Haatch Pulse

UK venture has a coverage problem. Rounds get reported after they've already closed, regulatory shifts get explained after they've moved markets, and the founder stories that actually predict the next cycle rarely make it into the press at all. Starting now, we want to change that. Haatch is a UK pre-seed VC fund. We've spent over a decade backing founders at day zero, and so much of what we see day-to-day never reaches anyone outside the people at the term sheet. After years of learning from the front row, it's time to share the view. So if we haven't met yet, we're Haatch, and we: • Run one of the UK's most active pre-seed funds, recently ranked among the top 20 in Europe, with 150+ portfolio companies and a combined valuation north of £1bn. • Write the largest pre-seed & seed cheques in British B2B SaaS, often as the first cheque a UK founder ever takes. • Have backed companies that have exited at multiples ranging from 6.5x to 276x, which reminds us every time why pre-seed is the most consequential layer of venture. Haatch Pulse is the open window into that view. Real-time intelligence on UK early-stage venture, with the analysis the wire-service version leaves out. Follow @HaatchPulse for the daily signal.

...significantly weaker. OPEC's entire power rests on its members agreeing to pump less oil to keep prices high. When a major producer walks, that agreement frays. The UAE is one of the cartel's biggest producers, and its departure means it can now pump whatever it wants, whenever it wants. That sounds like good news for petrol prices. More supply usually means cheaper oil. But the history of OPEC defections is messier than that. When members have broken ranks before, the remaining nations have cut production harder to compensate, and prices have stayed stubbornly high. The hidden loser here is every other OPEC member that relied on UAE cooperation to hold the line. Saudi Arabia in particular now has to work harder to keep the bloc disciplined. Watch what happens to oil prices over the next few weeks. If the UAE starts ramping up output fast, you may see relief at the pump. If OPEC retaliates with cuts, the opposite happens. Haatch is the UK's largest pre-seed VC fund. We built Pulse to track the macro events that move markets. Follow @HaatchPulse for daily updates on the stories that matter.

IT'S OFFICIAL: The UAE just walked out of OPEC after decades as a member. Every driver filling up this week should pay attention, because the group that has controlled global oil prices for 60 years just got...show more

...be sending their money to the same company that powers half the continent. A $400 billion combined entity would dwarf anything the US utility sector has seen. For context, that's larger than the entire GDP of many European nations. This wouldn't just be a big deal. It would be the biggest deal in American energy history. NextEra is already the world's largest producer of wind and solar power. Dominion serves millions of homes across Virginia, the Carolinas, and beyond. Put them together and you have a single company controlling an enormous slice of how America keeps its lights on and its heating running. The hidden risk here is what regulators do with it. Utilities are already heavily regulated monopolies. A merger this size hands one company enormous leverage over energy prices in states where customers have no alternative supplier. That's exactly the kind of concentration that gets Washington's attention. The timing matters too. America is mid-way through a once-in-a-generation grid buildout to power AI data centres and EV charging networks. Whoever controls the infrastructure controls the price. Haatch is the UK's largest pre-seed VC fund, and Pulse is our daily lens on the macro events shaping markets. Follow @HaatchPulse so you never miss one. x.com/HaatchPulse

THIS IS HUGE: NextEra and Dominion Energy are in merger talks that would create a $400 billion US power giant. That's bigger than most countries' entire energy output. Anyone paying a utility bill in America could soon...show more

...coming from next, and it isn't the Middle East. This is a striking reversal. Gulf states built their entire geopolitical influence on being the world's energy suppliers. Now one of them is bankrolling American infrastructure to fill gaps their own region can no longer reliably cover. The second-order effect is significant for European buyers in particular. The US is already the world's largest LNG exporter. A $13 billion plant adds serious long-term capacity to that pipeline, giving countries that cut Russian gas after 2022 a more permanent alternative. The hidden winner here is the American construction and energy sector, which gets Gulf capital at a moment when domestic appetite for fossil fuel investment has cooled politically. Abu Dhabi gets a return. The US gets the plant built. Europe gets the supply security it has been scrambling for since the war in Ukraine. The loser, quietly, is any country still depending on Middle East supply to stay stable. This investment is essentially Abu Dhabi hedging against itself. Haatch is the UK's largest pre-seed VC fund. We built Pulse to track the macro events that move markets. Follow @HaatchPulse for daily updates on the stories that matter.

IT'S OFFICIAL: Abu Dhabi just committed $13 billion to a US gas plant as Middle East supply starts to crack. The country pumping money into American energy infrastructure tells you everything about where the world's gas is...show more

...is because a US-backed leadership change just unlocked the entire global financial system overnight. That's the part worth sitting with. Six years of economic isolation didn't end because Venezuela reformed. It ended because the politics changed in Washington. The $5 billion emergency request is the easy ask. The real negotiation is the $150 billion in defaulted debt, which will take years to restructure and will require Venezuela to accept IMF conditions on spending, subsidies, and economic policy. That's where governments have historically cracked under public pressure. The hidden losers here are ordinary Venezuelans who've been surviving a collapsed economy for years. IMF programmes typically require austerity measures in exchange for funding. The country gets access to global finance, but the terms of that access reshape daily life for everyone inside it. Watch May closely. The tone of those Washington talks will signal whether this is a genuine economic reset or a short-term political handshake with a long bill attached. Haatch is the UK's largest pre-seed VC fund, and Pulse is our daily lens on the macro events shaping markets. Follow @HaatchPulse so you never miss one.

CONFIRMED: Venezuela is heading to Washington in May to beg the IMF for $5 billion. A fund it was banned from in 2019. The country is sitting on $150 billion in unpaid debt, and the only reason the door is open now...show more

...coming until it was already too late. BlackRock's TCP Capital, a publicly traded fund that lends money to companies through private credit markets, cut its net asset value from $8.71 to $7.07 per share between Q3 and Q4. That kind of drop doesn't happen quietly in a well-run fund. It means loans that were marked as healthy suddenly weren't. The core allegation from investors is that the fund knew the loans were deteriorating and kept the valuations artificially high for longer than it should have. Class-action lawsuits are already filed. The wider issue is what this signals about private credit as a sector. Over the past five years, private credit has been sold as a stable, high-yield alternative to public markets. The pitch depends entirely on trusting that the valuations are real. A DOJ probe into the biggest asset manager on the planet puts that trust under a spotlight it has never faced before. BlackRock declined to comment. Probes can end without charges. But the question being asked in federal offices right now is whether this fund told investors the truth. Haatch is the UK's largest pre-seed VC fund. Pulse is how we track what's moving global markets every day. Follow @HaatchPulse to get these before everyone else.

THIS IS HUGE: The DOJ just opened a probe into BlackRock after one of its funds quietly slashed asset values by 19% overnight. Anyone who owned shares woke up to a 13% drop in a single day. Now federal prosecutors are asking why nobody saw it...show more

...forces most people never see: giant institutional players automatically buying euros to offset currency risk on their overseas holdings. Here's the contradiction hiding in plain sight. The euro has faced real pressure this year from slowing European growth and political uncertainty. Yet it hasn't fallen the way the fundamentals would suggest. This is why. $200 billion is not a rounding error. That's a flow large enough to move a currency regardless of what any central bank says or any politician does. The hidden implication is timing. Hedging flows aren't permanent. They get adjusted, rolled, or unwound. If that $200 billion support starts to thin out, the euro loses its floor and the moves that should have happened already start happening fast. Anyone travelling to Europe this summer, or any UK business importing European goods, is sitting on a rate that may look very different by autumn. Haatch is the UK's largest pre-seed VC fund. We built Pulse to track the macro events that move markets. Follow @HaatchPulse for daily updates on the stories that matter.

THIS IS HUGE: Morgan Stanley just identified $200 billion in hedging flows quietly holding the euro up. If you've bought anything from Europe recently, or booked a holiday there, the exchange rate you got was shaped by...show more

...took a chunk out of them. These aren't rounding errors. A 1.64% drop on the CAC 40 wipes billions in value in a single session. Both France and Spain are export-heavy economies. When their markets slide like this, it usually signals something deeper: weakening demand expectations, pressure on trade, or a shift in how investors feel about European growth. The CAC 40 in particular is stuffed with luxury goods giants and energy companies. A sell-off there tends to ripple outward fast, hitting everything from French bank stocks to global supply chains. This is the kind of move that pension funds notice. If it continues into the close, fund managers rebalance. That rebalancing affects bond markets, which affects the borrowing rates that eventually show up in your mortgage. Haatch is the UK's largest pre-seed VC fund. Pulse is how we track what's moving global markets every day. Follow @HaatchPulse to get these before everyone else.

JUST IN: Europe's two biggest stock markets just sold off hard. France down 1.64%, Spain down 1.22%. If you have a pension, an ISA, or any savings tied to European markets, today just...show more

...watched a significant chunk of that value disappear in a single afternoon. A 2% drop sounds small. It isn't. The Nasdaq 100 tracks the 100 biggest companies on the US tech exchange. Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon. When it falls 2% in a day, trillions of dollars in collective value are wiped out before markets close. The March 26th comparison matters. That sell-off was sharp enough that analysts flagged it at the time. The fact we're back at that level of daily loss suggests the nerves that caused it haven't gone away. The question now is whether this is a single bad day or the start of something longer. Tech stocks led the bull run of the last two years. When they fall hard, the rest of the market tends to follow. Anyone with a pension invested in global equities will see this in their next statement. Haatch is the UK's largest pre-seed VC fund. We built Pulse to track the macro events that move markets. Follow @HaatchPulse for daily updates on the stories that matter.

THIS IS HUGE: The Nasdaq 100 just dropped 2% today, its worst single-day fall since March 26th. If you have a pension, a stocks and shares ISA, or any savings tied to tech, you just...show more

...eventually foot the bill for, through higher taxes, deeper spending cuts, or both. When the government borrows more expensively, every pound it spends on debt repayment is a pound not spent on hospitals, schools, or roads. That trade-off is now sharper than it has been in 27 years. This also feeds directly into mortgages. Fixed-rate deals are priced off government borrowing costs. Banks don't lend cheap when the government can't borrow cheap. Anyone coming off a fixed rate in the next six months is walking into this. The market is saying it believes inflation stays high for a long time. That's the signal embedded in a 30-year rate. Investors won't lock money up for three decades at 5.85% unless they expect prices to keep rising. The 1998 comparison matters: back then, the economy was still digesting the aftermath of Black Wednesday. The context today is different, but the pressure on public finances is just as real. Haatch is the UK's largest pre-seed VC fund. We created Pulse to make sense of the global events that affect your money. Follow @HaatchPulse for daily takes that cut through the noise.

BREAKING: The UK's cost of long-term borrowing just hit 5.85%. The last time it was this high was March 1998. Rachel Reeves is now paying a price for government debt that every taxpayer will...show more

...face the worst possible combination: borrowing costs going up while the economy is already slowing down. Inflation just hit its highest level since 2023. Normally the Fed raises rates to cool a hot economy. This economy isn't hot. Consumer confidence just fell to a record low and the job market is quietly deteriorating beneath the headline numbers. That's the trap. Raise rates to fight inflation and you risk pushing a weakening economy into a hard landing. Hold or cut and inflation embeds further. There is no clean move. The last time the US faced rising prices alongside a stalling economy was the late 1970s. The Fed under Paul Volcker hiked aggressively. It broke inflation. It also triggered two recessions. If hikes do come, the first people to feel it are anyone refinancing a home loan or carrying a balance on a credit card. The wider knock-on, slower hiring and weaker consumer spending, follows a few months behind. Haatch is the UK's largest pre-seed VC fund. We built Pulse to track the macro events that move markets. Follow @HaatchPulse for daily updates on the stories that matter.

CONFIRMED: The Fed is now expected to raise interest rates, with only a 1% chance of a cut before July 2027. Anyone with a mortgage, a car loan, or credit card debt is about to...show more