Tom Hulme
39 statements across 2 episodes · 15 bullish · 14 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement May 8, 2024 by Tom Hulme · said 10 times in 5 episodes since 2023 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Tom Hulme's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Harry Stebbings (10)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 3 mentions in 1 episode
2024 6 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
- Laela Sturdy: Life Inside Alphabet's $7BN Growth Fund | E1190 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Tom Blomfield: Do the Best All Raise Pre-Demo Day & YC's Fundraising Advice to Startups | E 1152 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Guy Podjarny: The Future of AI Software Development - What is Real & What is BS | E1232 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
Everything said about Tom Hulme, oldest first
May 8, 2024
Hulme: Salesmanship is the essential fourth pillar of venture capital
“The fourth S that I increasingly think is important is actually selling salesmanship. Like, great VCs are selling to LPs, they're selling to founders to take their money, and then increasingly, they're also selling to, you know, exec hires to go into portfolio…”
May 8, 2024 negative
Hulme: Absolute conviction in VC investments is irrational and unrealistic
“I don't understand in our industry how anyone can have complete conviction on anything. That makes no sense to me. Like I studied physics at university. We would go through a proof and I still didn't have complete conviction that I got it right. And then now w…”
May 8, 2024 negative
Hulme: Active startup founders raising side funds is concerning
“Now, when you start talking about raising funds, that worries me a lot because building a company is ridiculously hard. Like there's only a handful of people that have ever managed to kind of build multiple companies concurrently. And this idea of having a sid…”
May 8, 2024 negative
Hulme: Angel investors frequently rely on others to do due diligence
“I think too many people in our industry, particularly angels who have other jobs, full-time jobs, We'll take the view that probably someone else has done the work. I actually think often it's surprising how people haven't done the work.”
May 8, 2024
Hulme: Asking founders about product is a lens to evaluate thinking
“I spend a lot of time with founders, and I'll ask them a lot about the product they're going to build. I know that that's probably not what they'll end up being successful with. In fact, empirically, the product often changes a lot. But I'm asking about that p…”
May 8, 2024 negative
May 8, 2024 negative
Hulme: Premature scaling inflates costs and destroys startup adaptability
“And I think what you're talking about is when the money's used for premature scaling, it's really damaging because costs go up. When your costs go up, ironically, you actually become less adaptable. So your clock speed goes down. So if your primary job in a bu…”
May 8, 2024 positive
May 8, 2024 positive
Hulme: Founders and VCs should take secondary liquidity to minimize regret
“And my recommendation often to founders, often to VCs is to take some money off the table. It's a classic place. I like to apply a kind of regret minimization framework. Will you regret taking 10% or 20% off the table in this round? Probably not. Will you regr…”
May 8, 2024 negative
May 8, 2024 neutral
May 8, 2024 negative
Hulme: Requiring every VC investment to be a fund-returner is flawed
“I think, ah, a lot of VC strategy is a lagging indicator of what did work in the past, and the test, Or the experiment that worked very well in the past is funds with 25 portfolio companies, power law of returns, and one or two return the whole fund, and then …”
May 8, 2024
May 8, 2024 negative
May 8, 2024 positive
May 8, 2024 bearish
May 8, 2024
Hulme: VC learning depends on deal cadence over time, not cash losses
“The learning cycle is number of deals and time To see how they do. And so for me, it looks more like five deals over five years to figure out, actually, if you're building the muscle and you're learning, then it looks like an absolute quantum of cash.”
May 8, 2024 positive
May 8, 2024
May 8, 2024 neutral
May 8, 2024
Hulme: Aspiring angels should write $5k checks rather than waiting for $200k
“If your job is to learn and to demonstrate you add value, then just write small five K checks. I see so many people that never start angel investing because they think they have to invest 200 K at a time. It's crazy. If you believe you've got to learn, you wan…”
May 8, 2024 bearish
May 8, 2024
Hulme: Investors underestimate winners by assuming single S-curve growth trajectories
“We have a sort of bias that whenever we're looking at businesses, we see them on an S curve. It's very difficult to imagine new S curves, but the best businesses will continuously put themselves on new S curves and create new opportunities.”
May 8, 2024
May 8, 2024 positive
Hulme: Active founders angel investing personal capital provides high-value empathy
“Yeah, so the former, I think is actually great for the portfolio companies they invest in, because I think they're in our category of smart, smart. Like, they will be specialists at something, and the founder will be able to ask them for advice, and there's no…”
May 8, 2024 positive
Hulme: GV manages $10B with 10 to 20-year holding periods
“So our approach at GV is primarily be founder first, and we can take a very long time. You know, we have ten billion dollars under management. Alphabet does not put us under time pressure. We're less worried about IRR than we are absolute returns. And so we fo…”
May 8, 2024 positive
Hulme: Ex-rocket ship employees make the best startup founders
“I think one of the best groups of founders are those that have come out of the rocket ship companies because actually they kind of instinctively know they need to aim at big opportunities and they know how to run a Fast growth business.”
Apr 10, 2025 bearish
Apr 10, 2025 bullish
Apr 10, 2025 bullish
Tom Hulme: Uranium ETFs will capture upside as nuclear energy expands
“I think the best source of energy going forward is nuclear. Fusion and potentially fission and SMRs are going to be important. I think it's the predictable cleanest energy source we have. I, not betting on one individual company, that's difficult to do. So I t…”
Apr 10, 2025 negative
Apr 10, 2025 bullish
Hulme: Most impactful UK tech companies next decade will be AI-native and private
“I think we'll look back and the companies that are most impactful in the decade will have grown in the UK and they won't be names we know today because these companies are growing faster than ever. So they'll be AI native, incredibly fast growing businesses, a…”
Apr 10, 2025 positive
Apr 10, 2025 positive
Tom Hulme: Non-dom investments in GoCardless yielded massive UK tech spinout value
“Like angel investing in GoCardless. If I look at some of the other angel investors in that business, they were non-doms. They were actually Europeans, some Americans. The founders of that business built an important company for London, employing hundreds of pe…”
Apr 10, 2025 positive
Apr 10, 2025 negative
Hulme: The idea of a one-person billion-dollar company is a myth
“I think I keep hearing people talking about the first one person billion dollar business is already created. I think that's absolutely ridiculous. On the one hand, companies are growing faster and more efficiently than ever. Like bolt.new, forty million dollar…”
Apr 10, 2025 bullish
Hulme: OpenAI is a good investment at a $12 billion run rate
“I it doesn't mean I think it's the best gen AI investment, but if I was sitting independently, do I think it's a good investment now when your downside is somewhat protected and they're at a twelve billion dollar run rate? Let's say it's a 20 times forward mul…”
Apr 10, 2025 positive
Tom Hulme: Tech spinout cycles are compressing from 5-10 years to 18-24 months
“Businesses are growing faster than they ever had before. So I think those cycles will happen quicker, quicker. Previous, it might be five or 10 years that you start to see the best senior operators come out and build a company. Now it might be 18 months, 24 mo…”
Apr 10, 2025 negative
Hulme: Ending non-dom status drives top UK angel investors abroad
“If I do say, see the brain drain. I recognize it. And I do see that many of the people I know well that have chosen to leave have left. They were also incredible angel investors. They employed a bunch of people. And so do I think everyone should pay Equal tax.…”