FinTech Quantum States

FinTech firms are in a superposition of regulated and unregulated states until they are observed (by a regulator). For those unfamiliar with the Double Slit Experiment, physicists proved: Reality is not defined until it is observed. What you observe now can change the past. Until an observation, all possibilities are simultaneously true (“superposition”).  This is…

No News Is Good News

The headlines are relentless. Just today: UK Elections Imminent China Trade Deal (Again!) US Stock Markets Break Records (Again!) Greta as Time’s Person of the Year Mass Shooting Trump – Impeachement Trump – Horowitz Report on FISA / FBI Trump – Mean Tweets! China Bond Defaults The real question: Who cares? Most of the news…

MBA LoL wut?

Things we learned in business school 15-20 years ago: Porter’s 5 Forces: Threats of competitors, new entrants, suppliers, customers & substitutes should drive business strategy. BCG Matrix: Market growth rate and Market share should drive corporate prioritization between business lines. Marketing’s 4 P’s: Product, price, placement & promotion should drive marketing strategy  NPV, ROI &…

Tokenizing Funds 101

You probably own traditional funds, whether ETF’s, LPs, or simple mutual funds. You might even own a “digital asset” fund investing in cryptocurrencies and utility tokens. I bet you do NOT own a digital shares of traditional asset fund. The legal issues are tricky, and the first digitized funds are just hitting the market now.…

Wheels Are Coming Off (On Purpose)

“Banking is not rocket science. It’s actually much more complicated.” Morgan Stanley told me this at new hire orientation ~15 years ago. A lawyer explained that banking involves thousands more regulations than launching rockets.  All these regs also apply to Fintech startups. So do regulations around cryptography, telecom, cross-border technology transfers, data privacy, and more.…

Situation in China & HK

Quick thoughts on hugely complicated issues. Just my opinion and possibly very wrong. Getting reliable data out of China is hard. Internal communications are monitored & edited in real time. Externall the “Great Firewall” is a thing. Anecdotal evidence is noisy & slow but provides the clearest picture. Hong Kong’s official data is more reliable…

Steve’s Not-So-Deep Thoughts

Relaunching this URL as my personal website. It’s time. It used to be for my previous consulting firm. When I joined Loopnest as full time COO, I put up a “splash page” to hide the consultancy’s content. I just had my 1 year anniversary with Loopnest. We are doing great things. Very proud. We’ve been…

Brave or Stupid?

Brave leaders take risks that can make or break their organizations.  Stupid ones just break stuff. Venn and Why Bravery is about taking action in spite of risk, facing potential consequences while pursuing a worthy objective.  Stupidity is basically the same thing minus the worthy goal. The two overlap where the risk/reward is foolhardy. Corporate…