Shakil Khan

I mainly tweet about Food, Music, Coffee and Technology, None of which I really have a clue about, but so far so good.

[travis kalanick @travisk]

In 2001 I intercepted a partner at a VC who was trying to escape his office before our meeting was supposed to start. I ended up pitching him in his parked Lexus from the passenger seat.

At one point he grabbed my laptop placed on his large belly which was pressed against the steering wheel and rapidly flipped through the slides himself.

2001 fundraising hit different

[Fredrik Hjelm 🇸🇪 @FredrikHjelm4]

Europe can just do things.

Spotted at Old Street station and across Sthlm, London, Paris, Munich and Berlin: me, @HBO_Sweden, @antonosika, @mati, @NStoronsky, @alexgkendall and 100+ other European founders brought together by @balderton.

It's not a campaign about potential, not a campaign about what needs to change, but a campaign about what has already been built.

@Revolut, 70 million customers. @Lovable, a zillion users. @voitechnology, +500 million journeys. All of it, built in Europe.

And here's the thing: this is day one.

Most of us started young. We have 30, 40 years of building ahead of us. And behind us is an entire generation of founders who are just getting started.

The best of European tech hasn't been built yet.

[Seb Johnson @SebJohnsonUK]

The founders of over 100 European startups have come together to get more people to build and join startups in Europe.

The campaign, named "Built in Europe", is an out-of-home and digital advertising campaign across five European cities.

It features:

> @mati of @ElevenLabs
> @NStoronsky of @Revolut
> @antonosika of @Lovable
> @HBO_Sweden of @lassie_co
> @vriparbelli of @synthesiaIO
> @FredrikHjelm4 of @voitechnology & @Pitdotcom
> @Barney_H_Y of @meetcleo

And many other great European founders and CEOs.

It's been organised by @balderton but features companies and founders from all over Europe.

The VC firm has built a website bringing together jobs from 1,000 leading tech startups on a single platform using direct data feeds and API integrations.

The overall aim is to get more people building and founding companies here which is AMAZING to see.

NICE @surangac, @Jameswise, @robmoff

[Shakil Khan @shak]

Sunday Morning Brain Food newsletter by @shaneparrish never disappoints:

“Most people give soft feedback because they care more about how the conversation feels than about whether the problem gets solved. This is selfish.

Another thought on this... A lot of people don't actually want direct feedback; they prefer something softer. When they hear direct feedback, they focus on how it makes them feel and not the substance. If you're focusing on how feedback makes you feel and not its accuracy, you're robbing yourself of the opportunity to get better.

Exceptional results happen when people are willing to give direct feedback and to hear it.”

[Shakil Khan @shak]

Reading the Brain Food newsletter from @farnamstreet is 1 of my Sunday highlights, it never ever disappoints.

https://t.co/rnt1Ooa3OL

[Paul Graham @paulg]

The only thing worse than having the CEO knee-deep in building stuff with AI is not having the CEO knee-deep in building stuff with AI.

[Torsten Reil @torstenreil]

@HarryStebbings I don’t know, “troops”, “bleeding”, “trenches” were not in my word cloud for an insurance start-up in SF with a free cafe.

[David Senra @davidsenra]

The best advice Rick Rubin gives:

Don’t let fear get in the way of your hopes and dreams.

"This is my dream but I'm afraid. What are people going to say? My last one was successful, what do I do now? Will I be able to keep going?”

“Don't worry about any of that stuff because that stuff doesn't matter.”

“When people share their hopes and dreams that's all you need to know.”

[Dr. Julie Gurner @drgurner]

An overlooked personal signal to pay attention to:

The things that are *easy* for you in your work, are often a sign of incredible talent in that area.

[Shakil Khan @shak]

Truer words were never spoken…

[Garry Tan @garrytan]

Founders must stop trying to building 2010-era businesses with 2026-era technology.

Don't try to rebuild Foursquare or Yelp.

Don't try to recreate Basecamp by 37 Signals with $10/mo SaaS pricing.

Don't underprice! If it works it's worth a lot more.

Don't be tempted to become "Tech enabled PE" with revenue tricks.

The rules of tech changed with AI. Play the new game.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Fewer than 5% of homes in the UK have air conditioning. And British houses were specifically engineered to trap heat inside. Thick masonry walls, low ceilings, minimal ventilation. When a heatwave hits London, those homes become brick ovens that hold temperature for hours after the sun goes down.

A fan pushes air that's the exact same temperature as the room. The cooling happens at your skin. Sweat absorbs roughly 2,400 kilojoules per liter when it evaporates, and airflow velocity across the skin surface determines how fast that evaporation happens. More air movement, faster evaporation, more heat pulled from your body.

The bladeless design multiplies this. A small motor in the base pulls air through asymmetrically aligned impeller blades and forces it through a narrow slit shaped like an aircraft wing. Two fluid dynamics principles take over from there. Inducement: the accelerated air creates low pressure behind the output slit, pulling room air through behind it. Entrainment: air surrounding the edges gets dragged along in the same direction. The output is roughly 15 times the volume of air the motor originally pulled in.

The horizontal mode is where the engineering gets clever. Tilted flat at bed height, it creates a continuous laminar sheet of moving air across your entire body surface simultaneously. Traditional oscillating fans hit you in pulses. Your skin's boundary layer, the thin film of warm humid air that clings to your body, reforms between each pass. Continuous horizontal airflow strips that boundary layer and keeps it stripped. Every square centimeter of exposed skin is evaporating at maximum rate, all night.

Your body needs core temperature to drop about 1°C to initiate sleep. In a house designed to hold heat with no AC and ambient temps above 25°C, a horizontal air blanket across the bed is doing thermodynamically what a £10,000 AC installation would do. For about £150.

[Sejal Sukhadwala @SejalSukhadwala]

If any of you ever find good quality falooda or kulfi in London, let me know (sadly the quality of ice cream used is often poor).

[Jack Altman @jaltma]

"If you are building the same thing other people build, it can only be similarly good. It can't be actually much better. It can slightly look nicer, but you're bounded a couple percentage points either direction. If you want to build something great or much better, it has to be different.

So this has to be your starting position."

[Alexis Ohanian 🗽 @alexisohanian]

Just wait until this comes to America...

[Helsing @HelsingAI]

Space – the final frontier for European defence. Today we’re announcing KIRK, a joint venture with @OHB_SE to close Europe's critical space security gap. Battle-proven AI, running directly on satellites, fusing data from multiple sensors in orbit. 🖖

https://t.co/NAiJYaAvKx

[Demis Hassabis @demishassabis]

I’ve always believed the No.1 application of AI should be to improve human health.

That work started with AlphaFold, and now at @IsomorphicLabs with the mission to reimagine drug discovery and one day solve all disease!

We are turbocharging that goal with $2.1B in new funding.

[Jack Zhang @awxjack]

Tried @Neko Health in London recently.

One of the best healthcare experiences I’ve had. Fast, beautifully designed, incredibly data-driven, and focused on prevention rather than waiting until something goes wrong. And it costs just £299 only!

And great news for the US: they’re launching in NYC this summer. The future of healthcare should feel like this.

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

I’m in love with this sentence:

“Everyone knew it was impossible, until a fool who didn't know came along and did it.”