Musings | Making the Pivot: What's Next for PE_Feeds in 2014

Hello everyone and happy new year to you all! I hope the end of 2013 finished with a bang and that 2014 is off to a good start.

I spent the last 6 months learning about the startup, brand, advertising, and VC worlds at this agency, and while 2014 is going to be an interesting year in all of those industries (as well as private equity), I decided to take another pivot onto #FeedsWrites and catalog everything I've been watching, reading, and sharing.

Thus, behold...

THE NEW #FeedsWrites:

• #Startup_Feeds: A constantly-updating Flipboard Magazine which will hold all articles, info, and insight I find about the venture capital, startups, brand, advertising, mobile, and tech worlds. 
• #PE_Feeds: Another constantly-updating Flipboard Magazine which will hold (and continue to hold) the most important pieces on private equity that I believe you should be reading.
• #FeedsReads: An experiment that started last year, it's a curation of interesting and/or thought-provoking articles broken down by approximate length. You also can submit pieces to it!
• Writing Catalog: I've created and updated an About.me page that lists all of the pieces I have written as well as links to both Flipboard Magazines, #FeedsReads, and a few other surprises.
• What Will Continue: I plan to put together more Leveraged Stories, Musings, Conference Notes, and Industry Thoughts along the way. 

Expect some more surprises especially coming from the Twitter feed. It's a new year and a new day (and a new dawn?) for PE_Feeds, and there's a lot of great work to be done ahead.

Feel free to leave me comments, and happy new year to all of you once again!

Musings | Thoughts on 2013, Private Equity, Startups, PE_Feeds, and the Future

When you start a new chapter in your career, you don't ever expect it to fully engulf all aspects of your life. I left the private equity world as my primary gig to come into the tech and startups world, joining an award-winning team of mobile web and native app developers at Gist Digital with a CTO responsible for part of the software in the iPhone and a CEO who brought Salesforce.com and Webex to the entire Cisco Systems global network. Why did I move? Because it gave me an opportunity to move into a world that I had gotten a taste during my PE days:

The startup world.

I've always been fascinated by startups. Some are meant to truly help us and some, well, have other purposes. That said, It's so impressive to me to see such talented minds collaborate on revolutionary products that they believe can change the ways we interact in our daily lives for certain aspects. One of my dream jobs was to run my own healthcare-focused investment firm dedicated to seed rounds for startups (hence the main move to pursue a Biomedical Engineering degree), but the more that I got involved with startups across various industries, I became more and more curious about the applications many apps and startups could be used for, well, mankind in general.

The past 5 months have been a wild ride in my frying-pan-into-fire transition from the world of PE (a world that took me quite a while to wrap my hands around) to the startup world (which I continue to enjoy learning more about). I've talked to agencies, labs, accelerators, incubators, VC firms, multi-startup founders (both seasoned and new), tech/startup/agency journalists, and the like to suck in as much information as I can. To make matters even more murky, private equity shops started investing in some of the more successful startups like RebelMouse and Refinery29 this year!

That last point is part of my 2013 Takeaway List of things I've seen in both PE and startups that have piqued my interest. I've also seen some interesting transitions among the PE_Feeds Twitter account, both great and rough:

PRIVATE EQUITY:

1. A Hopeful Deal Future. This year was another big one for the world of add-on acquisitions for private equity firms. They heavily outweighed standalone deals and it's been pretty even in terms of secondary transactions (PE to PE) versus original transactions (acquiring the company from a strategic buyer, taking it private from public, or taking it from the family). Many companies will hit the 5-year holding period on 2015 and 2016 so we'll probably start seeing a winding down of add-on deals
2. IPOMG. It's also been a heck of a year for IPOs for private equity-backed companies. While it's usually been a limited IPO window in the past, 2013 seemed to be the year the window was propped up with a thin (but stable) branch to allow some of the most prominent and successful IPOs happen this year.
3. A Heavier Focus on Dividend Recaps, All Over. Dividend recapitalizations (taking out a debt investment to pay the original private equity owners, and then their investors, a dividend) is not the most ethically sound instrument, its main purpose (to help keep a company for a long-term plan while keeping investors happy returns-wise) is still sound. With the aforementioned 5-year holding period not too far away, expect more dividend recaps done in 2014; I actually expect PE shops to hit a record on dividends raised. Am I proud of this? Absolutely not.
4. SEC Reg Tag. The House of Representatives is working to stop private equity firms over $150MM in investments to be registered with the SEC. The original deadline for them to be registered was earlier this year so while it's an interesting push, it's honestly unnecessary for two reasons:
1. While paperwork filing will be frustrating at first for PE shops (and the losers here really are lower middle market shops where internal budgets are tighter than most), it will be consistent enough. PE firms have internally policed themselves and others for decades so when a firm steps out of line, other PE shops will think twice about co-investing with them as well as potentially selling them companies they own.
2. From key pensions like the top funds in Canada to CalPERS and CalSTRS, Limited Partners (aka the key investors into private equity funds) took a heavier move towards both demanding for more information about investment processes and management fee charges as well as investing directly into companies. While some funds have some weird conflicts of interest (e.g., CPPIB's deal with KKR), expect this movement to continue. Canada's funds pay quite well so it's far from the end in terms of their direct investments.  
5. A Push to Help The Manufacturing Economy. While we see a heavy focus towards the USA becoming more of a service-focused economy, there are still gleams of hope that our manufacturing prowess will return. Many industrial-focused companies are backed by private equity firms and it will continue to grow, so I truly believe that private equity has a moral obligation to help kickstart the US's manufacturing strengths. It's obviously a positive PR move for the industry, but the ethics need to outweigh it. 
6. General Solicitation = Meh. The ban on general solicitation for private equity firms was lifted this year and while it's a powerful moment, it's not going to matter...on a public basis. There has been one hedge fund so far that has openly advertised but one point that I have consistently made about this lifted ban is that the SEC should focus on a consistent template that PE shops could use as their prospectus. You'll definitely see an under-the-radar movement towards private banking individuals and high-net-worth clients and what would be interesting to see is if family offices would get move into the movement as investors.

STARTUPS:

1. Creativity Has No Bounds. Everybody hears about the Facebooks, Twitter, Tinders, Snapchats, and the like. That said, after going through countless Meetups, tech demos, and pitches, it is so comforting to me to hear some creative and innovative pitches from ambitious men and women. 
2. Helping Others: The financial services industry has been a notoriously cold and tough world. While social media and branded content has helped the industry create a more human touch, coming to a more friendly, open environment in the startup world where aspiring entrepreneurs helped and continue to help each other in providing advice, resources, and information was quite an eye-opening experience for me. It's quite wonderful especially when you see people from all walks of life entering the startup world with big dreams and bright ideas.
3. Tech Journalists and Valleywag. Making the transition to the startup/Silicon Valley world from private equity, you move from one journalist and coverage base to another, and it's been an interesting change. PE journalists and tech journalists are extremely different, and while I've integrated my reading from publications like AllThingsD, Techcrunch, and Mashable to MediaPost, Digiday, AdWeek, and AdAge,  one publication that really pointed out to me is Gawker Media's online platform known as Valleywag. Run by Sam Biddle and Nitasha Tiku, it's a variance of dives into the ethics issues of Silicon Valley and the startup world. Sam has focused on the general news and ethics violations while Nitasha has done more deep dives and takedowns that are fantastic reads. I've visited the site so much that it's becoming a solid bookmark in my browser and I openly wonder what would happen if/when there would be a Valleywag-style site for private equity. 

TWITTER AND PE_FEEDS:

1. Ethics and Social Media. There have been many publications online like BuzzFeed that have touched on ethically wrong posts on social media. The most prominent example of this is when the world learned about ex-IAC PR exec Justine Sacco. Whatever your position on her tweet, it was by far ethically wrong and disturbing. That said, it was equally disturbing to see some of the terrible and shocking responses that the general public wrote in light of her. From this to anonymous commenters on forums, when one is given more power to wield their thoughts from semi-protective curtains, it is scary on how far people will go to say hurtful things. Remember when many of our parents told us that if we don't have anything nice to say, don't say it? It seems that that sage advice has been thrown off the top of the Empire State Building. (We're all culpable for this terrible mistake, including myself.)   
2. Reflections. It's been a great year in the world of PE_Feeds; I've met some very interesting people and have had the pleasure of some wonderfully talented and influential men and women follow me. That said, every single person who follows PE_Feeds is very special to me. What started as an experiment in 2010 has grown into something big that I never thought could happen. That said, it's been a rough time this year as I feel I lost the trust of several people who did help me get to where I was. I pissed off two important people to me who were great influences on PE_Feeds due to the mess behind Freedom Group (the gunmaker). I've also pissed off a few people due to some of my actions. I take these things very seriously and it's honestly tough to live with them. As Michael Richards said to Jerry Seinfeld when the topic of his nightclub mess came up, it broke me. When you build up a platform and you try to stay as professional and informational as possible, you want to take your mistakes seriously and to those who I have offended, I am truly sorry.

I know I've missed a lot of specific points; it's been tough to focus on both the private equity and startup worlds this year since they're two different places. That said, it has been a blast to listen to various people pitch great ideas to me and while I will continue to find ways to help them on a development standpoint, it would be great to help them further on an investment standpoint and take their ideas to the next level. 

Here's to 2014, everyone.

Musings | School Shootings and the Gun Debate: How the Issue Is Deeper Than "Mentally Ill"

This morning I read a powerful piece in the NYT Magazine about Jay Caspian Kang's conversation with One L. Goh, who killed 6 people and wounded 3 others in Oakland on 4/2/12 before surrendering to the police. It's a very telling and scary story, not just because of the recounting I the gruesome events, but because of Goh's background.
While the story focuses on being Korean in America, it raises a deeper issue, an issue that has unfortunately become more trivial during this whole gun debate: what it means to be "mentally ill."

There is no question that there are many mentally unstable men, women, and children who need to be helped and are in need of support. But what is more worrisome is how both the NRA's Wayne LaPierre and the media are treating these unfortunate souls as a category. It goes deeper than that because there are countless people like Goh who are relatively mentally healthy people who are dealing with so many issues and are quietly crying out for help.

The worst part is, these men and women are unable to find the necessary support systems, whether it's because they don't know where to turn or they are scared that turning to help is a symbol of weakness. In a society where sensationalism, peer pressure, and a desire to fit in has overtaken daily life, any sign of weakness is trampled.

We all have a duty to keep our eyes open. We all have a duty as human beings to see if people we know (and even those we don't) are struggling. We have a duty to show them they won't be judged by working towards finding ways to become happy again.

We can't put them in a category. It only makes it worse.

Musings | The Sickness That Is Trolling: How Jabs To One Are Slaps To Others

I'll just go ahead and say it: I was bullied a few times when I was younger.

I was poked at for my scrawny size, my inferiority complex, and worst of all, for my religion. Growing up in a mostly-white suburb, there was one day when our world history classes taught us about it (Jainism) and my fellow classmates subsequently learned that I was Jain. While I was proud that they were learning about the history of Jainism, many of the guys instead thought it would be funny to call me "Diaper Boy" as their way of understanding some of the tenets of the Jainism. With sentences like "So what, you don't kick rocks?" and "Why aren't you wearing your diaper today?" coming up, it hurt. Hard. I somehow was able to laugh it off then, but it still scars me to this day of the ignorance of those guys.

In this day in age, the worst kind of bullying is coming up on social media. I've been going through this Atlantic piece about the modern ways we are tackling cyber bullying, and what scares me the most is that even as people I know get older, their ignorance and sense of self-ethics never changes.

"Trolling," a quasi-bullying tactic I have been seeing way too often on Twitter, is getting a bit out of hand these days. From "subtweets" (tweets specifically referring to someone or a set of people without directly mentioning them) to direct attacks, I see so many snarky comments and jabs that while the jabber may think is funny and lighthearted, the jabbed may take it more as a heavy backhanded slap. It's not right and it makes that person look more of a fool than he or she already is.

What is even scarier to me is that some of these jabbers are well-respected people within their fields of work. I have seen journalists unfairly blow up on others (including myself). I have seen social media strategists/editors/directors/etc use some pointed language to take down the viewpoints of people, even if they are just expressing their opinions. I've even seen publications retweet tweets of others because they did a simple search on Twitter in order to publicly shame them. Really? Are we adults or are we still children?

I know it is unfair to point fingers like I am above, but what is scarier to me is who is to blame: all of us. Let's face it, we all have laughed at one of these actions. We all have seen them happen. But we don't ever do enough to stop it or even police it. I am at fault, and so are many of us.

The song from Avenue Q is sadly correct: Everyone's a little bit racist. But as grown adults, we have the ability to both stop ourselves from causing these disturbing jabs and to put a stop to others doing it by calling them out. The Atlantic's piece points on how the idea of a "self-reflection" box could come up before one posts anything due to algorithms, and that's a great and hopeful step. But if we cannot control ourselves from doling out these backhanded insults, then we all need a lesson in maturity.
We have seen individuals take action themselves. John Herrman took down ComfortablySmug, and Ryan Broderick has taken on some seriously scary 4Chan posters during the "Cutting4Bieber" mess. It takes balls to take action, and they both did great work. Guys, if you're reading this, thank you.

All I ask of each and every one of you (and even myself) is this: before you post, write, tweet, or say anything, take the extra few seconds and think: could this hurt someone? If it does, then hold back. Your psyche will thank you later.

PS: Also, if you've never visited it before, check out PostSecret. You will find some of the most powerful inner thoughts of people around you, and sometimes you'll even feel you'll connect with them.

Not Private Equity, But Still Important | Quick iPad 2 Thoughts

Yes, this post isn't related to private equity, but after reading the relatively underwhelming iPad 2 release today, I had a few thoughts that I wanted to share:

1. Weight Matters: It's thinner than an iPhone 4. Pretty awesome. But it still weighs more than 1 lb. As a current first-gen iPad owner, trust me; it makes a difference.
2. Incase Must Be Angry: The new Smart Cover designed for the iPad is nice and all, but the folding design is exactly like a case that Apple accessory maker Incase made for the first-gen iPad. By the way, Incase is now backed by Swander Pace Capital, a private equity firm (smart buy for them). 
3. It's All About the Accessories: I currently have the first-gen iPad (thank you ACG CT!) and was more excited to see the new iOS upgrade and HDMI adapter. ANY app or website can share video and audio to an Apple TV with the new AirPlay update on iOS 4.3, and full mirroring is available with the HDMI adapter. I can see that option being BIG for classrooms.
4. Cheaper First-Gen iPads: Don't care about the hardware but excited about the software? Apple's online store is selling new and refurbished (aka basically new, Apple cleans them up really well) first-gen iPads starting at $350. Click here.

That all being said, I'm happy with my first-gen iPad. I think Apple is slowly realizing that it's running out of innovation idea regarding hardware and is going to start focusing on software. 

Moreover, one company was like Apple in its heyday and after a few products where the hardware didn't make sense, that same company focused on making its strongest products better software and specific components-wise.

That company is Sony.