Today is a massive day for @Firstbase We are joining forces with @AppDirect

Hope everyone is enjoying their Thanksgiving weekend. Feeling extremely blessed and grateful for family and friends, and for Xu Talent’s clients ($1B+ AUM funds) and supporters. As we head into the final month of the year, I’m hearing from many who are starting to pick up their

Absolutely right. In startups, winning is what bonds land keeps them motivated to keep playing the game

All true

Private companies now spend $300B/yr building data centers If AI is the greatest accelerant of intelligence in history, it's strange governments aren't investing trillions in sovereign compute Could be fumbling a once-in-a-century chance at superpower status by not doing it

sometimes you just have to STFU and execute

At some point, very soon if it hasn’t happened already, all that matters is access to compute and energy Countries that have those things will be superpowers. Those that don’t, won’t Every Country should invest everything it has in sovereign compute infrastructure starting now

Saw a tweet yesterday about someone finding the next startup they're ready to spend the next 10yrs of life on That is the conviction needed to do something great And most people don't realize 10yrs is the lower bound of how long success will probably take

As a first time founder I was initially terrified of potential hires who told me they wanted to build a startup in the future. Thought they'd always be distracted I was wrong. They took on founder-like ownership of projects. I should of hired as many people like this as possible

Risk is the currency of all progress Most avoid it waiting for permission Hoping risk will shrink with time Requiring perfect conditions Their biggest regret? Not taking more risk Not taking it sooner Not swinging harder Not dreaming bigger Not being more ambitious

So the IPO window is back open, right?

The most important chart globally RE: the race for AI AI is another – the final? – Industrial Revolution Refining electricity into human intelligence Unless we solve this, the West loses

Some of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made was in hiring "experienced" people instead of hungry ones

“But it would only apply at over £10M” So you force founders to leave right at the moment their startup begins to work. This is the average Series A at average ownership for founders And they have no liquid wealth, and below market salaries

And we're proposing taxing paper wealth of founders? Probably not the target of this policy, but the unintended consequences of it will kill any possibility of startups being built in the UK

I never had a salary for 3-4 years, I couldn't afford flights to London to raise money. I was staying in 24 bed hostels above nightclubs to even have a chance at pitching investors

Firstbase raised ~$2M at ~$10M post-money as a seed round. I owned the majority of the common equity. My liquid wealth at the time? Minus $50-$100K My wife was putting her salary as a teacher into the company to let us squeeze a few extra months of runway. I'd liquidated all

I've never met a founder who has made a decision on whether to build a startup or not based on tax But this is different – if the UK labour government installs an annual wealth tax founders will leave Why? If this existed when I was building Firstbase it would *literally* have

I used to think winning together was the strongest bond teams could have. What I've actually seen is that the strongest bonds form during near death experiences, overcoming the odds, then winning

Something I've found to be universally true: the people you think should be most inaccessible are almost willing to jump on a call or grab coffee ASAP when you share something interesting + relevant to them whereas those you think should be aren't

That was my favourite thing about Twitter of old No matter what, I could guarantee a smart, coherent argument against what I believed – a lot about remote work over the last few years – would counter mine I obviously didn’t agree with most But it challenged me to improve