Welcome, friend.

March 29, 2019

Me xxxx

I’m Tom.

You can find me on Twitter, or LinkedIn.

A brief history of Tom

I was born in the UK and grew up on the road. I lived in seven different countries.

Moving around constantly as a kid taught me about what other people want, and how I can give it to them.

I became fascinated by physics and studied a masters in theoretical physics at UCL. I did well and won a few awards.

Physics taught me about how to break down any problem and understand it, and the value of intense, intellectual work.

In my final year I realised academic physics wasn’t for me.

I explored startups, first as an ML engineer at Xydus. I wrote code that signed up 10s of millions of users at companies like Revolut and the NHS. This taught me how to hustle, and how to write production-ready code.

Obsessed with the future of education and itching to start something of my own, I left Xydus soon after graduating UCL to start an education company. This taught me the value of independence and agency.

I then joined Wren as their first growth hire. This was my first Real Job™️. Wren was a wild ride. I built our marketing team, grew us over $6m in ARR, and spent millions of dollars on creator sponsorships (and over $200k on one YouTube video).

Working at Wren taught me about Californian optimism and how to be relentless.

I left Wren after nearly 3 years to work for Erik Torenberg at Turpentine. I’d admired Erik from afar and working with him was also a wild ride: onboarding new partners like crazy, building our first financial model, and selling over $1m in sponsorships with 0 sales experience.

Working with Erik taught me to believe in myself.

I left Turpentine last year to start a verticalised AI company. Back then I was going through a painful Canadian immigration process, and I was determined to fix the broken visa system with LLMs.

I spent 6 months (and two cofounder trials) trying to build an AI immigration law firm. This taught me that I never want to sell to law firms. So I stopped, and joined EF instead.

I joined Entrepreneur First in London to find a world-class cofounder and work out what I really want to do. Through EF I met Christian. As soon as I met him, a part of me knew we’d end up co-founding together.

We explored dozens of ideas applying AI to marketing before hitting on one that really, really works.

So now we’re building amt.ai.

My loves

I love skiing (especially Whistler), hiking (especially the Alps), reading (especially Murakami and Ishiguro), playing touch rugby (especially for Canada), karaoke (especially Blink-182), kettlebells (especially cast iron ones), music (especially French techno, British alt rock, and film music), cooking steaks (also using cast iron), physics (especially condensed matter), figuring things out from first principles (especially systems problems), and meeting idiosyncratic people with home-made worldviews.

If you’re one of those people you should reach out, I’d love to chat :)

Recent personal writing (2023)

Creator economy writing (2020)

The state of the creator economy
Billion dollar newsletters
Billion dollar newsletter communities
The economics of OnlyFans: OnlyFans is a billion-dollar company, but most creators lose money. Why? (This one went viral)

Oldies but goodies (2020 or older)

Life, School, and the 80:20 Rule: School compresses the ups and downs of life into nice linear sequences. It gives the illusion of progress. But real learning is nonlinear.
The economics of OnlyFans: OnlyFans is a billion-dollar company, but most creators lose money. Why? (This one went viral)
Minimum Viable Novelty: In uncertain times we crave order, and in the lockdown we have to impose it upon ourselves. Our routines need minimum viable novelty so we don’t go insane.
Why does maths work?: A summary of Hamming’s The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics
Wait Attentively: Why waiting for groups of friends is like an infinite series.
Benford’s Law Basics: In which I finally understand Benford’s Law.
2020 Review: Just over a year of writing online. It’s surprising how much I learned.

Some things I’d like to see in the world

If you want to discuss any of these, reach out!

A scaled solution to the Two-Sigma problem
- Something between The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, and Aristotle as a live-in personal tutor.
- LLMs could be highly promising here.
Widespread nuclear power (especially nuclear powered container ships — did you know the biggest 15 ships emit as much pollution as all the world’s cars?)
A company that absolutely nails moving-as-a-service
- When you have to move you should be able to push a button, and all the paperwork, finding a house, finding schools, opening a bank account, is done for you.
Voluntary Imprisonment as a service — a solution to the “flying productivity paradox”
- People tend to be extremely productive on airplanes. This is in part because there is a lack of stimulation: no internet, limited room to move around, only sub-mediocre entertainment which is decided by committee, not tailored to your interests. How can we simulate this in a co-working environment?
A really good consumer subscription management app.
- Because companies are after predictable revenue, the subscription business model will become even more prevalent. But most consumers don’t get persistent value from most of their subscriptions.
Widespread permanent carbon removal under $50 per ton of CO2e
- Biochar and enhanced mineral weathering seem like two promising approaches here.
A “COO in a box” for creators.
A company that automates every single boring task that comprises 95% of marketing.Building it :)

Idea corner

My fave blog is Ribbonfarm.
Some of my fave authors are Julian Barnes, Margaret Atwood, George Orwell, Haruki Murakami, Kazuo Ishiguro…
Some of my fave thinkers are: Richard Feynman, Karl Popper, Georg Polya, Claude Shannon, Albert Camus, Vaughn Tan, Peter Thiel, Visakan Veerasamy, Venkatesh Rao…