I loved working on megabus. I was in love with it. My girlfriend at the time had a habit of asking what I was thinking about when I looked deep in thought. The answer - every single time, was inevitably megabus. She eventually stopped asking.

I was 22 years old.

When I built the original prototype for megabus.com, I built it using PHP + PostgreSQL. I put together a document detailing my reasoning for these choices. I quoted 33 days for it, built it over six weeks and charged £13,200.

The support contract was £300/month - for one day a month. On the first day, megabus.com sold 200 orders.

When megabus had its first expansion, I was up overnight bringing new servers online and scaling it live. I loved it - my code was finally being tested.

Over a week, I’d probably burned through many days of effort. I remember the project manager specifically asking me to invoice for the extra work I put into it. I even said that I would - except I didn’t.

I’ve had a long time to think about this - why did I not send that invoice? I even had approval.

The answer, as with most things of this nature is complicated. I loved the work and I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want a potential conflict trying to figure out what a reasonable amount was to charge. I felt that I should have done a better job in the first place - I felt responsible that I had not told them that scaling of this nature would not have worked without prep work.

I had not scaled anything before.

I was 22 years old.

I was super grateful that someone believed in me. I naively assumed that they saw all the extra effort I was putting in and that they would reward me for it - that they would have my back.

I remember adding a bunch of different bits of functionality because I wanted it there. I didn’t want to go through the process of quoting for it, and it getting potentially rejected, not to mention the waiting for decisions. One key bit of functionality I remember is adding in a percentage load column for the loading sheets. I built it, showed it - they loved it! It went live. I did not charge for it.

At this point, the vast majority of my time was spent on megabus - very little of it actually paid for.

At a glance, based on the emails sent, I probably spent a minimum of 10 days each month supporting megabus when I was charging for one day.

In Jan 2004 - I proposed doubling the contract to two days for £4,800/year. It probably kicked in in Feb 2004. By March 2004, the site exceeded that revenue each day.

In the following months, I probably spent, on average a minimum of at least double the time I was paid for. I should have charged for it.

I grew the team, and the support contract based on the minimum I needed to maintain the product - not based on the amount of time I was spending.

For my 28th birthday, my girlfriend at the time organised a cake which was a image representing kraya - which was basically megabus. I felt bad that she thought that kraya was the most important thing in my life - she was right - but it still felt bad. kraya had other clients at the time, but my time wasn’t monopolised by other clients, or indeed by kraya - my heart still belonged to megabus.

And it would all have been all fine too, except for a grave miscalculation I made.

In 2010, after trying to rebuild the ticketing system for £500k, and making some mistakes with people I trusted, kraya ended up in £150k in the hole. We needed some money urgently.

I was desperate and naively, I reached out to stagecoach for help. I thought they were my friend - that they would have my back.

They understandably lost a great deal of trust in my ability to manage and lead my company. I trusted the wrong person - but that was still my mistake. They were right.

I thought that I’d built up enough goodwill that they would help me through this. I’d felt I would have way more than that “in the bank” in terms of goodwill. I learned that professional relationships do not work that way that dark afternoon, standing outside my office on the phone, in the rain.

They didn’t make my life easier. Instead, I’d ended up rattling the cage - they were now panicked - realising their over-reliance on an organisation that could disappear at any point.

Instead of support, I had further actions, renegotiating the contract and what felt like punitive, and definitely invasive reporting obligations.

I was hurt and angry. I had poured my heart, my soul - hey, my very life into this product that I loved.

Suffice it to say - I got no help - no loan, no offer of investment - though they did suggest buying us outright - which I rejected.

I signed a contract under circumstances I would not wish on anyone.

The best I got from them was a challenge - if we were really spending more time than we were charging for - prove it. I did! We documented every minute we were spending - I wasted my time on spreadsheets, pointless meetings and work to try and rebuild the broken trust.

We went from £300k in the hole to £200k profit within a year. We charged for a whole year in support around 20% of what the system made in a day.

I was 28 years old.

Around the same time, I was also dealing with the operational aftermath of trying to build a java EE ticketing system over six months for £500k. I thought it would take a year and cost £1m. In hindsight, it needed two years and probably three million pounds.

Over 18 months, I personally answered over 250 out of hours emergency calls. We had a rota and others on call too - but I took the vast majority of these calls. I felt bad putting others through what I knew was gruelling.

All of this led me down a narrower and narrower path to a serious breakdown - though I didn’t know enough to name it until many years later. All I knew - all I felt was that something broke in me.

We managed to resolve all of the issues, but the deployment of that version kept getting pushed.

Stagecoach cancelled the contract in 2012. They had started building a ticketing system in-house two years prior - the cost of my grave mistake. I wasn’t able to make the meeting - I was in India, and at the same time as the meeting, I was meeting for the first time the one who is now my wife.

I was 28 years old. I spent the next 15 years putting myself back together.

How much did it cost them to build it inhouse? If I had charged for my time from the start, would we all have been better off?

I still feel something deep inside me every time I see a megabus - a sense of pride mixed in with a deep sense of sadness - not for what I lost - but for what could have been.

I am 44 years old, and I am starting again.