✈️ From 30 000 ft to Alfacinhas Sunshine
When BA 472’s wheels lifted, I realised how much a new skyline resets my head.
Last Sunday I left London’s greys for Barcelona’s glare. This Sunday I’m back in Lisbon, sipping an iced latte that feels like vacation. Amazing how the right weather can trick your brain into believing anything is possible.
That 30-minute spotlight felt enormous
Four years of talking to a Sony ZV-1 suddenly paid the rent.
I pressed record, asked the room to find a neighbour, and launched the Carbon-Finance Fist-Bump.
Bankers in charcoal suits actually touched knuckles — and laughed. They were with me, and that’s toward the end of the 30min presentation.
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When I re-watched the clip later, I saw a version of myself I almost recognised: loose shoulders, smiling—having fun on stage.
Turns out the scariest rooms get easy the moment you invite them to play.
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💌 Tools & Treats
- New video:How to Train ChatGPT as Your Best Teammate – “how do you use ChatGPT?” here’s how
- Podcast drop:Brian Wong: Escaping Expectations, Burnout & the 9 to 5 Trap ($32M Raised before 25)
- Podcast recco:My First Million – “How the Smartest Founders Quietly Win with AI.”
What stuck with me wasn’t the AI hacks, but the rule for outreach: "I want them sending me a cold e-mail that is so good that you would invest off the cold e-mail. This is how l invest. I want a cold e-mail that is so good, that is so good that you don’t even need..."
✨ This Week’s Magic Moment
“Can you imagine this 10 years ago?” Sharon asked as we looked into the convention center that reads “Global ABS 2025”
Ten years ago we stared at Hong Kong’s skyline through the glass of IFC, counting ticks on a Bloomberg terminal.
Countless times we’d talked about ‘the Barcelona conference’ (Global ABS—the one everyone in structured finance wanted to go)
The skyline above Victoria Harbour outside of the IFC office in HK we once stared at 16 hours a day felt like a different lifetime.
Here we are, sitting on the bench, for thirty seconds we just listened to the leaves whispering into the wind
Then we looked at each other and burst out laughing:
“Who would have thought?”
It’s finally our turn.
🤏 One Shift in Thought
I used to measure safety by how many digits sat in my bank app.
But months of hop-scotching between side gigs and climate experiments have flipped the equation: my real runway is momentum.
Every time I finish a beta, ship a video, arrange a new event, or land a new ally, another paving stone slides into place—just in time for the next step.
There will be bigger stage waiting for me.
🔹 Extra Sparks
I’m re-reading Andrew Wilkinson’s Never Enough and lingered on this line:
“Could capitalism be improved? It had to be, if we didn’t all want to fry from global warming.”
After three days at Global ABS I can feel that improvement itch in the room: bankers swapping fist-bumps over carbon risk, investors hunting term sheets for rock dust. Capital markets aren’t perfect yet, but the tide is turning — at least I hope so.
🖋 Prompt for the Week
“What single hour am I protecting—no matter what—this week?”
(Mine is deep work time before 11am every day, one trick I learned from a founder friend when I was still just looking for a job)
🎒 This Week’s Escape Note
“It’s really a mindset thing… 9 to 5 is only 8 hours, figure out what you will do for the rest of 16 hours, it might only take 2hrs after you put your kids to bed”
— Brian Wong, Founder of Kiip, #23 of Escape 9 to 5
