Hi team. I wanted to personally kick this off. We've partnered with Sam and Flo at Twenty Six Collective to bring you the Know Thyself experience, not as a corporate exercise, but as something genuinely valuable for you as individuals and for us as a team.

We will be spending a lot of time together, even if not always in the same place, and this is a chance to understand each other, and ourselves, a little better. Before the session, please take 10 minutes to fill in the short questionnaire. Your answers will be read by Sam and Flo, and by me, to help shape the day around what matters most to us and for me as a leader to know how I can continue steering Park Lord in the right direction.

I hope you approach it with the same openness and honesty you bring to everything else.

TalentPool is a one-day, invite-only gathering in London for a small, curated group of VC Talent and Platform Partners — the people inside Europe's best venture firms responsible for talent strategy and hiring across their portfolios.

It's hosted by Captivate Talent, and it exists to fill a real gap: there's no other dedicated experience built for this specific community, and it's a role that's often done solo or in very small teams.

The whole day is built around one question: what does it actually mean to build a best-in-class team in this new age? Guests come to connect with peers doing the exact same job, swap honest market insight, stay ahead of how talent, hiring, and AI are shifting, and figure out how to do more with less. The programming is deliberately experiential — fireside chats, hands-on sessions, and workshops rather than a wall of panels — wrapped in a premium, intimate, hospitality-forward setting (this year at 180 House).

It's curated down to every detail and every guest on purpose. We want people to leave feeling genuinely connected to a rare peer community they can't find anywhere else, inspired and better-informed about the future of their work, and quietly reminded that what they do matters — like they were part of something special that can't be replicated.

The three of us move fast. We care deeply. And we've bet everything on building something that matters. Before we spend time together with Sam and Flo, I wanted us each to take a moment to look inward. Not at the product, but at ourselves and at each other.

This isn't a corporate exercise. It's an investment in the thing I believe will determine whether we succeed or not: how well we know ourselves, and how honestly we show up for one another. Please answer with the same directness you bring to everything else we do.

It'll take about ten minutes. And it might be the most useful ten minutes we spend this month.

Hi all. I hope you enjoy the onboarding journey and questionnaire from Sam and Flo of The Twenty Six Collective, who'll be working with us, delivering their Know Thyself workshop. Before it lands, I wanted to say a few words about why it's important.

I'm enormously proud of what we've built and of the people in this firm. We have some of the sharpest minds in our field, and the work we do genuinely shapes how culture is understood around the world. But I want the next chapter to be our most ambitious yet. Over the next five to ten years I want us to grow significantly — to deepen our impact, and to do work that only a firm of our calibre could do.

But our ambition isn't just about size. It's also about us as people and leaders. How we work together, where we're holding back, and how the brilliant people here grow, so that we as the current and future leaders of this firm, shape and build something incredible together.

We've commissioned this work with The Twenty Six Collective because it's something I've experienced first hand. At its core, the "Know Thyself" methodology they've developed creates the space for us all to look honestly at how we operate, individually and as a group: what drives us, where we get in our own way, what we each need to do our best work. It's reflective, not corrective. Spacious without being fluffy. The clearer we are with ourselves, the more ambitious we can afford to be.

So, with the questionnaire, please be honest. It's confidential to Sam and Flo, and the value of all this is proportional to the candour we bring. Nothing is off the table.

More soon — and thank you. Paul

When we started Huckletree in 2014, the idea was simple: build the kind of place the most ambitious people actually want to come to work — and then surround them with the people, ideas and support to go further than they could alone.

Our Founder Circles have always been the heart of that. There's something that happens when you put founders who are walking similar paths in a room together — comparing notes, recognising themselves in each other's wins and worries, learning as much from where they differ as from where they overlap. People arrive thinking they're there to solve business problems and leave having found a kind of company that's genuinely hard to come by. The bonds that form in those rooms tend to outlast whatever was on the agenda.

But there's one part of that work we rarely make space for. We pour almost all of our energy into the company — the product, the team, the raise, the next milestone — and almost none of it back onto ourselves. And yet the company is, in so many ways, a reflection of the person leading it.

That's why I'm so pleased to welcome Know Thyself into the Huckletree programme. Sam and Flo at Twenty Six have built something that sits naturally alongside the Circles: where the Circles bring founders closer to each other, Know Thyself brings each founder closer to themselves — and, in turn, closer to their teams. Because the same self-knowledge that grounds you as a leader is exactly what lets the people around you trust where you're taking them. Same spirit as the Circles — small, curated, honest, a world away from the usual after-work networking — pointed somewhere new.

In a moment you'll meet Sam and Flo, who'll be guiding this. After that there's a short, reflective questionnaire — take your time with it, and be honest; it's only for you. This is the start of the most valuable work a founder can do.

I can't wait to hear where it takes you.
Gabriela

Team, before our time together, I wanted to say a few words about why we're doing this. We've been through a lot of change: new faces alongside long-standing ones, shifting priorities, technical and personnel moves all at once. We've navigated it, but we haven't really stopped to bond as a senior team, or to get clear together on where we're taking this.

That's what these few days are for. I want us to come out of it more connected, clearer on our vision and values, and honest about where we're holding back: the silos, the gaps in how we communicate across functions, the capability in this team we haven't fully unlocked. There's an enormous amount of talent here. This is about aligning it.

We've partnered with Sam and Flo at Twenty Six Collective to guide us through their Know Thyself work. It consists of two sessions on consecutive days. The first is the Know Thyself workshop. The second is a cross-functional communication and collaboration workshop, where the answers from your questionnaire will help calibrate and baseline where the team is. It's reflective, not corrective, a chance to look honestly at ourselves and at each other, individually and as a system. In a moment you'll meet them, and once you've acquainted yourself with Sam and Flo, please take the questionnaire that follows. It's confidential to Sam, Flo and me, and the value of the whole thing is proportional to how candid we're willing to be.

Please be honest. Nothing is off the table. Thank you, Chris