Hi, I'm David and I'm building Qu.
I'm from Folkestone, England, and by way of about 50 countries I now live in Buffalo, NY.
When I was seven I stood outside my house and thought 'this isn't it'. There was so much more out there, and I decided that as soon as I could, I'd go and explore as much of the world as possible. New people, new places, new things, and in time, I thought, I would find purpose. Though I didn't know it then, that was the beginning of Qu.
I was inspired by movies. I was obsessed, especially with stories of people changing the world, that sounded great to me. What a life that would be, to make the world a better place.
That love led me to a 15 year career in film and television. I spent nine years on set on shows like Star Wars, Game of Thrones, and Skyfall.
I worked in the UK, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and worked with thousands of people from all over the world. I later spent six years at HBO and Amazon Studios in Los Angeles.
My favorite part of the job was solving impossible problems. There is nothing I relish more than finding a novel solution.
But, amidst the excitement and adventure, I felt something was missing. As a kid, I wanted to make the world a better place, but the industry wasn't doing it for me. Sure, some movies inspired people, others helped people escape, but I wanted to help people flourish, not distract them from growing.
So in 2022, I quit the business.
Before I move on, I want to come clean about something. My production career was kind of a means to an end. What I was really doing was studying humans, on and off screen. Every person I encountered helped me understand our species a little better. I knew that when the time came to lean in, the more I understood about people, the better my chance of succeeding. Over the years I even ran my own little social experiments, just to see what people would do. It was all preparation. I just didn't know for what yet.
I looked at my savings and saw a choice. I could hold onto them for some distant version of me, or I could invest them in myself, right now. I chose now. It bought me something I'd never really had: time. Time to step back and contemplate my whole life, to learn again, to build new skills, and to reach for my creativity for the first time in years.
It allowed me time to look hard at the world. I'd spent twenty years watching it drift in the wrong direction, and I wanted to understand why, to find the problems that were hardest for us to solve and, at the same time, mattered most.
I'd also always had a sense that I was working towards something specific, something the collection of my life experiences would prepare me to do, and this was my chance to find out what it was.
Just over
a year later,
Qu arrived.
I was thinking about bubbles. The kind we're all in, even if we can't see the walls. Whether it's fear, or convenience, or a screen that feeds us more of what we already think.
But bubbles were just the start. I zoomed out, past the specific problems, looking for a root underneath all of it, something they all had in common. And I think there is one. Almost every problem we face, as individuals or as a species, comes back to the same thing: we cannot communicate effectively with each other. If we could, we would work out so many of these problems with our words, instead of conflict and division.
And here's the irony. We live in a time with thousands of ways to connect, and yet we can't truly talk to each other. I believe this is our greatest threat. If our ability to communicate doesn't improve, and instead keeps dwindling, a harmonious future becomes impossible.
I couldn't accept that. It's not the world we were promised, and it's not the world any of us deserve.
Before I could work out what to
do, I asked myself a question:
How do people learn
to talk to each other?
The answer was simple, actually. We learn to talk to people by talking to people. Through experience, practice. The more you do and the more people you meet, the better you get. But in a bubble, you don't meet new people or do new things, and your most valuable asset, your voice, goes quiet, unpracticed, unable to meet the moment.
So I set out to pluck people from their bubbles and drop them into an ocean of new ideas, people, and experiences, each designed to help them develop the core human skills we need to truly communicate with one another.
Qu has evolved
a lot since then.
Qu's core ambition is to help people develop the ability to learn from every moment. Live this way and you grow exponentially, in every part of your life. You also become present: when you're seeking the lesson, you're there, in the room, paying attention. And that's where the joy is.
I mentioned earlier this idea of finding purpose on my journey. You might think I was talking about Qu, but I wasn't. The purpose I found was self-improvement. To get better, consistently. That's it. That's my responsibility. And as long as I am fulfilling my purpose, my life will keep getting better, every moment of every day.
It took me decades to work this out, but with Qu, I can help you get here in just a few years, but there's no time to waste.
The future is here, and change is coming.
Are you ready?