We are all humans after all

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Last week, we did a poll on what should we write this week. More than 50% of you would like to read about behind the scenes and client shenanigans. Hope you enjoy!

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Investing is a Lonely Journey

In the traditional finance industry, investing tends to be a lonely journey.

When you decide to buy an investment product — be it a stock, a mutual fund, or some structured note — it’s usually a private matter. No celebration, no conversation. Just you with your doubts and fear that you try to suppress, a login portal, and maybe a two-page factsheet you only half-read or quickly skim in the office.

Even the products themselves are structured to feel distant. Mutual funds is a great example. When was the last time you spoke to the fund manager behind one? Or even remembered their name?

When we imagine a fund manager, a certain stereotype usually comes to mind:

• Nerdy

• Deeply analytical

• Critical thinkers

• Occasionally aloof (because they've done the homework and you haven’t, so hush now)

That’s not entirely unfair.

Finance professionals — fund managers especially — are known to love using jargons that I’d like to call: word salad. Concepts that are actually simple end up buried under layers of language meant to sound smart rather than useful.

Take valuation, for example. Some professionals might tell you they use something called a Discounted Cash Flow model, or DCF. That involves estimating the terminal growth rate and calculating the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC), which you then use to discount future cash flows to their present value.

Sounds complicated? It’s actually not. But the presentation of it makes you feel like you’re not supposed to understand it. At least that’s how I felt when I was first exposed to those ideas.

The Expert Barrier

So, two things tend to happen:

1. There's a perceived (and sometimes real) knowledge gap between you and the “experts.”

2. You still have to invest — despite finance not being your comfort zone.

Put those together, and you get what we call “lonely investing.”

You’re left to navigate it all yourself, hoping you’ve made the right decision, with no one to bounce ideas off. You want to ask that fund manager / your relationship manager, but you don’t know where to begin.

No one truly gets what you're trying to do.

But what if you could interact with the “fund managers” and actually be in the same whatsapp group as them?

Well you have Recompound.

And no, this is not a shameless plug about Recompound. It is a realistic story about us, being humans, serving others who are also humans. So let’s take a look at the characteristics of the humans we serve, presented as truths.

Truth #1: People don’t want to think about investments all the time.

Honestly? Most of our WhatsApp groups are dead silent. Not because clients don’t care. But because they’re just busy. With work. With family. With life.

Take my brother as an example (he’s a Recompound client too). You might think that he’s my brother and therefore he’s super engaged with the product to optimise his investments yada yada. But no, I’ll explain later.

To add a bit more colour, he used to be a professional in a corporate world. Seeing his little brother doing his own business, he decided to take a leap of faith and he’s right now starting his own business in the F&B industry. He used to be real busy working at his corporate job. Now he is even busier cracking his head and banging his feet onto the wall to get his first few clients and figuring out a good business model. Maybe out of 24 hours, he’d like to spend 25 hours on his business*.***

He’s been with us since the very beginning. And since a year ago, he has only said 68 things on our WhatsApp group (yes I count the conversations sent by my bro~).

Of those 68:

• 23 are just “ok” or “siap” (with variations like okkk, siappp, 🫡🫡 — you get the drift).

• 10 are “wkwkwk,” the classic Indonesian chat-laugh. (Still don’t know why we do that. Been like that since I played PC games in elementary school.)

• 6 are “makasi,” “kamxia,” or “thank you” — usually when he pays his fees.

The remaining fraction of the conversation is slight remarks about the stocks we buy, when he’s topping up and the broker. Super brief, short and sweet. Because of that, Wilson created and OK_MSG_LIST on our code repo to get the bot react to thank you or ok messages with 🙏. And of course, we hard coded the list. We could have regexed it, but no we hard coded it.

OK_MSG_LIST = ["ok","ya","yoi","iya","oke","yep","okk","ouu","sip","yes","oya","ooo","gas","yup","yea","yez","thx","kke","ok2","iye","yap","aman","iyah","done","siap","iyeh","okee","sipp","yups","syip","okei","thx!","yeah","okok","woke","yeps","thks","nais","yeap","yezz","sure","yess","iyaa","siip","xie2","okay","yoii","yeep","iyes","sip!","good","yupp","yes!","yepp","gass","yes2","okkk","okeh","baik","amin","yeaa","iyes","okeee","iyess","okokk","oh ok","ok tq","aman2","ok ok","noted","okhey","okeii","naisu","haode","okaay","tq ya","oo ok","wokeh","ke yi","okdeh","okiee","boleh","trims","siaap","ooke","bisaa","cool!","done.","iyapp","okeh2","yesss","udahh","siapp","sipsip","okeoke","lol ok","xiexie","noted!","ok can","ok pak","thanks","got it","oh okk","syappp","siappp","ok gas","ok uda","ok sip","makasi","sdh ya","wokeee","okoeke","tq yaa","ok deh","okeeee","notedd","donnee","udah +","okeiii","siap..","oke ko","iya ko","ok sdh","tq pak","oh ok2","oh sip","doneee","ok koo","done y","oke oke","done ya","oke uda","ok siap","haha ok","noted !","okkayyy","ok nice","ok done","oke sip","oh okay","alright","ok cool","yes udh","oke mas","okk sipp","okee sip","siap pak","baik tks","done yaa","ok siap~","ooh okee","baik pak","sudah ok","oh okeee","done fwd","executed","oke sipp","udah kak","sudah ya","thankyou","ok siapp","udah gtc","thank you","ok2 noted","siap trims","okok siapp","forwarded!",]

Truth #2: Principles Stay the Same, but Execution Evolves

One fine day, Budi was reading a book by Charlie Munger. In it, Charlie wrote that a fund manager needs to be a dictator. As someone who looked up to Charlie (and maybe still does a bit too much), Budi immediately called me and said:

"Tob, we’re dictators. People have to follow us to the T!"

It came from a good place — the desire to maximise long-term profitability for our clients. After all, if we’ve done the homework, shouldn’t people just follow the plan? Don’t forget that Charlie Munger (Warren Buffett’s buddy) is a wise man.

But almost immediately reality hit us super hard. On another fine day, we were chatting with a prospect. In the middle of the conversation, Budi (being Budi) casually said,

“We’re basically dictators.”

The poor guy chuckled nervously… hung up… and ghosted us forever.

We learned a few things that day:

• One, we are not dictators.

• Two, don’t ever say dictator to a prospective client.

• And three, while discipline is key to long-term investing, people don’t like being told what to do.

Over time, we realised something deeper. The key to long-term profitability isn’t just about perfect asset allocation or timing every crash and rally. It’s more about time in the market.

The longer we can help our clients stay invested, the more likely they are to benefit from the magic of compounding. So our job shifted — from telling people what to do, to helping them stay emotionally steady when it matters most. And I think Budi’s real transformation — his butterfly moment — came during one of those difficult times.

When Donald Trump slapped tariffs after the 2025 Idul Fitri holiday, a client reached out, panicked. Markets were down and he had a few stocks that were already at a floating profit, and he asked if it would be okay to sell some to feel safer.

Now, a few years ago, Budi might have snapped (ironically to me, not to the client):

“No! We’re dictators! Margin of safety is still high! Opportunity cost! Think long term!”

But instead, he said something else:

“If it helps you feel calmer through this tough patch, please go ahead. Just know that we’ve reviewed the businesses behind your portfolio, and our investment thesis is still intact despite the tariffs.”

The client ended up selling. Ironically, the stock rallied a few days later.

But the point wasn’t the 1-2% he might’ve missed out on.

The point was: he felt okay. He thanked us for walking the journey with him, not for being right about the stock.

For me, that’s when it really clicked.

Clients don’t (and shouldn’t) have the same level of conviction as fund managers. They haven’t done the hours of due diligence. That’s okay.

But it means we now have a second job:

To create a safe psychological space where people can stay invested for the long term.

That’s what we’ve set out to do. That’s the real work.

Truth #3: The VVIP / the bringer of chaos

In the deepest, darkest chamber of Recompound, there exists… a client. A very special client. His name is Computer Science / ChaoS — or CS for short. Yo CS, if you’re reading this, yes, we are talking about you.

This guy is beyond imaginable. If I go offline for just 1.5 hours, I return to hundreds — sometimes thousands — of chat threads between CS and Budi. The messages come in so fast and furious that we had to create a separate WhatsApp group, because our internal alert bots kept thinking we were dealing with a service crisis. Yes, we have bots to help flag client messages so we don’t miss them.

Yes that whatsapp group has an image of a Maybach. Because Maybach is fast and value investing is slow. haha… get it?

And if you’re a client reading this — don’t abuse it please. We are humans too. With only two thumbs.) Anyway, back to CS.

I honestly can’t do a proper summary of his conversations. No meta-analysis could ever capture the essence of what CS says — or what Budi replies. But one thing is clear:

He is crazy passionate about both the market and Recompound.

Here’s what sets him apart:

• He reacts to every significant price movement

• He reads every new financial report (sometimes before we do!)

• He even alerts us when assets outside our scope — like S&P500, Bitcoin or Gold — move sharply.

Most of his messages are emotional, funny, and borderline degenerate (in the best way possible). It happens so often that Budi blurts out:

“Ini orang bawel banget Tob gila wkwk”

(Translation: “This guy is unbelievably talkative, Tob — insane lol.”)

One time, when the market was crashing, CS literally told Budi to take a back seat and demanded I step in — because, in his words,

“Budi injects too much hopium. Toby is more cautious and realistic.”

I chuckled when it only took me less than a minute to find a concrete example.

I didn’t know whether to be offended or flattered. I just laughed and scrolled on.

But truthfully?

We love it.

Interactions with CS are a daily reminder that behind every WhatsApp group we manage, there are real, passionate individuals who deeply care about what we’re doing together.

And yes, if you’re another client reading this:

Please don’t suddenly become CS. Otherwise, we’ll have to open another WhatsApp group for the banter division. 😂

But all jokes aside, these “shenanigans” — this chaos, this energy — are exactly what make this work feel so special. People often ask, where do you get the motivation to keep building Recompound?

It’s not some mythical force.

It’s passionate clients like CS and others of course — people who push us, banter with us, and believe in what we’re doing.

And for that, we’re grateful.

Closing Remarks

So there you have it folks. Shenanigans with clients. If you are a client and have some ideas on how we could improve the product, please let us know.

Regardless if you are a client or not, if your line of work deals with some sort of managing clients, my sincerest wish that your clients will push you to become a better version of a provider that you are. Ultimately, it is the tiny pieces of communication, interaction and values we share with people that build trust overtime and a rock solid foundation in this thing we call society.