some GRAT-titude

Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts, commonly referred to as GRATs, are a financial instrument that allow a property or asset owner to pass appreciating assets to their heirs with minimal, if any, estate tax consequences. Affluent taxpayers often turn to GRATs (and capitalize on the higher estate tax exemption eligible under the Tax Cuts & Jobs Act of 2017) as part of a creative, proactive strategy in planning their estates.

So how can you benefit from a GRAT? The first step is for you, the grantor, to contribute an appreciated asset(s) to an irrevocable, fixed trust. You would then be entitled to receive an annuity from the asset during the term of the trust. Keep in mind, this annuity is not the same as the income generated by the asset. The grantor of the asset is eligible for an annuity based on the fair market value of the asset at the time it was put in trust, not simply the income generated from the asset.

More …

July 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

July 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading

Interview: Marc Andreessen, VC and tech pioneer
“M.A.: Don’t follow your passion. Seriously. Don’t follow your passion. Your passion is likely more dumb and useless than anything else. Your passion should be your hobby, not your work. Do it in your spare time.

Instead, at work, seek to contribute. Find the hottest, most vibrant part of the economy you can and figure out how you can contribute best and most. Make yourself of value to the people around you, to your customers and coworkers, and try to increase that value every day.

It can sometimes feel that all the exciting things have already happened, that the frontier is closed, that we’re at the end of technological history and there’s nothing left to do but maintain what already exists. This is just a failure of imagination. In fact, the opposite is true. We’re surrounding by rotting incumbents that will all need to be replaced by new technologies. Let’s get on it.”

4 Rumi Quotes That Will Boost Your Confidence

“You are searching the world for treasure, but the real treasure is Yourself.”

Zoroastrianism And Persian Mythology: The Foundation Of Belief

“Zoroastrianism was the main faith of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Attributed to the prophet Zoroaster, this Persian religion was a key influence on both Christianity and Judaism.”

What I am Watching:

The Explainer: Solving Problems by Starting with the Worst Idea Possible

Sometimes wrong thinking can lead to the right answer. 

Bionic Eye Cures Blindness
“First Bionic Arms- Now Bionic Eyes! Last week the FDA gave approval to the Argus II, a bionic eye that could potentially cure blindness in 15,000 people in the US. The Alpha IMS, a new implant in early testing, has cured blindness in eight people so far. Anthony gives us a sneak peak at this amazing new tech.”

Muppet Babies
My four year old son can’t stop watching and I’ve been strangely captivated by watching it too.  I guess it’s because I loved watching The Muppets so much growing up.  We’re now saying “Waka Waka” after every joke we tell just like Fozzy the Bear 🤣!

What I am Listening To:

ROLL ON:

CASE STUDIES IN MENTAL FORTITUDE: THE IRON COWBOY & MINNEAPOLIS MAYOR JACOB FREY

“Success in all forms demands mental fortitude—a capacity honed through consistently placing yourself beyond comfortable confines. When practiced with daily rigor, an increasingly sturdy mindset becomes a superpower—and the foundation for the purpose-driven life you aspire to inhabit.”

June 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

June 2021 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading

Why Start-ups Fail
Most start-ups don’t succeed: More than two-thirds of them never deliver a positive return to investors. But why do so many end disappointingly? That question hit me with full force several years ago when I realized I couldn’t answer it.

The Tail End
What I’ve been thinking about is a really important part of life that, unlike all of these examples, isn’t spread out evenly through time—something whose [already done / still to come] ratio doesn’t at all align with how far I am through life: Relationships.

Curiosity Is the Secret to a Happy Life

What exactly does it mean to be curious? “If you go by the typical dictionary definition, curiosity is simply a desire to seek out new knowledge or experiences,” Kashdan says. While this definition is a useful starting point, he says curiosity also involves a willingness to engage with complex, unfamiliar, and challenging concepts or endeavors.

More…

Founders On Fleek

Founders On Fleek

What makes an investment promising, from the perspective of a venture capitalist? As any VC will tell you, it's not so much the idea being invested in; rather, it’s the team behind the idea, and most specifically, the founder.

A Smart Bet

VC investment is very much like gambling. Even having the best team and idea does not guarantee any level of success. That’s why many VCs spread their bets across a number of different companies; the way the math works out, you only need one outsized win to more than make up for all of your losses (or mediocre wins). But how do you optimize your chances of getting that outsized win? How do you know what to look for in a startup?

Well, there are many immeasurable factors that go into the success of a company, and to be honest, luck is probably one of the most important. Other factors, however, are much more concrete. And over the years, I’ve found that finding businesses with great founders significantly increases my odds of success.

Real Estate Highlight : Delaware Statutory Trusts

Real Estate Highlight : Delaware Statutory Trusts

What are they and how can you benefit?

Real estate investors are constantly looking for new trends or the new “hot” investment. In recent years, Delaware Statutory Trusts (DST’s) have grown in popularity because of their diversification, tax planning opportunities, high-quality asset holdings, and passive nature. Delaware Statutory Trusts are an alternative investment vehicle to a traditional real estate property in a 1031 Exchange. DST’s allow investors to purchase tenant-in-common (TIC) share(s) of an investment fund. These funds can appear extremely similar to a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). The trust owns the property, but the investor owns a portion of the trust.

December 2020 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

December 2020 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening To

What I Am Reading

Why the ‘paradox mindset’ is the key to success

Although paradoxes often trip us up, embracing contradictory ideas may actually be the secret to creativity and leadership.

Revealed: British accents are the world’s sexiest
Sorry, France: in our latest global survey, accents from the UK swept the world off their feet

Why Do We See Dead People?
Humans have always sensed the ghosts of loved ones. It’s only in the last century that we convinced ourselves this was a problem

More …

November 2020 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening to

November 2020 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching and Listening to

What I Am Reading

The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness

Doing well with money isn’t necessarily about what you know. It’s about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. Money―investing, personal finance, and business decisions―is typically taught as a math-based field, where data and formulas tell us exactly what to do. But in the real world people don’t make financial decisions on a spreadsheet. They make them at the dinner table, or in a meeting room, where personal history, your own unique view of the world, ego, pride, marketing, and odd incentives are scrambled together. In The Psychology of Money, award-winning author Morgan Housel shares 19 short stories exploring the strange ways people think about money and teaches you how to make better sense of one of life’s most important topics.

The Science of Wisdom
As it turns out, wisdom doesn’t vary only between people who read about hypothetical scenarios in a laboratory. Even the same person typically shows substantial variability over time. Several years back, researchers asked a group of Berliners to report their most challenging personal issue. Participants also reported how they reasoned about each challenge, including meta-cognitive strategies similar to those described above. When inspecting the results, scholars observed a peculiar pattern: for most characteristics, there was more variability within the same person over time than there was between people. In short, wisdom was highly variable from one situation to the next. The variability also followed systematic rules. It heightened when participants focused on close others and work colleagues, compared with cases when participants focused solely on themselves.

These studies reveal a certain irony: in those situations where we might care the most about behaving wisely, we’re least likely to do so. Is there a way to use evidence-based insights to counter this tendency?

More …

Get Your R&D Tax Credits On

Get Your R&D Tax Credits On

When most business owners hear “taxes” they either stop paying attention or only think about how much in taxes they’re going to owe. However, Research & Development (R&D) Tax Credits are something every entrepreneur & existing business owner MUST understand and utilize. Many expenses that qualify for R&D Tax Credits are expenditures that your business is already encountering which you may not be capitalizing on. Having a thorough understanding of the following rules & ideas can save your business a lot of money each year in taxes.

Let’s start by understanding the difference between a tax credit and a tax deduction. Tax credits are more valuable because they are a dollar for dollar offset of a tax liability. In contrast, a tax deduction simply reduces your taxable income before the tax rate is applied. A tax credit directly reduces your tax liability in the amount of the credit, whereas a tax deduction only reduces a portion (your tax rate) of your tax liability. Because certain R&D costs are treated as a tax credit rather than a tax deduction, the tax savings are much larger for your business.

More…

October 2020 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching, Listening to and Downloading

October 2020 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching, Listening to and Downloading

What I Am Reading

First hint that body’s ‘biological age’ can be reversed

“A small clinical study in California has suggested for the first time that it might be possible to reverse the body’s epigenetic clock, which measures a person’s biological age.”

Here's Why Uncertainty Makes You So Miserable

“I suspect that some meditative or religious practices which extoll the virtue of acknowledging only the present tense, or accepting our fate, might help reduce stress by attenuating our sensitivity to uncertainty,” he says. “Since uncertainty is about what’s going to happen in the future, if you’re completely absorbed in the present, then it seems likely that uncertainty will impact your stress less.”

Energy firm says its nuclear-waste fueled diamond batteries could last thousands of years

A cell phone power source that lasts nine years. An auto-battery pack that lasts nearly a century. A pacemaker that is powered to last 28,000 years. These surreal claims are being made by a California-based battery company that says successful early test results recently competed on a nano-diamond battery brings them closer to realizing such claims.

The key to their revolutionary batteries is radioactive nuclear waste. There are massive quantities of leftover nuclear waste from nuclear plant facilities. Such waste is extremely toxic, lasts thousands of years, and poses a challenge when it comes to disposing of it (burying and encasing it) safely.

More …

Shane Neman Launches 411Rx Prescription Drug Savings Chatbot Service

Shane Neman Launches 411Rx Prescription Drug Savings Chatbot Service

411Rx Introduces RxChat – Innovative Chatbot That Saves You Money on Prescription Drugs

411Rx’s RxChat allows you to find and compare pricing of any prescription drug at your local or online pharmacy and receive free money saving coupons which can be redeemed for huge discounts either with or without insurance benefits.

MIAMI, FL. – September 23rd, 2020 – 411Rx, the maker of automated healthcare software solutions, today launched an intelligent Chatbot prescription drug price comparison and saving tool, RxChat, as part of the company’s continuing efforts to help all American consumers find the best priced prescription drugs at their favorite local or online pharmacies.

Journal Genie

Journal Genie

Whether it’s a daily fitness log, an all-purpose bullet journal, or a traditional “Dear Diary,” there’s no doubt that journaling is a fashionable habit these days.

Personally, I started journaling in 2013, having read about it on a self-help blog that I can’t now recall (maybe Tim Ferris?) and I haven’t missed a day since then.

When I tell my friends and colleagues about my journaling habit, they usually ask what the point is. Did I want to meet some goal, achieve some benefit, hit some benchmark? Ironically, I didn’t start journaling as a means to any kind of end - I just wanted to see where it would take me.

There are a lot of different approaches to journaling, and different things work well for different people. Over time, I’ve found a method that works perfectly for me. Here’s what I do.

More …

September 2020 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching, Listening to and Buying

September 2020 Roundup: What I am Reading, Watching, Listening to and Buying

What I Am Reading:

Comfort Is The Silent Killer Of Your Happiness

My motto is to always make myself uncomfortable. This article explains why a lot more eloquently than I ever have been able to. Things you’ll learn:The Nasty Things Comfort Does To UsYou’re Robbing Your Kids Of What They Need Most

Against Busyness and Surfaces: Emerson on Living with Presence and Authenticity

Two millennia after Seneca admonished against how living with haste and expectancy constricts our lives and more than half a century before Hermann Hesse made his case for the most important habit in living with presence, Emerson writes:

“Life goes headlong. Each of us is always to be found hurrying headlong in the chase of some fact, hunted by some fear or command behind us. Suddenly we meet a friend. We pause. Our hurry & embarrassment look ridiculous. Now pause, now possession is required, and the power to swell the moment from the resources of our own heart until it supersedes sun & moon & solar system in its expanding immensity. The moment is all, in all noble relations.”

More …

5G’s Money for Real Estate Investors

5G’s Money for Real Estate Investors

Throughout my professional career, I’ve worked hard to stay aware of technology trends & changes. My first gig in college was working for a blog publishing website – well before anyone even knew what a blog was! Since that day, I’ve been involved in many entrepreneurial tech ventures that both increased my awareness & improved my ability to evaluate opportunities. 5G Networks are a major real estate opportunity that landlords are currently overlooking and need to capitalize on.

More …

I Gotto Play Lotto

I Gotto Play Lotto

You’re more likely to be struck by lightning. You’re more likely to be eaten by sharks. You’re more likely to score a royal flush in your first hand of poker. And on and on it goes. Basically, it’s scientifically proven that playing the lottery is a waste of money. So... why do it?

Every week, I play the lottery, and I have for years. I don’t plan on breaking this habit, either, even though I know that it’s essentially statistically impossible for me to win, and so the $2 I spend is a loss from the get-go. I’ve gotten some strange looks from friends and others when they find out I play or notice the tickets in my wallet. People are often surprised, and in some cases, disapproving-- playing the lottery has something of a taboo about it!

But for me, it’s not about the odds that I might not win-- it’s about the fact that I definitely can’t win if I don’t play. Let me explain ….

The 2020 Real Estate Winner : Cost Segregation Studies & The CARES Act

The 2020 Real Estate Winner : Cost Segregation Studies & The CARES Act

As a real estate investor and developer, I have learned that every dollar counts. Development budgets are tight and the returns on any deal are impacted by every decision. One often overlooked is the potential tax savings and planning opportunities available for a transaction. There is no better tax-saving opportunity for an investor than a Cost Segregation Study. Most investors do not fully understand the benefits of a Cost Segregation Study, and it’s amazing how few tax professionals are aware of this opportunity.

More …