Tom Simmons

MD & CTO Pfeifer&LangenUK.
Former Founder & CEO SupplantCo, RoySocEdinburgh Fellow.

[Tom Simmons @DrTJSimmons]

@oldbooksguy @threadreaderapp unroll

[Tom Simmons @DrTJSimmons]

@JohnathanBi @threadreaderapp unroll

[Tom Simmons @DrTJSimmons]

I honestly think the most productive 11 h that @SupplantCompany ever gets out of me are on LDN to SFO 🛫

All I need is a chair, a laptop and red wine.

And also good WiFi
3 cheers for @britishairways on that front! 👏
(3 boos for @VirginAtlantic)

[Tom Simmons @DrTJSimmons]

@sethbannon Do we need to make deeptech more cool or SaaS less cool?

[Tom Simmons @DrTJSimmons]

Honoured to be a speaker at the @NutritionOrgUK "Nutrition Science and Innovation - Powerful partnerships for the future webinar" on June 4th alongside: Anthony Warner at @newfoodteam, Jeff Brunstrom at @BristolUni, Philip Calder at @unisouthampton and Josh Sauer at Zya

[Tom Simmons @DrTJSimmons]

Random thoughts I had this week while traveling 🇵🇹

Hope you enjoyed 👋

[Tom Simmons @DrTJSimmons]

11) Lisbon has a long way to go to be Europe's Silicon Valley though.

SV's lifeblood, venture capital 💰, is more than ~30x greater there than in Lisbon.

Even in Europe, Lisbon is ~10x below the amount of venture invested in London 🇬🇧, Europe's primary VC destination today.

[Tom Simmons @DrTJSimmons]

10) Though the skylines of each are today of course dominated by modern skyscrapers.

🇵🇹 Left: Vasco da Gama Tower
🇺🇸 Right: The Transamerica Pyramid

[Tom Simmons @DrTJSimmons]

9) This shows up in the regional architecture, which is distinctly hispanic.

🇺🇸 Top: Stanford University
🇵🇹 Bottom: Lisbon Old town

[Tom Simmons @DrTJSimmons]

8) Both have a strong Catholic heritage, but have since liberalised.

🇵🇹 Left: Lisbon Cathedral
🇺🇸 Right: Misión San Francisco de Asís

[Tom Simmons @DrTJSimmons]

Lisbon🇵🇹 aspires to be Europe's🇪🇺 Silicon Valley.

Right now, it certainly has some way to go.

But I travelled to Lisbon recently and was surprised at the number of similarities.

Here's a list of my observations.
👇🧵

https://t.co/yKsbAzTRYq

[Tom Simmons @DrTJSimmons]

7) But even the bridges that span the middles of the bays look spookily similar:

🇵🇹Left: The Vasco da Gama Bridge connects Lisbon with Montijo
🇺🇸Right: The San Mateo Bridge connects San Mateo with Hayward

[Tom Simmons @DrTJSimmons]

6) Lisbon famously has a carbon copy of the Golden Gate Bridge across the mouth of its bay - the '25th April Bridge'

🇵🇹Left: The 25 de Abril Bridge
🇺🇸Right: The Golden Gate Bridge

[Tom Simmons @DrTJSimmons]

5) Both Lisbon and San Francisco sit at the mouths of large bays facing large oceans.

🇺🇸 The San Francisco Bay on the Pacific
🇵🇹 The mouth of the Tagus river on the Atlantic

This has driven the economic history of each.

[Tom Simmons @DrTJSimmons]

4) Both also lie at one end on densely populated coastal stretches with another major global city at the other end (Porto 🇵🇹 and LA 🇺🇸 respectively).

[Tom Simmons @DrTJSimmons]

3) The continents they are part of are dominated by large single market economies: 🇪🇺 and 🇺🇸

This means both cities/regions can easily trade with 100s millions of people and 10s trillions GDP.

[Tom Simmons @DrTJSimmons]

2) They have very similar Mediterranean climates 🌞characterised by mild-to-cool winters with occasional rainfall and warm-to-hot and dry summers.

So, from that perspective, they're amongst the nicest places in the world to live.

[Tom Simmons @DrTJSimmons]

1) Both Lisbon and San Fran are major cities on the Western coasts of large advanced industrialised continents: Europe and North America.

This means both are in the vicinity of large numbers of highly developed trading partners.

[Tom Simmons @DrTJSimmons]

@paulg I never understand why British people go on summer vacations

[Tom Simmons @DrTJSimmons]

@eric_is_weird Would make an interesting study as there is a direct control population. I think student-run law journals are basically a uniquely North American phenomenon.