Business Strategy

The latest reporting from the Financial Times highlights a point that energy analysts have been making for years: geopolitical shocks consistently strengthen the case for renewables, electrification and storage. Microsoft’s global vice-president for energy notes that oil and gas price spikes linked to the Middle East conflict reinforce the value of wind, solar and batteries in providing price stability. Once installed, renewables offer predictable cost profiles and reduce exposure to volatile global fuel markets. We saw this dynamic after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Europe accelerated solar deployment, heat pump uptake increased in several countries, and governments revisited questions of energy security through the lens of diversification and electrification. The underlying issue remains unchanged. Fossil fuels must continuously flow through complex global supply chains. When those flows are disrupted, prices spike and economies are exposed. Renewables, by contrast, are capital intensive upfront but deliver long term domestic supply and insulation from commodity shocks. There are short term risks. Inflation, higher interest rates and supply chain constraints can slow clean energy investment. Some governments may also respond by doubling down on gas infrastructure. The policy challenge is to avoid locking in further structural vulnerability. Energy security and climate policy are not competing objectives. In a world of recurrent geopolitical instability, they are increasingly aligned.

Building a startup is harder than I ever imagined. 14 lessons in the order I learned them: 1. Find your obsession. If it doesn't feel like your life's work, don't do it. Tinker till you find a problem that consumes you. And don't raise capital until you do. 2. Jevons paradox (efficiency increases demand) applies to nascent markets. When technology increases efficiency, demand surges. Gamma aims at people who need to communicate visually but lack tools. By making it much easier, we unlock more usage. New use cases = untapped TAM. 3. Your conviction is everything. Market opportunity means nothing without belief. "The world will ask who you are, and if you do not know, the world will tell you." 4. Word of mouth is the only thing that matters at first. Conviction drives products people brag about. Do their faces light up? That's what amplifies distribution. 5. Your luck surface area has 2 dimensions: Time and people. Surround yourself with people who share your values and level of ambition, and give yourself enough time to execute. 6. Compounding is the 8th wonder. Hard work compounds exponentially. 1% better daily means 37x after a year. If you just focus on winning today, you’re missing out on winning big later. Play the long game. 7. Parkinson's law (work expands to fill available resources) applies to time and money. Give people $1M budget, they'll spend $1M. Give one week, it takes one week. Constraints beget creativity. Learn when and how to apply them. 8. Power laws dictate outcomes. Allocation reveals what works. 2-3 features drive usage. 2-3 channels get users. Start broad, identify what works, double down. Experimentation is the key to understanding. 9. Know where you're at and when to evolve. v1 is for enthusiasts. v2 is for early believers. v3 is for masses. Seize the market and become the standard. 10. Strong brands have clear values. Nike is speed. Apple is aesthetics. Berkshire is integrity. “Don't be the best, be the only.” 11. Being ignorant is fine. Staying ignorant is not. Most hate sales thinking it's manipulation. Good sales is listening and solving. 12. Your story is your ticket. “People remember 2-3 things about you. Don't let them be random. Reality bends to whoever tells the better story.” 13. Become extremely literate. "Your success in life will be largely determined by your ability to speak, your ability to write, and the quality of your ideas. In that order." 14. All moats are temporary. Xerox is dead. Polaroid is gone. Kodak is history. Leverage anything you can to make your company antifragile. Skip obsession and your conviction crumbles. Skip word of mouth and distribution fails. Skip power laws and you reach local maximum. Master them all and they compound.

Australia has quietly built the most cost-effective rooftop solar industry in the developed world – and it shows. Australia consistently has the highest per capita adoption rate globally, with over one third of all households now having rooftop solar, totalling more than four million installations. In South Australia more than half of all homes have rooftop solar. And it's easy to see why: ✅ Abundant sunshine ✅ Large detached homes with plenty of roof space ✅ Relatively high retail rates In many cases these give a payback time of just 4–5 years. On top of that, many Australians like the idea of being more independent from their energy retailer. But none of this explains why Australia installs rooftop solar for a fraction of the cost seen in other advanced economies. What really makes Australia unique is the system behind it: ➡️ A highly competitive installer market ➡️ Fast, simple permitting and interconnection ➡️ Very low customer-acquisition and overhead costs Installations are often completed within a week of quoting, with the work itself usually done in a day or two. The panels are the same everywhere. The difference is the process. In the United States, the panels aren’t the problem — the process is. Permitting can take weeks or months, sales and marketing costs are high, state-level rules add complexity, and tariffs and paperwork drive up costs. The result: a typical system can cost five to seven times more. Permit Power estimates that if US rooftop solar prices matched countries like Australia or Germany, nearly 20 million more households would install it — saving around US$31,000 over a system’s lifespan. Australia now has so much solar that the government is exploring giving everyone three hours of free electricity a day to help soak up the excess. Clean energy gets cheaper when the system gets smarter — and Australia is showing what’s possible. #energy #renewables #energytransition

People sometimes see Acumen raising large amounts of commercial capital and assume we no longer need philanthropy. No sooner had we announced $250M for our Hardest-to-Reach fund — to bring off-grid light and electricity to 70 million people across 17 of Africa’s most challenging markets — than some concluded Acumen must be set. In fact, the opposite is true. First, let me acknowledge how tough this fundraising environment is. I couldn’t be prouder of the team and partners who made our Hardest-to-Reach announcement possible after 2.5 years of relentless effort. And yet it’s worth underscoring: none of this would have been possible without philanthropy. Philanthropy is the first mover. It allows us to place early bets in fragile markets like Malawi and Benin, cover the development costs needed to structure and raise investment across the capital spectrum and provide the technical assistance that builds capacity. To put a finer point on it: of the nearly $250M raised for Hardest-to-Reach, more than $80M is philanthropic. That risk-taking anchor made it possible to prove new models — and ultimately unlock institutional investment. During Climate Week last month, I met philanthropists who see this as the time to pivot from grantmaking toward impact investing. While I understand the instinct, I want to offer a reframing: it’s not either/or. If you want your capital to have lasting impact, there may be no better use than catalytic philanthropy — especially when deployed through blended finance models like Hardest-to-Reach. Philanthropy cannot see itself at the margins. It is catalytic capital — risk-taking, patient, and unabashedly impact-first — creating the conditions for commercial capital to follow. And it's more important now than ever as traditional aid shrinks and many governments shift from grants to investment approaches. At Acumen, philanthropy from donors at all levels remains our bedrock. It enables us to reach the hardest-to-reach, build inclusive markets where none exist, and keep social impact at the center of everything we do. And because solving problems of poverty is Acumen’s mission, raising philanthropic capital will remain essential to our work.

The European Parliament has officially passed Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation that fundamentally shifts the responsibility for textile waste management to fashion brands and retailers – with far-reaching global implications. This new law requires all producers, including e-commerce platforms, to cover the full cost of collecting, sorting, and recycling textiles, regardless of whether they are based within or outside the EU. The financial burden of Europe's textile waste now falls squarely on the brands that create it. What are the critical business implications? UNIVERSAL SCOPE: The legislation applies to all producers selling in the EU market, including those of clothing, accessories, footwear, home textiles, and curtains. No company is exempt based on location. FAST FASHION PENALTY: Member states must specifically address ultra-fast and fast fashion practices when determining EPR financial contributions, creating cost penalties for unsustainable business models. GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN DISRUPTION: As the world's largest textile importer, the EU's new rules will ripple across global supply chains, particularly impacting exporters from Bangladesh, Vietnam, China, and India who supply much of Europe's fast fashion. TIMELINE PRESSURE: Officially adopted September 2025, this creates immediate operational and financial planning requirements. COMPETITIVE RESHAPING: Brands and retailers will inevitably pass increased costs down their supply chains, fundamentally altering supplier relationships and pricing structures globally. What are the implications for various stakeholders? For CEOs and board members: This represents more than regulatory compliance – it's a complete business model transformation. Companies must now integrate end-of-life costs into product pricing, rethink supplier partnerships, and accelerate circular design strategies. For sustainability and decarbonisation executives: This creates unprecedented opportunities for circular economy solutions, sustainable material innovation, and traceability system development across global supply chains. Link: https://lnkd.in/dTyHtHuD #sustainablefashion #circulareconomy #textilwaste #epr #fashionindustry #sustainability #supplychainmanagement #fastfashion #environmentalregulation #businessstrategy #decarbonisation #textilerecycling #fashionceos #boardgovernance #climateaction #wastemanagement #producerresponsibility #fashionsustainability #textileindustry #greenbusiness

£322M in revenue. £120M cash in the bank. And still family-owned after 130 years. That’s Barbour. Most fashion brands chase growth at all costs. Barbour never has. A century-old and quietly spinning out £30m+ profit every year. The antithesis of the modern fashion playbook. → Revenue: £322m last year – compounding at 7% a year over 5 years → Gross margin: ~50%, among the strongest in fashion → Profit after tax of : £34m last year → Cash: £120m in the bank, balance sheet strength unrivalled They call themselves a Premium Niche. Jackets built to last decades, not seasons. So what’s the playbook? 1️⃣ Brand without dilution → Barbour does not discount — not online, not abroad → Instead they push sales via story-led branding 2️⃣ Heritage with a future → Same CEO for 25 years. Dame Margaret Barbour as Chair for 50. Jackets still made in South Shields since 1894 → Paired with reinvention: collabs with Erdem, Alexa Chung, Ganni. → Wax for Life, repairs and eco-materials - before Patagonia made it cool. 3️⃣ Global appeal → 130th anniversary campaign hit 1B impressions in 10 days across Asia → Early into China, Japan and the US - leveraging British heritage abroad → But adapted for local climates (eg. a 52-week summer range in the Gulf) Fashion loves disruption. Barbour proves discipline disrupts harder. If “boring” means £30M+ profit and £120M in cash… Maybe more brands should try being boring. -- I’m John - a CFO who loves brand and co-owner of Traction. Follow for insights on how - and why - brand building belongs on the balance sheet.

A promising Indian health-tech startup I invested in just shut down. Hard lessons inside… I invested in Onco back in 2020. It was basically an aggregator for cancer hospitals. Patients could visit their website or app, see all the hospitals and treatment options, get online consultations with doctors, and then choose where they wanted to get treated. They raised over $7 million from top investors like Accel, Chiratae, and others. They also built a strong brand. At their peak, they had 25,000+ visitors and over 1000 unique leads (cancer patients) every month - all organic, across their website, app, and social channels. We really thought hospitals would see the value in owning or partnering with a brand like this. But it didn’t work out that way. I’m sharing some lessons I learned watching this journey. Might be useful for founders (and investors) trying to crack India’s healthcare market: 1. Hospitals in India hold all the power. If you’re trying to aggregate them, you’re basically at their mercy. They will delay payments, ignore contracts, and squeeze every bit of margin out of you. They don’t really need you. Your margins get eaten alive by collections and compliance costs. 2. Digital only healthcare sounds great in pitch decks, but it doesn’t work here yet. People don’t pay enough for online-only services. Digital is great for leads, but it can’t be your whole business. Unit economics just don’t work with digital-only solutions because of low ARPU. 3. Offline is necessary. And brutally capital-intensive. Healthcare in India is still very much offline. Patients want to see a real centre and talk to doctors in person. Building those offline centres isn’t cheap. Each one takes at least 12–24 months to break even. You need serious money upfront. If you can’t fund that, you’re stuck. So, if you are building an aggregator only business in Indian healthcare, think twice. If you don’t have strong answers for these challenges, you’re just setting yourself up to be a middleman with no leverage, no margins, and no way out. That’s business suicide. #HarshRealities

Open Banking (OB) isn’t a feature - it’s the blueprint for banks to stay relevant in an APIsed economy. But exposing a few APIs is not innovation. Here's what really powers OB - and some myth busting. OB is reshaping how we access and interact with financial services. At its core, it’s about unlocking data and making it securely available through modern infrastructure rails called APIs. But the impact goes far beyond banking. OB is becoming the key enabler of today’s two most dominant business models: —   Platform economics —   Embedded finance Banks play a critical role in this shift - because they hold the data. Enter: 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝗕𝗮𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 This is the invisible technical foundation that allows banks to expose data and services to fintechs and partners. Here’s a simplified breakdown of key components: 1. API Gateway – The secure front door that handles requests and and routes them properly. 2. Consent & Identity Management – Ensures only the right parties get access, with the customer’s permission. 3. Authentication Layer – Uses secure login methods to confirm the customer’s identity. 4. Developer Portal – A gateway where third parties discover, test, and onboard to the bank’s APIs. 5. Microservices Layer – Breaks banking functions into modular services for faster, flexible delivery. 6. Core System Integration – Connects modern APIs to banks’ legacy systems without needing to rebuild everything from scratch. This isn’t just about technology - it’s about designing trust at scale. 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗮𝗻 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝗕𝗮𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗿𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀: 1.     A licensed third-party provider (TPP) sends an API request to the bank to access account data or initiate a payment. 2.     The end-user is redirected to the bank’s interface to authenticate and provide consent. 3.     Once consent is verified, the bank issues a secure access token to the TPP. 4.     The TPP retrieves only the authorized data or completes the payment transaction. 5.    All actions are logged for traceability, audit, security and compliance purposes. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗯𝗮𝗻𝗸𝘀 𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸? 1. Legacy tech – Many core platforms were never built for external connectivity. 2. Security & compliance pressure – Exposing APIs while meeting regulatory requirements is complex. 3. Real-time readiness – Open Banking requires real-time availability and minimal downtime. 4. Governance and ecosystem management – Managing third-party access and maintaining oversight is operationally demanding. Banks should avoid treating OB as just a tech upgrade or a compliance checkbox. It’s a strategic opportunity to modernize infrastructure - something they would have to do anyway. In the era of AI and real-time digital ecosystems, not being able to communicate via APIs is like owning a smartphone without internet access. Opinions: my own, Graphic source: Blanc Labs 𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐲 𝐧𝐞𝐰𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫: https://lnkd.in/dkqhnxdg

🗺️ AirBnB Customer Journey Blueprint, a wonderful practical example of how to visualize the entire customer experience for 2 personas, across 8 touch points, with user policies, UI screens and all interactions with the customer service — all on one single page. AirBnB Customer Journey (Google Drive): https://lnkd.in/eKsTjrp4 Spotify Customer Journey (High-res): https://lnkd.in/eX3NBWbJ Now, unlike AirBnB, your product might not need a mapping against user policies. However, it might need other lanes that would be more relevant for your team. E.g. include relevant findings and recommendations from UX research. List key actions needed for next stage. Add relevant UX metrics and unsuccessful touchpoints. That last bit is often missing. Yet customer journeys are often non-linear, with unpredictable entry points, and integrations way beyond the final stage of a customer journey map. It’s in those moments when things leave a perfect path that a product’s UX is actually stress tested. So consider mapping unsuccessful touchpoints as well — failures, error messages, conflicts, incompatibilities, warnings, connectivity issues, eventual lock-outs and frequent log-outs, authentication issues, outages and urgent support inquiries. Even further than that: each team could be able to zoom into specific touch points and attach links to quotes, photos, videos, prototypes, design system docs and Figma files. Perhaps even highlight the desired future state. Technical challenges and pain points. Those unsuccessful states. Now, that would be a remarkable reference to use in the beginning of every design sprint. Such mappings are often overlooked, but they can be very impactful. Not only is it a very tangible way to visualize UX, but it’s also easy to understand, remember and relate to daily — potentially for all teams in the entire organization. And that's something only few artefacts can do. Useful resources: Free Template: Customer Journey Mapping, by Taras Bakusevych https://lnkd.in/e-emkh5A Free Template: End-To-End User Experience Map (Figma), by Justin Tan https://lnkd.in/eir9jg7J Customer Journey Map Template (Figma), by Ed Biden https://lnkd.in/evaUP4kz Free Figma/Miro User Journey Maps Templates https://lnkd.in/etSB7VqB User Journey Maps vs. Service Blueprints (+ Templates) https://lnkd.in/e-JSYtwW UX Mapping Methods (+ Miro/Figma Templates) https://lnkd.in/en3Vje4t #ux #design

Amid rising tariffs and shifting geopolitics, the foundations of the rules-based global economy are being redefined. With the US policy shifts, the uncertainty is real. In fact, I just got back from New York, where I met with a number of CEOs – and for the first time, all of them said the same three words: “I don’t know.” It’s clear we’re not going back to “business as usual”. That’s why we felt it was crucial to bring our clients together today to hear from Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Industry Gan Kim Yong at a closed-door conversation. He’s just been appointed Chairman of the new Singapore Economic Resilience Taskforce, and his perspectives were insightful, as he also listened to the concerns and questions our clients brought to the table. Looking ahead, I believe we’re in for more short-term volatility and uncertainty. My advice to clients: lock in good rates, manage your FX exposure, and address any supply chain constraints. Longer term, we need to think about the new world order more strategically. There are four key areas businesses need to focus on: • Supply Chain – Diversify sources and build in resilience • Logistics – Plan for the possibility of longer routes and ensure continuity • Financial and Payments – Prepare for alternatives beyond USD • Technology – Be ready for dual tech ecosystems and interoperability costs The silver lining is that we are in Singapore. While Asia does bear the brunt of tariffs, it is also home to 18 of the 20 fastest-growing trade corridors. Also, even though we have had slowdowns in our neighbourhood, we are still surrounded by big economies – China, India and Indonesia. Over the years, we’ve walked alongside our clients through many turning points, and we’ll keep showing up, especially when things get tough. Whether it’s navigating treasury decisions, managing volatility, or adapting supply chains. Storms may come, but like Singapore, we’ll stay steady – anchored, open, and here for the long haul.