With your shield or on it.

We back founders and companies whose operating principles mirror our own — built on conviction, a clear sense of why and tolerance for pain.

Investment Principles
01
Know Your Why
Everyone has a purpose. What is yours? You will only reach your potential if you stay anchored to it. Without a strong why, failure offers no real learning — only distraction. Once you know it, visualise your future self and grind toward it, one step at a time.
02
Act With Intent
Intent is full focus, attention, and willpower concentrated on the action at hand. When you act with intent, you do it with greater intensity — more exhausting, far more rewarding. Our capacity for intent is limited but trainable. Do one thing at a time. 250% focus.
03
Push Through Uncertainty
Uncertainty grows with time horizon and ambition. Any meaningful vision of your future self is by default highly uncertain. Being able to hold a course through ambiguity and doubt — with conviction, not delusion — is a required quality for building anything worthwhile. We were built for this as children. Reclaim it.
04
Build Pain Tolerance
Avoiding pain is impossible. The only variable is your threshold — the point where it stops you. Growth means pushing that limit through deliberate experience. The bigger the pain, the bigger the learning. Build the capacity. It compounds.
05
Release Expectations
Expectations are a projection of a distorted view of reality — and reality is random. They are a primary source of suffering. The discipline is to work with full intensity toward a goal while remaining unattached to the outcome. Focus entirely on what you can do. Let go of the rest.
06
Empty Yourself
Two goals worth pursuing: clarity of perception and intensity of experience. Clarity is the constant work of separating fact from opinion — observing without bias. Intensity requires prior emptiness. You cannot reach new levels without first stopping. Slow down. Reset. The first session after nothing is always the most alive you'll feel.
07
Break Your Patterns
You have habits, routines, and rules you follow without questioning. List them. Then systematically break them. That self-reflection and deliberate disruption forces your mental models to evolve — and protects you from the trap of a life that could be far better than it is. Become a dynamic, self-transforming mind.
08
Do What You Hate
The things you refuse to do are usually your weaknesses in disguise. We build stories to justify avoiding the uncomfortable. But our perception is frequently wrong — and correcting it can be one of the most gratifying experiences of your life.
09
No Regrets
We will all die, and we don't know when. The worst outcome is looking back and saying: I wish I had done this, said that, met that person. Do what you love. Face your problems. Accept that life is a dance with randomness — you have zero control over it, and that's fine.
Field Notes
Strategy
Optionality vs. the burned ship
Two valid strategies: cultivate alternatives, or pick one thing and commit completely. The wisdom is knowing which the moment demands — and having the courage to switch when it changes.
Growth
Comfort is a trap
For most people the function of life is to maximise comfort. A good life actively balances comfort and discomfort. Growth lives in the gap between what is easy and what is not.
Thinking
First principles over convention
Most rules are the calcified opinions of people who came before you. Decompose every problem to its foundations. Ignore what "everyone knows." Rebuild from what is actually true.
Action
Velocity over perfection
A decision made now, even imperfectly, is almost always better than the right decision made late. The cost of waiting is chronically underestimated. Move. Correct in motion.
Perspective
Wrong path, course corrected
When things don't work out as hoped, it is mostly because you were on the wrong path and life is correcting you for your own good. Learn to read it that way.
Execution
Kill it while it's small
Solve the problem the moment you recognise it. If you let it grow, it may reach a point where it can no longer be solved — or only at enormous cost. The lost time creates exactly the kind of regret you can't afford.