I think the best way to start is to be clear about why this is here at all.

I’ve been running Heron Financial since 2011. What started as two of us trying to do mortgages slightly differently has grown into a team of around 40, technology-led, fee-free to clients, open seven days a week, and a certified B Corporation. Along the way we’ve grown apprentices into senior advisers, built our own software from scratch, and been acquired by a public company. Each of those things matters in isolation, but in my view the more interesting question is how they fit together: the way the technology, the people, the process and the customer journey end up reinforcing each other, or pulling against each other, depending on how they’re set up.

That’s the kind of thinking I want to do more of here.

I’ve written commentary in the trade titles for years, and sat on enough panels to know what works and what doesn’t. What I haven’t really done, until now, is write at any length about what I actually see from where I sit: running a regulated business in a market that doesn’t stand still, with technology and AI changing what’s possible faster than the regulation that surrounds them.

The title is deliberate. I’m not pretending to have it all worked out. I’d rather form my views in public, in writing, as the evidence comes in, and revise them when it changes. What I’d like to offer here is a particular vantage point, and the willingness to think out loud from it.

The writing will focus on how things connect, rather than picking apart single ideas in isolation, because in my experience the interesting bits tend to be how things connect. I’ll also change my mind in public when the evidence changes, which it tends to do more often than people admit.

It’s worth saying what this isn’t, too. It isn’t financial advice. Anything I write about rates, lenders, products or the market is commentary, and not a recommendation about what you or anyone else should do. If you need regulated advice, that’s what brokers and advisers are for. It also isn’t Heron marketing. Heron will inevitably crop up in what I write, because it’s the evidence base for a lot of what I think, but if a piece could sit on the company website unchanged, it probably isn’t really for here.

In terms of who it’s for, I’d say: founders, advisers and brokers, people building things inside regulated industries, and anyone making serious money decisions in a market that gets harder to predict with every day that goes by.

Cadence will be monthly to start, and the whole thing is free. I’d rather skip a month occasionally than publish something I haven’t thought through. You can reply to any of these and it’ll reach me directly, and I’d be happy to continue the conversation.

— Matt

Matt Coulson is founder and CEO of Heron Financial. More at mattcoulson.xyz.