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 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 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 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 the people who see you at your most tired, afraid, and in the most pain and discomfort...

I owe the hard-working, caring and dedicated nurses of the National Health Service my life, along with the Radiographers, Cardiologists, Phlebotomists, Psychiatrists, Social Workers, Psychologists, Nutritionists, Physiotherapists, Pathologists, Porters, Caterers, Cleaners and of course the Doctors, Consultants, Surgeons and Anaesthetists. It would be ridiculously selfish of me to not continue living after all the hard work that a huge team of people made in putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.

I always seem to expect that things will heal overnight, and indeed I rushed everything after a fairly major leg injury. After the accident, which luckily seemed to avoid any major blood vessels, despite severing a load of muscle, tendon and nerve. I hastily cobbled together a 'field dressing' with sanitary towels and a dressing gown cord, and wanted to make my own way home, but paramedics insisted on checking me out. It was them who discovered I couldn't actually raise my foot anymore, due to a severed tendon, and had lost feeling on the top of it, due to a severed nerve.

The operation took a long time and must have cost a lot of money. I have paid a lot of tax and National Insurance during my career, but that does not make me entitled. I need to repay my debt to society somehow. I haven't thought how I'm going to do that just yet, but I do think about it. I do have a list I'm working through, although I'm obviously never that mindful of the "one step at a time" mantra... I tend to sprint everywhere.

Running before I can walk, running with scissors (not how it happened, just a metaphor) and all the other things my Mum warned me not to do never ended in tears because I was always told to MTFU (Man The F**k  Up). A kind friend told me the other day that excess mucous and swollen mucous membrane might indicate a backlog of tears. I guess my tear ducts are fairly full.

But let's keep this about those in the caring professions. These people have to mop up your blood, pooh, pus, vomit and mucus, while you wince and generally try and hide your discomfort and be as polite and courteous as you can under the circumstances.

We should pay people in the caring professions a living wage, and more to reflect the important role they have in society.

I, for my part, am going to ensure that I pay full income taxes on my earnings when I am inside IR35, which is anytime that I have a regular place of work and commute to the same office on a regular basis... like now.

Coming from a startup and small business culture, I have always re-invested any profits into Research & Development projects in my time between contracts, but I think I need to just get a regular hobby... probably a safe one, given my accident prone nature!

I also think that a socially responsible proportion of my disposable income that I have should go as Gift Aid to Macmillan Cancer Support, because Cancer is a disease which blights all our lives, and the nurses in Palliative Geriatric care are really doing an extremely tough job and should receive all the support that we can possibly give them, as highly qualified professionals in a job that demands them to be kind and caring, loving and supportive, dealing with the inevitable painful loss of loved family members.

This by no means absolves me of my social conscience, but it's a public declaration of starting as I mean to go on. Some might see this as pathetic hypocrisy. Fine. Send me a postcard with a better idea.

Tags: #NHS #injury #startup #charity #career

This is a story of a noncompetitive person who became a winner...

In September 2008 I won the Poole Animal Windfest. I then got into a waiting taxi and flew to India to work with my team on the DTCC project for JPMorgan. I didn't even have time to collect my prize or wash off the salt from my skin.

I didn't even realise I had won. When I reached the shore, I had travelled far downwind from the spectators, and it wasn't until I dragged my board and kite back up the beach and started to pack up that people said I had won the final heat

That year, I wrote a software testing framework called Message Oriented Testing (MOT... a pun on the UK's certificate of roadworthiness test for cars and other motor vehicles) as well as designing and leading the coding of the confirmations engine for Credit Default Swaps, that would work with the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation's API and the Financial Products Markup Language.

This test-driven approach delivered the project on time, despite me having to do it with completely inexperienced offshore resources, and the low number of defects left my bosses gobsmacked. I didn't realise any of this until somebody told me this a long time afterwards.

The truth is though, that was the last good code I wrote, and even that was a bit hacky. I don't really go in for Rolls-Royce solutions. Generally I'm useful when the client or customer needs something doing yesterday. When all the 'architects' have done fart-arsing around and the project is really late, that's the time that I ususually wake up and start hacking something together to get things over the finishing line.

Does that mean I'm a good hacker? In truth, not really. Doing these 'heroic' acts generally leaves me burnt out, and leaves the team with a pile of code which I'm the only person who understands. The deadline is met, but everybody else is left holding the baby, while I sleep off the 'hangover' from a work binge.

So what am I good at? Well, I'm honest - brutally honest - and I also really dislike the salesmen in software who promise the earth and then go back to their development team to give them the 'good news' that they have made the sale... provided the whole team can work for 25 hours a day, 9 days a week, for the next 17 months, and deliver in a year. We just need to make a little adjustment to the Gregorian calendar, no?

I do have a good background in Mathematics thanks to incredible teachers (my maths teacher at school taught me Matrix Mechanics after school, so I could write a 3D ray-tracing algorithm) and Computer Science (the same maths teacher also taught me and a few friends an extra GCSE in our lunch breaks) and I'm enough of a fast learner to pick up any new technology that's required of me to learn to a 'competant hacker' level... a colleague once kindly said I "hit the ground running like Linford Christie" but I think I will probably also fall over like Usain Bolt, unless I stop taking on these sprints.

I also love design and technology. I had the most brilliant D&T teachers throughout my school years. At age 15 I designed and built a motion-tracking device that fitted over a person's arm. I demonstrated it, along with the software I wrote, at Brunel University, as part of the Young Inventor of the Year competition. I think I got a prize, but I can't remember! I definitely think I have a certificate from the competition - which was awarded to me by the Rotary Club, in Lyme Regis - somewhere in the archives.

Now, what would be the perfect job for such a person? I actually have no idea. I've been trying everything I can possibly think of. I actually think, I'm pretty good at pursuading people to back other people's ideas. I guess that makes me a salesman?

The logos displayed are companies that the Hubflow platform was demo'ed to. We partnered with Video Arts, who then took it to their large customer base. Standard sales bullshit (July 2011)

Tags: #kiteboarding #kitesurfing #startup #entreprenuer #computing #banking #career

This is a story of the darkness that drives away the light...

I once wrote my own obituary, believing I wanted to die. When a kind and loving person told me that they supported an accurate portrayal of my life, and I felt I no longer had to plead and beg to be given a chance to not have my history rewritten by my perceived persecutors, I had a reason for living again.

During my descent to this point, I realised that there must be other people, going through what I was going through. I decided to try and found a startup to try and help them.

Did you know that the Apple Watch has a feature where you can send your pulse to another person's watch, and they can feel your heart beating too? This is essentially the idea I had, while I was dying. I don't claim that it is an original idea, nor that I had prior art, but only that I think it's a brilliant use case for modern technology.

One of my best friends, who had taken me in, during my descent into melancholy and infinite sadness, confessed to me that he was kept awake at night, and was stressed at work, not knowing whether he was going to come home to a corpse. Secretly I had resolved to try and end my life away from his house, as I wouldn't leave that legacy in somebody's home.

That was how I arrived at the idea. The idea that you could just touch base with somebody... to see if their pulse still beats. And if that person knew that somebody cared whether blood still coursed through their veins, they would feel a little bit less alone in the world, feel a little reminder that people still care whether they live or die.

You think this sounds melodramatic? F**k you.

I have just registered the domain name areyougone.org and the Twitter handle @RUg0ne ("Are You Gone?" with a zero for an 'o') which will tweet the name of the person and a message, when you email. For example: email nickgrant@areyougone.org with the subject line "answer your bloody phone, we love you" then message and the name as a hashtag (which would be #nickgrant in this example) will get Tweeted out to the world.

I have also registered the Twitter handle @NotGone1, and any information relating to that missing person can be tweeted back with the relevant person's hashtag (e.g. #nickgrant) and this will be emailed back to those people who emailed the address.

At the moment, it's only in Beta testing, but I have started to link together the software that can fully automate this. If it's a useful application, I will automate more and more of it, so that it can stay on top of demand. If there is no demand, that's good, because it means that nobody else feels like I did on that day.

People sometimes push loved ones away. We need to understand why (April 2015)

Tags: #suicide #depression #mentalhealth #startup #friends

This is a story of the son of a historian and a philosopher...

Here's where I grew up. I literally had the West Wing. This 26 bedroom 'house' cost £120,000. Only my father - the most inspirational person in my life - had the vision and the courage to take the plunge on such a venture. You can't even see the whole house... there are still 2 blocks,  an indoor basketball court, a grass tennis court and a 5-a-side football pitch, that you can't see.

So what riches paid for all this? What family money? What inheritance, trust fund, or silver spoon were we all born with?... is there a chance that your preconceived notions might be wrong?

My Mum was the main breadwinner in our family, on an entry-level academic salary. My Dad used to be a gardener. We used to live in Gardiner's Arms Cottage. The cottage backed onto some woodland, and I could hear Wood Pigeons coo-ing from my bedroom (my parents had the only other bedroom). In order to make this tiny cottage liveable for our growing family, my Dad built an extension, built me a tree house, and used to poach the Pheasants and Wood Pigeoens in the woods, in order to save money on meat.

I cried when we left the cottage, as my life seemed pretty complete. I got to play in my tree house, sniff the flowers and water the grass... what more is there to life? However my Dad had bigger and better plans for the family. The problem with workaholics, is that they don't know when they have won, and when to stop. I'm very grateful that my parents are who they are, and it's taken me 36 years to really see their master plan, and get on board with the winning team.

As well as a gardener, my Dad has been a philosophy undergraduate, car mechanic, metals trader, chef, pub landlord, junk shop owner, holiday cottage operator, builder and antique dealer. His knowledge and love of architectural antiques, plus his skill as an entrepreneur helped him to build Oxford Architectural Antiques into a business that counted Formula One drivers amongst his clientele, as well as him providing architectural centre pieces that were focal in the work of famous interior designers and restauranteurs.

My Dad taught me the importance of not only building a profitable business, but being part of the economic community. He created jobs, and firmly believed in the Guild of Master Craftsmen. He made the former coal yard that he rented into a beautiful jewel in the heart of Jericho, that won an Oxford in Bloom prize. He was interviewed by the BBC. He put on fireworks shows for my school friends and me. He sponsored struggling local artists and musicians, to put on cultural events. He is my hero.

Unfortunately, career politicians saw his yard, only in terms of prime property development value, and eventually it had to be sold off so that flats could be built on the land of his thriving business, as well as nearby Lucy's Iron Works. Because of this Jericho no longer had these sources of wealth generation and employment.

This is the definition of a Lean Startup. I learned from the best in the business (circa 1986)

Tags: #startup #entrepreneur #lean #childhood #oxford #parents

This is a story of exploration, at the ragged limit of control...

Promises are easily made, but you have to make good on those promises if you really meant what you said. When I found myself without any money or support to build the startup that would set my conscience straight, for my involvement in the Credit Crunch, and help me back to health & wealth after separation from my wife, I had to think creatively.

I sank every penny I had, plus everything I could borrow from the banks and other commercial lenders (which was a lot... I am extremely creditworthy) into Bitcoin, in August 2013. This turned out to be a rather shrewd investment. Only one friend, Cameron, was wise enough to back me, and I think the return on his capital is likely to have exceeded a lifetime of Governement-backed tax free saving.

Another friend, Will, decided to copy my investment strategy, and had me to manage the purchase and sale of his Bitcoin Miner to maximise his profit. However, he decided to hold and try to run his profits on his Bitcoins, when I was cashing out in December 2013. The losses he sustained from that mark-to-market point, have been pretty eye-watering. Oh well; he's still suckling at the teet of Investment Banking, so he doesn't need the money.

Selling my house, dividing up all my posessions and trying to move what I could to London, as well as divorce paperwork and general breakup unpleasantness, plus having to risk everything just to keep my hopes & dreams alive, was the very last distraction I needed. Doing a startup is hard at the best of times. Moving is stressful. Leaving everything you've built and worked for is heart-wrenching. Doing it when you are unwell... it's enough to finish a person off.

And so, in the first half of 2014 I had to invest in myself. All my profit was re-invested in my health. I parked my dreams of building a social enterprise - a not-for-profit built to salve an aching conscience - built with knowledge gleaned from my obscenely rich masters.

Exactly how rich did I make my masters? Well, software I designed and delivered was responsible for the confirmation of $1,160,000,000,000,000 in Credit Default Swaps contracts in 2008. That's $165,714 for every man, woman and child on the planet. That's f**ked up.

A guy I worked with resigned in moral protest... but he was really just looking after himself: he bought gold at $550 a troy Oz and a chicken farm in New Zealand. I was disturbed by what we were doing, but I'm just a frustrated coder... I knew I could deliver the project for the bank... I didn't know how to say "no".

Scarcity, collatteral, securitisation: the basis for the non-insane version of capitalism (September 2013)

Tags: #startup #career #banking #capitalism #computing #divorce #friends