Before joining firstminute capital, Michael Stothard spent over a decade as an FT foreign correspondent and bureau chief across Europe before becoming founding editor of Sifted, and he now leads the fund's French coverage while also helping portfolio companies sharpen their messaging. At firstminute, he's built a detailed thesis on AI-enabled services transforming labor-heavy industries like outsourcing and healthcare admin, arguing that most startup value will come from AI applications and workflows rather than the underlying models, and he regularly publishes long-form frameworks, market maps, and adoption surveys to back up this thinking.

• Passionate about rapidly building experimental artificial intelligence products using modern development methods. A major focus is creating functional applications in very short timeframes, such as launching an automated competitive intelligence firm in a single day, turning founder photos into classical oil paintings, or developing a specialized email assistant for parents to sort through messy school updates.
• Deep interest in how artificial intelligence will unbundle and transform traditional industries like journalism, consulting, and education. Examples include theorizing about newsrooms where algorithms commission human reporters to write stories, creating personalized financial news feeds that explain how market movements specifically impact an individual readers portfolio, and analyzing academic research on how smart chatbots might actually increase inequality among students in schools.
• Strong enthusiasm for publicly celebrating the milestones and technical achievements of specific startups and founding teams. Public support is frequently directed at high growth artificial intelligence companies they are partnered with, such as celebrating the massive traction and funding rounds of Mistral or praising the team at Nabla for building healthcare tools that meaningfully improve lives.