Good morning from London, Reader Last Sunday, writing from Riyadh, I shared an idea that had crystallised during my week in Saudi Arabia: The next great wealth transfer is actually two transfers. Financial capital. And the wisdom that created it. This week, back in London, I realised there is another part to that idea. Nothing compounds simply because it has been preserved. Capital has to be deployed. Wisdom has to circulate. Ideas have to be acted upon. Relationships have to be developed....
9 days ago • 2 min read
Good morning from Riyadh, Reader Last Sunday I wrote: The model is rented.The expertise is owned. After a week in Saudi Arabia, meeting family offices, founders, investors and businesses, that idea has taken on a much bigger meaning for me. Because there is an extraordinary transition happening here. An enormous amount of wealth is moving from one generation to the next. But after the conversations I've had this week, I think we may be describing that transition incorrectly. The next great...
16 days ago • 2 min read
Good morning @Reader, Last Sunday I wrote about a distinction that has stayed with me all week: The rules tell you what an expert knows.The exceptions tell you how an expert thinks. Since then, another question has kept coming up in conversations: If judgement is where the real edge lives, who actually owns it? Because something interesting is happening in AI. The models are getting better. Faster. Cheaper. More accessible. And increasingly, everyone has access to broadly the same underlying...
23 days ago • 1 min read
The Edge Lives In The Exceptions Good morning Reader, Last Sunday I wrote about preserving human expertise. This week, I’ve been thinking about something slightly harder: What part of that expertise actually needs preserving? A story from hedge-fund, Citadel, this week made the point beautifully. Very recently, they acquired a large portfolio of US equities from Situational Awareness after a sharp sell-off put the fund under pressure. They acquired the risk. The market bounced. And within...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Good morning Reader, Last Sunday I wrote about a question that has been coming up repeatedly in conversations: What happens to 30 years of expertise when someone leaves? This week, I've found myself thinking about the question from the other direction. Why should we preserve it in the first place? The photograph above captures something that has been at the heart of this journey from the beginning: Your story deserves to outlive you. Because, despite everything I now do in AI, this was never...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Good morning Reader, Something kept coming up in conversations this week. I spoke with people who have spent 20, 25, even 30+ years becoming exceptionally good at what they do. Different industries. Different businesses. Different countries. Yet underneath almost every conversation was the same question: What happens to all that expertise when the person isn’t there? When they retire. When they sell the business. When they leave. When they're too busy. Or simply when there aren't enough hours...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
The Cost of Being Needed Hi Reader, For years, I believed being needed was a sign that I was valuable. If people constantly came to me for answers, decisions and guidance, that had to be a good thing. And, initially, it is. It means people trust your judgement. It means your experience matters. It means you have become important to the business. But eventually, being needed comes with a cost. Every decision waits for you. Every difficult client conversation finds its way back to you. Your...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
The Hidden Asset Hi Reader, Last week, I wrote about the questions I ask before I recommend AI. Questions like: How does this business actually create value? Where are the same decisions being made over and over again? Where is expertise trapped inside one or two people? Where is time disappearing? Where is revenue leaking? Those questions have completely changed how I think about AI. But this week, I realised something else. I don't think I'm actually building an AI company. When I first...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
The Questions I Ask Before I Recommend AI Hello Reader, Last week, I shared my recent article in Valiant CEO about why every successful founder eventually becomes the bottleneck. The response was overwhelming. What struck me most wasn't the number of people who read it. It was how many people told me afterwards: "I finally understand what you mean." That mattered to me. Because the real challenge isn't explaining AI. It's helping people see that AI isn't the starting point. Over the past few...
2 months ago • 1 min read