Happiness by the Kilowatt
I only ever really managed to write my thoughts on here when I had a near-empty mailbox and few side hustles to focus on. Naturally, it follows that my tendency to always find more work results in me not keeping this blog as up-to-date as it should be.
2024 has been tumultuous.
As I type this, LinkedIn is awash with doomposts amongst British entrepreneurs at the looming budget of the new Labour (not to be confused with New Labour… or is it?) government.
Somebody who works with The S*n tried to do a hitjob on me on LinkedIn. It didn’t work.
I’m now the Interim CEO of a not-for-profit that works to develop the capacity of towns, cities and regions throughout the UK to build prosperous technology-led economies. I’m biased, of course - but I think Capital Enterprise is about to surf the next major wave in how different parts of the UK tech ecosystem work together to create more success stories.
I had some nice holidays. Drank some good wine. Ate some exotic animals. Went to Monaco. Got Monaco’d.
Made some new best friends for life.
Some of my angel companies hit hard times. Others have soared to new heights.
Won ‘Angel Investor of the Year’ at the inaugural Seedlegals awards.
I did another Liverpool Slush’D - and got Fredrik Hjelm, Prof Sir Robin Saxby and Piers Linney on stage.
I’ve got some boss projects coming to fruition through my job and other work-y, tech-y, policy-y stuff.
Busted my left shoulder in my first major jiu-jitsu injury for a long time, and subsequently saw how awful life is if you spend almost 8 weeks not training. Hello triple digits on the scale whilst set to kilograms…
I feel really fulfilled - but simultaneously, hungrier than ever to do more cool stuff. My one wish, if there’s a genie out there, would be to give me some more hours in the day - or perhaps more energy and sustained focus. The reality of prioritisation means those data science and geospatial dataviz tutorials I’ve been trying to get done end up dropping further and further down the list. But that’s absolutely okay, for now…
Elon’s space people managed to catch one of their rockets with giant metal chopsticks - and it reinvigorated my belief that freedom and technology and enterprise are inextricably linked; And any place which wants to reap the maximum benefits of the technology economy needs to accommodate true liberty, autonomy and privacy.
Booked my first ever business class flight. Bit of a strange and potentially quite materialistic thing to regard as a milestone, but considering your boy came from the ‘hood, I don’t mind saying I’m proud to have been able to do that. Crucially, I feel like I have clarity in my own head now about what things are important to me, what I want to spend my time on and what things are not so important as to carry them around with me in my head and heart day-to-day.
Coffee shops and lattés are out - writing business proposals, blogs and thought leadership pieces over high strength German ale near a roaring fire in a traditional boozer is *in*.
Long live imperfection - and the freedom to be in a state of such…
