How I got my UK visa (and how you can too)
If you’ve built something—even if you haven’t “made it” yet—you might qualify.
Wanna sponsor this thing? Have a spicy tip? Hit reply. For everything else, find me here.
In today’s issue:
The tamagotchi bag we’re all drooling over
Some home favorites for my new flat
The vacuity of “culture rot”
Notes from a messy desk
Watching the chaos unfold in the U.S. from afar has been… something. Every time I talk to friends back home, they tell me my timing was perfect—like I somehow knew things were about to get even messier. The truth? I’ve been planning this move since May. You don’t just wake up one day, get a three-year visa, pack up your life, and relocate across the world.
One thing I haven’t talked about much is the visa — the type I got, the application process, and how you can get it too. Selfishly, I want my friends and cool people like you come to the UK, so I’m going to shed a bit of light on something that, when I discovered it, felt almost too good to be true: the Global Talent Visa.
Unlike most visas, which require an employer to sponsor you, this one is designed for independent professionals, entrepreneurs, and creative contributors—people who want the freedom to live and work in the UK without being tied to a single company. And the best part? You don’t have to be some world-famous name to qualify. There’s a whole category for promising talent, not just established leaders.
Who’s It For?
People in tech (startup founders, engineers, product designers, growth marketers, investors, UX/UI designers, advisors, etc.)
People in creative industries (writers, photographers, musicians, fashion designers, digital creators, architects, etc.)
Academics and researchers (scientists, university lecturers, researchers, PhDs)
Most people assume you have to be a household name or someone giving TED Talks to qualify, but that’s not true. There are two levels of endorsement:
Exceptional Talent: This is for established leaders in their field who have a strong track record of impact. If you’ve built a recognizable brand, scaled a business, contributed to major projects, or been featured in industry press, this is your lane.
Exceptional Promise: This is where things get interesting. This category is for people who are on their way up—those who have made significant contributions but aren’t at the peak of their career yet. If you’re still early in your career but have a strong trajectory, this is where you can qualify.
For example, you could be…
A growth marketer who helped scale a few startups but hasn’t been a CMO yet
A UX designer who’s worked on well-known apps but isn’t a household name
A fashion designer with press and collaborations but not a global brand
A writer or journalist with bylines in respected outlets but no bestsellers
A tech consultant who has worked with high-profile companies but isn’t a founder
Basically, if you’re doing interesting, impactful work and can prove that you’re either already a leader or well on your way to becoming one, you can get this visa.
The Process (And What I Submitted)
At first, the application process sounded intimidating, but once I broke it down, it was just a matter of organizing proof of what I’ve done. Here’s what I needed:
I then had to submit three major pieces of evidence showcasing my contributions to tech. For me, that looked like:
Press and media coverage about my work
Speaking engagements (even smaller panels count)
My work with Business Class and the impact it’s had
Other examples of valid evidence:
A case study on how you helped grow a company
A product or platform you built
High-profile clients you’ve worked with
Your portfolio, publication history, or awards
Next, I had to submit three letters of recommendation from people in my industry who could vouch for me. These couldn’t just be “nice to work with” testimonials—they had to say how I’ve contributed to the field in a meaningful way. I asked founders, investors, and other leaders who had seen my work firsthand.
If you’re applying under Exceptional Promise, the letters should emphasize your trajectory—how you’re on your way to becoming a major player in your field.
I then had to write a personal statement explaining why I wanted to move to the UK and how I planned to continue contributing. It’s not just about past accomplishments—the UK wants to know what you’ll bring to their economy and ecosystem.
If you’re a tech founder, freelancer, artist, or consultant, this is where you explain why the UK is the right place for you and how you’ll keep innovating.
The process happens in two stages:
Endorsement – An industry body (like Arts Council England for creatives or Tech Nation’s replacement for tech) reviews your application. This can take a few weeks to a few months.
Visa Approval – Once endorsed, the UK Home Office processes the visa, which usually moves fast.
Once I got approved, I had a three-year visa with total freedom—no employer sponsorship, no restrictions. I can live here, work here as little or much as I want, be here as much or as little as I want, and build whatever I want.
This visa is still relatively unknown, but it’s a huge opportunity if you work for yourself or don’t want to be locked into corporate sponsorship. If you’re feeling stuck, frustrated, or straight up want to flee the country, this might be worth looking into. If nothing else, I want people to know this exists. If you’ve built something—even if you haven’t “made it” yet—you might qualify.
If you’re specifically interested in learning more about applying for the Global Talent Visa in the tech category, check out Tech Nation’s website here. For more general information, you can learn more here.
Hope to see you in the UK soon!
Wheels Up,
Sophia
PS – If you’re thinking, I need a gorgeous sunrise lamp or clock to help adjust to daylight savings time, or to just make your sleep suck less, I have a special discount for readers – use the code SOPHIA20 today through March 18th for 20% off Loftie.*
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Shopping roundup, downsizing to 900-square-feet edition
Collabs on my radar
French fashion label Coperni sent their collab with Meta’s Ray-Bans down the Paris Fashion Week runway. They also designed a Tamgotchi swipe case, and people are freaking out in the Instagram comments. We need it. You can now buy the KEEN clogs from madhappy. e.l.f. partnered with Fazit Spirit Stripes on game-day makeup patches – those little stripes fans paint under their eyes. Cute. Polish designer Magda Butrym is dropping a collection with H&M next month. The dresses, strappy sandals, and headscarves all center around the rose – a symbol of womanhood. Hailey Bieber’s 13-piece collection with FILA is so good – knit sweaters, pullovers, pleated skirts, and tees in popcorn yellows, forest greens, and greys are a fresh spin on preppy activewear. Also very good: Sofia Richie Grainge’s contemporary collection for Tommy Hilfiger. LA-based designer Mandy Cheng dropped a coastal, earthy line for lighting brand Mitzi. If you’re looking for a cool, California-inspired wall sconce, she’s got you. The Maison Margiela x Gentle Monster collection is described as “an exploration between classicism and futurism.” It’s rad. Also rad: designer Cecile Bahnsen’s hyperfeminine collection for The North Face, which just dropped today.
Collab report: Last week, subscribers were most into the Lila Moss x Wildflower phone case and Lisa Says Gah x Polly Pocket collection.
Links to make you smarter and more interesting
Gap is hot again. Gap’s profits for 2024 totaled $1.1 billion, up more than 80% from the year before. The brand has been killing it with its celebrity partnerships – like Troye Sivan and Parker Posey – a bet its new creative director Zac Posen was (correctly) banking on.
Creatives are still inspired by the “controlled chaos” and singular aesthetic of The Sims. This is a gorgeous exploration on how the 25-year-old video game influences the style of current visual creators, from those claymation-like Airbnb spots you’ve probably seen on TV over the last year to a New York Times illustration.
“The Sims is this really cool way to have agency and then starting to feel out what it's like to shape the world around you,” Buck design director Shannon Rollins told It’s Nice That. “It’s like, when you’re a kid, you can't go buy a sofa, but maybe you can ask your mum if you can paint your room – your hands are a little bit tied in terms of how you can express that. The Sims is a really good jumping off point for starting to feel out if you are the type of kid that's going to grow up to be interested in creative work.”
Google’s Startup Founders Fund website removed the word “underrepresented” from its site. On January 21st, the site said the program provided financial support to “underrepresented communities” and that it helped “underrepresented and at-risk founders build and grow their businesses. Now, the site states that the program provides “financial support for innovators” and hands-on support “to help founders build and grow their businesses.” This follows Google’s email to employees last month that the company would review its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
The average workday for Americans now ends at 4:39pm. And overall productivity has increased by 2%. Work smart, not hard cuties.
Leaders with a sense of humor are 27% more motivating. A very unsurprising TLDR from a recent study: if you can make your employees laugh, they might want to work harder and they’ll certainly be less bored. As long as the jokes aren’t at the cost of someone else’s feelings. If you’ve got it (it being the ability to crack a good ass joke probably because you’re a little bit of a weirdo), flaunt it. At work.
Female-founded companies without any male co-founders got just 1% of VC funding in 2024. A harrowing statistic! Diem CEO Emma Bates points out that her company – which is building a social search engine for women and non-binary folks – was among the 1% last year and calls it “incredibly embarrassing” for VCs.
“It’s also a shame that most people making the check writing decisions won’t find this embarrassing or problematic enough to make any meaningful change,” she wrote on LinkedIn. “Even if all the stats also point to outsized returns from women-led teams.”
This hot new water bottle (RIP Stanley) is finding success on TikTok and at Target. Bink launched exclusive colorways at Target in December and is all over TikTok. EV Salon founder Erika Veurink even called it the “status water bottle of the moment.” That’s because, unlike the Stanley and Owala reusable water bottles, Bink is made of borosilicate glass with a rubber silicone cover.
Consumers want to shop with their values, but not if it’s too expensive. Yes, anecdotally, people want to be more mindful shoppers – they want to shop local and to buy socially responsible products from well-intentioned brands. But the findings from Fast Company’s annual Conscious Consumer Spending Index finds that, despite these well intentions, people end up buying what’s most convenient and more affordable. For instance, the survey found that 30% of Americans are morally opposed to Amazon, but most of them shop there anyway.
Ghia ditches their paper label. Founder Mélanie Masarin shared a note on Wednesday that their new Le Spritz cans are now 100% aluminum – they’re more eco-friendly and hold a little more drink. If you weren’t already aware, aluminum isn’t recyclable when it comes with stickers or any kind of coating on it, which a lot of labels have.
Reddit is the current king of social. People are spending more and more time on Reddit for the “social” aspect – spend an average of 34 minutes a day on the platform this year, a 3.7% increase from last year. That’s better than any other social media platform, even Instagram.
Gen Z is cosplaying work, or “taskmasking”, at the office. With a bunch of companies forcing their workers to return to office, a lot of younger employees whose professional lives have largely been remote to date are finding the performative aspect of office life exhausting. Meaning, the expectation that you always maintain an air of business.
“Gen Z has graduated high school and college remotely, done so many milestones from home, so the idea that work can only be done in an office is so far off,” said Gabrielle Judge, a 28-year-old content creator known as the Anti Work Girlboss. “Taskmasking is a result of how people feel bitter and frustrated over this. I think it begs the question to employers: how important is being together?”
Brands are confusing content for culture. It’s called “culture rot.” A report from TBWA dissected 39 global cultural shifts for marketers and found that brands and creators are just parroting microtrends (like “cores”) instead of using actual cultural forecasting to inform their content, and it’s not actually moving the needle or influencing someone’s life. Like what they might buy. Stop chasing trends and start them.
An aquarium worker’s booming side hustle? Selling anti-Elon Musk stickers to Tesla owners. A lot of current Tesla owners are reckoning with the controversial CEO of their car’s company. But not everyone is in a financial position to casually get rid of their car, so they’re buying statement stickers. Matthew Hiller makes some of those bumper stickers, which say things like “Elon Killed My Resale Value” and “Shut Up Elon.” He’s been selling between 400 and 500 stickers a day.
Link report: Last week, subscribers were most into the Industrial Era hairbrush having a moment with Gen Z, the CIA’s SXSW panel on “the spies’ guide to creative problem solving,” and the $10 tween and teen status symbol.
More from my rich universe of endeavors
I may include affiliate links, which means I receive commission on purchases made from some of the links. But I’ll only show you stuff I really like.
Hi from a fellow American who just arrived to London this month! Flagging that for the writers bit, you have to write fiction or poetry! Journalists and non-fiction authors aren’t eligible sadly.
This is a hot tip!!