Tide

It's 2026 and a computer just negotiated my car insurance renewal for me

We are hiring a SDE 3 - Flutter at Tide - Apply now! #Job #Dart #Flutter

In Sweden, 83% of the option spread gets taxed away. Same grant. Same exit. UK and US employees keep 76%. Swedish employees keep 48%, and that’s before counting the 31.42% in employer social security contributions that sit on top. I received a lot of messages about my post about the British Ambassador’s event on equity market reform, so I thought it would be helpful to run the numbers. That employer cost matters beyond the headline number. Index Ventures’ Rewarding Talent research puts Sweden in the bottom tier of European countries that have stock option regimes. Seven countries now match or beat the US, and Sweden isn’t one of them. Part of the reason is structural: when granting options costs the company an additional 31.42% on top of the spread, companies grant less equity. They have to. Which means employees get smaller stakes, have less skin in the game, and feel less of the upside when it comes. Sweden does have a qualifying scheme, QESO, which is helpful at seed stage. But once a company crosses 150 employees or has a balance sheet of over $30M (which can now be breached in a mega seed round!), it can no longer issue new qualifying options. Every employee who joins after that point: the people scaling the product, building the operations, running the enterprise deals — gets unapproved options. The regime protects the earliest hires and then stops. The argument I hear back is: options are compensation, why should they be taxed differently from salary? I think it’s the wrong framing. Options aren’t deferred salary. They’re a bet. Below-market cash, real career risk, no liquidity for years. When it works, the value that survives the exit doesn’t just go into someone’s pocket. It funds the next company. It becomes the angel round. That’s how ecosystems actually get built. Europe has a pattern that follows from this. Too many promising companies sell to a larger acquirer, usually American, before they’ve had the chance to find out how big they could actually get. That’s partly a funding story, partly a founder psychology story. But it’s also a tax story. If the people inside the building can’t see a credible path to meaningful upside through the scale-up journey, the pressure to take the acquisition offer grows. Sweden has produced Spotify, Klarna, King. The question is how many companies that could have been the next ones on that list got sold instead. You don’t build listed companies by making it rational to sell early. The ecosystem is here. The talent is here. The ambition is here. The tax framework is the missing piece.

Vibe-coding earned its bad rep. "Build me a social network for AI agents" produces something that looks fine until a security review finds a misconfigured database leaking 1.5M API keys, no rate limits, and no way to tell a real agent from a script (search Moltbook). So engineering matters more than ever. But there's a flip side. When an engineer opens Claude Code or Cursor for the first time, they see an empty input field and freeze. What do you type? "Build me the app"? "Implement X feature"? "Write tests for a function"? The paralysis is real. It took me a while to learn how to pair with AI properly. Three videos that may help, in case you're stuck at the same step: 1. Spec-Driven Development with AI (Andrea Bizzotto). How to build a real Flutter feature step by step. 2. Build Flutter Apps FASTER with Claude Code Opus 4 (Andrea Bizzotto). A crash course on building a mobile app with AI. 3. The Official BMad-Method Masterclass. A bit outdated now, but still brilliant. Walks you through what to do with an idea before you write a single line of code (market research, PRD, architecture, and so on). First two are aimed at engineers. The BMad one works for anyone who wants to code with AI. My advice: plan first, prompt second. The AI is fast either way. Links to the videos in the comments 👇

"Sorry to bother you, but just checking - no worries if not - would it be okay to maybe discuss payment at some point? 🙂" Sound familiar? Our latest research at Tide found 26 million Brits are using language like this at work - and it's costing them, big time. For SME owners, the impact is pretty stark. 'Softening' requests makes you 8x more likely to experience late payments, get ghosted by clients, and have customers try to renegotiate prices after already agreeing them! If you're writing about SMEs, thought you might be interested in the research in the first comment...no worries if not👇

One thing that changed significantly after we moved more platform ownership internally: Production issues stopped feeling like black boxes. Earlier, even identifying the source of a problem could involve: - Multiple teams - Vendor dependencies - Long turnaround cycles - And a lot of coordination before the actual issue was understood Fixes would sometimes arrive with limited visibility into: - How the issue was identified - Why a particular solution was chosen - Or what trade-offs were being made Over time, that makes it difficult for internal teams to build deeper understanding of the platform itself. As platform understanding improved within the engineering teams: - Root cause analysis became faster - Fixes became more targeted - And operational discussions became far more data-driven It didn’t remove complexity. But it changed how quickly teams could understand problems, make decisions, and respond when issues happened. That shift made a much bigger difference than most people initially expected. #PlatformEngineering #EngineeringLeadership #Transformation

👋 After an incredible journey, it’s time for me to say goodbye to Tide. 👋 Working on products that improve the life of over 1.8M small businesses owners is an incredible mission and great responsibility that I truly enjoyed. 🙌 Looking back, I am immensely proud of what we have achieved together. From building out our engagement marketing engineering teams to delivering value to our members at speed, it’s been a season of growth and high impact. 🚀 We didn’t just build software; we built a culture of delivery at pace with quality. By improving our systems and listening more closely to feedback, we were able to remove friction for our users and significantly improve the membership experience. 🎯 Together, we’ve hit our goals and set a strong foundation for the future. 🙇 Helping our product engineering teams solve complex problems and find more impactful ways to work has been some of the most rewarding parts of my time there. A massive thank you to Ayman Hafez , Lauren Henry , Stephen Robinson , Heather Cobb , and Vinay Ramani for your leadership and guidance. And to my teams (too many great people to tag you all, but you know who you are!)—thank you for your hard work and brilliance. I wish you all continued growth and every success. Today is all about Tide. I'll soon share more about what I'm up to.

Tide is on a mission to become the world's leading business management platform for SME's and India is at the heart of that journey, plans to add 800+ new members to our team in 2026, If you want to work at a $1.5Bn fintech that's actually changing how small businesses operate, lets talk! There's never been a more exciting time to join. We are currently looking for passionate professionals across functions in Delhi/NCR :- 1. Senior Country Commercial Manager - Wealth - https://lnkd.in/eepkBgFK 2.Head of Partnerships/ Director - Insurance - https://lnkd.in/eeQMTfMa 3.Senior Country Commercial Manager - TCS https://lnkd.in/ef7vn5wx 4. DGM/ GM Collections....please share your interest. Will share the link soon. #fintechjobs #TideIndia #hiring #Startupgrowth .

Looking for someone great to join my EU team ✨ 🚨 I’m hiring a People Operations Manager (maternity cover, min. 2 years) - someone experienced, hands-on, and comfortable working across different European markets. • English is a must; German or French is a nice plus • Strong understanding of People Ops and experience working with external payroll vendors • Brings structure and can navigate complexity with a calm, positive mindset We’re a genuinely supportive, down-to-earth team - working hybrid, enjoying both offline & online time together, and keeping things human in a fast-paced environment. If this sounds like you (or you know someone who’d be a great fit), feel free to reach out to me ☀️