Tim Groot

In 48 hours at the Munich Security Conference I met British & European founders building: - space data centers - fusion power - cyber defences for AI (x2) - intelligence drones - robotic exo-skeletons - novel geothermal energy plants - new AI-designed body armour - new AI-designed plastic eating enzymes - a laser-mining company for rare earth metals Something is happening that’s for sure.

This has also not been covered AT ALL in The Guardian or The Telegraph. What are we doing here guys? Our ecosystem has absolutely zero exposure. Zero.

I have been posting repeatedly on X about the extraordinarily fast collapse of births across the planet: in rich and poor countries, in fast-growing and slow-growing economies, in religious and secular societies, under right-wing and left-wing governments, with high taxes and with low taxes. The pattern is universal. I knew this trend would continue. Still, the figures released this morning left me genuinely speechless. China’s government announced on Monday (see screenshot below) that births in 2025 fell to 7.92 million, a staggering 1.62 million fewer than in 2024, and that the total fertility rate has dropped to 0.93. Few economists have been more forceful than yours truly in arguing that births are collapsing, yet even I was surprised by these numbers. I was forecasting around 8.5 million births, not 7.92. To put this into perspective: if China could somehow sustain 7.92 million births per year from now on, its population would eventually stabilize at roughly 625 million, far below today’s 1.405 billion. In reality, as smaller cohorts reach childbearing age, births will fall well below 7.92 million. Hence, 625 million is a very generous upper bound, even under implausibly optimistic assumptions about life expectancy. Put differently, there were fewer births in China in 2025 than in 1776, the year the United States declared independence. I am still trying to process these numbers. This is the defining issue of our time.

That fry represents one, maybe 2 shelf stable, long storage, Idaho potatoes grown in a single field by a single farmer, processed and flash frozen for indefinite storage until needed, fried on demand as needed That fruit cup is the result of 7 different fruit suppliers, harvested and shipped fresh from global supplies in a matter of hours to a day, hand cut and assembled and served immediately before browning and decay sets in. The fact you can do that for the cost of 15 minutes of labor or less is a f---ing miracle.

China's trade surplus tops $1tn for the first time and reconfirms the question: What does China really need to import from the rest of the world? It believes it can make everything better, faster and cheaper, and it's probably right.. ft.com/content/b9bf3d…

@andrewhart Sorry to hear that Andrew, I might be interested in acquiring the IP. Could have a chat sometime?

A few months ago, we decided to shut down Hyper. We built an amazing product and technology - better than I ever could have imagined - and rolled out with huge retailers like IKEA. But growth was impossible. 2-3 year sales cycles, in a challenging market. Hard product, hard distribution. It's been a crazy ride over six years. There are so many people to thank, and we have so many stories to tell -- some day. As for now, I'm feeling good. 2026 is the future. I'm going to take everything I've learnt about researching a breakthrough technology from first principles, and apply these lessons to something new. 🤖🤖🤖 I will talk more about that in the new year.

The ideal outcome is that founders incorporate, raise, hire, build, pay tax and ultimately list in the UK. The second best outcome is that they have a Delaware topco and ultimately list in the US, but everything between is in the UK. An exit tax is just going to push founders to move elsewhere as soon as they can. It’s a terrible idea which further limits potential. Instead of managed decline, the UK needs to reorient towards a growth environment: - Let BBB funds invest outside of the UK - Shift GLP activity to early stage EMs - Improve EMI incentives - Remove S/EIS for funds - Improve S/EIS for angels (remove long stop requirements) - Full expensing for capital investments - Remove SBRR cliffs - etc Incentivise growth at the base, use the US to support growth while UK capital catches up, and build a more attractive exit market. More on much of this in @andrewjb_’s excellent article:

In 2000, UK top 10% incomes were no 3 in the world, but they’ve since gradually fallen and are now behind the rest of the Anglosphere and northwestern Europe; just above Spain and Italy.

Albania has appointed an AI-generated government minister who will avoid getting corrupted.

@jjanezhang Thank you for saying this. I don’t code but closely involved in product and I was starting to suspect the same thing.

It's been about a year since my team has fully adopted all the AI coding tools (Cursor, Claude Code) And day to day I am feeling the added cruft in the code base. Unit tests are not catching regressions. Unneeded mocking, comments, are left in between. More refactoring is needed to add new features. I find myself sitting down and rewriting files to ensure completeness, correctness, and ease for future developers more than I ever have before.

@CMCabrera_ @Tallow__ I think it’s slightly confusing that the website and the restaurant have different names. Although I’m sure the vision makes sense I would start with one and make that the name of both the website and restaurant

@Tallow__ Is the restaurant called Tallow or Permissibles? I’ve been looking for 10 minutes and I can’t find a menu online with pictures of the food or prices. Can’t search you up on Google Maps. I think you’ve gotta work on your marketing more than anything.

@NXT4EU The cloud. No physical capital is required.

0 likes is brutal 😭 What should be the Capital of a united Europe? Seems like it won't be Frankfurt..

🧵The US-EU trade deal has generated a lot of talk on X about how this is a humiliation for the #EU, how it should be a wake up call for Europe, how Europe must assert itself, etc. My take is that if anything it should finally put paid to all the talk about the EU as “Europe.”1/5

Eastern and Northern Europe refused to confront Trump due to security concerns, fearing an American retreat. Italy is sceptical of the Franco-German axis and thus wanted to keep the USA on their side. Angry about the deal? Blame weakness, distrust and disunity in Europe.

A few random thoughts on the deal 1) After a "happy globalisation" phase, the EU risks entering "happy vassalisation" phase (@GillesGressani) The US went from being a "benign" liege lord to a much more aggressive one.

🇪🇺 Further European integration would add around €3 trillion in GDP every year! Almost 4 times the entire US defence budget. It's time to complete the Union

@christianreber Hi Christian, Let me know if you need someone to help with registration/event app etc. We work with TNW, Money20/20, TechArena and many others. Thanks T

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Let's change the narrative 👀 projecteurope.co

Ik vind dit zó erg. De overheid zou een plek moeten zijn waar de allerbeste ITers van ons land met veel plezier werken. Maar moet je kijken waar je mee te maken krijgt als je iets simpels wil doen als ITer. Zo erg. anneschuth.nl/2025/03/07/hos…

Lovable will change Europe's startup culture forever. Never has a company grown so fast and so profitably. This team, company and product will inspire multiple generations of European builders.