Angel investor backing world class founders & LP in funds in Western Europe & North America. Early in @supercell @unity @getnuman
London, United Kingdom
Joined May 2009
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Lots of people I know outside the UK ask me what’s going on here. This is one of the problems. I’ve said for years to people I know that it’s too easy to get on welfare in the UK and there is zero incentive to get a job. Benefits have become a broad financial crutch. Now we have mental-health claims exploding, Motability cars for tennis elbow and dyslexia (that is free use of a car for tennis below, huh?), fraud cases of people claiming they can’t leave the house while leasing BMWs and ziplining abroad. Working-age claimants up more than 60% in six years. Bill already bigger than defence and heading toward £130bn. No other Western country has seen this. Unsustainable.
More than one in every 10 people in the UK claim sickness or disability welfare.
Here's our deep-dive, with @MaximColch, into part of Britain's welfare state that's started to spiral out of control, threatening the country's finances.
wsj.com/world/uk/united-king… via @WSJ
Paul Heydon retweeted
New version of the Sunday Light app is out.
The light page is a sky now. You drag the sun around - left for warmer, up for brighter. When you pull it below the horizon the light goes off and the starts come out.
This is mad. Both my car and my wife’s were stolen, separately, outside our house in London. The Met never called and never came to the door. Their stated mission is “More Trust, Less Crime.” A post you say you didn’t write gets a visit. Stolen cars get nothing.
We have entered the Twilight Zone in the UK. Hoping we get out.
Tomorrow, October 7th, in London, the Met Police and the Home Secretary Shabana Makmood, have signed off and supported a march by Muslims to celebrate the torture and murder of Jews. This tells you who they are. This tells you what they are. This is a disgrace. This is not England. This is Islamic Britain. The government of this country, the police and the mayor of London, the Muslim Sadiq Khan, are celebrating the murder of Jews. This is what Germany looked like and felt like with the state sponsored pogrom of Kristallnacht in 1938. This is where we are now.
Need a recommendation, not another quote.
Independent chartered building surveyor / envelope expert for persistent render efflorescence and possible water ingress. New Forest.
Need someone who has actually diagnosed rendered façades, will inspect both buildings themselves, and will write a report that holds up if this becomes a dispute.
Cold outreach so far: no usable references, or weeks of process then a walk-away.
If you have used someone good on a similar residential defect, DM me the name.
🤖 Made with AI
Will every labour mp will sign a document verifying they have no empty homes to offer up first?
Picked up a rental in Ibiza on Monday.
They tried to give me a car 15% smaller in cubic space than the one I booked and said it was “the same category.”
I told them this was the second time this year a rental company in Ibiza had tried that. The person at the desk then admitted it: companies are doing this globally to push people into paying for an upgrade at the counter.
They upgraded me for free after I pushed back, so I’m not naming names this time. But next time you’re at the desk, don’t just accept the category letter. Check the actual car.
They are counting on you not noticing.
Paul Heydon retweeted
New light control interaction for our app.
When you turn it off the stars come out.
Smart move
A client once asked me whether they should spend $40K on a sponsor booth at a major SaaS conference or try something smaller.
I told them to take $800, book a private dining room at a steakhouse 4 blocks away, and invite 8 target VPs of Operations who were already attending the event.
We skipped the slide decks entirely. We ordered dry-aged ribeyes, poured two bottles of cabernet, and opened with one question about the messiest operational roadblock everyone was trying to fix that quarter.
The conversation went for 3 hours. Our VP of Product sat next to an enterprise buyer.
Out of those 8 dinner guests:
- 6 booked deep-dive architecture reviews within 14 days
- 3 closed before the end of the quarter
- Total closed ARR from that one $800 dinner was $185K
Meanwhile, the $40K booth across the street collected 340 badge scans and closed zero deals.
B2B buyers with real budget do not make six-figure software decisions while standing in an aisle holding a branded tote bag. They make them over dinner with peers.
This is bad advice from a founder who has executed very successfully so far.
What works for one founder, company and cap table does not automatically work for another. I have backed a founder who was right 99% of the time; but not 100%. The company still became very successful. Everyone makes mistakes; the important thing is surfacing them early enough to learn, adapt and get help.
In my experience, the best founders send the best updates especially when things are difficult: candid, clear-eyed and with a specific ask. Transparency is part of the bargain when investors trust you with their capital.
Gamer skills map surprisingly well to air traffic control: rapid decision-making, spatial awareness, pattern recognition, staying calm under pressure.
Smart move. Same logic could apply to plenty of other high-stakes jobs that need those exact traits.
More of this, please.
🚨 GAME CHANGER
In April, we launched a NEW CAMPAIGN to recruit video gamers as air traffic controllers — and supercharged the entire hiring process to get the BEST & BRIGHTEST in faster. The results are HISTORIC ✈️
✅ 94% of hiring goal met — fastest time ever to reach target
✅ 2,000+ hired — the most in a single year
✅ 2,000+ “best & brightest” candidates in the pipeline — reaching the Academy quicker than any class before them, thanks to the most streamlined hiring process
We’re building the strongest, sharpest workforce in aviation history ✈️
This is the best video on digital marketing I’ve seen in years.
Clicks are dying:
~60% of Google searches end without one
LLMs answer questions before users reach your site
Your first impression now happens in-feed. Not on your website.
Worth 40 min 👇
Nearly 60% of Google searches now end without a click. Social throttles links. LLMs answer before anyone visits your site.
@amandanat's MicroConf US 2026 talk is the playbook for founders who can't wait 12 months for SEO to work.
Link to the YouTube recording in the thread 🧵👇
Paul Heydon retweeted
We put one of our lights in @YinkaIlori_'s studio earlier this year. My favourite install so far.
Paul Heydon retweeted
For a long time, we struggled to capture what our light actually feels like in person.
This is the closest we’ve come.
Labour’s net zero plan in one line: “No air con for you, Britain. Just sweat, suffer and shut up while Westminster stays perfectly chilled.”
Britons ordered to remove air conditioning from homes in 40C heat under Net Zero crackdown
gbnews.com/news/air-conditio…
Britain has more taxes today than at any point since 1834 — 90 in total — and yet services feel worse.
We didn’t get here by raising a few big, honest taxes. We got here by layering on dozens of tiny, fiddly ones that add friction for founders, investors and operators while barely moving the dial on revenue.
The problem isn’t just how much we tax. It’s the sheer complexity of how we tax.
If you could instantly scrap 5 UK taxes, which ones are gone first?
taxpolicy.org.uk/2026/05/29/…
The UK pays some of the highest electricity prices in the world and is still dangerously reliant on imported oil and gas after two fossil‑fuel crises in five years. At the same time, the North Sea workforce has already been cut from around 450,000 to 200,000 since 2015, with industry warning that thousands more jobs are at risk under current policy. ( see guardian link) Calling this “energy security” while hollowing out our own basin and exporting jobs overseas is delusional. theguardian.com/business/202…
