About me
Part 1 of 3 — Origin
I spent my teenage years in Chelmsford, England. Long before I ever built anything real, before platforms, projects, or products existed, there was simply a fascination. As far back as I can remember I had a deep curiosity for two things: technology and business.
When other kids were watching television or playing games after school, I was watching technology keynotes, studying product launches, and reading blogs written by some of the sharpest minds in business. I would sit for hours with my laptop open, absorbing everything I could find. TED Talks, product reviews, startup stories, breakdowns of how businesses worked. I consumed it all.
At first it was curiosity. Later it became something much deeper.
But to really understand why that fascination mattered so much, you have to understand the environment I grew up in.
I grew up on a council estate in the heart of Chelmsford. Life there was not calm, predictable, or comfortable. Most families around us were struggling in one way or another. People struggled to feed their children, struggled to pay bills, struggled to buy basic things like clothes or school supplies.
It was a place where pressure and frustration lived close to the surface.
Police cars were a common sight around the estate. Arguments in the street were normal. Sirens were just part of the background noise of daily life. It was the sort of place where chaos was routine and stability felt rare.
At home things were not much different.
At the time I lived with my mum, my brother, and my stepdad. My brother and I were always close. In many ways we had to be. When you grow up in an environment where things feel unstable, family bonds become something you rely on heavily.
Inside our house there was constant tension.
My mum and stepdad fought often. Not the kind of arguments that end with shouting and silence, but violent fights. There were drugs in the house, drugs being taken, and drugs being sold. Nights were loud, unpredictable, and often frightening.
Some memories from that time are still very clear.
I remember screaming and begging my stepdad to stop hurting my mum. I remember the fear in those moments and the feeling that there was nothing a twelve year old kid could really do to stop it. I remember lying awake at night wondering what was going to happen next.
It was chaos. And when you grow up surrounded by chaos you start searching for something else. Something calmer. Something that feels like a way out.
For me, that escape came from a laptop.
When I was eight years old my grandfather bought me a laptop. At the time it was just a gift, but over the years it became far more important than that. It became my refuge.
Whenever things at home got overwhelming, I would open that laptop and disappear into another world. A world where ideas mattered more than problems, where plans were more powerful than circumstances.
I began learning everything I could about technology and business.
I studied how products were built. I watched founders talk about their journeys. I read articles explaining how businesses grew, how technology changed industries, and how people turned ideas into something real.
But I didn’t just watch and read.
I started writing.
Page after page of ideas. Business concepts, product ideas, strategies, sketches of websites and platforms that didn’t exist yet. Most of them were unrealistic. Many of them made no sense. But at the time they felt important.
They were possibilities.
While everything around me felt unstable, ideas felt solid. Planning something felt empowering. Even if nothing I wrote ever became real, the process of thinking about building something better gave me a sense of control that I didn’t have anywhere else in my life.
For years that became my routine.
School during the day. Chaos at home in the evenings. And whenever I could find the time, learning about technology and writing ideas on that laptop my grandfather had given me.
That routine carried on until I was about fourteen years old.
At fourteen something changed that shifted everything again.
I got my first smartphone.
It might sound like a small thing, but for me it felt like the world suddenly opened up. Along with that phone came something my mum had finally agreed to let me have: social media.
Until that moment my interest in business and technology had mostly been passive. I was learning, observing, and imagining. Social media changed that.
For the first time I could actually try building things and putting them out into the world.
I started small.
Using my computer I began creating simple websites. Nothing sophisticated. Just basic sites about topics that interested me. Some were about meditation and personal growth. Others were technology news sites where I tried to write about the latest gadgets and developments.
Some were simple “how to” websites teaching things I had recently learned myself.
Then I would create Facebook pages and start trying to build audiences for those projects. I experimented with posting content, trying to get people to follow the pages, trying to drive visitors to the websites.
Most of those projects didn’t last long.
A few months at most.
Eventually I would get bored, delete everything, and start something new. Another website. Another concept. Another experiment.
At the time it probably looked like I was jumping from idea to idea without direction.
But in reality I was learning.
Learning how websites worked. Learning how online audiences formed. Learning how content spread. Learning how difficult it actually was to turn ideas into something people cared about.
I wanted to try everything.
Every new idea felt like another experiment. Another step closer to understanding how the digital world really worked.
Then when I was fifteen I started my GCSE years at school, and for the first time I had the chance to study computer science.
That class introduced me to something entirely new.
Building.
We started learning the basics of programming. Simple logic systems. Early game design concepts. Small pieces of software development.
For the first time the technology I had been watching and reading about for years began to feel accessible. It wasn’t just something other people built anymore. It was something I could begin learning to create myself.
But around that same time something else started creeping in.
Depression.
The motivation that had driven all those experiments and late nights of learning started fading. I stopped building projects at home. I started getting into trouble at school. My focus slipped away.
Eventually things reached a point where I left school a few months before the end of Year 11.
At the time it felt like everything I had been building toward had stalled.
But sometimes the path forward only becomes clear after the difficult chapters.
And the next chapter of my story was about to begin.
Part 2 of 3 — Learning
Leaving school early felt like a strange turning point in my life. Up until that moment everything had felt chaotic and uncertain, but there was still a loose structure around me. School gave the days a rhythm, even when I struggled within it. Once that ended, things felt different.
I was still young, but suddenly the path ahead looked unclear.
Despite leaving school before finishing Year 11, I knew one thing very clearly. My interest in technology and business had not disappeared. If anything, it had become stronger. Those long hours spent learning on my own, watching talks, reading blogs, and writing ideas had already planted something deep in me.
So when the time came to choose what to study next, I chose a college course focused on business and computing.
That decision ended up reigniting something that had gone quiet during the darker period toward the end of school.
College introduced structure again, but this time it felt more aligned with the things I genuinely cared about. Instead of subjects that felt disconnected from my interests, I was finally spending time around topics that had fascinated me for years.
Business strategy. Technology systems. How digital platforms worked. How ideas could be turned into real products that people used every day.
Something clicked.
It felt like a fire had been lit again.
I started realizing that the ideas I had been writing for years were not just random thoughts. They were pieces of something bigger. There were real paths where people spent their lives designing systems, building platforms, and creating tools that changed how others lived and worked.
For the first time I could see what my future might look like.
And once that realization landed, I began building again.
Just like before, my projects were small and experimental. But they came faster and with more purpose. I spent evenings sketching ideas, building simple websites, and trying to figure out how things worked behind the scenes.
Some of those ideas were content websites. Others were experiments with different kinds of online platforms. Sometimes I would design entire concepts for digital tools that I never actually built.
I also started experimenting with branding ideas.
At one point I designed mock clothing brands, creating logos, product ideas, and launch plans. I would spend weeks planning everything, getting excited about the direction it could go, only to delete it all just before launching and move on to something else.
Looking back, it might seem strange to constantly start over like that.
But at the time each project was a form of education.
Every attempt taught me something new. How to structure ideas. How to think about audiences. How to shape a brand around a concept. How difficult it actually was to move from an idea in your head to something that existed in the real world.
I also experimented with content creation.
At one point I started planning educational YouTube channels. I wrote scripts, designed channel concepts, and planned entire content strategies. Other times I focused on blogs, writing long pieces about technology or business ideas I was interested in.
And then there were the game ideas.
Games fascinated me because they combined technology, creativity, and systems thinking all in one place. Designing a game meant designing rules, experiences, and environments that people could interact with.
I would sketch game mechanics, write design documents, and imagine entire digital worlds that could exist inside a screen.
None of these projects lasted very long.
A few weeks. A few months at most.
Then I would wipe everything and begin again.
At the time it sometimes felt like I was failing to finish anything properly. But what I was really doing was building a foundation of skills without even realizing it.
Every project sharpened something.
I became better at thinking through ideas. Better at visualizing systems. Better at understanding how digital tools could be structured. Even when projects disappeared, the lessons stayed.
Those years were less about producing finished work and more about building the mental toolkit that would eventually allow me to build real things later.
But life outside of these projects was still complicated.
Home life remained unstable, and the pressure of that environment never fully disappeared. There were still arguments, still tension, still the feeling that stability was always fragile.
Learning and building small ideas continued to be my escape.
Whenever things around me became overwhelming, I returned to what had always grounded me. Opening a laptop. Writing ideas. Designing systems. Thinking about how technology could be used to create something meaningful.
The more I learned, the more I realized something important.
The world of technology was not controlled by some unreachable group of people with special access. Most of the tools that powered the internet were available to anyone willing to learn them. The difference between those who built things and those who only consumed them often came down to persistence.
That realization changed how I looked at my own situation.
I began seeing my background not just as a disadvantage, but also as motivation. If I could teach myself the skills to build things, then my environment did not have to define my future.
The internet had opened a doorway.
Through that doorway were millions of tutorials, communities, tools, and resources that anyone could access. You did not need permission to learn. You did not need a traditional path to begin experimenting.
You simply had to start.
And I had already been starting again and again for years.
By the time I reached my early twenties, I had spent nearly a decade quietly experimenting with ideas, platforms, content, and systems. None of it had turned into something lasting yet, but the experience had changed the way my mind worked.
I no longer just saw technology as a consumer.
I saw it as a builder.
The question was no longer whether I would try to build something meaningful.
The real question was when I would finally commit fully to doing it.
That moment was approaching faster than I realized.
Because soon my life would shift again.
And this time the shift would push me from learning and experimenting into something far more serious.
The beginning of actually building real projects.
Part 3 of 3 — Building
By the time I reached my early twenties, the years of experimentation had shaped the way I thought about the world. I no longer saw technology as something distant that other people built. I saw it as something I could create myself. The only real question left was when I would fully commit to building something real.
That moment arrived when I was twenty one.
Around that time I was kicked out of home by my mum for the last time. It was not the first time conflict had reached that point, but this time it was final. For the first time in my life I was truly on my own.
Moments like that can either break you or focus you.
For me it did something very simple. It forced clarity.
There was no more waiting for the right moment. No more half attempts or unfinished experiments. If I wanted a different life, I had to start building one with my own hands.
So I did the one thing that had always grounded me.
I started building.
The first real direction I committed to was making games. Games had always fascinated me because they combined creativity, design, systems thinking, and technology all into one experience. They were interactive worlds built entirely from ideas and logic.
I began developing small projects and learning the tools needed to create them. Each game taught me something new about design, structure, and persistence.
Over time those experiments turned into real playable games.
Projects like Bunker 100, Galactic Cargo, Investa Fox, and Astro Nexus were all part of that period. Each one was a step forward. Some were simple. Some were more ambitious. But every project pushed my skills further.
I was learning how to design systems that people could interact with.
Game development forced me to understand user experience, interface design, mechanics, and how people actually engage with digital environments. It also taught me discipline. Building even a small game requires patience, iteration, and the willingness to keep improving something until it works.
Those three years were a deep learning period.
But while I was building games, something massive was beginning to reshape the technology world.
Artificial intelligence.
When modern AI tools began appearing publicly, I became obsessed almost immediately. The speed of development, the possibilities they opened, and the leverage they provided felt unlike anything I had seen before.
To me it felt like a turning point in technology.
The tools that once required teams of engineers could now be accelerated dramatically through AI assistance. Tasks that once took weeks could be done in hours. Entire new kinds of platforms suddenly became possible for small independent builders.
I realized very quickly that this technology could change how I worked completely.
So I leaned into it.
Up until that point, the platform I used to release my games was called Kieren Day Studios. It was originally built as a place to host and share the games I was developing. But as my interest shifted toward building tools and systems with AI assistance, that website began evolving.
Instead of being just a place for games, it started becoming a place where I built software.
I began experimenting with browser based tools. Small development utilities. Platforms designed to help other builders create things online. AI assisted systems that could automate tasks that normally required complicated workflows.
I built browser based IDEs. Game development tools. A web developer academy. A system capable of generating websites with the assistance of AI.
Each project taught me something new.
How to structure complex systems. How to design user interfaces that people could understand quickly. How to integrate AI into real practical workflows. How to build tools that solved real problems instead of just interesting ideas.
But after a while something began bothering me.
I had built many different tools and projects, but they were scattered. Each one lived on its own page or site. Each one solved a different problem, but none of them connected together into something bigger.
I began asking myself a question.
What if instead of building dozens of separate tools, I built one massive platform where everything lived together?
In 2025 I made a decision.
I decided I did not want to spread myself thin across countless small projects anymore. I wanted to focus all my energy on building something large, meaningful, and aligned with my core values.
Those values were simple.
Open systems. Privacy first software. Tools that gave builders real leverage without trapping them inside endless subscriptions.
That decision led to the idea that would eventually become Cordoval.
At first Cordoval was a simple idea.
I wanted to build a single website that contained a collection of tools designed to help people start building online. Instead of paying for ten or fifteen different services every month, builders could access the tools they needed in one place.
Subscriptions across modern software platforms can easily cost hundreds of pounds every month. My goal was to create an alternative that was accessible and free to use.
But as I began planning the platform, my thinking expanded.
Why stop at a tool bundle?
Why not build something bigger.
Instead of just building a set of tools, I started imagining an entire ecosystem designed for builders. A platform where someone could work, build, learn, connect with others, and even relax without leaving the environment.
The concept slowly evolved into something much larger.
An everything app for builders.
A place that combined work tools, AI systems, personal productivity tools, social features, and even entertainment into one platform.
The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. As a creative person I constantly have ideas. Cordoval could become the environment where all those ideas lived and grew together.
So I began planning seriously.
I mapped out every tool I wanted to build. I researched the best frameworks and systems that could help me build them efficiently. I explored how AI could accelerate development while still allowing me to maintain control over the direction of the platform.
Then I started building.
Step by step.
One tool at a time.
The process took a year of consistent development. During that time I learned more than I had in the previous decade of experimentation.
I learned how to code properly. I learned how to collaborate with AI as a development partner. I learned interface design, user experience design, and system architecture. I learned what founders actually need when they are trying to turn ideas into real projects.
Over time the platform grew larger and more capable.
Eventually Cordoval became something far bigger than the original idea. The platform now includes more than eighteen business tools, personal productivity tools, over twenty AI powered tools, a social network designed specifically for builders, and even a gaming section featuring more than one hundred indie games.
Because even builders need time to relax sometimes.
But the most important thing Cordoval gave me was clarity about my own path.
Through building it I discovered exactly what I want to spend my life doing.
I want to build systems.
Platforms that help people create, learn, and grow. Tools that give individuals the leverage to turn ideas into reality. Technology that respects privacy and empowers builders instead of exploiting them.
When I look back at where I started, growing up in chaos on a council estate, the path here feels almost unreal.
But it also proves something important.
Your starting point does not have to define your ending.
The curiosity I had as a kid watching technology talks on a laptop became the foundation for everything that came later. The hours spent learning during difficult times became the skills that allowed me to build real platforms years later.
Today Cordoval is available for the world to use freely, without harvesting user data or locking people into expensive software ecosystems.
And this is only the beginning.
My focus now is simple. Continue improving Cordoval. Continue building tools that empower builders. Continue sharing everything I have learned from years of experimenting, studying, and building through some of the hardest moments of my life.
Because the knowledge that once helped me escape my circumstances might help someone else do the same.
And if Cordoval can play even a small part in that, then the journey has been worth it.
