In 2024, I traveled about 83 days with the highlight being 2 trips to China and the couple trip to South Africa and Namibia.
Second son finished NS and entered law school. So its a new phase of life for him. Work wise, I continue to define my role in society as an active angel investor and board volunteer for education and tech/startup related organizations.
AngelCentral continued its activities and we can see that the startup ecosystem has bottomed out in terms of funding weakness. However, startups are still contining to adjust to the new funding environment with mixed success. In fact this is the source of some negative feelings for Ning & I. Will elaborate more below.
To recap, I centered myself on 3 purposes.
Purpose 1: Be there for family. Share and guide kids more. Maintain friendships.
Overall rate this purpose an 8.
I continue to evolve and try my best to be a good husband and good parent to the 4 boys aged 10 to 22. Wife and I spend lots of time communicating about kids, about our relationship and debate to come to joint decisions on key relationship strategic items and operational issues. Dad wise, he had a shoulder operation this year but happy to see that his overall mind is still sharp and in fact he just passed his fit for driving!
The most important relationship with wife has managed to improve slightly more now as we know each other even better and are more accepting of differences. We continue our weekly date nights, couple trips and it helps we have an added common interest in business and travel. I think the key thing attitude is a desire not to allow things to get dull or be taken for granted. I continue to be very proud of all the 4 boys and my dearest wife. Probably my biggest motivator in life right now. Definitely not about career or money..
Friends managed to keep in regular touch but some of them are more busy with young kids and career. This year also made a new set of friends via my volunteer work at HwaChong. It’s quite easy to get along as we have a common schooling background and lingo. My forum group also still manage to go strong after almost 15 years together!
Kody the dog also has managed to insert himself well into my life. Have to walk him daily, brush his teeth, bathe him every month etc. And we had a scare on his tumor middle of the year but we decided leave it alone and so far so good. Not growing.
Purpose 2 : Be as healthy as I can mind and body
Rate this 8.5
I lost even more weight to an average 63kg, body fat <20%. Quite happy with this new state as I have more energy and don't tire too easily. Also don't need to buy any new clothes. I continue to eat less processed food, aim never to overeat and also exercise/move around a lot about 5-6 times a week. Exercise is usually 1 hr dog walk + 40min yoga or jog or swim. My motivation to be healthy is so that I can eat and travel well into old age.
One thing I did different this year is that I ran a battery of medical tests and have been taking customized supplements. So far seems to work pretty well with a clear positive effect of removing my all my heartburn issues. Will see if there are any other effects.
The other fun activity was spending about 15hrs making a charcoal drawing. It’s the first time in my life I put in effort to do an art work. Art for me is mentally quite tiring but in a different well. Actually sleep very well after spending 2-3 hrs each time.
Mentally, feel quite happy and engaged though the boredom as an early retiree still surfaces sometimes. This is no different from past years since retiring.
However, one major issue cropped up this year with some of the startup founders. The pressure from the funding crunch has created situations which make clear some founders ethical inclinations. So while I have always known humans can behave very differently when pushed into a corner, I am nevertheless somewhat bothered when our portfolio companies and other startup companies face problems and their founders start to pull stunts and display behavior that are at odds with quality ethical behavior. I am an optimist and always believe people are generally good so it’s disappointing when proven wrong.
So what helps is just to focus on all the founders that are trying to do the right thing. And ignore the lousy ones.
Purpose 3 : Preserve & Grow Wealth - 10% annualized net IRR on networth+ Quality startup angel work for 100 startups+ build AngelCentral + good volunteer
I would rate this 7.5 this year. Mainly due to startup side performance causing drag.
Failed to hit the 10% IRR and probably land at about 7.5-8% IRR for the year. Main positive is public portfolio of bonds, stocks and cash grew another >20+% on the back of very strong performance by SPY, QQQ, STI and SEA specifically. China continues to be a drag but at least this year it rebounded a bit from 2023 lows. Bonds did decently well too.
PE side, we are up about 4% on mark to market basis. Handful of complete writedowns offset by a few uprounds. This is a bad return for the risk we take in this asset class. In my modeling i am expecting PE to do 12-18% to offset property which grows 3-4% at best. Of course on cumulative basis PE side is still within that range as returns were very strong from 2016-2021.
It does look like the long term target of 10% IRR is hard to achieve with a diversified portfolio. But I will leave it there as the goal was to give a challenge to myself.
AngelCentral and angel investing took up most of my work time this year and we saw funding stabilize at last year’s low of about $3.6m. Membership is growing which is good and our syndicates performance is still quite strong. For our own startups, we write off another 4 more startups. Budget for investing similar to 2023 which is halved from 2022. We won’t be able to hit 100 startups if the exits don’t come. End of the day our ecosystem deserves investment quantum that matches the returns it gives.
I will make separate post on startup portfolio and angelcentral work to review 2024.
Finally on volunteer work, I continued to do volunteer work at Hwa Chong, ITE, IPOS and NRF. Retired from my PEP role after almost 7-8 years. One activity that stood out as especially meaningful this year is my contribution to help a non profit craft its strategic plan and values/vision.
So in summary, 2024 has been a good year for all 3 purposes. But when I drill down, the startup side of work does create some unhappiness and mild stress. And these are all due to interactions that expose the ugliness of human nature.
Looking forward to 2025, expect the main focus to stay on family relationships. Hope to travel as much or more. When last kid gets independent, I hope to ramp up to 120-150 days a year and stay longer in each place.
Work wise will continue to work with and hopefully help founders, startups and the various non profits. Do my bit for society. Portfolio strategy no need to make any change but I will surprised if listed side can continue the fantastic performance…I am hopeful that startup side will start to improve in terms of exits and ipo.
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