Tom Blomfield
Vibecoding a production app
TL;DR I built and launched a recipe app with about 20 hours of work - recipeninja.ai
Background: I’m...
21st Mar 2025
TL;DR I built and launched a recipe app with about 20 hours of work - recipeninja.ai
Background: I’m a startup founder turned investor. I taught myself (bad) PHP in 2000, and picked up Ruby on Rails in 2011. I’d guess 2015 was the last time I wrote a line of Ruby professionally....
Tom Blomfield
What is “founder mode”?
We held a YC event a couple of months ago where Brian Chesky from Airbnb gave a passionate talk...
7th Oct 2024
We held a YC event a couple of months ago where Brian Chesky from Airbnb gave a passionate talk about his experience running Airbnb over the last 17 years. He believed that as Airbnb hired more professional managers, he lost a close connection with the details of the end product...
Tom Blomfield
Taking Risk
I just spent a week talking with some exceptional students from three of the UK’s top universities;...
18th May 2024
I just spent a week talking with some exceptional students from three of the UK’s top universities; Cambridge, Oxford and Imperial College. Along with UCL, these British universities represent 4 of the top 10 universities in the world. The US - a country with 5x more people and...
Tom Blomfield
Monzo growth
I’ve been asked a few times recently how we got customers to sign up to Monzo in the early years and...
1st Aug 2022
I’ve been asked a few times recently how we got customers to sign up to Monzo in the early years and I haven’t been able to give a satisfactory answer in a sufficiently short space of time. I thought I’d write out my thoughts in a longer piece so I can feel less bad about giving...
Tom Blomfield
How to raise investment
Update: I am no longer personally angel investing - I’m focussed on other things at the moment....
11th Sep 2021
Update: I am no longer personally angel investing - I’m focussed on other things at the moment. Please don’t ask me to invest in your company! 🙂
I started angel-investing in 2021, and a large proportion of the companies I put money into asked for help raising an investment...
Tom Blomfield
Unit Economics
The old joke describes a lot of companies at the moment - “I’ll sell at a loss but make it up on...
10th Jun 2018
The old joke describes a lot of companies at the moment - “I’ll sell at a loss but make it up on volume.” Pilloried in the press, startups burn through vast sums of capital before spectacularly imploding.
Let’s go back to 2012-13. The world was finally emerging from a punishing...
Tom Blomfield
When to join a startup
Something has changed in the last few years which has made an increasing number of people want to...
14th Jan 2016
Something has changed in the last few years which has made an increasing number of people want to join startups. It seemed to start around the time the Social Network movie came out - perhaps it’s just a coincidence, but part of me imagines a group of MBAs sitting around watching...
Tom Blomfield
Five Unbreakable Rules for Startups
I’ve been involved with 4 startups over the last 10 years or so, 3 as a co-founder. I’m a follower...
13th Dec 2015
I’ve been involved with 4 startups over the last 10 years or so, 3 as a co-founder. I’m a follower of Paul Graham and the YC camp of startup wisdom. There’s now a great deal of literature laying out the unbreakable rules for startups. Despite studying this literature, I’ve...
Tom Blomfield
Getting Shit Done
I was recently talking to a handful of successful startups founders about issues they were facing as...
8th Nov 2015
I was recently talking to a handful of successful startups founders about issues they were facing as they scaled up their companies. Unanimously, hiring and retaining people who “get shit done” seemed to be their biggest problem. I’ve been thinking about this for the last few...
Tom Blomfield
Apple is propping up a fundamentally broken payments industry
Apple’s latest announcement on payments has sparked some interesting debate but also a fair share of...
12th Sep 2014
Apple’s latest announcement on payments has sparked some interesting debate but also a fair share of breathless pronouncements on a “revolution" in mobile payments.
To be clear - Apple Pay is a step forward in terms of end user experience - but it simply entrenches a...
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