Hello 👋
Hi there. I'm Jon. This is what I looked like on the 17th August 2022. Below you'll find a little timeline containing things of note that have happened in my life so far.
- 1986Born in Enfield, London.
- 1989Moved to the house in Whetstone, London that I would live in until I was 24.
- 1998Had my first guitar lessons with my uncle John.
- 2002Took a weekend job working on the meat & fish counter in my local Waitrose, where I met my good friend Ash. I can still fillet a fish pretty good.
- 2002Left secondary school with a handful of very average GCSE's.
- 2004Quit 6th form college (it was that or get expelled) without finishing my A-levels. I was studying Music and History.
- 2004Took a full time job at Waitrose while working out what to do with my life.
- 2005Started a Retail Management Training scheme with Waitrose.
- 2006Joined a band called Rush Hour Soul that was looking for a lead guitarist. We renamed the band to The Foxes shortly after I joined.
- 2007Not long after completing the Retail Management Training scheme at Waitrose I handed in my notice to go full time with The Foxes. The store manager told me I was making a "big mistake".
- 2007After being featured on MySpace The Foxes were invited to do a tour in the US, taking us from New York down to Austin and randomly also over to Hawaii.
- 2007Toured extensively throughout the UK and Europe with The Foxes, playing hundreds of shows.
- 2010Recorded The Foxes debut (and only) album, which was appropriately called Last of Many. We recorded at Sawmills Studios in Cornwall with John Cornfield producing
- 2010Starting to think I might need a post-music career and after a few pints with my friend Ash (of Waitrose fish counter fame) asking about his job as a "developer" I bought a book on HTML and CSS.
- 2011Took a job working on Waitrose.com doing basic content management. There was a big team working on an IBM WebSphere migration that I don't think was going very well, but some of them were kind enough to explain what they were working on.
- 2011Landed my first proper developer job at a company called Mippin which made a mobile app builder. I wrote some truly terrible code here that at the time I thought was very clever.
- 2012Started a part-time Computer Science BSc at Birkbeck College at the University of London.
- 2012Joined dating app Badoo as a Software Engineer on the Mobile Web team.
- 2014Joined fashion aggregator Lyst as a Software Engineer.
- 2015First recording session at Tilehouse Studios, working on my own songs.
- 2015Bought my first place, a small flat in Clapton, London. By coincidence this flat is less than a mile from the house my Mum (and her Mum) grew up in.
- 2015Dropped out of my Computer Science degree as balancing it with working full-time was too hard.
- 2015Met my partner Sei, our first date was on Carnaby Street where we met for an afternoon coffee that progressed to a few pints in a local pub and then dinner.
- 2016Became an Engineering Manager at Lyst.
- 2016Released my first EP - Profit & Loss
- 2016First trip to Seoul to meet Sei's parents.
- 2017Joined online pharmacy Echo as Director of Engineering, where I met my future co-founders Benoit and Tom.
- 2017Released my second EP - Full Circle. Hanover Square, a song with a lot of chords, features my Uncle John on piano.
- 2018Sei and I got enagaged.
- 2019Drove to Southampton to "have a look" at a litter of Poochon's (Poodle and Bichon Frise cross). Came home with little Bowie.
- 2020After months of house hunting went to see a house in Chingford on a whim - put in an offer the same day.
- 2021Diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma, which was (and still is) a total bummer.
- 2022Founded Keel with ex-Echo colleagues Tom and Benoit. We raised a £5M seed round from LocalGlobe and Earlybird.
- 2022Moved into our Chingford house after a lengthy renovation.