This is a story about human nature...

What kind of pose does one pull at the birthplace of Silicon Valley? Imitating the undead seemed somehow fitting. There is an incredibly powerful global brain drain at the moment.

Money does not trickle down, it concentrates in pools. If you want me to show you how to make a million dollars, give me 100 million and a year. I must be some sort of financial genius, right?

I'm alarmed by just how hard all the engineers are working, and how little of the reward they share. In fact, they are getting burnt out by an industry, which seems to care very little about the lives it's destroying. Get rich or die trying seems to be the order of the day. Very much more of the latter going on than the former.

Anybody who tells you that Americans don't understand irony is completely wrong. They not only understand it, but they play with it, and it's hilarious. The tongue-in-cheek humour I have had the pleasure of experiencing is delightful.

The entire world, including America, has been misled about the American Dream. Hollywood tells us we can all been rich and beautiful: take taxis, fly in jets, stay in 5-star hotels, have swimming pools, helicopters, speedboats and sports cars. We can't. There are far more people watching those movies and buying into that dream than the space available for helipads on the planet. It's a con.

Some of my super super smart engineer friends have even been taken in by the simplest con of all: getting somebody to do a load of hard work for you, while you pocket all the profits. It breaks my heart to find out just how diluted their shares are by the time they've built a valuable company for a bunch of Venture Capitalists.

However, my friends have gotten to scratch that "engineer's itch" and work with great people doing intersting stuff. I guess my remuneration is based on boredom and danger money for working in a tall building on an airport approach path, in a rather hated industry.

We used to talk about the 'golden handcuffs' at JPMorgan Chase & Co. We knew that what we were doing was completely insane, but we had big houses, kids in private schools and pretty wives with spending habits that were proportional to their good looks. We were locked into the system. We were prostitues and junkies.

However - as is always the case with human nature - people got greedy. They started getting young, idealistic and hard-working people to do more of the work for less of the pay. They even started getting massively underpaid Indians, straight out of University to to all the work for a tiny fraction of the pay. That doesn't work.

If you undervalue a person, they become a zombie. Zoned out.

If you wave a ridiculous cash reward under someone's nose, but chronically underpay them until they 'win' the prize that they can never seem to quite reach, they become burnt out.

Or they get really cheesed off with it all, and come back and kick your ass. The fact is, they've worked a lot harder than you, so they'll fight a lot harder too. They're probably smarter than you too, because they've had to be resourceful. Getting fattened by the labour of other people makes you lazy and soft.

Why people think that they deserve a big salary for forwarding emails is completely beyond any sensible comprehension. The laziness in middle management is incredible. Nobody can be bothered to do any typing. Nobody can be bothered to collate any figures, let alone do any math. Nobody seems to have any relevant knowledge or experience. They are just blundering fools.

So, I need to go back to London. The company that I'm officially contracted to at the moment desperately wants to terminate my contract but hasn't found an excuse to do it yet. I really wish they had the backbone to just do it so I could spend some more time with friends out here in California. I really could do with the money from the contract, and I really don't have any money to spend staying here, but I'm not being allowed to do anything approaching useful to help HSBC deliver the #1 project on time, on budget and to a decent quality.

"I told you so" is so completely useless. I just want to do a good job. My normal approach is to do the right thing, get in trouble for it, but then at least the problems are solved, things are delivered and the client is begrudgingly accepting of receiving exactly what was needed.

I can't be arsed with that anymore. Time for some honesty.

I'm actually completely exhausted by the relentless crappy compromises that are demanded by ass hats that result in death by a thousand cuts. Why do idiots feel they have to 'add value' by undermining the experts? Why do little hitlers feel that they are adding value by encroaching into people's lives? What I wear to work and when I turn up is none of your business if the work is getting done. Certainly my private life is completely off limits if you're not going to be sympathetic when I get sick.

I'm aware that people from work might read this, and I actually hope they really do. It's interesting to me to see how social media sourced data might be unethically used against me. Again, it's about a complete spinelessness in corporate culture. Why not just call me out... I've given so much to my job to try and get a late project back on time, and then when I needed a week out, I got accused of being "unreliable" and was told I was acting "cloak and dagger"... that's such utter horse sh1t.

Was I unreliable when I was amongst a handful of people who always got phoned every weekend? Was it cloak and dagger when I was working 7 days a week and clearly not sleeping because I was answering email around-the-clock? I couldn't possibly have concealed anything as I was forever in the eye of my team, and the client. No cloak, no dagger.

Frankly, you picked a fight with the wrong guy. I'm coming back to the UK, and I'm mighty p1ssed off... and you don't want to see me p1ssed off.

Here is an unrelated picture of Frankie the cat. I like the feel of grass under my feet. It calms me down (July 2012)

Tags: #banking #career #computing #frankie #mentalhealth

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 burnout...

Here I am, back in Cambridge, after 4 years of ups & downs. What happened?

Well, I got hit by a perfect storm. I could see the storm coming - I'm a sailor after all - but I couldn't sail fast enough to get out of the way. Part of the reason for the sudden breakdown was uncontrolled self-medication with the GABA agonist, ethanol, which had suppressed my natural anxiety response until things were literally unbearable. The other reason is a lack of support from my parents. In fact, they actually undermined me and lied about supporting me.

Life is stressful. My sister is a single mum on a low income, working 6 days a week, going through a horrible divorce. That's stressful. I was a startup founder, in conflict with my co-founder and my girlfriend, who were both pulling me in different directions and away from my investors in Cambridge and my customers and talent pool in London. That's stressful too.

Our parents are always looking for the easy way out. They are not good at taking any responsibility, but I don't blame them. Whatever it is that causes them to be so slippery at accepting that they have 2 children who need their support, I want to find out and help them. My sister is a supermum to her daugher, my niece.

Even though our parents don't realise or appreciate it, we have been working so damn hard all our careers to make sure we don't place any financial burden on them. My sister and I have suffered in our adult lives as a result.

Something had to give.

You should give your children enough to do something but not enough to do nothing. It's as simple as that. If you don't give enough to allow your kids to do something then you're not a good parent. Simples.

My sister gives my niece a brilliant life.

So, I want to help my parents with their alcoholism. I want to help them see that projecting their inadequacies onto their kids is over-pressuring them. I want them to see that their kids are nice people who care about family and want to look after their parents in the manner to which they have become accustomed, but we are living in an age when the government has bankrupted the country.

Life is hard as a young person.

Baby boomers had it unbelievably easy versus the prospects that a young person faces today. The chance of a young person being debt free, owning their car, buying a house... these are pie in the sky dreams that will never come to fruition unless your parents are able to comprehend that their dreams of being idle pensioners are of lower priority than miserable deprived grandchildren and stressed anxious children, who have become parents themselves.

We have known about contraception and family planning for long enough, that there is no excuse for not thinking about the wellbeing of any children you might spawn. Having a baby does not make you clever. It means that your body did something that it was evolved to do... just the same as a slug, a pig, a fish, a bird. Reproduction just means that you failed to use your higher brain function, and acted instead, no differently than a fly laying eggs in putrid meat. Well done.

There are a great number of barely educated and underprivileged kids who are bored on housing estates and have no hope of escaping these sink holes. They are incentivised to perpetuate generations of welfare dependent and economically inactive families. These people have been robbed of the things that would enable them to work their way out of poverty and deprivation.

My parents both went to University, so they have no excuse.

I delayed starting a family until I had done more research into the genetic factors in Type II Bipolar Disorder, and had verified whether I could consistently manage my own illness in a stressful environment. Only when I know that I'm not going to pass on bad genes and I'm not going to have another stress-related burnout, will I consider stopping using contraception.

Condoms are a good thing.

My parents enjoy looking after my cat, Frankie, until I'm ready to be a good human to him again (August 2012)

Tags: #university #career #divorce #parents #depression #suicide #alcohol #addiction #bipolar #youth #sex #politics

This is a story about thought experiments...

I had 50 minutes to draw something while in hospital. I drew this. I have been thinking about it since I lay dying on the floor, unable to move a muscle except my eyes, diaphragm and heart. My urine was like orange juice and full of blood.

I considered that dying would be a regretful waste, because I wouldn't be able to tell anybody what it was like to die. I decided that if I discovered I was immortal, it could corrupt my morality and I would eventually use that knowledge to my sole advantage. I also considered how embarassed I would be to 'meet my maker' in the full realisation that I p1ssed away my chance to learn anything from the situation.

Bizarrely, I then conceived a thought experiment, as I lay on the floor. This addresses The Measurement Problem in Quantum Physics. The problem is this: how do you separate the experiment from the scientist who is conducting the experiment? By taking a measurement you are actually part of the experiment. We see this in every experiment that attempts to measure Quantum weirdness.

Then, seemingly 'miraculously' enough of my muscle was broken down by my body so that I had enough energy to get up and phone for help. I wasn't out of the woods though. I nearly lost my kidneys. There was a lot of muscle damage too. So, just biology, and not really a miracle. I'm not a God bod now... although I did become agnostic at this point.

My thought experiment is a variation of Schrödinger's Cat, where two brave (or suicidal) scientists willingly enter a soundproof box, with a soundproof wall separating them. They then have to press a timing device for each other that must be pressed once every 2 minutes or else the timer will reach zero, and a captive bolt will pneumatically be driven into the brain of the other scientist. Given that there is a co-dependence on each other, if one scientist dies, so will the other.

As an additional twist, if the two scientists press their buttons at the same time, within n milliseconds of each other, then they are both killed by the captive bolts.

We can then start to tweak the parameters of the experiment so that we dial in a known probability of our scientists being killed. With 120 seconds of possible button push time, and 1,000 milliseconds in a second, we might hypothesise that there is a 1 in 120,000 chance (0.0008%) of both buttons being pushed within the same millisecond, which will trigger the event that leaves our scientists dead.

So, what if our suicidal scientists press the button 60,000 times? Well, then the probability that the 2 scientists will be dead when we open the box is 50/50 . This is equivalent to Schrödinger's Cat, except that 2 scientists are both alive and dead, rather than 1 cat that is both alive and dead, until we open the box.

So, what if our suicidal scientists press the button 120,000 times? Well then the probabilistic prediction is that there is a 99% chance that the co-incidence would have occurred. We would be very surprised to open the box and find two living scientists. However, there is still a possibility that - no matter how slim the chance - they could have played Russian Roulette with a 100 bullet revolver loaded with 99 bullets, and somehow managed to fire the empty chamber.

So, what if the scientists playing the game keep playing and playing and playing and playing. What if they eventually grow tired, having run many millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions of iterations, and they are still alive and button pushing? What if they decide to rip off the equipment and step outside the box? What would they know?

They would know that Quantum Theory's prediciton of immortality is very likely to be correct (Many Minds interpretation) and also know that this can be communicated beyond a single conscious surviving mind.

I know that this is very messed up. Similar thoughts troubled another JPMorgan IT bod to the point where he took his own life.

However, we can't ignore the predictions of a fundamental theory that seems to be borne out by the experiments that we can conduct ethically. But why are we asking intelligent people to do stupid jobs? Is that ethical?

I have always had a passion and aptitude for science and art, but we are all in a debt trap. Without the brain draining work of Global Banking IT, I could never be debt free. My myopic ex-wife got greedy. She now has a paltry amount of rapidly devaluing fiat currency, rather than a tangible freehold property asset.

This is the kind startup I really want to be working on.

I started building this but my divorce nearly destroyed me (October 2013)

Tags: #physics #depression #suicide #mentalhealth #NHS #startup #career #divorce #banking #capitalism

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 about bridge burning...

How many of us are afraid to declare the causes we support, for fear of impacting our professional reputation. Does supporting mental health and homelessness charities make me look somehow less corporate, and consequently, make me less employable? Does the fact that I have even experienced these things first hand make me unemployable?

In fact, if my employment options became coincidentally curtailled at the same time as I have started blogging, despite a successful full-time career of some 18+ years, it would not take a brain of Britain to recognise that this must be because of institutional discrimination, which is probably illegal.

There is absolutely nothing to suggest that I am any less able than any other candidate in the job market, and in fact, my history makes me more of a 'catch' to a potential employer: the man who has nothing has nothing to lose. Plus I have been 'stress tested' to the limit and beyond. I know exactly where those limits are, and I can empathise with my colleagues when they are under stress and pressure.

When 'sh1t goes bad' who do you really want in the bunker with you? People who have never been in that kind of situation before, and are therefore an unknown quantity, or people who know their personal breaking point.

I've been in some hair-raising situations, both through choice and by accident. Challenging yourself, and being challenged by things that are out of your control, teaches you how to handle stressful situations. A certain amount of training, discipline and drills will prepare your muscle memory to pull the "parachute rip-cord" to use a layman's term. But how do you deal with the long plane journey up to 13,000ft? How do you mentally prepare to throw yourself out of a perfectly servicable aeroplane?

Worse still, how do you prepare yourself for people yelling at you and telling you you're an idiot? People do this because they are scared and have lost faith in your leadership. People believe that pain and fear can be magically taken away by those in positions of authority.

Losing authority can be dangerous, especially if you are the leader in a dangerous place. Generally, most people don't know what to expect when they are entering an extreme environment: the mountains and the sea (the poles and the deserts too, but I don't know much about those places, yet).

Let me tell you about crampons. These are a spiked device that attach to your feet, so that you can move safely on ice. I always shake my head in disbelief at people who are blunting an expensive pair of crapons on rocks. If they do encounter any ice, they will certainly not be effective if they are not sharp.

Let me tell you about ropes. These long flexible cords are no use at arresting a fall unless they are attached to something solid. In order to attach a rope to a mountain, you will need a whole load of other heavy metal gear that will need to be secured to the rocks, and the rocks themselves will need to be large and heavy and generally immovable.

So, if you see climbing parties with crampons and ropes, moving on snow - in an area with no glaciers - then these things are only there as a confidence trick. The fact is, that there is very little stopping you from plunging to your death, even with ropes & crampons.

I personally, don't like to be weighed down with unnecessary gear. It's not about not being prepared. It's about recognising that I'd rather have saved the energy, so that I can use that surplus reserve of energy in order to scout ahead of my group for problems, or fetch assistance if necessary. The main thing though, is to stay within personal limits as a leader, so that when people are tired and cranky, and scared and their feet hurt and they are cold and hungry, you don't mind giving them your personal stash of candy bars, you don't mind them calling you names, you don't mind them questioning your leadership skills.

The main thing that qualifies a person as a leader is how they cope under crossfire.

The more I lead people in stressful situations, the more I learn about my personal weaknesses, the more I learn about my personal limits. Nobody should underestimate just how hard I had to be pushed before I cracked, but nobody should consider themselves such a 'rock' or a hard nut that will never crack under pressure.

My best friend and climbing partner sustained life-changing injuries in a 'freak' accident when the chockstone he was abseilling from shattered. I have only just started to deal with feelings surrounding this, so I'm not going to write any more about this today, but my thoughts always turn to him and how I have shyed away from post-accident involvement, as it was such a terrifying reminder of our mortality and fragility. I knew I couldn't do anything to turn back the hands of time. Accidents happen, and the first thing you learn in the mountains is that you can't control all the variables. It's still something that victims, survivors and those connected to them, have to come to terms with though.

Ropes have their place in sport rock climbing. Modern equipment is so good - the Petzl Grigri in this case - I don't even have to hold the rope to be honest, but old habits literally die hard (October 2012)

Addendum for climbing nerd trolls: no, I didn't leave the rope all over the place like that. I was asked to step in and belay only seconds (sic.) before the photo was taken. And, no, I'm not even standing on the rope even though it looks like I might be from the low-resolution image. Anybody who has climbed multi-pitch with me will tell you my ropework is above your nitpicking.

Tags: #climbing #leadership #homeless #career #london #banking #adventure #mentalhealth

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 red flag that gets raised before disaster strikes...

Why does a person sink? Why do they get swamped? Why do they collapse inwards, under the gravity of their own infinite stress, sadness, blackness? Why do they implode in a spectacular supernova? Can we ever understand and relate to depression so deep that it would drive a person to take their own life? Can we make a difference? Can we empathise, help and ever rehabilitate somebody who has the clinical diagnosis of depression, without pills and a padded cell?

From my personal point of view, I have always felt that making a mistake leaves a dark stain on me, a black mark. People seem to have a very long memory for the mistakes I have made, and enjoy bringing up things that embarrass and upset me. In my career, the people who I need to impress and to promote me are always very keen to know about my weaknesses and flaws, seemingly as an excuse that I should "know my place" and not challenge the status quo.

The world has organised itself into a Pyramid Scheme, where there are a handful of unbelievably filthy rich oligarchs, sheikhs, kings, queens and emperors and other scum, who sit in their palaces, while their people starve in squalor. The trickle-down effect is a lie, spun by the courtiers, the sycophants in the entourage of the super-rich.

This wealth-worship has created a totally fake society, where newspapers, TV and the media, exists only to tell the proletariat that they are 'special' and 'unique' while at the same time, getting them to buy mass produced products from factories in China.

The best example of which is Apple and Beats by Dr Dre. There is a standard line amongst the creative community, that only a MacBook will suffice, as a the workhorse for the output of recording artists, graphic designers, web developers and startup founders. This is backed with the celebrity endorsement of footballers, who are seen arriving at matches wearing their 'individual' choice of a pair of overpriced Beats headphones.

I have always said that it's the software packages that are important, not the Operating System (OS) or the hardware, provided that both of those things are adequately up to specification to run the software. It's true that Apple stuff "just works" but anybody who foolishly accepts a new software release too early also finds that Apple do a lot of their testing by relying totally on the loyalty of their Fanboys.

I have mixed feelings about the largest consumer electronics company in the world. I think they are more anticompetitive than Microsoft ever was in their heyday. When IBM's BIOS (Basic Input-Output System) was reverse engineered, which started the boom of IBM Personal Computer Compatible grey clones. This, along with Microsoft Disk Operating System (DOS) launched the home computer from the realm of labcoat wearing boffins, into the ubiquitous Internet-of-Things existance, where my car and my washing machine have an Application Programming Interface (API). This has been Bill Gates' vision for as long as I can remember.

I have always been fairly platform agnostic. I tend to go with whatever works, and ignore the marketing rhetoric and hyperbole.

That takes a lot of work and bravery, because at some point, people start to have vested interests. There are billions of dollars at stake in the tech industry. Apple majicked (sic.) a billion dollar App industry into existence more or less overnight. Who would have thought that paying 59 British pence for stupid little time-filling games (the developer used to keep 36 pence of that) would be so lucrative?

It also seems to take a lot of bravery to stick around and re-invest your cash in something worthy or pay the tax, because Apple seem to have precipitated a brain drain in the developed nations. I know far too many wealthy people who are hiding in tax havens, due to fear and greed. Why run away to South East Asia, taking your cash pile with you? What was wrong with paying tax or investing in somebody or something? What are you afraid of?

Perhaps I have little appreciation of risk? What's the worst that's going to happen to me though? The Conservative government will support me as a successful entrepreneur who invests in people, ideas, research & development. The Labour government will support me as a socialist who pays his taxes and does not try to evade them, recognising that the National Health Service, high quality schools and colleges, roads, libraries, street lighting, policing, fire service, trash collection, civic ameneties, community events, social services and the broad and rich spectrum of life in the United Kingdom is truly a model that every nation should aspire to emulate.

Feel the fear and do it anyway (Y2K)

Tags: #apple #computing #career #NHS #politics

This is a story of two different investment strategies...

The guy on the left is Junior Banker, William Marshall. The guy on the right is Senior Analyst/Programmer Banker, Nick Grant. We are both professionals in Global Banking, economists, and philanthropists, who have read law and practice accountancy.

We have followed very different strategies for the banks that we have worked for. William is 'old money' and has practiced the buy and hold strategy of passive investment in the world's biggest companies. Nick is 'new money' and has practiced active investment in startups and disruptive companies.

I would say, that as we are well into the 21st century, and we have seen many cycles of boom and bust, that we have enough economic data to make a bold pronouncement: passive investment has failed.

Having large amounts of capital locked away in pension funds, where the fund managers are old and lazy, is not a good strategy for anything. In the 1980s it lead to asset-stripping of profitable enterprises that had employed a lot of people and were generating wealth. This made the Mayfair Set very rich, but left Britain with huge numbers of people laid off, and factories closed and sold off for the land and asset value. In the 1990s and beyond, it has led to boardroom excesses that frankly disgust me.

Male-domination of the boardroom, and eye-watering salaries, bonusses and golden parachutes that are paid to our company executives. This is a situation that must change immediately.

Both William and I share a common belief that we need to see more women in the professions, and we need to smash the glass ceiling that woman have been held beneath for far too long. Both of us have supported our partners to the fullest possible extent to allow them to be the Wonderwomen that they are.

William's wife is a Rocket Scientist, working on Europe's most important Space Missions. My ex-wife quickly became an amazing software developer, outclassing me in every company that we have ever worked for, including Research Machines and JPMorgan. I supported us delaying starting a family and her retraining to become a Teacher. With incredible speed, she rose through the ranks to become Head of the Chemistry Department at one of the best State-funded Grammar Schools in the United Kingdom. The admiration she has of staff and pupils, and the exam results that she has helped achieve are amazing.

Our boardrooms, our corporate culture, are starved of women, and a non-macho feminism in the thinking of the way that we build businesses. We are not being diverse enough in selecting the best minds in industry. We are still sexist in our thinking and our hiring. Myself and some colleagues had to fight tooth-and-nail to retain one of the most brilliant women that I have ever worked with, on the most important project in the biggest bank in Europe. That's not right.

Law, accountancy, medicine, journalism and IT are all lacking in women, while teaching, childcare, events, hospitality and catering are lacking in men. Meanwhile, strong independent intelligent women are being short-changed in their careers and sidelined into roles that they are totally underused and undervalued in.

Myopic business leaders are also short-changing our young people too. By investing in old dying people, rather than energetic young people, the pyramid of society has been stood on its head. Retirement is not a right, it's a priviledge. You only get to retire if you have left the world a better place than you found it. Sorrry, buster... you don't get to spend your hoarded cash until you fix the environment and create some damn jobs.

It's time to do the right thing.

We do need to respect our elders, but that should be strictly in a non-executive capacity. Should these people receive huge remuneration for such positions? Absolutely not. Only those who have already managed to build enough wealth, and can therefore afford to not have to keep working, are entitled to sit on the boards of companies.

The most enterprising and hard working individuals are implementing and executing large-scale changes to our economy, creating jobs, creating wealth and inspiring the next generation. The value of sitting in a chair and criticising everything is precicely zero.

Tags: #banking #career #gender