Startups and Investing
Startups and Investing

What a High Performing Designer Looks Like

In order to hire a top end Designer—or for that matter a Product Manager, Marketer or Engineer—you need to know what “good” looks like. Otherwise you may end up hiring somebody who looks good on paper, but is actually a bit of a dud. The best way to know what good looks like is to have worked alongside amazing designers in the past. That way you’ll already have a model in your mind of what you’re looking for. However if you’re not from a tech background, or have been unlucky enough to work alongside less talented designers, it’s hard to pick the wheat from the chaff.
Startups and Investing

The missing middle of startup funding

There was a time, not that long ago, when starting a small business meant going to see your local bank manager. This sounds almost quaint now. A friendly person in a branch. Someone who may have known you, or at least had access to your history with the bank. You would turn up with a business plan, talk through the numbers, and ask for a loan. Maybe it was unsecured. More likely it was secured against your house, which you probably had mortgaged with the same bank. The bank knew your salary, your spending habits, your debts, your reliability. You were not an abstract risk profile. You were a person in a place, with a track record.
Startups and Investing

What gets VC funding now?

I was recently asked to join a local conference panel about what investors are looking for in 2026. The session ranged from angel and seed investing to scale-up capital, bank lending and company valuations. But the question I kept coming back to was narrower: what has changed over the last 12 months, and why does the old early-stage fundraising playbook feel less reliable than it used to?
Startups and Investing

The lazy myth that Europe regulated itself into decline

There’s a familiar libertarian story about Europe: too much bureaucracy, too many regulations, too many worker protections, too much privacy law, and too many rules about what companies can and can’t do. This, we’re told, is why Europe doesn’t produce as many world-beating technology companies as the US.
Startups and Investing

Will AI Super Charge Venture Studios?

Coming from an agency background, I’ve always had a soft spot for the idea of the venture studio. At its simplest, it’s a pretty seductive model. Instead of using your design, engineering, marketing and commercial skills to help clients build their businesses in exchange for fees, you use those same capabilities to build companies of your own in exchange for equity.