Why this project
A few people have asked why I'd give up what little time I had for this project. This background is only a fraction of the story, but it explains why I made that choice. I assume most people in their position would have responded the same way.
When something important is broken and you can help, you help.
The collapse
One of the first major challenges I had to overcome was the sudden loss of a large sum through a number of real estate transactions when the market was low, but my responsibilities to contractors were high. Shortly afterwards I came down with cancer, just two weeks after a health insurance policy had lapsed. That finished me off. By the time I finally got out of bed eight months later, the COVID lockdowns had begun, and I've remained largely isolated ever since - and COVID free, for what it's worth.
Other than some sales of my photography in the Web3 space and some private client work, I've had no real income since I was hospitalized in 2019. The timing could not have been worse. Rehab started under those conditions, and I made it to one physical therapy session where the provider told me I might never be able to raise my arms again and would need to begin with three months of hydrotherapy. The drive home was painful physically and emotionally, and I knew immediately I was in serious trouble.
The choice
At that point I was faced with another hard choice. One option was to take a risk on COVID, transfer my real estate license to Sedona, and use that income to try to bring my food project to market, a path that would have required a $26 million seed raise and a two-year buildout. The other was to find something less demanding that could still produce meaningful social impact. I chose the latter, and CareHub is the output.
The founder story video on the website gives you the polished side of things, but the hard truth is I've been homeless since October 2022. I've spent bitter winters and scorching summers camping in the desert, lived for three months in a shed, a year living in an insect-infested slum in Arizona's fentanyl capital, and periods where the sale of camera equipment, artwork or my vehicle kept a roof over my head for a while. In all I've moved over 35 times.
What came next
A little later I started investigating AI from every angle I could find: cancer, clinical trial databases, tokenization, sources of truth, storytelling, cinematography, mental health, and end of life. The list kept growing. When I moved out of the shed and canceled home hospice, I began using LLMs (large language models) to do the legwork, with Google NotebookLM as the organizational tool.
Key to using LLMs effectively is no different from knowing how to use a camera, drive a car, scramble eggs, or not catch COVID.
- Define the objective properly - the specification.
- Use logic with traditional research methods to understand the steps needed to achieve the objective.
- Know what questions to ask.
- RTFM. Read the manual.
After about a year of attending Twitter spaces on AI Alpha and Art, chaired by Robert (Rob) Stratton (@madbutter), I was convinced I'd found a key that could unlock real opportunity for cancer patients, caregivers, and science. The next step was to work out how to reduce government obstruction where it's doing the most harm and build something from the ground up.
Why I stayed with it
When I saw the lights in my hospital room at the beginning of this journey, I had a split-second decision to make: let go and the pain would be over, or fight back and find some purpose in life that could benefit society. I chose to fight, fully aware I had an insurance problem, a horrid cancer, and that a bad set of blood tests could change everything at any time.
A great deal of the grit behind that decision comes from seeing, at close range, patterns of malignant narcissism and predatory behavior in my family that were the exact opposite of everything my education taught me was decent or constructive. I moved to Australia in 1989 to get away from that world rather than join it.
The battle between homelessness, hunger, jawbone necrosis, no family support, a close friend dying from cancer, and my own cancer journey has been grueling. The constant daily worry about where the next meal is coming from, whether I have a bed for the night, or can pay for the project hosting, coding or my prescription costs, is exhausting.
