Having Purpose
12 years ago, I received a phone call at 5am telling me a close friend had tragically died.
This later became my ‘why’ and purpose for building a company.
12 years ago today, I received a phone call at 5am telling me a close friend from home had just stabbed himself repeatedly in the stomach with a kitchen knife in a moment of rage, love, depression, drink and drugs. Yes, as horrific as it reads.
His girlfriend, brother, mother and father were all present in the room when it happened, desperately trying to comfort him praying the ambulance would arrive in time.
After arrival at the hospital, he lost too much blood and didn’t make it. 27 years old, gone.
The most unthinkable information my brain has ever received.
I took a call in the middle of the night from one of the guys back home. Bizarrely that evening, returning from dinner I couldn’t get to sleep and scrolled through a property app looking at flat shares for what seemed like hours before falling alseep.
I was staying at a friends house that night on his sofa on the other side of town, I woke 4 people up shouting in tears at 5am after receiving the call. It was surreal.
When the sun was up I walked for hours from Bethnal Green to Waterloo trying to make sense of it.
I moved to London in 2010, I’d speak to him almost daily. We’d laugh at what I was doing, my childhood ambition of designing buildings in London to enrich peoples daily life was complete.
We spent a large part of our teenage years and 20’s together in Liverpool, from starting University, holidays with the guys at school and enjoying the city’s night life. Yet he was silently suffering, without purpose and confused at which path to pursue after Uni.
Growing up one of few black kids at our senior school in a predominantly white afluent neighberhood, dealing with racism in Liverpool. I can’t begin to imagine the thoughts going through his head following the jokes and obvious awkward moments. He was one of us.
As we got older, being 18-27 in Liverpool during the 2000’s was both hilarious and eventful to say the least.
I first picked up a broken nose, standing alongside him in a street brawl with 7 idiots who decided to use the N word. An enjoyable end to an evening with friends leaving a restaurant, minding our own business, turned into one drunk moron deciding to shout racist abuse to an Asian guy and then turned to my friend and got a reaction.
As any good friend would do, I stood alongside him with 5 others when the brawl broke out. Growing up around a boxing gym, I was able to defend myself until getting punched from behind by 2 slippery chaps who joined in and caught me right on the hooter.
Fortunately, I wasn’t knocked to the floor and managed to continue the scuffle defending myself until we heard police sirens and the brawl dispersed. I jumped in the car and drove straight to A&E with a face full of blood and tissue hoping they could do something to fix it.
Ade was typically very relaxed, always laughing, but anyone who crossed the line knew about it.
He had a streak of ferociousness about him which I saw often on the athletics track, sprinting and winning 400m events for years.
We were both competitive in our track sports, I focussed on long distance being the lanky skinny kid and him on explosive sprints.
At 19, our tele-sales evening job at the Royal Liver Building, gave me the confidence to pick up the phone and pitch to people.
Being told repeatedly “No Thank You”, nine times out of ten before disconnecting, developed me a thick skin patience to redial and keep on knocking.
One week night leaving the office at 10pm sitting in traffic, a police car pulled up alongside us. The officer beeped and pointed, “put your belts on or pull over.” So we buckled up, gave them a thumbs up thanks and drove off.
Two minutes later, we were involved in a head on collision thanks to a car jumping lights at a junction turning across us. I braked for a first car, then a second cut across me and hit us head on.
We were talking with the music on, casually heading home for the evening. On this rare occasion we kept our belts on for those 2 minutes, saving all of our lives.
A ringing sound and cloudy dusty daze, after the airbag had bust my nose again. I looked left and saw Ade okay and behind me to see Steven awake, both conscious.
Our immediate reaction was to kick the doors open, jump out and hurl swear words at the driver of the other car that caused the accident. He was trapped in a smaller car coughing blood. The ambulance arrived soon after as we gained an audience of people or so at the junction leaving the city centre.
Steven was very lucky to move seats from the middle to behind the passenger seat before the crash and did not have his belt on when the crash happened. He trapped a nerve or blood vessel in his arm which began to go purple.
My neck stiffened up as the adrenaline began to wear off so I was wheeled into the ambulance on a stretcher.
Rolling into an A&E room staring at the ceiling is a bizzare feeling. I could hear everyone talking about our accident and how lucky we were to get out of the car with scratches.
On the night Ade passed away, I can’t imagine the fear and pain he must have gone through and the distraught his amazing parents and family experienced. To this day, I’ve never got to understand the details of how his final night unfolded and cry for help, taking his own life in that manner on drugs or alcohol.
Ade never told me what his dream was. So I ended up creating one for both of us.
I can only relate on a far far lesser level, a feeling I once had of imposter syndrome. Being a Liverpudlian (or Scouser) working in London at Hampton Court, the posh part of Surrey. The constant north/south divide jokes of being dodgy, working class and wearing shell suits created an appetite to prove something and push my boundaries further.
The summer Ade died, I was working my ass off in the evenings completing my Part 3 examination (after Masters) to become Chartered. The shock of mortality in losing a close friend forced me to take work extremely seriously with new dedication.
After a decade marathon of study and all nighters, I received my ARB & RIBA chartered architect status, but the satisfaction simply wasn’t enough.
The domain I bought in January 2011 was mipic.co and it continued to nag at me like a pestering itch. My collegues in the office would joke, what are you scribbling in your sketch book at lunch?
I decided to hire 2 engineers after Part 3 finished and continue the maniacal evening job of building an App.
I had no business degree, no startup experience other than selling muffins at the school yard, DVD’s on Ebay and a market stall selling my own art.
Four months after quiting my job, I was stood on stage at Richard Branson’s house with a life changing 90 second pitch, thinking…
“what the f**k am I doing here.”
- 300 hundred companies entered
- I made the initial cut to 20 startups
- Our 60 second video made the judges cut to 10
- Semi Final – A public Facebook and Twitter vote saw miPic lead votes moving into the final 3 startups.
- The Final – 90 second pitch at the Founder of Virgin’s home in front of 200 people, live streamed online.
For the two weeks before the event, I practised my pitch to strangers on the tube, the bus and at the gym. Literally stopped people and asked: “Can I pitch my business to you, I have to do it to Richard Branson next week.” Everyone obliged.
During the practice day we met in Soho with the Virgin team to do some filming and a test run of pitches. My attempt was f**king awful, disastrous.
I’d spent 10 years presenting buildings to architects ranging from 5 people to 100 on little sleep. But pitching to 6 other founders and Virgin’s PR team, I flopped.
My nerves got the better of me on practice day. I felt waves of blood pressure pumping through my arms and fumbled through the pitch sounding more like a stuttering Harry Enfield Scouser impression.
The day before the Final, I took a train alone to Oxford and sat in a hotel garden thinking about my pal Ade.
I was doing this for him. To show others that no matter where you come from, the colour of your skin and how you sound, anything is possible. I was mad enough to dream this App into existence so I had to go out there and deliver my pitch unanimously with zero doubt.
Coming from a family of sportsmen, boxers and footballers I treated the Final event more like a title fight or cup final.
I was in the zone, the morning of the pitch listening to rap music, doing squats and burpees naked in the shower, shouting out the 90 second pitch like Eminem.
I turned up at Richards house feeling like Mike Tyson heading into a ring. No chit chat with anyone, I needed to be focussed and not let the nerves consume me, listening to the recorded pitch audio on my phone.
Twenty minutes before going on stage, I was calm. Sitting alone watching the other founders reading from pages and pacing up and down. I kept telling myself, “this is it boy, now or never.”
An hour later, I was called up on stage by Richard, the Founder of Moonpig Nick Jenkins and Not On The High Streets Holly, naming miPic as the Innovation Winner and People’s Choice awards.
The sweat patches soaking my shirt was pretty embarrasing, all I could think about was first taking a selfie with Richard, an entrepreneur who’d inspired me since childhood but my thank you speech remained as determined as my pitch.
“I am going to create a global brand and help people make money selling art.”
At this point, I had about £4,000 in my account. No investment, no routes to capital, yet I believed in my vision.
Losing a friend forced me to jump far far outside of my comfort zone. To do more, demand more, learn more, love more, live more and help empower people worldwide to earn money from their pictures using mipic.co.
My ‘Purpose’ and the company Mission was created from tragedy and has been used as my fuel to overcome the odds ever since.
I’m a non-technical Founder from Liverpool and can say:
- I founded a tech company with a £12k bank loan.
- Secured £30k Virgin StartUp Loan to fund Year 1.
- Raised £170k on Crowdcube from a standing £0 start without an anchor.
- Count 90 shareholders on the cap table raising £1.8m
- One of only 6 UK founders to receive Venture Capital funding from:
- Harry McPike’s Venture Office MGFO a 25% seed investor
- Achieved organic six figure revenues from users worldwide before paid marketing.
The chances of this ever happening were 0.0000001% or less.
The platform miPic now has users in 210 locations globally and customers in 80 countries before marketing spend. With 140,000 creatives choosing miPic to launch their store.
Our brand, tone of voice and mission resonates with people. miPic has a soul and a story.
miPic – The Internet’s Print Button is for everyone, premium quality prints, affordable and accessible globally to compliment creativity on Instagram and Twitter.
Being crazy enough to believe my idea as a Founder and speak it into existence, is the most satisfying achievement I could ever imagine. My old friend Ade is to thank for the years that followed, providing me with purpose and a real warrior story worthy of his name.