Stan Boland

[Stan Boland @stanboland]

@Barney_H_Y Totally right, Barney

[Stan Boland @stanboland]

@goodwin_ml Amazing work, @goodwin_ml, your leadership is second to none, keep on doing what you are doing and you’ll be leading @fractile_ai to be a trillion dollar company!

[Stan Boland @stanboland]

A great tribute to @goodwin_ml and the team at @fractile_ai that Fractile is today announcing its $220M series B raise led by - and with participation of - many of the world’s top venture investors. Congratulations, team, a great recognition of the quality you’re building!

[The Wall Street Journal @WSJ]

Exclusive: The U.K. chip startup Fractile said it has raised a $220 million Series B funding round led by Factorial Funds, Accel and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund https://t.co/V2UctHXjvT

[The Wall Street Journal @WSJ]

Exclusive: The U.K. chip startup Fractile said it has raised a $220 million Series B funding round led by Factorial Funds, Accel and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund https://t.co/V2UctHXjvT

[Stan Boland @stanboland]

@eamonncanniffe Happy birthday, Eamonn!

[Stan Boland @stanboland]

@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

[Big Brain Business @BigBrainBizness]

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.

[Stan Boland @stanboland]

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

[Stan Boland @stanboland]

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

[Rishi Sunak @RishiSunak]

https://t.co/13FoSUlhyB

[Sifted @Siftedeu]

Chip manufacturer Fractile is set to spend £100m building up its UK operations, the country’s AI minister, Kanishka Narayan, announced on Tuesday

https://t.co/iZDYcCRU3O

[Stan Boland @stanboland]

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.

[Stan Boland @stanboland]

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

[Andrew Bennett @andrewjb_]

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

[Stan Boland @stanboland]

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

[Stan Boland @stanboland]

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!

[Startup Coalition @StartupCltn]

Today we're publishing an Open Letter from over 150+ founders & investors across our startup & scaleup ecosystem to the @RachelReevesMP warning against a so-called 'Exit Tax'.

You can read the letter and sign on at https://t.co/luqdPxamQQ

[Stan Boland @stanboland]

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!

[Matt Clifford @matthewclifford]

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 🚀

[Stan Boland @stanboland]

@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….

[Andrew Bennett @andrewjb_]

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*: