This is a story about reaching the limits...

We are about to enter a consumer debt crisis. Credit Crunch 2.0. How do I know this? Well, I don't see any joined-up-thinking in retail banking, but I do see all the signs of a bubble about to burst.

In Germany, there is a central system that tracks what money is owed between every company. When you raise an invoice, you enter it in the system, and that way, you can see who owes who, and how much. You can do something called netting where all the balances are totalled up and you can then see exactly who's in debt and who's in credit.

The Germans have got that spot on. We need to know where the bad debt is, so we can contain toxic companies that are trading recklessly.

We don't have anything similar for consumer debt.

The credit-scoring system is only useful when people are applying for more debt. When they get into a debt crisis, they only show up when they start defaulting on their loan repayments, get to the limit of their overdraft, can't make their credit card minimum payments, default on their mortgage etc. etc.

I worked in Debt Management in 2012 and I listened to many phonecalls with ordinary individuals who didn't do anything reckless, but got caught in a debt trap. They were encouraged by consumer lenders to take out more loans to cover the last loans, and then payday loans to cover the interest, and before you knew it BOOM they were as good as bankrupt.

Personally, I hadn't been in debt since the age of 19 or so. This is unusual. I paid the deposit on my house. I paid for my wedding. I paid for my cars. I paid for our holidays... all with cash I had personally saved. The only way that was possible for me to do this was with way above-average earnings. This would have been impossible for anybody who was earning average wages.

I didn't really know what it was like for an ordinary person, living on an ordinary wage, in an ordinary way.

There was a huge amount of interest in my Debt Management startup, when I tried to found it in 2013. People still email me about it today. People still remember. I only worked on it for a short amount of time before I was consumed by my own ordinary life event - a divorce - which tore my stable world apart.

I wanted to let out our house, so that we had steady rental income, and I was able to defer the stress of financially settling the divorce until I had re-established myself back in London. I begged my wife to allow me to secure my life before she rained fire and brimstone on my head. She undermined everything I tried to do to protect myself.

By the time 2014 started, I had managed to keep my finances ticking over with Bitcoin trading, but she had wrecked me. When the house sale money eventually came in, I was in no fit state to work. She had destroyed me. I could have sold the house in 6 weeks. She managed to drag it out to 6 months. It was fine for her, she was staying in Bournemouth and she had a job. I had to rebuild my entire life.

I had a huge cash pile, but I had been stress tested to the limit and beyond. I couldn't work. I had to go to hospital. I was a wreck.

So, I ended up spiralling downwards. I didn't borrow money, but you sure rip through it if you're unwell, living in London and trying to support yourself getting better. Especially if you can't afford to sit and wait for state support. It was a Catch 22. London is where friends and my work network are, but it's certainly not easy to get any help from over-stretched boroughs. I had to turn to the private sector. That cost me a lot of cash.

So, I don't really qualify for state support... that's right. Why should I take something which I could afford to pay for privately? Only I couldn't really afford it... I got well, but then I had no personal safety net any more.

I spent all my money keeping myself alive. I had yet to thrive. 

Other people are very good at spending my money. My ex totally forgot that I paid for everything. She felt entitled. My ex flatmate, John, went overbudget on a flat that he didn't pay a penny towards, and even took some of my furniture with him when he left. He felt entitled.

Why do people feel entitled to come and pick my pocket? I've got nothing left.

The banks have done very well out of me and I've defended them. I've not claimed my PPI that I'm entitled to. I've not frozen the interest on my loans and had unfair credit charges refunded to me. I could - in fact - just throw down my tools, and say sod this for a game of soldiers. I'm trying to prevent a domino-effect of systemic failure in the banking system, which would see bank runs and total carnage as the whole system deleverages in an extremely inelegant way.

I'm trying to help my masters avoid such a crisis, but I feel like ground zero at the moment.

I need to go to work tomorrow, but I can't. I'm not well. I have been stress tested to the limit, and it's broken me.

Poor Frankie lost his home, which was his castle. Look how relaxed and happy he was there in his lovely big bed (June 2008)

Tags: #divorce #mentalhealth #frankie #banking #career

This is a story about doing the right thing for the wrong reasons...

I had 3 options: hospital, suicide, support network. Thankfully, I still have the latter.

I really didn't fancy another inpatient hospital admission. I probably would have had to accept stronger psychiatric medication, as it's pretty clear that my life hangs by a thread. One rash, hot-headed decision and it could be snuffed out in the blink of an eye. Think that sounds melodramatic? Screw you.

If you think that people say that they're depressed and suicidal because they're attention seeking, you're wrong. If you want to understand suicide a little more, you should watch The Bridge, by Eric Steel. It will cost you £2.49 and 90 minutes of your life.

I watched The Bridge as an inpatient. My suicidal plans to take Potassium Cyanide, changed. I decided that jumping off the Golden Gate bridge would have much deeper personal meaning, seeing as I had to cancel a San Francisco trip because of my horrible divorce. If you're going to die, do it quick & clean, or do it in some meaningful way, right?

Does it seem irresponsible? Well, actually I took out life insurance that covers suicide, that will leave a small legacy for my sister and my niece. I'm sure they'd rather have their brother/uncle, but suicide isn't really a choice but instead it's a reaction to unmanageable factors out of the control of that suffering individual.

So, instead of going back to hospital and being put in a chemical straightjacket, I made a video explaining what I was going to do and why. Then I booked a flight to San Francisco, packed a bag and headed to the airport. I was a man on a mission, but also a man on fire.

My friends have been scattered fairly far & wide. My friend John came back from Australia relatively recently, but we have been out of contact for years & years, and I struggled to support him - paying his rent and wages - when my need was very much vice-versa. We fell out when I grew impatient with his adoration of TV rather than job-hunting.

My friend Dave lives near Bristol. I would love to spend more time with him, but it's away from my work in London. That was one of the problems that was a coffin nail in our startup: Hubflow. I'm super grateful that Dave is such a great guy that he forgave me for becoming a complete sociopathic a**ehole as the pressure and stress of it all became too much, when I was CEO, and that we still seem to have a good friendship.

My friend Tim lives in Bournemouth. I really want to avoid that place. Bad memories linked to my divorce and startup failure. London is home. I like London.

My parents and a few old friends live in Oxford. I was dragged there against my will, and then my ex cheated on me, while I was temporarily evicted from my home. Bad memories. It's not my life... I live in London, not Oxford.

My sister and my friend MG live in Nottingham. I'd like to give it a go, but I haven't let London run its course yet. I will probably try and have a little pied-à-terre up there soon, so I have a base nearby my sister at a way lower cost than London. It's good to have an escape plan in case sh1t goes bad. Don't have one at the moment... hence suicidal thoughts.

I really want to get up to the North-East of England to see my friends Andy and Jim. It's a strange land for me though... I've been to the USA more times than I have been in the North of England, in my adult life.

So, when I booked my flights to California, USA, I knew that I was at least going somewhere with relative familiarity, even if that familiarity comes only from the movies I have watched and technology companies (Apple, Google, Oracle, Facebook etc. etc.) that I worship.

Also, I knew that there might be a chance to see long-lost friends, Ben & Jakub, who are business founders in Silicon Valley. Now, I feel very very embarrassed about the way I have conducted myself while things have not been going very well. I feel most embarrassed of all in front of these role models of mine, who have handled the same pressure and stresses. They have done it without vindictively and publicly blaming their shortcomings on their ex and/or parents.

Embarrassment drove me into my shell, made me withdraw. I didn't want the London Kitesurfers and my Cambridge peers from the Springboard Program to see me - an enthusiastic, happy-go-lucky, extroverted, capable and entertaining guy - so subdued by unhappiness in a destructive relationship. 

I stopped talking to my friends.

That was nearly fatal. Social media is the reason why I have maintained a toe-hold in life. Friends have reached out to me, when I'm clearly fumbling around without a bloody clue as to what the heck is happening to me, except that I'm loosing my grip on my will to live. That's made the difference. That's why I didn't chuck myself off the Golden Gate Bridge.

Thanks.

Jakub lent me the Apiry.io bike so I could cycle to Marin County, across the Golden Gate Bridge. Another thing ticked off the bucket list (Friday 30th October, 24 hours after making the video)

Tags: #suicide #depression #bipolar #startup #entrepreneur #parents #childhood #oxford #london #media #mentalhealth #friends

This is a story about manipulation...

My ex told her side of the story so much that our friends got sick of it. She then moved onto my parents. Sadly, my father was taken in by it.

Damsel in distress? I really think not. She spent a huge amount of time cultivating self-pity and a warped story that attempted to completely exonerate herself of any responsibility for our destructive relationship. I went quiet. I was slowly dying. I was self-harming and suicidal. Meanwhile, she vociferously attempted to turn friends and family against me. It didn't really work, as most people are mature enough to listen to both sides of the story before judging.

I certainly admit to my equal responsibility in an unhealthy co-dependent relationship based on hate sex. But I was the 'weaker' in this relationship, and I was beaten into submission. I think my friend Wiktor accurately summed up our marriage with the following image.

I should have walked away. I tried to walk away very early in our relationship, when it became clear to me that she wasn't ready for a committed relationship. I tried breaking it off loads of occasions, but she kept begging forgiveness for things like cheating, and I kept forgiving her. Fundamentally, I loved her and she didn't seem to love me.

That was a life lesson I couldn't really seem to learn, because she isolated me from my friends, from the activities that I loved and even from my GP and my family. The conflict of interest was appalling. I literally ended up with almost nobody fighting my corner. She cultivated such a convincing 'woe is me' story of her own suffering.

I was suffering in silence.

However, I'm a very forgiving person. She vindictively destroyed me, and I forgive her.

I'm struggling to forgive my parents. They should remember that it was me who eventually reached out to both sets of parents and got them to negotiate my release from captivity, and allow my life to be spared. I found her parents to be extremely supportive, understanding and kind. It's really upsetting how my own were so twisted by her manipulative and one-sided bullsh1t.

I also have a problem with the way that my GP acted. She took my wife on as a patient - which I believe was an unprofessional conflict of interest - and started to see my ex on a very regular basis, and began to become compromised, sympathetic to the patient who she saw more and more of. I honestly believe that my GP was convinced by my ex to act in a manner that was by no means in my best interests.

I have evidence for this. When it became clear that I had few human allies, I turned to technology. I installed a keylogger on my spare laptop, which I left in my house. When my ex eventually subdued me into being taken away by my gullible and manipulated idiot father, I was able to see what was typed on the keyboard of that laptop.

My horrible ex immediately joined a dating website and started messaging men. Supposedly she justified conspiring with my father and GP for my safety, health and wellbeing. In actual fact she showed her true colours straight away. The front door had barely closed behind me.

This 'butter wouldn't melt in my mouth' fake image of a person had her mask torn down. At first, I didn't even resort to looking at the keyboard transcripts. I just had great intuition that something was wrong. Naturally she played the "he's just paranoid... mentally ill" card. She bare-faced lied to the Crisis Teams in Bournemouth and Oxford when confronted by them about my concerns that she was not loving, supportive and faithful.

When I showed her the evidence, she backtracked with remarkable speed and started acting with some human decency. Foolishly, I forgave quickly. I married her. In sickness and in health and all that. I bought in to all that love and marriage vows crap. Strangely, I still do.

I don't think the end justifies the means. I wish I hadn't had to resort to snooping on the use of my own laptop (which is completely legal... it was my property, running my login account) in order to retain my own sanity. Can't people just be honest? Moral?

One of the moments that I clung to when my character was being assassinated, was when my ex recounted a tale of her trying to elicit yet more sympathy from our friends (I was not present, naturally). She was outraged that they were so dismissive of yet another here we go again tear-jerking tale of woe is me and pity party for the biggest martyr I have ever had the misfortune to meet, let alone date and foolishly marry.

Yes, fundamentally, this is a story of me growing up. This is a story of me finding out that relationships can be abusive, with cheating, lies, subterfuge and people are even prepared to take a life to perpetuate their disgustingly twisted image of self-righteous perfection. Whiter than white. Ha! I think not.

I accept now that I played my part in this. I should have taken responsibility for the safety of my own life much earlier, but so much of my support network was perverted by this manipulative character. Many of my friends went quiet, reserving judgement. They didn't reject me as a friend, but our relationship went cold.

I really hope she's OK. I don't think she's a bad person. I actually don't think anybody is 'bad' per se, Instead, we are all animals that respond to stimuli, to our environment, to factors outside of our control. I tried my best to make it work - that's what my parents taught me to do - but I didn't know how to walk away.

I didn't know how to walk away and it nearly killed me.

I got to keep our cat, but nothing else. My 'half' has been spent on putting this heartbroken chap back together again. I'm off to hospital again now. Hopefully I'm going to have an echocardiogram soon and see how bad the damage is.

This poor animal was the victim of a horrible divorce. Frankie the cat didn't have a great time either (October 2014)

Tags: #divorce #suicide #friends #mentalhealth #frankie

This is a story about making new friends...

I don't like bullying. My new friend Klaus Bravenboer doens't like rugby. Somehow we get along and became friends, fast. We are just about to go surfing. Yesterday I was in hospital feeling sorry for myself. That's the difference that friends make.

We are really enjoying a spur of the moment visit to Koa Tree Camp in North Devon/Cornwall, mapping the territory as a high-performance team. None of this was preplanned. We are just going with the flow, dude.

I've always been a bit of a man on a mission, and it's nice to have a healthy way to express my masculinity. I've been fetching wood, making fire, tending to the animals, walking round the farmland. I feel quite proud of myself, even though that's a little laughable to all you happy well adjusted people who are loving your lives.

Klaus and I have been capturing videos, taking photos and doing interviews with the lovely founders of Koa Tree Camp: Andy, Gemma, Sam & baby Hamish and Poppy the dog. You'll be seeing more of this on social media over the coming week or so, during the build up to the inaugural Man on a Mission weekend.

78% of suicides are young men. That's more than 3 times that of women. I'd like to understand why that is, and understand myself more. I just want to be happy and well adjusted, like you. I'm pretty happy right now, and I'd like to hang onto a little piece of that.

There will be more Frankie the cat pictures soon. Meanwhile. here is Klaus with a black and white pig (October 24, 2015)

Tags: #friends #manonamission #bullying #suicide #surfing #adventure #leadership

This is a story about obvious consequences...

The Trek 820 mountain bike was excellent, and cost just over £300 in 1993. This was apparently too much for my Dad to pay, so he stole a girl's bike.

Having removed the family to the middle of a remote part of the UK, on very steep hills on the Devon/Dorset/Somerset borders, away from all my friends in Oxford, I was then expected to get to school and do my paper round on this bike, as well as making new friends at the school which was part of my 6 day a week gruelling punishment for being the son of a couple of lazy dope smokers.

Averaging about 50 miles a day on some of the UK's steepest gradients. I can tell you a lot about lactic acid burning in your legs. I can tell you a lot about gritting your teeth and grinding the pedals, through all seasons, through all weather.

One thing I can tell you about children, is that they are extremely good at spotting other children who are different. Usually bullying and social exclusion are based on these perceived differences. I can tell you a lot about both of those things.

I'm going to hospital now, because I'm suicidally depressed. It seems like the responsible thing to do, even though all I really want to do is run myself a hot bath and slice my arms open with a kitchen knife, to get at my radial arteries. The pain must flow out of me somehow. The thoughts are invasive. I can't block them out.

At least my parents got to save £300 (or maybe less if they actually bought me a bicycle second hand). Are they responsible?

Tags: #bullying #oxford #childhood #parents #cycling #addiction

This is a story about unquantifiable needs...

It takes a lot of effort to keep up with somebody in distress. If you're not going to go the distance, you are just guessing, and you will be wrong on every conclusion drawn from lazy presumptions.

Whenever my homeless friend Frank phoned me, I would get on my bike and travel from Kentish Town to King's Cross to meet him. This might have been rather inconvenient for me, but I had started so I was going to finish. That's the first thing you need to know about me & Frank: we are determined people who finish what we start.

I had decided to take a trip to Prague, Czech Republic, to see a friend from the Springboard Accelerator Program, Cambridge. In so doing, I wasn't there for Frank. The consequences for him were nearly disastrous.

Did you know you can't keep one single solitary crab in a bucket, because it will crawl out and escape? However, you can keep two or more crabs in a bucket, because as soon as a crab tries to escape the other(s) will pull it back down into the bucket. They keep each other imprisoned. Mutually assured destruction.

Frank is a happy-go-lucky kinda guy, like me. We trust people. We give people the benefit of the doubt. We ran into some of Frank's 'friends' just before I had to catch my flight to Prague. They tried to mug me. Luckily I was streetwise enough to see what was happening and I cycled off. There was nothing else I could do. They stole Frank's iPhone, so I couldn't contact him. I had no idea what had happened to him.

When I got back from my trip to Prague, I got a call from Frank's friend, Paul, saying he had just been discharged from hospital.

There was a significant disparity between Frank's story and his hospital discharge notes. He told me he had been discharged from St. Pancras Hospital, but his discharge notes were clearly from UCLH. He told me that he had sustained a head injury, but there was no mention of that in the notes.

However, what did check out was that Frank was an alcoholic and he had gone through untreated withdrawal that could have killed him. Delirium Tremens killed the famous singer Amy Winehouse and it nearly killed Frank. The notes didn't seem to draw much attention to the fact that he did not receive treatment for his withdrawal. I guess London hospitals see a lot of homeless alcoholics though... mainly in the morgue.

When I first met Frank, on Primrose Hill, the first thing I noticed was that he was clean shaven, well dressed, had a tidy haircut and spoke articulately. The second thing that I noticed was that he was drinking at 7am. When we went to get a cup of tea later, I noticed that he started shaking quite badly... it was time to skip the tea and get him an alcoholic drink.

Buying alcohol for an alcoholic? Had I lost my mind?

You are ignorant about the dangers of abrupt alcohol withdrawal syndrome for an alcoholic. It's not a perfect solution, to buy them a beer, but do you really want somebody having a Grand Mal seizure and dying right in front of your eyes, because you are too stubborn to educate yourself about the damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you don't trap that an alcoholic can't escape.

So, alcoholics are abandoned by society, begging enough money to self-medicate for their physical dependence with the threat of horrendous withdrawal syndrome and possible death, if their blood alcohol level drops too abruptly.

How do I know this? I've known alcoholics, I've seen people get treated, I've read books and papers and online resources. You can do it too, if you care. It's certainly a lot easier to be wilfully ignorant, though, and incorrectly say "why don't they just stop drinking and use some willpower?". It's certainly a lot easier to not know any facts and just be wrong about everything.

What if that person was your son, daughter, brother, sister, husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, friend? Just let them die, right?

Well done.

First, do no harm (October 2013)

Tags: #frank #homeless #alcohol #addiction #NHS #friends

This is a story about being patronised...

This is my cat, Frankie. He was the kitten that nobody else picked. He's the most loving cat you could ever hope to meet. He loves humans. He thinks he's a little doggy, and follows you around and licks your face and stuff.

I think that I provide a nurturing and loving home for people and animals. I don't have a lot of evidence for this, but my friends used to love coming to my house, before it was sold, and Frankie used to call it home, and be a happy well-adjusted kitty there.

I'm going to switch this blog from telling you about me, and tell you the story of two Franks. First, there is Frankie my cat. Second, there is Frank: my homeless friend from Primrose Hill. I promised Frank that I would tell his story, and in telling Frank's story, I inadvertantly became entwined in it.

This is me climbing the hill, where I met Frank. I had no idea I was going to meet him. I was just taking photographs of London's skyline at daybreak. I sat down to rest on a park bench, struck up a conversation with a stranger, and our story began.

Frank's needs were not hard to understand, and seemingly not hard to address. As a firm believer in direct action, I was galvanized into a blur of activity. Who was I trying to save, him or me? Who cares... nobody else was there for Frank. Were you there for Frank? No. A lot of people had let him down. I had the time and the means to be able to try and help him.

Try is the operative word here. I'm going to try and not spoil the ending - which is going to be easy because we are writing the future as we live it - but I should let you know that this is no fairytale. I'm certainly not the knight in shining armour here. Despite my initial patriarchal attitude, it was me who learned from Frank, not vice-versa. He ended up helping me more than anybody could surely have predicted. I will leave it up to you, dear reader, to judge (with your super judgey-judgey face you reserve especially for people like me... whatever box that is you've tried to put me in).

So, what did I do? Well, we had a normal human conversation. Who knew that this is how human relationships are formed, and bonding and empathy can occur when we do such a thing. This so-called 'human connection' seemed to somehow transfer some understanding of Frank's fears and needs, into my brainbox, whereupon I somehow naïvely imagined that with whatever surplus I had, I might be able to help with some of his basic needs.

I defend thinking that I could help. You can't just throw money at the problem, but what have YOU tried yourself? Sure you read in a newspaper that we spend X on dealing with problem Y, and you think "that sounds like a lot of money" but really is it? How much direct support actually reaches people on the streets?

We absolutely can not criticise those who are trying to help, and take it from me, there really are not enough resources (shelter, food, volunteers, money for full-time workers and the real estate that is needed) to go around. This might sound anecdotal, but just use your eyes. Do you think people choose to sleep rough on the street? Are you stupid?

While you're digesting the fact that I just insulted your intelligence for being so prejudiced about the homeless, here's a photo of the view that Frank and I were enjoying on our park bench. Seems like a pretty sweet life, huh? Imagine waking up to this view every morning.

Have you noticed that it's not sunny every day? Have you considered that it rains a lot in the UK? Are you aware that it's pretty cold for most of the year, especially at night? Have you thought how you would stay warm & dry, if you had to sleep on the street year-round? How would you keep your clothes and sleeping gear from getting sodden with rain and dew? How would you stop your stuff from being stolen? Have you thought how much of your life you take for granted?

Is this too challenging? I know that it is, but I don't really care if you want to bury your head in the sand. I don't actually care if you switch off, disengage. I'm not writing this for you. I'm writing this for me & Frank. Maybe I'm just writing it for me, but it's still about Frank and it's still true. Try and dismiss me, try and dismiss this... go on!

JPMorgan Chase & Co investment bank employee and home owner tries to help homeless guy... coincidentally becomes homeless himself and follows in the footsteps of Frank. This is the true story I'm going to tell you.

I asked a member of Her Majesty's Constabulary (a Metropolitan Police Officer) to be a witness to me fulfilling the first of Frank's needs, right there and then, on the spot. Frank did not have a mobile phone, as he had been mugged. Without a means of contact, the Safer Streets team have very little way of finding people, except if they are sleeping somewhere obvious where they are preyed upon by muggers... Catch 22. I gave Frank my iPhone, and had a passing Policewoman witness the giving of this gift, in case he was ever accused of theft.

This was just the beginning of a journey that entangled the tale of Frank with mine, as we travelled on a similar voyage, through the same social ecosystem and his story became our story.

I took photos, and made notes throughout, but you have to believe me when I say that nobody would choose to go through what Frank and me went through. Nobody could plan for it. Nobody would want to experience it. Nobody should have to go through it, and I plan to share our journey, in the hope that people can empathise, rather than dismiss.

If you think "I've heard it all before" please share any links to those stories in the comments section below. Don't you think that the people who fall between the cracks should have their stories told? I do.

From high up, we see just how far we can fall (October 2013)

Tags: #homeless #frank #frankie #london #banking #career #police

This is a story of imitation...

I pitched the Cambridge Angels in flip flops. They didn't like this very much. It was a hot day in June though, so I thought it was appropriate. Perhaps I was a little over-inspired by The Social Network, but at least I wasn't wearing my dressing gown.

I also structured my company, so that my shares would be less diluted when the company received investment.

I was even so paranoid about anybody wrestling control of my company away from me, that when I wrote and signed a vesting agreement for my co-founder in a pub, on a napkin, during the first weeks of the Springboard Accelerator Program, in Cambridge, I deliberately held the pen upside down for the photo. Plausible deniability.

Anyway, so Hubflow is winding down operations, and that means I failed as CEO, despite the fact I stepped down a few years ago. Of course I wanted to give all my investors a big payday, so put a black mark against my name.

People should remember that I always had one eye on the sales pipeline and another eye on the bills, taxes, and wages. I would never bankrupt a company. However, it's all credit to my co-founder for getting things in order when I became unwell.

It's tough at the top, and I have nothing but respect for anybody who is in a CxO position. I'm not after anybody's job... I know how much of a kicking the executives get from investors, customers, and the sleepless nights thinking about everybody who is depending on them.

I'm also not so naïve as to believe that I should be telling anybody how to build a successful startup yet. I learned loads on the Springboard program, but those lessons have yet to express themselves in a useful and productive way for everybody who invested time & energy in me.

I'm wrestling with an unquenchable desire to research and develop stuff, to innovate, to explore ideas. I know that I can deliver a project as a solo founder, or build something from day one with the right co-founder(s). Bringing people in later in the life of a startup, is very difficult.

I also know that I can be a developer, or I can be a startup founder...  not both. Sure, I can write code, I can fix bugs, but the demands on a founder are so great that it's impossible to do the development as well. I was writing and maintaining code for the iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, web application, maintaining the database, doing sysadmin, operational support... it was too much, on top of raising money, meeting customers, pitching and meeting mentors.

On the Springboard Program, Jon and Jess did a great job of supporting the founders. I know that Jon also went by far the extra mile for the teams that were dealing with issues, and the safety net that was there for me could not be faulted. I had bitten off more than I could chew.

I was always torn between raising any kind of investment round (friends & family, seed) or bootstrapping. I also was conflicted about bringing anybody into my startup, except hired help. I didn't trust anybody. I also couldn't let go of control and empower anybody to help me.

When you are bootstrapping, you don't have any money. For anything. Making rent payments, wages, expenses... everything comes down to one thing and one thing only: how much runway have you got left for your burn rate? You run lean, but you also run stressed. That's not an excuse for me not being a team player though. Hubflow probably could have been a bigger success if I had learned the importance of Team, as well as Traction and Technology.

You live, you learn.

Photographic evidence that I did make people laugh as well as cry. I think we had great times in Cambridge. I know I did (May 2011)

Tags: #startup #entrepreneur #university #career #leadership #computing #apple

This is a story of a culture that is destroying people's mental health and lives...

Management by balance-sheet, bean counters, spreadsheet jockeys and "yes" men and women are joining a set of executives who do everything in their power to abstain from any of the hard work and responsibility that is necessary in the world.

We have all heard horror stories of people being sacked by text message. In fact, skilled workers, professionals, have been steadily robbed of their worth and self-esteem since powerful rich men, behind closed doors in gentleman's clubs were allowed to asset strip British industry. The practice continues today, as companies are allowed to be headquartered in the UK, but are offshoring all the jobs for cost reasons, and are draining the wealth of the nation.

Europe is fast becoming little more than a tax haven for global businesses, with billions, if not trillions of dollars of profits being pushed through legal entities that have little reason for existence other than to evade the taxes that these companies rightfully should pay to the countries that they have extracted the profits from.

Luxembourg is the most obvious example, but Ireland has recently jumped on the bandwagon. The amount of tax that is paid by Vodafone (group HQ is Luxembourg... funny that, considering that Newbury, UK is where I thought they were founded?) or Apple and Amazon (taxed via Irish legal entity... I know Apple Maps is rubbish but it's a long way from Silicon Valley?) is a pittance. The amount of profits that these companies make is disgusting, versus what they pay as percentage of their gross profits.

However, maybe there is a good reason for all of this?

When I became unwell, and asked good old UK government for support - as somebody who has always paid my full taxes, has no offshore bank accounts, has never tried to evade or avoid taxes - I found that there was worryingly little of a safety net there.

I went to my doctor (General Practitioner, or GP for short, here in the UK) and had a 30 second conversation about what was going on in my life.

"Have you heard of Fluoxetine"

Well, yes, I have heard of Fluoxetine. It's the generic name for Prozac, which is an antidepressant from the 1980s. What the hell is my doctor doing dishing out 25 year old pills to somebody who they have taken 30 seconds to get to know? Well, we know that the NHS is extremely cost pressured, given that we have to give such large tax breaks to profitable billion dollar companies and make sure that we don't take too much inheritance tax from dead multi-millionaires. Oh, and we need nuclear atomic bombs too. Yes, we need to make sure we can always annihilate every person on earth at the flick of a switch.

Luckily for me, I walked away from a course of powerful psychoactive medication, that has been proven in long-term studies to be less effective than placebo. It also takes 6 weeks to take effect. My episodes of depression tend to be about this long anyway. Also, SSRIs make you fat and destroy your sex life, as well as blunting your emotions and generally making your sh1t life even more sh1t, but you'll be too doped up to even realise, unless you ever emerge from the chemical haze.

I'm pretty upset about this, if you hadn't picked up on that.

Another thing that is very annoying is that, as anybody who takes a few more minutes to get to know me will tell you, I'm certainly not what you might term unipolar. My life is littered with examples of radical mood swings. Catch me at a certain time, and you will see my racing thoughts, pressured speech, lack of sleep, intolerance of dimwitted twits, and evidence of my wacky projects.

One day I whimsically decided to knock down my shed, order a load of wood from a sawmill and build a giant beach hut summer house thing in my back garden. Somebody suffering from unipolar depression does not normally do such a thing, according to the DSM-IV/V.

I had to learn all about Google Sketchup, so that I could design the thing, learn about different types of timber, wooden building construction techniques, roofing techniques, planning laws governing outbuildings, estimate how much I would need in terms of materials, locate a sawmill, find a roofing supplier, get a chop saw, nail gun and roofing blow torch (the most fun tool of all).

At no point did any of this seems slightly strange or beyond my capabilities, as a spotty IT nerd who did little more than turn coffee into software for a living, by pressing buttons on a computer, in a comfortable air-conditioned office.

Working around-the-clock seemed perfectly normal too. I remember one neighbour pointed out that the sound of nails being hammered at 9pm was not helping him to study for an English exam... but how are you supposed to hammer quietly? I did try and hammer more considerately, but it seemed more considerate to simply get the project done as fast as possible (I think I took 3 days to complete the structure) given that I didn't know the sleep patterns of everybody within earshot.

So "Mega Shed" as she was affectionately known, appeared at the bottom of my garden in under a week, at a cost of £700. An ordinary week in anybody's life? Well it's hard to judge from an internal point of view, as you can't step out of your own mind and view yourself as others would.

Naturally, friends, colleagues and family are always impressed by a person's industriousness and ingenuity, so I saw no real reason to back off the gas. When the world rewards you for efforts, this reinforces your belief that what you are doing is sustainable.

I then decided to sit in my garden and read a huge stack of books on Quantum Mechanics. This then progressed to me reading every paper that looked interesting in Cornell University's online archives. Naturally, I then started emailling a bunch of the authors, and getting engaged in particularly interesting email based discussions with people around the world about De Broglie's Matter Waves (Pilot Wave theory) which looked a hell of a lot more elegant than all that Standard Model crap that couldn't be unified with General Relativity.

Instead of being discouraged, I found academics to be kind, indulgent and generous with their time. I took things too far, of course, and wrote a paper on the measurement of collapsing Quantum States in an entangled system, spread over a physical space larger than the light-cones of the particles being measured. Standard Quantum Eraser type stuff. I even tried to get it published. Lolz.

At no point did anybody actually directly say to me "you seem to be as mad as a box of frogs on acid with lasers coming out of their nostrils" so I kept digging myself into a deeper and deeper thought hole until I sank into another depression, with no idea what had just happened to me.

The thing is, it's fairly entertaining, enthralling, to watch somebody who is hypomanic. In our age of Big Brother and myriad reality TV shows, we seem to think that it's OK to be a spectator in somebody's spectacular life.

We seem to think it's OK to sit back and watch somebody go absolutely bezerk. It's that person's fault, right? Or maybe it's not their fault, but it's not your responsibility... that would be somebody else? Maybe doctors? Maybe the police? Maybe the council? I don't know... I'm just going to watch - because this is just too horrible to miss a minute of - and I can't tear my eyes away this is just so awful, somebody should do something about it, but not me, and not yet because I'm really getting into this. Brilliant. Who needs TV anyway?

I don't think that I'm not personally responsible for getting unwell, but I don't think that people know how to help, really. I don't think that people are particularly incentivised to help either. We have a very isolated existence. We don't know our neighbours, we don't trust strangers, we ring the police to deal with things that we used to work out between ourselves, we expect our doctors to give us magic beans to cure all society's ills.

So, today is World Mental Health day and World Homeless Day. I can tell you, from personal experience, that mental health issues can lead to homelessness. When I was discharged from hospital after a suicide attempt, I was given 2 weeks accommodation, and I was expected to use that time to arrange my own accommodation. I went to the council offices with a letter from my doctors, explaining that I was extremely vulnerable and that I should receive urgent assistance. The person I spoke to then went on holiday and that was the last I heard of it.

I don't blame the system or the people. People are trying to do the best that they can, but there are so many people in need of assistance, and so little money, because we are fixated on helping the rich to get richer, rather than supporting the most vulnerable members of society. I'm not even angry about it. Living in the Royal Parks and on Hampstead Heath was an eye-opening education for an extremely highly qualified and well educated guy who fell on hard times. If you think I chose to become homeless, then f**k you, you ignoramus.

Yes, I could have sold my camera, but I wanted to document what happened to me and I already sold all my other possessions to support myself. When will you be satisfied? Sell my clothes? Locking me up for being naked will be expensive (June 2014)

Tags: #mentalhealth #bipolar #depression #homeless #sex #banking #career #london #culture

This is a story of a sabbatical that I never got to take...

Anybody who says I'm ungrateful for my life needs to have their head examined. My life has been paired down to the nth degree. Anybody who has lived aboard a 22ft boat for weeks knows how to live a small life.

In 2003, I asked HSBC if I could take a sabbatical, so that I could backpack around Australia, New Zealand and South-East Asia. The important thing about the trip, for me, was that I needed to make more friends and do a bit of independent growing up, away from the Angel Islington and Canary Wharf, which my whole life revolved around.

My old boss, an Exeter graduate who had completed an M.Phil (Master of Philosophy degree) in Epidemiology at Oxford, was a brilliant guy and did his level best to get this agreed with Human Resources. The rule at the time was that you had to have been an employee for 2 years, which I had been. It had been agreed and I started to get excited about tying my knapsack to a stick and setting off on the road to secure and happy adulthood, with some brilliant travel stories to tell when I got back.

Sadly, HR decided to change the rules under our feet, and the trip of a lifetime became a choice between resignation or cancelling my trip. I chose the latter, as I had a secure job with a conservative bank that I have loved since being a Griffin Saver, in the days of Midland Bank. Working for HSBC was very personal for me. Also, memories of the Dot Com crash and 9/11 were fresh in my memory. I valued my job, and I liked working for my boss. He's a great guy: so disciplined and inspiring.

Possibly as some kind of compensation (I'm totally speculating here) my boss allowed me to ride his coat tails into a very important project, whereupon I sulked for months and months, because I hadn't fully comprehended what he might have done, in light of the clear importance of the project that I was a part of. My boss exposed me to the very best people within HSBC, and perhaps tried to pair and mentor me - perhaps deliberately, who can say? - with people who are still to this day an inspiration in everything I think and do. I can't help but well up with tears thinking about what an amazing time that was, even if I was sullen and sulky for so much of it.

When the pressure really ramped up on the project, towards the go-live date, I flicked the switch from 'zoned out' to 'warp drive' and started putting in the hours I should have been. I had wasted a lot of time, so this was hardly anything more than working as hard as I should have been all along, but nobody should underestimate the effort that was put in, either.

Anyway, I was eventually ranked - quite fairly - on my average effort over the whole year, rather than just on the 'heroic' efforts towards the end. There was one issue that I was very very tenacious with, having to work with operations, software vendors, networks, sysadmins and security to track down a particularly nigglesome problem. This taught me some well-needed discipline, but not, however, much humility.

My boss did his very best to knock a streak of arrogance out of a jumped-up young upstart: I found it very easy to do the work that was asked of me, but I was lazy, sloppy and work-shy, to be honest. Nothing was much of a challenge, so instead, I filled my time reading the BBC News website, chatting with my friends on the Kiteboarding forums and planning my next weekend trip to the beach or overseas Kiteboarding trip.

I suppose you could say that I had my cake and ate it. I got to continue my career in London, and I also got to travel the globe and meet a set of friends who became a part my life, almost like University or "gap-yah" friends (gap year to those who don't speak posh) would be in the lives of my rich upper-middle-class white spoiled brat peers.

However, I still harboured a bitter resentment against the world for having 'conspired' to deny me a year of diminished responsibility, casual sex with sun-kissed young women with sand in their hair, and generally having fun in the playground of World's backpacking hostels. I felt I was entitled to this, like all the University-educated upper-middle-class twentysomethings in Banking.

I couldn't see that I had kind of won. I had kind of gotten both. I couldn't see that my life was awesome already.

When my boss told me that I been ranked just below the very top performing employees of the company that year, I was mighty p1ssed off. He did a very good job of staying calm and not telling such an arrogant little sh1t to p1ss off. Partly at issue, was that entitlement is bred into us by our upbringing and society around us.

We are told what to expect depending on our position in the World. Perhaps we also misunderestimate (sic.) the effort that is going on beneath the serene surface: some of us are wild swans, with our legs frantically paddling under the surface, while we glide along the surface looking cool, calm, collected & awesome.

Tony Blair told the world that 50% of people should get to go to University. I wanted to go to University, but always felt such a deep sense of responsibility to be self-sufficient and work hard, it seemed decadent and profligate to spend so much money, geting into debt, just drinking and reading books. I have always been excellent at cramming for exams and words seem to flow out of me like so much water in a sieve, so that part didn't exactly worry me.

It's always been a bugbear of mine that people think that education is a right. It's not. It's a privilege, but it is also essential to advance civilisation and humanity. It can improve lives and society more than any other gift that we can give to the developing nations. Teach a man to fish etc. etc.

People have tried to gently, and not-so-gently steer me towards teaching. I loved my teachers and I love teaching. I can remember all the names of my teachers, and I still fondly recall so much of what they taught me in life, and how they inspired me. I hated school though, because the bullying was so unbearable. But then again, I was always terrified of electricity and ended up becoming an electrician, so fears can be overcome.

I think I know now that, when I'm done with wearing a suit, I want to teach - so much that it makes me absolutely sob my eyes out as this realisation dawns on me - Physics, Maths and Design/Technology/IT working with underpriviledged kids in state comprehensive schools in Inner City London. This doesn't have to be soon. It's something to aspire to for semi-retirement, I think.

The only way that I can think to make that a reality from my current situation of zero cash, zero assets and massive debts, is by draining the swamps in banking, as an IT contractor, and by changing the political landscape of the UK so that we pay Teachers a decent living wage and top up the salary of those working in London so that they can afford to live here.

Ideally, I would like to finish the project I'm on, and deliver of a stint of many months and years of steady high-quality work for the global bank I have always loved admired and respected the most. HSBC really is a great place to work, and you really can be reassured that when we are all done, it's going to be good for another 150 years of helping people and businesses to achieve their full potential.

Maybe I'm just a hopeless dreamer. Answers on a postcard if you've got a better idea.

Anyone who says 'narcissist' to somebody who has decided to wear a grey suit for 18 years is going to get a punch in the mouth (Winter 2014)

Tags: #career #london #banking #university #hsbc