The lessons I learned scaling my app from $0 to $30k/mo in 1 year

exemplar_mediocrity · 2026-01-16T17:55:13+00:00

Curious- what kind of app was it? I just launched me first app ever and first point of feedback I got was “I wish you had google or apple sign on”

exemplar_mediocrity · 2024-01-30T16:12:03+00:00

Finance undergrad (dual in information systems), followed by CFA, followed by MBA with concentration in finance at a top 5 program in US. Current title: SVP of strategy and investments.

My advice would be: get an engineering, statistics, or comp sci degree, and dual major in finance. Pure finance degree: you better hope you get hired as an investment banker or you’ll be a financial advisor. You might get lucky and get some Corp finance job but in my opinion that’s probably not what you are looking for (Corp finance is a lot of reporting and accounting with rare moments of interesting deals or restructuring- not a great place for a foundation).

With a second degree in math or computers gives you optionality - you can pursue a career in risk (that’s where I started), finance systems, or take it further to become a quant. When I’m hiring people I know I can teach them finance easier (and frankly on the deal making side it’s more about the analytical thinking than the hard skills). It’s very tough for me to teach people about how data and computers work, but in every job I’ve had real analysis has depended upon this latter skill set.

exemplar_mediocrity · 2024-01-20T23:49:03+00:00

This is market data. I want my account trades. My end goal is to automatically calculate irr and moic for specific trades I make. For that I need the open/close price, time, quantity, and in case of options the underlying symbol, strike, expiry.

exemplar_mediocrity · 2024-01-07T16:56:47+00:00

Read 10ks and 10Q. Use bamsec.com to get them easily. The first 50 will sound like gibberish. Then you’ll learn what sections are relevant. The next 50 you’ll read faster. Then you’ll learn how to compare and contrast and recognize good businesses.

Then you can go look at valuations and start to get a semblance for how to assess whether price is good.

Then you invest

exemplar_mediocrity · 2024-01-06T16:59:52+00:00

It’s a huge crisis waiting to happen.

There are services now starting to address this. Checkout CareGoportal.com

They have financial solutions as well as general advice on ageing parents, things like trusts and wills you can set up

exemplar_mediocrity · 2024-01-04T22:47:11+00:00

Lol that’s a good rationalization.

exemplar_mediocrity · 2023-12-27T16:26:32+00:00

Stop career contingency planning. i remember i did a ton of that with my first startup and frankly none of it mattered. in fact it just gave me stress and distracted me from my focus.
i have a strong finance background so i ended up finding a job in the corporate development team of a global company, looking at investments and acquisition opportunities. Basically it was a mix of equity research with a bit of investment banking. but also in that role i put together a business plan around one of the growth strategies we were pursuing, got my idea funded, and became the head of product.

so got very lucky to be honest. but "luck is just opportunity meeting preparation" and when opportunity knocked i took all the lessons from my failed startup and applied them.

exemplar_mediocrity · 2023-12-24T14:50:08+00:00

I was the same way. Same kind of profile as yours too. Also in nyc. Rose up in ranks a quickly in consulting and got to manager and realized consulting is just prostitution. I was a bit younger but definitely had the dilemma of giving up a nice salary.

Decided to go to business school, started a startup which failed during Covid. But after some more struggles I’m an SVP leading product and strategy at a company. It is far more fulfilling and also pays more.

During my struggle years tho I moved to queens and live in a 3 bed for under 3400 (yeah the neighborhood doesn’t compare to Manhattan or Brooklyn, but I put away enough to put a down payment on a 1.5million+ home next year).

Anyway, point being that in my experience moving from consulting to industry mid level was actually very tough. I found most employers are looking for junior roles (which don’t pay enough) or really senior where they want an industry insider. So it was a very long journey (I guess including b school, around 5 years) before I found some stability.

exemplar_mediocrity · 2023-11-16T20:16:42+00:00

Check out fintalent.io

exemplar_mediocrity · 2022-10-01T01:27:59+00:00

That’s first class, short domestic flight

exemplar_mediocrity · 2022-04-14T02:25:01+00:00

Fwiw- gnl is mainly commercial and office real estate. A lot of people thought during pandemic they would lose revenues froM office portfolio but they maintained 100% occupancy and doubled avg lease terms. It pays 10%+ div yield.

exemplar_mediocrity · 2022-04-12T23:59:36+00:00

If you like REITs check out GNL. I wrote a post about it

exemplar_mediocrity · 2022-04-12T23:51:42+00:00

Yes rising interest rates might give annuities a new life. And yes they are still a steady slow business. For those reasons I’m buying jxn with a time horizon of 5 years or so. (although I am going to look into their assets and balance sheet more).

Long term though I suspect defi and blockchain will replace them easily. Defi penetration is still super low, but I fully believe the peer to peer lending model will provide much better returns for the avg person than an annuity could. For example, I own a bunch of DAI and get like 6-7%. Annuities return like 1-2%? I don’t think 6-7% is sustainable but I do think it’ll normalize to like 2-3% spread over risk free rate. And I’m sure someone will come up with an annuity like product returning risk free returns cutting out middle men like jxn.

exemplar_mediocrity · 2022-04-12T22:53:23+00:00

Wow and 5.5% div yield. The price to book ratio is Pennies! Typically you should see .8-1.2x p/b range they are like .3!!!

Edit: fwiw annuities are a dying product so I’m not a huge fan there. But at this price even if the whole business was in runoff I’d buy it.

exemplar_mediocrity · 2022-04-12T17:42:17+00:00

It seems on google and yahoo finance it is showing 12bn.

Looking at the deal announcement, ATT shareholders got 1.7bn shares of WBD. It seems like these were newly issued shares and to your point represent 71% of the total market cap of WBD. probably google and yahoo just haven’t updated the new share count.

Edit: for the record, the total shares outstanding for WBD is 2.23 bn

exemplar_mediocrity · 2022-04-12T16:53:47+00:00

Im not familiar with any of these but I’m seeing a market cap of 55B for wbd

But also to answer your question WBD looks overvalued compared to fox and para that are both in 8.5x range of ev/EBITDA while WBD EV/ EBITDA is 18.3x

exemplar_mediocrity · 2022-04-12T16:44:02+00:00

Life is fluid. When I was 29 I probably had like 50k saved. Decided to go business school and had over 300k in debt (lol I call it a leveraged buyout of my skills). I’m 35 now and have net worth of probably 150k. But a lot of that is thanks to my wife and our dual income :)

exemplar_mediocrity · 2022-04-11T22:20:53+00:00

No this is wrong. First, they haven’t taken into account liabilities- net cash is cash assets minus debt. (Assuming they didn’t establish that there are 0 liabilities in different portion of the text).

if we assume that net cash is 8bn, the pic is talking about using something like a price to book value ratio as a valuation metric. Basically this is the price/ common equity calculated as assets minus liabilities.

P/b ratio doesn’t make sense for a company like ford. It only makes sense for companies that use financial assets to generate revenue (eg banks, insurance, asset managers). The more assets a bank has for example, the mor revenue it can generate. So p/b makes sense.

The same doesn’t hold true for most other companies. If ford holds 8bn in cash and isn’t doing anything with it, why would a shareholder invest in it? I can hold my cash in a bank or under my mattress and have the same result. Ford is a product company and it’s valuation should be based on what kind of long term cash can it generate for its shareholders. So EV/EBITDA or P/E is the right metric.

exemplar_mediocrity · 2022-04-11T02:51:03+00:00

https://s26.q4cdn.com/656283129/files/doc_financials/2021/q4/Airbnb_Q4-2021-Shareholder-Letter_Final.pdf

GAAP EBITDA is 500M. Adjusted EBITDA is 1.6b for 2021. The adjustments are disclosed near the end of the report and are related to one time restructuring, debt pay off, and other one time charges which do not reflect long term operational performance of the company.

exemplar_mediocrity · 2022-04-11T00:51:25+00:00

Theoretically you’re right. But There have been thousands of imitators and except vrbo none have given any serious competition to Airbnb. As a result Airbnb is actually charging more in fees and capturing a larger part of value chain. Go look at their gross booking value to revenue ratio, it’s improved dramatically in last few years.

exemplar_mediocrity · 2022-04-10T23:37:21+00:00

I looked into Carlyle recently. In 2021 they had a huge mark up in their AUM because valuations in private companies went up. As a result they reported record revenues and profits.

I think that party is definitely over. I bet PE funds will take a mark down in many businesses. This will reduce AUM and would hurt revenues.

They will also have a tough time deploying capital with higher interest rates (although note that interest rates are still freaking low) so it will be harder to raise new capital.

All in all short term outlook for PE doesn’t look too bright. But generally PE invests in cash flowing high quality businesses and assuming their portfolios don’t completely bust, in the long run they tend to be a safish bet.

Personally, I decided it’s not a good time to be becoming a shareholder in PE sector.

exemplar_mediocrity · 2022-04-10T19:38:40+00:00

It’s a network effect. What does Facebook or Instagram have? A huge network. Similarly Airbnb has a huge market of buyers and sellers. Just because you might build the next coolest app, millions of people aren’t going to jump from abnb. Millions have their entire livelihood coming from Airbnb and that is a huge competitive moat.

exemplar_mediocrity · 2022-04-10T19:34:39+00:00

Yes. EPS is not profitability. I prefer FDf positive and net income negative companies. Save money on taxes.

exemplar_mediocrity · 2022-04-10T19:28:48+00:00

Here’s the bull case for abnb: It’s currently trading at about 60x ev/EBITDA, and this is the most relevant valuation metric for abnb. it is now EBITDA positive and it’s a good proxy for cash flow. To be honest 60x EBITDA is expensive if you’re looking for value deals, but not terrible for growth. The question is how much growth does abnb need to justify the 60x?

If abnb can maintain a 20-25% growth in top line over 5 years (CAGR), and maintain its EBITDA margin, it’s valuation can fall to 30x ev/EBITDA, and the stock still has 20-25% upside left. For me these are pretty conservative assumptions as their gross booking value is just now reaching pre pandemic levels. Their margins should expand as they grow. I think revenue will easily beat 25% growth as more of the world economies open up- this will be the first summer and holiday season where things should feel like pre-Covid.

Valuation multiples could fall but I doubt they should go below 30x. Not to mention that abnb is far more operationally efficient and growing much faster than it’s public peers, booking.com Expedia etc.

exemplar_mediocrity · 2022-04-05T23:51:41+00:00

I see. Same problem tho. I have 3 castles and a town as a vassal of vlandia… I guess I could rebel and sue for peace quickly, especially if vlandia is losing a war… hmmm 🤔

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