Stan Boland

@HarryStebbings Biggest reason as stated - thin domestic VC firms with $1-2B fund sizes due to the under development of the UK VC ecosystem and anaemic participation by pension funds, insurers and single family offices

What Europe needs to do to build trillion-dollar companies "I think Europe is strong at starting companies and getting them to an early stage. But to build trillion dollar companies, it needs access to much larger growth capital and billion dollar rounds. Without that level of capital and ambition, it is hard to compete with global incumbents." @demishassabis What is the single biggest reason Europe does not have a $TRN company today @torstenreil @eldsjal @stanboland @goodwin_ml @alanchanguk

Ken Griffin, founder of Citadel, has a $10 plaque behind his desk that reads: "If we're all going to eat, someone has to sell." Of all the things this man could surround himself with, he chose a cheap plaque with a blunt truth about business. "You're always selling. You're selling to candidates. You're selling to vendors, you're selling to counterparties, you're selling to customers." And if you're always selling, you know what you're going to hear a lot of? "No." Griffin doesn't sugarcoat it. He tells two stories that illustrate just how brutal rejection can be. 1994 was a rough year, with Citadel losing ~4% of its capital. Griffin flew to Switzerland for a crucial lunch meeting, sat down, and his guest arrived only to say: "Oh, I thought you were John Griffin from Fen Church. I got to go." His lunch date got up and left the table. Later that afternoon, a Swiss banker spent 45 minutes with him in a beautiful office, smoking a cigar, before closing with: "Such a pity that such a bright young man picked the wrong career." Two rejections in one day for the founder of one of the most successful hedge funds in history — and his takeaway was simply this: "You just have to tolerate. You're going to hear no a lot, but you need to become accustomed to having to market your ideas and market what you represent and what you stand for." Absorbing rejection and continuing anyway is the actual skill, whether you're hiring, raising capital, or winning customers. Most people avoid selling because they're afraid of no. The ones who build great things have learned to expect it.

@matthewclifford @join_ef Well done Matt, Alice and team!

We’re excited to announce that @join_ef has raised $200m of fresh capital, including $130m into our management company at a unicorn valuation, to be the natural home of the world’s most ambitious people in the Age of Entrepreneurship 🧵

@alexgkendall @wayve_ai Amazing - many congratulations @alexgkendall and the team @wayve !

Another major milestone in @wayve_ai's history. Proud to say we’ve secured $1.5 billion Series D investment at $8.6 billion valuation. We started a decade ago with a contrarian technical thesis: that self-driving is an AI problem, and Embodied AI will enable autonomy to scale without rules, HD-maps and using mass-produced hardware. Now we're entering commercialisation, we're taking a contrarian commercial strategy too, selecting the business model with the largest opportunity to scale. We're not selling our own cars, which limits scale to one brand. We're not operating our own fleets, which limits autonomy to city-by-city expansion. We're licensing autonomy to any vehicle, anywhere. This new business model is only possible now because we've built a general purpose AI driver, which is flexible to work with any vehicle architecture and proven to drive all around the world. This unlocks a high margin software licensing model, which we're now excited to be deploying with global partners with the strength of this new funding round. Thank you to our new and returning financial investors for backing our vision all the way: @EclipseVentures, @balderton, @SoftBank, @OTPPinfo, @BaillieGifford, @BritishBBank, @IcehouseVenture and @Schroders among other global institutional investors. We're deepening our partnerships with @Microsoft and @nvidia to build and deploy Embodied AI at global scale, and with @Uber, who are announcing supervised robotaxi trials in 10 cities around the world, starting with London this year. To top it off, three top-10 global automakers across Europe, Japan and USA are backing and believing in our technology for consumer vehicles and robotaxis: @MercedesBenz, @Nissan and @Stellantis. I’ve always believed that our end-to-end AI approach would lead the way in autonomy. This latest investment and the endorsement that comes with it make me believe that the industry is also now converging on that idea too. What's next? We have a busy next few years of commercial delivery: supervised robotaxi trials around the world in 2026 and consumer vehicle sales from 2027. Thank you to the incredible Wayve team for making this all possible. Check out all details here: wayve.ai/press/series-d/

Chip manufacturer Fractile is set to spend £100m building up its UK operations, the country’s AI minister, Kanishka Narayan, announced on Tuesday sifted.eu/articles/fract…

1. Yes, the UK friction on new physical infra is insanely too high and it's damn urgent we fix. Obvs safety needs continued regulation and we need central planning but removal of all other barriers to building and connecting power generation to the grid is the biggest single high leverage move for the UK. Since we have a lot of wind and tide, this seems certain to engineer an explosion in low cost generation and storage. New NSIP planning for 50MW+ capacity can still take 15 months from submission to decision, we should think like wartime (this is economic war), how do we make this 3 months? 2. Complex issue, that of subsidies. Contracts for differences (CfDs) extremely valuable for promoting infra build and reduce cost of capital, riding out spot-based pricing, it'd be chaos without them and we'd struggle to support private investment. Some of the others are misguided (eg biomass), some should be removed (eg CCS), some already stopped for new contracts (eg feed-in tariffs). Other subsidies are for impoverished families fuel bills. All of these should come from general taxation.

7. If I Was in Charge of Energy Policy in the UK I Would Do These Two Things 1. Deregulate anything physical: It should be incredibly easy for anybody to build anything. 2. Remove all subsidies: Let the free market do its thing. If it is profitable, people will build it. Love to hear your thoughts on this @matthewclifford @stanboland @goodwin_ml

I have interviewed 1,000 of the best founders over the last 10 years. The top three: 1. Nik Storonsky (Revolut) 2. @awxjack (Airwallex) 3. @alanchanguk (Fuse Energy) All three share one trait. Unwavering obsession to win. We BS so many founders today because people hate what makes them feel mediocre. Truth is, if you want to build a generational company, you need to work weekends. You won’t have work-life balance, it will be fricking hard. Today Alan Chang says it like it is, no BS, raw and unfiltered. For founders, this is your must listen and my 8 takeaways from @alanchanguk 👇 Spotify 👉 open.spotify.com/episode/1eG9QT… Youtube 👉 youtu.be/T4-sSCxiU4c Apple Podcasts 👉 podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/20v… Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:20 The interview process that led to the $150M pay packet 04:58 How Revolut drove speed and urgency in their teams 08:35 You cannot have work-life balance 10:56 What I disagreed with Nik on most 13:50 Is Nik right that Revolut should have got a banking licence earlier? 18:18 Energy Crisis 25:20 Why China is the shining light for regulation to follow 30:28 Interview Process: Green & Red Flags 39:31 Lesson from Nik about ownership and excuses 40:58 The signs of truly top performing people in a team 48:15 You need to work weekends to win 54:00 Every single year we 10x revenue - now at ~$400M 55:45 Why Eastern European engineers are the best 57:33 What People Get Wrong About Having Money 59:12 Quick-Fire Round

@KanishkaNarayan @leicesterliz Great work, Kanishka. LFG 🚀 🚀

Today, @leicesterliz and I are announcing a transformational c.£25bn AI growth package - deals, reforms, appointments - that together put AI opportunity firmly in the hands of British workers, kids and communities. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇬🇧𝐇𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐂 𝐈𝐍𝐕𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐈𝐍 𝐖𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐒 (with exceptional leadership from @JoStevensLabour and @PrifWeinidog) A £10bn AI Growth Zone in North Wales, with thousands of jobs to power a proud AI future And now, a £10bn AI Growth Zone in South Wales, 5000 jobs, transforming our community for the next technological revolution A total of c.8500 jobs in communities that have shaped industrial progress before and will shape AI progress again A wider policy package to take years off grid connection, months off planning, and makes Britain an exceptional place for AI Growth Zone investment 🚀𝐀𝐈 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐋𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐃𝐎𝐔𝐁𝐋𝐄 𝐃𝐎𝐖𝐍 𝐎𝐍 𝐁𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐒𝐇 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐅𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 @Equinix £3.9bn compute investment in Hertfordshire Leading US inference platform, @GroqInc, investing £100m and opening its first UK data centre Emerging UK AI hyperscaler, AI Pathfinder, investing £150m @perplexity_ai, popular AI search platform, investing £80m to expand their London office, creating 100 jobs UK chip leader, @graphcoreai, doubling its UK headcount and opening a new AI dev lab in Bristol AI coding automation platform, @cursor_ai, opening its first UK office @cerebras, leading US AI chip maker, expanding in the UK and announcing its ‘Cerebras for Nations’ partnership with the UK @Zoom investing a further £24m in the UK 🤝𝐀𝐈 𝐀𝐌𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐒𝐀𝐃𝐎𝐑𝐒 𝐁𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐑𝐔𝐌 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐔𝐊 𝐀𝐈 @t_blom, exceptional founder of Monzo and GoCardless, will be AI Ambassador helping us ensure British talent builds an audacious AI future Deepmind’s VP Research, @RaiaHadsell, will be AI Ambassador supporting our effort to grow the UK's AI research and commercial lead Simon Johnson, Nobel-winning economist, will be our AI Ambassador focused on driving AI adoption and productivity impact cross-economy 🇬🇧 𝐒𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐈𝐆𝐍 𝐀𝐈 𝐓𝐎 𝐁𝐔𝐈𝐋𝐃 𝐀 𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐓𝐋𝐘 𝐁𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐒𝐇 𝐀𝐈 𝐅𝐔𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐄 @jameswise, brilliant tech investor @balderton, will chair Sovereign AI, a new £500m initiative to back strategic British AI firms A £250m AI Research Resource (AIRR) procurement will ensure compute resources for the best of British research in public interest A world-first £100m Advance Market Commitment (AMC) for novel compute will focus on how Britain can build global leadership in new forms of AI compute 🧪𝐀𝐈 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐒𝐂𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄, 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐀𝐈 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐒𝐋𝐎𝐏 (with Lord Vallance) A £137m strategy that focuses on a clear national mission: using AI in pursuit of novel therapeutics, new drugs to tackle life-threatening disease Compute for leading UK AI for materials firm, @cusp_ai, to double down on its world-changing work from the UK Data call with @RenPhil21 and data generation capabilities to drive major advances in AI-driven science

a distinction I’d like the government to make: imo the real divide in our economy isn’t just between rich + poor — or in HMT speak, those with broad shoulders + those without — but b/w those working to get us out of this malaise + the legacy incumbents happy to keep creaming off the rents of stagnation if you start there, I don’t think you end up considering an exit tax

@matthewclifford Happy Birthday Matt, that is one big cake - eat up!

Today is my 40th birthday! I feel very lucky to have spent the last decade with wonderful family, friends, partners, colleagues and investors - and look forward to what the next decade might bring…

The government must rule this out if serious about making the UK the most attractive place to start, grow a company and build wealth for founders, employees and investors. As France proves, exit penalties on employment stops hiring; likewise exit penalties (esp at this critical juncture for the UK) will stop startups. We need founder optimism, don’t crush it!

100%, @matthewclifford. We *can* restart UK’s wealth creation engine but it’d be SO much easier if the current gvmt would embrace this, if we don’t need the extended trauma of another lost 9 years of finding our political way (remainder of this parliament and likely the whole of the next one), so come on @Keir_Starmer!

The UK is a great country with an extraordinary history. Our stagnation is real, but it's fixable and worth fixing. Enjoyed giving this talk at @lfg_uk last week and so encouraged by the optimistic responses I've had from people who are building a brilliant future for Britain 🚀

@andrewjb_ @turinginst @BritishBBank @BritishProgress Important and thoughtful report on how we can build and keep UK-owned and domiciled tech companies in the world in which we are truly competing….

you've heard about @turinginst (~£30m/yr), but do you know the issues with the @BritishBBank (£25b), the closest thing we have to a sovereign wealth fund? or how VC incentives costing £1b a year don't help scale or sovereignty? to fix this chart, we need to fix *them*:

@christianbowens @clovefi @Accel @Kindred_VC @airstreet Yay! Congratulations, Christian, it’s going to be big….

Today, I’m delighted to announce @CloveFi, and our $14m pre-seed led by @Accel, with @Kindred_VC and @airstreet. It’s been 2 years since I left Paddle, and in that time, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what’s next. Over the last 10+ years, I’ve always tried to imagine what a financial institution built for this century would look like, and that’s what we’re building at Clove. For all the progress in consumer technology, the way in which we get guidance around our finances has barely changed. There are products to move money, and make investments, but not to answer the questions that matter – the ones about timing, trade-offs, and planning for the future. At Clove, we aim to be the partner for your whole financial life. Combining AI and humans to deliver this at an unprecedented scale. We’re early on what will be a long journey, and hiring across many roles — if you’re passionate about playing a part in building the financial institution of the future, we’d love to hear from you.

@HarryStebbings No question that massive stepping up in the number of, and sizes of, investment in European-based tech is needed, and we shouldn’t get deluded into thinking that’s happening at a fast enough pace by the progress that has been made. It’s not.

3. Europe Needs to Invest More Than Ever We need to invest $750-800BN alone just to catch up on AI innovation. We also need more investment to compete in other industries. Defence, high tech, etc… Love to hear your thoughts on this and if you think capital is the number one barrier for Europe today @torstenreil @eldsjal @daveclark85 @stanboland @taavet

We chat a lot in venture about how big our funds are and think we are all big-time players. Then PE walks into the room!! Philipp Freise is the man behind @KKR_Co's $8BN European fund; the largest private fund in Europe. Wow this show does not disappoint. - Why Philipp does not believe tariffs are the right answer - How KKR construct their $8BN portfolio - How KKR deployed 40% of their fund in COVID - The wild story behind Turkey and losing $500M there - What Europe needs to do to keep pace with China and the US My 6 takeaways below 👇

💻 What are the barriers to developing a thriving tech sector outside of the US? Join @stanboland, @RobynVidra & @KanishkaNarayan on 17 June to discuss 'Tech and the future of the world economy' 🌍 #LSEFestival zurl.co/B5Myq @ndrlee @LSEpublicevents

💻 What are the barriers to developing a thriving tech sector outside of the US? Join @stanboland, @RobynVidra & @KanishkaNarayan on 17 June to discuss 'Tech and the future of the world economy' 🌍 #LSEFestival zurl.co/B5Myq @ndrlee @LSEpublicevents

Catch an unmissable @20VCFund episode with the irrepressible @harrystebbings where @thulme and I don't hold back in sharing our practical recipe for the UK to change and to realise its potential to be a sustained winner in global tech. Grab the episode here and enjoy! YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=CRxxP8… Spotify:  open.spotify.com/episode/0h6r7H…