Ariana Alisjahbana, CFP®

Thinking About Building Your Tahoe Second Home? This Is Worth Paying Attention To I’m having more conversations lately with Bay Area clients shifting from “What’s available?” to “What can we create?” That’s where land comes into play. Across Truckee and North Lake Tahoe—especially our golf communities like Gray's Crossing, Lahontan, and Martis Camp—we’re seeing steady movement: 41 active homesites, 6 pending, and 9 closed year-to-date. In our market, that’s meaningful. After 25+ years in real estate, I see a consistent pattern: resale can get you close—but rarely exactly right. Layout, privacy, views, and how a home lives on the lot are harder to find than people expect. That’s why more buyers are considering building. • Well-priced lots in Gray’s Crossing are still moving • Lahontan buyers are stepping up for premium positioning • Martis Camp continues to attract those building something truly custom I also speak from experience—my husband and I have built 15 homes here in Truckee over the past 25 years. Every homesite comes with its own variables, and there’s no simple “price per square foot” shortcut. What’s different right now: • Build costs are more predictable • Buyers are comfortable securing land first, building later • Finished inventory still isn’t meeting specific needs • And the best homesites are limited You can change a floorplan—you can’t recreate the setting. This time of year is also one of the best to walk land. You can see how the sun hits the property, the snow patterns, the surrounding homes, the privacy—it gives you a much clearer picture of what you’re actually building into. If you’ve been even casually thinking about building a second home in Truckee or Tahoe, this is a really good time to start exploring what’s available—and more importantly, what’s possible.

9

Data from Gusto show that small businesses shed nearly 6k jobs in October ... fourth consecutive month in which net hiring saw a decrease 

18

"Out of the last 3 years, I've been fundraising for 2.5 of them." A fellow emerging VC manager said this to me last night. Not as a complaint. As a statement of fact. The landscape is genuinely complex right now. Here's what every emerging manager is navigating: You're not just benchmarked against Sequoia and a16z. You're benchmarked against ex-partners FROM those funds — spinning out with instant credibility, warm LP relationships, and a brand that opens doors before they say a word. And then there's the macro: 🥇 Gold at all-time highs. Liquid. Simple. No J-curve. No 10-year lock-up. 📉 LPs who deployed 5 years ago are still waiting on distributions. They're disciplined about new commitments until they see real liquidity. 🔒 Venture is inherently illiquid — and in today's environment, that's a harder conversation than it's ever been. The managers who win in this environment aren't the ones who ignore these realities. They're the ones who understand them deeply and build their approach around them. 1. Invest in relationships long before you need them. Trust built under no pressure is the most durable kind. 2. Let traction do the talking. SPVs, angel deals, co-investments — proof of judgment in action is worth more than any deck. Show the work. 3. Speak their language. A family office and a FoF operate in completely different worlds. The managers who take time to understand each LP's mandate are the ones who earn real consideration. To those who've been through it — I'd love to hear from you. What's one thing that actually shifted your fundraise? Drop it below. There's a whole community of emerging managers who will benefit from your experience. 👇 #venturecapital #fundraising

10

2 Comments

The Hidden Lever of Scale: Hire Right When founders talk about scaling, the spotlight often falls on capital, product, & process. But the real accelerant—or drag—is people. Who you hire, when you hire them, & how well they fit the next stage dictates whether you grow or stall. People Decisions Matter The leap from 0→1 (finding PMT) to 1→10 (codifying growth) is not just headcount—it’s transforming leadership, structure, & capability. Hires shape culture & momentum. Get it wrong, & you accumulate culture debt, cash burn, & complexity that slows you down when speed matters most. Fitness Beats Pedigree Future success = previous success × fitness-for-stage. - Fitness isn’t about titles or pedigree—it’s adaptability, resilience, & context fit. - Bias toward potential over tenure; experience alone often fails in high-change environments. Map the Talent for Scale The archetypes shift as you scale: - 0→1 thrives on innovators and generalists. - 1→10 wins with operators and managers who can run, improve, and align systems. - Hiring is sequencing—get the archetypes right for each stage or risk stalling at 1→10 after nailing 0→1. Culture as Capital Culture isn’t a poster—it’s what people do every day. Every hire either amplifies or erodes that operating system. Hire for cadence—clarity, communication, accountability—so growth compounds instead of friction . The Best Hires Share One Thing They have validated exceptional contribution to your current or next stage of growth. That validation can come from: - Personal experience working with them. - Endorsement from someone you deeply respect. - Proven performance at a previous company at the same stage that you regard as best-in-class. Anything less? Risk rises exponentially. A Founder’s Fitness Test Before every hire, ask: - Stage Fit: Innovator or scaler? - Self-Scaling: Can they grow systems and people without losing speed? - Culture Amplifier: Will they raise the bar on clarity and accountability? - Role Clarity: Are responsibilities explicit to drive aligned autonomy? - Fitness Over Tenure: Does their trajectory suggest future success in this context? One More Lesson From my experience as a founder & investor—the American VC mantra of “hire ahead of the curve” carries risk in Africa. Here, every dollar has to sweat harder. Hiring must align with cash runway & burn to a credible next raise. Over-hiring too early can kill momentum faster than under-hiring. Scaling is a marathon, not a sprint. I started with 2 people to 250 across five countries—and back to 40 across three markets. Hardest lessons? Hiring mistakes are costly. Clarity and cadence win. Fitness—for stage & culture—is what compounds success. What’s been your biggest win, learning, or mistake in scaling teams from 1→10? Drop your thoughts below #ScalingStartups #Leadership #FounderLessons #StartupGrowth #TeamBuilding #CultureMatters #HiringStrategy #ScaleUp #GrowthLeadership #StartupLife #AfricanStartups #VCInsights

18

1 Comment

"That's expensive." Two words from early customers that shouldn’t have surprised me. But they did. They’d just signed on a $950,000 home together. In our early days at CoBuy, we helped this group through their purchase in the Bay Area. Three successful professionals. Stellar credit, incomes, down payment. They'd used our platform to pre-plan the major decisions—ownership percentages, expense splits, exit strategies, and more. When we connected them with a CoBuy-certified™ attorney, the quote came in at $3,500. Normally, that attorney would charge $10-15K for a Co-ownership Agreement. The pre-work had resolved the big decisions, so they were 75% the way there. The group's response stopped me cold: "That's expensive." For a $950,000 asset. With three people's financial futures intertwined. "Expensive." But here's what opened my eyes: Even with the discount, even with pre-work done, the process took 2 weeks. Multiple revisions. Back-and-forth on language. Scheduling conflicts. Email chains. $3,500. Two weeks. Friction at every step. That's when I realized we were solving the wrong problem. The truth about co-ownership: most groups create NO agreement at all. The few who do typically get templated fill-in-the-blank documents--often from attorneys pulling from legal libraries. Few-to-none create a Memorandum of Agreement for public recording. Here's what actually matters: Getting on the same page isn't about documents. It's about building informed consensus on uncomfortable topics: - Tuesday, 11pm: "My boyfriend wants to move in." (Now what?) - Sunday morning: The water heater dies. (Who pays?) - Next month: Someone loses their job. (What's the plan?) - Next year: Someone wants out. (What's the process?) And more importantly: staying aligned as life changes. No document, no matter how perfectly drafted, can anticipate every scenario. But a SYSTEM can help groups navigate whatever comes up. That's why we built Co-ownerOS™. Instead of connecting groups to attorneys, we built infrastructure for consensus. Groups work through Governance at their own pace. Update agreements when circumstances change. Sign digitally from anywhere. $500 per year for the entire group. The lesson: Sometimes you have to stop optimizing the old model and build what's actually needed. For this one part of the co-buying process, we thought that helping to bring down the price of legal would help. Turns out we were building consensus infrastructure for the 61 million Americans who already co-own homes—and the 1.2 million who co-buy each year. Watch what they do, not what they say. That's where the real business lives.

6

4 Comments

🚀 I’ve been working with early-stage founders and investors for years, and one thing I notice constantly: the language around fundraising and equity can be confusing. 📝 Terms like vesting cliffs, SAFE caps, anti-dilution, or liquidation preferences sound intimidating—but they don’t have to. That’s why I created a beginner-friendly cheat sheet explaining the most common startup and fundraising terms in plain English. Here’s a taste: 💼 Option Pool → Shares set aside for future employees as part of their compensation. 💰 Convertible Note → A loan to a startup that can later turn into shares instead of being paid back in cash. 📌 Drag-Along Rights → If most owners agree to sell the company, small owners may have to sell too. I’ve compiled 50+ terms with simple definitions so founders, investors, and employees can understand the mechanics of startup deals without the legal jargon. 💡 If you’re a founder or investor who wants a clear understanding of startup fundraising, comment below or DM me—I’ll send the full cheat sheet for free. #Startups #Fundraising #Founders #Investing #Equity #VentureCapital #AngelInvestors

42

19 Comments

During my visit to the SF Climate week 2 themes emerged in multiple conversations I had with Founders. First, fundraising got harder compared to the ZIRP era. (No surprise here) But the other consensus that emerged pleasantly surprised me. Founders building in the impact space agree that not only are the problems that need solving here to stay, but the opportunity and reward for those who solve them are still up for grabs. The downstream effects from these themes are multifaceted, and here is my attempt at a surely incomplete list: - The tourists are gone. It takes perseverance and grit to deal with the current environment - Investors with dry powder can generally ask for more time and diligence items - Founders have to spend more time planning and executing their raise, away from other core business activities - Valuations are (still) coming down: which is a problem if you’re in a position to justify 2021/2022 valuations. But an opportunity for early stage investors today Do you agree with these conclusions ? Always curious to hear counter-arguments.

22

4 Comments

I talk to climate founders at 1.5M ARR burning out on both sides - missing impact AND missing family. At least every few weeks, someone asks me about hiring an agency or bringing on a CMO to fix that. They're at 1M-2M revenue. Built through referrals and founder-led sales. Doing work they believe in. But they're the bottleneck. Here's what I tell them: Think twice before following the typical playbook of the agency retainer or the CMO hire. If you've built something real through hustle and relationships, you're making climate impact, and you've got a mission-driven team. But you're stuck tweaking email sequences at 11pm instead of speaking to policy-makers and building strategic partnerships? Validate what works. Build the system. Then scale it with a team. The agency costs 10K/month with a 6-month commitment, you have no visibility on their work and misses half their weekly meetings. The CMO costs 150K, then wants to hire a team because they "only work on strategy" - you're 250K in before you see a pipeline improvement. But you lose the next 6-12 months. The control that got you here. The agility to pivot. And the time you don't have - for your runway or the climate crisis. Is that worth it? Let's think this through: Getting execution help to validate your playbook? Smart. Building the system before hiring the strategist? That makes sense. Hiring strategy when you need execution? Burning months on positioning when you need deals this quarter? That's not a trade worth making. If you've already built the engine and just need someone to drive it, hire them. If you need the strategic firepower and have the runway, go for it. But if you're grinding 14-hour days and missing both climate impact AND family dinners? Don't let the startup playbook guilt you into the "proper" path. Actually think through what's best for you and your current business situation. Don't default to the version of growth that gurus and press releases sell to you.

6

When you hire ex-BigCo talent, remember. The habits and process are not always theirs. Here in Seattle-area tech, the jobseeker market feels tighter, and that is showing up in how candidates position themselves. People are understandably leading with ex-AMZN, ex-MSFT, ex-whatever because brand association works enough of the time to get into hiring loops. Pedigree has value on multiple levels. HR uses it to triage applicant volume. Hiring managers use it to reduce political risk. No one who has advanced on pedigree complains when it works in their favor. But moving to your company does not mean an ex-BigCo person will deliver the same behaviors at an individual level. Because when they join your company, that person will no longer have the systems that enforced those traits in the first place. Big companies are extremely good at shaping behavior through structure. Over time, that structure produces behaviors that can look identical to personal discipline. From the outside, it is very hard to tell where the system ends and the individual begins. My point is as hiring managers, we underestimate how much early success was shaped by other strong managers and well-funded systems that candidates did not personally create. This is not an argument to automatically discount BigCo candidates. Some of the strongest operators I have worked with came from large companies. But the difference is not where they worked. It's whether they learned habits and self-management that survive without the previous ecosystem. I think the current hiring climate makes this distinction harder to see. A lot of growth-oriented titles inflated during the pre-layoff and even the Covid years. You cannot hire someone’s old boss. You can only hire the habits that survived without them.

6

2 Comments

Companies preparing for California's climate disclosure laws now aren't just meeting compliance—they're building competitive moats. The global regulatory wave is rolling out in phases: → California SB 253/261: 2026-2027 reporting begins → EU CSRD: Already active with expanding scope → UK frameworks: Tightening through 2025 → ISSB standards: Creating global baseline Here's what early movers understand that others miss: **Systems Integration Advantage** Companies building California compliance infrastructure now can scale the same systems for EU CSRD, UK requirements, and emerging ISSB standards. One investment, multiple regulatory returns. **Resource Availability Window** The best consultants, verification providers, and technology platforms are available now. By late 2025, everyone will be competing for the same limited resources. **Operational Efficiency Gains** Climate risk management and emissions tracking aren't just compliance exercises—they identify cost savings, operational improvements, and strategic opportunities that competitors won't discover until they're forced to. -------- The companies treating California as their global climate disclosure foundation are positioning for advantage across multiple markets. The ones waiting for "clarity" will find themselves scrambling while leaders execute. Understanding your preparation position across these frameworks isn't optional anymore—it's competitive intelligence. Assess your California climate disclosure readiness: https://lnkd.in/djCa5u38 -------- Interested in learning more? **Helping companies navigate global climate disclosure requirements | Birch Group Consulting** #ClimateDisclosure #ESGCompliance #SustainabilityReporting #ClimateRegulation #BusinessResilience

4