Post by Josef Chen

Honoured to be on Financial Times' Top Stories today, discussing opportunities—and talent misallocations—facing UK graduates. I came to the UK as a first-gen immigrant, drawn by the sheer concentration of talent. But my lessons in ambition weren’t from textbooks—they were from my parents, who built a Chinese restaurant in a small Austrian town, betting everything, even taking on loan shark money, with no safety net. For me, going all-in to build something of my own wasn’t just an option—it was the only way to make their sacrifice mean something. But once I got here, I saw a different reality: talent wasted, misplaced, or stuck in cycles of underemployment—because ambition alone isn’t enough when the system doesn’t back builders. The FT highlights a stark example: “After 40 applications for laboratory assistant or data analyst roles yielded no interviews, Joe turned his attention to financial services.” This isn’t just an isolated case—it’s systemic. The UK needs greater ambition to build and back HARD projects. More deep tech. More hardware. More opportunities where talent isn’t just absorbed into consulting and finance by default. (I explored this in depth in my viral article last year—link in comments.) If an Austrian-Chinese dude can build hardware and have a voice in the UK, so can you. No more excuses—let's build. 🇬🇧 https://on.ft.com/41tS8Ne