👋🏾 Hi friends!

You may be wondering why you’re seeing me on a Tuesday rather than a Friday. But then you may also have been wondering why you were reading a five thousand word essay from me last week too.

And, in fact, a number of you reached out and asked me precisely that, so I decided to split things out into two separate newsletter.

Moving forward you’ll get my finance, venture and tech musings under the Off Balance title on a Tuesday and every Friday you’ll continue to get a bit of a breakdown of the Nothing Ventured pod.

And hopefully, that’ll be just the right cadence and length to put us in the goldilocks zone!

Remember, if you have any feedback or if there’s something you’re desperate to see me include, just reply to this mail or ping me online - I’m very open to conversations. So give me a follow on LinkedIn, Twitter (at least until it implodes), Instagram and now even Threads and drop me a note :)

Don’t forget to like, rate and subscribe to Nothing Ventured on Apple, Spotify or YouTube, it really helps more people see what we’re doing!

With that said, let’s get into it.

Philosophise this.

I spent last week in Athens soaking up the sun, sea and sights of this beautful, though at times, rundown city.

Whilst I was there, we went to see various Greek ruins including the Acropolis and Hadrian’s Liabrary.

I had been thinking for some time that I would like to get a better understanding of philosopy (from the Greek: love of knowledge) and the art of thinking.

And let’s just say the environment tipped the balance for me.

Why, I hear you say, is he telling me this.

To be blunt, it’s because as we enter the new age of the AI platform, the ability to ask questions and think critically about what questions to ask, how to ask them and then debate the answers is incredibly important.

A friend of mine building in the generative AI space (before Chat GPT was even a thing) told me that he is prioritising philosophy grads to take on prompt engineering roles in his startup for exactly this reason.

In this article written way back in 2012 (might as well have been another century) by David Deutsch, Visiting Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, he states:

And let’s face it, he’s a pretty smart guy so it probably makes sense to take him seriously.

If you can’t beat them…

How can did I add value?

As I say, I was on holiday in Greece last week. I tried (as far as possible) to remain off line, but sometimes life comes at you from unexpected places.

I had reached out to a friend - whom I’ve only had the pleasure to see once in the last two decades - and who now lives in Athens and we caught up for a meal.

Over the course of dinner he told me that he’d started dipping his toes into early stage investing, but his first bet was a weird convertible into a later stage business suggested to him by his bank - he wrote a largish cheque and though he liked the business, wasn’t really sure how to diligence it properly.

And sitting in Greece, in the pretty old school industry he works in, he doesn’t exactly get all the exposure and communities that we do out here in the UK and elsewhere.

So how did I add value last week?

I let him know that I would introduce him to some angel communities and the world of syndication via platforms like Odin so that he could not only learn more, but also follow other angels as he starts immersing himself further into the ecosystem and starts to build a diversified portfolio.

Maybe that means some good returns in the future for him, but it definitely means another smart person getting involved in the early stage ecosystem which is a big bonus from my perspective.💪🏾

(Full disclosure, I am a small cheque investor in Odin, itself and have used the platform to invest in other startups. Investing in early stage businesses is risky, your capital is at risk and you should only invest what you can afford to lose).