I had one of those great New York days yesterday.
They start crazy early and end late
They leave tons of room for flexibility.
It does NOT rain and the air is generally humid.
I was born and raised in Toronto, moved to Phoenix for grad school and settled for 25 years and moved to Coronado 6 years ago.
But it is New York I consider my second home to Coronado. I spent so much time here in 2006-2010 making Wallstrip happen, working at CBS after the acquisition and than pushing hard on StockTwits in the early years while angel investing in startups (Buddy Media, Betaworks, Bitly, Tweetdeck, Ticketfly, Alley Insider, TechStars New York first few classes, Videolicious and GetGlue). I stupidly passed on Foursquare and really tried to write David Karp a check at Tumblr but he said nah. What an incredible crop of founders and companies from that era by the way. Probably because Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook were inspiring us all with their real open early days.
This morning I could not sleep (day 3 no Ambien) so I got up to write, do a short workout and than headed to Bloomberg to do Tom Keene’s radio show. Tom always lets me catch his audience up on StockTwits. Tom treats me like a king and getting that love from Tom and his long time (22 plus year) radio co-host team makes me feel special. They just start firing questions as if I may know something about Apple, Google, Yahoo and Twitter. What new gadgets are my kids playing with and how life in Coronado must be grand.
My next stop was with my long time pal Barry Ritholtz. Barry and I talk over each other so I can’t tell you what he was talking about. The calories flowed very high as usual. Barry suggested coffee and I suggested 1500 calorie Pancake and Bacon feast. He rolled easy. Barry has built an incredible RIA business with his partner josh Brown. He does not seem like a numbers geek but he can roll with the best. His Bloomberg View, Big Picture blog and MIB podcast series with the biggest names in banking and money management is now 100 deep. He caught me up on his current speaking engagement presentation which is fantastic. Barry and Josh are classic American entrepreneurs. They have incredible domain experience and decided to build a business around their passion and a problem they saw. I should have invested when they offered me a chance but did not.
Next I stopped by their office because Josh happened to not be doing CNBC.
I got to catch up with Michael Batnick as well. Michael does an incredible job doing research for all their content. He had his classic poster behind him of Warren Buffett missing a tooth (I should have snapped a pick). They are building an incredible team and look at the markets with such respect and irreverence.
Now that Ian and Justin run StockTwits I get to show up at 11 for team meetings. We have been polishing the 6 month and 1 year roadmaps now that Ian has a few weeks under his belt with the team as CEO. With Twitter and Apple earnings ahead for 4 pm it was a busy day on the site (probably biggest day ever) and the community was rocking. Life is more fun when you are growing key metrics.
At the end of the day I met with Nikesh Desai who bootstrapped ‘Investing Channel’ with his brother and is a great entrepreneur. Generally I’m yelling at Nikesh but he was giving me ideas for how we can improve our product and advertising partnership.
Finally a dinner at a fave restaurant ‘RedFarm’ (pastrami egg rolls) with Ellen. Scott Mullins joined us who is doing an incredible job growing the Amazon AWS footprint in financial services/ banking. I love picking his brain about trends in the business of financial startups because he sees who is lighting things up and what seems interesting to him.
My pal Shu Chowdbury joined us late. Shu knows the New York restaurant scene better than anyone and he has helped open my eyes to a new layer of fun and food joy in the city. He started Salido a few years back.
We are here until Sunday so hopefully we can thread together some more great days before heading home after 5 weeks on the road.