This week, I am releasing the first of a three-part interview with serial tech entrepreneur Duane Jackson. In this extract, we focus on his upbringing — from growing up in care homes in East London to getting caught smuggling drugs into the USA at nineteen years-old.
If you haven’t already, sign up to my newsletter here to be the first to receive the rest of this interview, and the bonus filmed interview I did at Duane’s home.
You can read Part II here and Part III here.
Duane Jackson is a hugely inspiring serial entrepreneur. But no one could have guessed how successful he would become based on his childhood.
Duane grew up in East London with his mother, brother and sister. At eleven, his mother called the police on him and got him taken into care. At fourteen, he was expelled from school with no qualifications to his name. At nineteen, he was arrested trying to smuggle 6,500 ecstasy tablets into the USA.
But during his stint in prison, Duane turned his life around. Upon the realisation that he is the only person who is in charge of where his life goes next, and with the help of The Prince’s Trust, Duane decided to make his hobby his career. And so his tech entrepreneur path began…
Two successful exits later, Duane is working on his third startup, and is Patron of The Prince’s Trust. He is also the co-founder and Non-Executive Director of Code 4000 which teaches prison inmates how to code.
Here’s his story:
Newnham: I wanted to start with your childhood. Can you tell me more about growing up in East London?
Jackson: I grew up in and around Newham in East London — it was me, my older brother, younger sister, and my mum. My dad disappeared when I was two or three and I never saw him again.
Growing up, the feeling I always got from my mum was that we got in the way of her having her life. She remarried, split with that guy and then she was a mature student so it felt, very much, that we were getting in the way.
And I wasn’t an angel by any means, but I wasn’t setting fire to the house or anything crazy like that. I was a handful but I remember always being threatened with, “I’m going to put you in care if you misbehave.” And then, one day something happened at home — I can’t even remember exactly what it was — but I remember being on the stairs and being told, “The police are coming now.”
Newnham: This is your mum saying this?
Jackson: Yeah.
Newnham: How old were you?
Jackson: I was eleven. And I still can’t remember the exact incident — it was probably a series of stuff and this was the final straw but I remember getting taken away by the police and taken to a children’s home in Ilford, just outside of East London.
Newnham: Did you have time to say goodbye to your brother and sister?
Jackson: No.
Newnham: You were literally just carted off?
Jackson: Yes. I remember being in a police van and they said I was there because my mum just refused to have me in the house. She had said to them, “You’re going to have to take him.”
My brother and sister were still at home. My sister later ended up in care as well, but my brother never did.
Duane with his sister (above) and brother (below)
Newnham: How do you feel about that?
Jackson: I saw going into care like an adventure. I don’t remember my first night or two there but you certainly knew that the adults around you were there because they were paid to be there.
You’re around other kids your own age, some older, some younger and you can have a bit of fun so it’s almost like a youth club. OK, you don’t have an overly loving environment but I never really had that at home anyway so I guess I didn’t really know what I was missing.
Duane in the children’s home
Newnham: It was while you were in the care home that you fell in love with technology. Is that right?
Jackson: Yes, it was a few years later when I was fourteen or fifteen, and I had been kicked out of school for misbehaving. I was that cliché kid that found the work a bit too easy then got bored and got into trouble which happens all the time just because you’re not challenged.
The other kids at the home were at school so between 9am and 3pm, I wasn’t allowed to watch TV. Instead, I remember they gave me worksheets that were going to be my education for however long it was, and it was ridiculous stuff like how to tell the time. I mean, I was fourteen, I knew how to tell the time.
These were social workers, not teachers so they didn’t know what they were doing — they just got some stuff from a textbook. Obviously that was too easy but they said I had to be in the dining room between these hours. So I said, “Well there’s this black box — this computer thing over there. Can I play with that?” And they agreed, “As long as you are not watching TV on it…” I mean, no one had any idea what this “black box” could do…
It was a ZX Spectrum and there was a manual for it. I remember sitting down and playing with it, and the hours just flew by because I really enjoyed it.
Newnham: So you taught yourself to program?
Jackson: Yeah. It was the basic things at first like 10 PRINT 20 GO TO 10 and then it loops and then you expand it a bit more.
I’ve since read something — A Hacker Manifesto which looking back now, explains much better than I ever could, why people like me — in that situation — can take to computers. It’s because if the computer does something wrong, it’s because you programmed it wrong not because, like humans, they aren’t getting paid enough, they didn’t get laid last night, they shouldn’t have been social workers in the first place. It was that certainty of it I guess. Rather than the unpredictableness of humans, computers are very predictable. If it does something wrong, it’s your fault because you programmed it wrong, and you can then go back and correct it.
Newnham: So that’s when your interest in tech started. I read in your book that you were due to go to college at some point — what happened there?
Jackson: So I ended up at a secure unit children’s home. I had been at another home where there were two other boys my age called Bruce and Presley, and we used to mess around. I remember Presley would drink anything so we would make these concoctions in the kitchen with washing up liquid and Tabasco sauce and he would just down it in one. We were just young boys having fun.
Then one day, me and Bruce were messing around and I pushed him. We weren’t even fighting, we were playing but he fell back against a mirror and it broke everywhere. And when the social workers came in and saw the mirror smashed, they asked what had happened. I was taken to the head of the home’s office and had to wait there. And I remember a social worker was there called Antony who I’d known from a few children’s homes because he’d moved around so I’d seen him around the system. And he was someone I really liked but while I was waiting, he started terrorising me about where I was going to get sent and what they do to young boys at this place called Little Heath Lodge. I had heard of it because it’s where the guys with criminal convictions go.
So I did get shipped to Little Heath Lodge and it was very different to all the other children’s homes. It had barbed wire around it. It wasn’t a nice place and there was a lot of violence. Whilst I was there, I was seen by an educational psychologist and he said a few things which stuck with me. One was that I would either grow up to be a master criminal or a success in business. The other was that I should go to a special school and sit my GCSEs a year early so I was taken to see a place and it was agreed that that’s where I’d be going in September.
Newnham: And this was something you were happy about wasn’t it?
Jackson: Yes, I loved the idea of this place. There would have been other kids. It would have been challenging but I would have enjoyed it.
So, for the summer, I was sent back home to be with my mum and my brother because my sister was in care at this point, and the intention was that I would start this school in September. Then I think it was a day or two before I was meant to start, I got told I couldn’t go, and it wasn’t until years later that I got to the bottom of why and it was because it was a residential school. With each council, there’s the education budget and the social care budget and Newham social services, between them, couldn’t agree who would pay what part — and because that never got agreed, I never got to go there. Even worse, I was then left in the home environment, where everyone knew it wasn’t a good place for me and how it wasn’t a feasible option long term. So of course, that ended up breaking down again and I ended up back in care.
Newnham: That must have been so disappointing. But I’ve heard you say before that growing up in care helped you prepare for the world of startups, can you explain what you mean?
Jackson: Typically you know as a kid, or even an adult, where you’re sleeping tonight but when you are in the care system, and in prison as well, you can get moved overnight with no notice at all. So life becomes uncertain and you get used to that uncertainty. I think for most people, they avoid uncertainty but with a tech startup you don’t get much more uncertain than that so you learn to live with it. It just doesn’t faze you — you are comfortable with uncertainty. Most people aren’t, they crave certainty — they want to know what they’re doing, where they’re going and what’s happening tomorrow.
Growing up in the care system, knowing you can get moved at any time and you might not even have time to collect all your belongings… I think that actually prepares you quite well for startup life.
Newnham: Let’s fast forward to when you were nineteen years old and you get arrested with 6,500 ecstasy tablets. How did that happen?
Jackson: A lot of people I grew up with did a lot of the stuff I was doing earlier on but the difference was that I had a lack of fear. I think fear can be healthy sometimes but I probably didn’t have a healthy sense of fear.
At fifteen, sixteen, we were all smoking weed and cannabis and every Friday — we’d put our money together and see how much we’ve got, pop over to the local drug dealer, buy what we could and shared it amongst our mates. And I realised, hang on a minute, if I go and buy it in bulk, I can get everyone’s £15, £20, give them their drugs and get mine for free. And I think that’s how so many low-level drug dealers get started — they’re using it themselves and economically, it makes sense to buy a bigger amount and then before you know it, you’ve got people you don’t know knocking on your door saying, “I hear you can get me something.”
Newnham: You’ve got a business…
Jackson: Yeah, exactly. But actually, I had stopped doing drugs and had moved away from all that but the guys I hung around had carried on and, actually, some of them had got into more serious drugs like coke which I never went anywhere near.
Before the arrest, I had actually started working, using my IT skills. I was contracting and earning pretty good money but I didn’t have the skills to manage that money so I’d go from having loads of money from a good job to being totally skint because I had spent it all. My last contract had been good money at Reuters but then I held out too long for the next job and I ended up totally skint. At the same time, one of my best friends, Alan, was taking drugs to the States so I volunteered to get involved with that.
Initially, the idea was that I wouldn’t go near the drugs, I would just get involved with bringing the money back but then it didn’t look too difficult to take the drugs over there and when someone dropped out, I said that I would do it.
Newnham: And you had a girlfriend over in the States at the time, didn’t you?
Jackson: Exactly and I was making good money so I would visit… As well as contract work, I was involved in an internet radio station which is how I met Simone. So I had been over to see her in New York a couple of times, legitimately, with money I had earned. But at this point I was now in a position where I didn’t have the money to go and see her.
I had also recently borrowed money from my mum and she was talking about getting a CCJ (county court judgement) if I didn’t pay back the £300 ($386) or whatever it was, which she did end up doing — she got a CCJ against me so I owed her money, and I also couldn’t pay the rent. So working with Alan and the guys he was involved with, to move drugs to the States, seemed an easy way to make money and see Simone at the same time.
Newnham: How many trips had you done before you got caught?
Jackson: I think I had done two with drugs before getting caught and I was quite blasé about it because you just never saw a customers officer at JFK if you were coming from the UK.
And then on one trip, which proved to be the last one, I was told that actually the trip was to Atlanta rather than New York. And I was like, “What do I want to go to Atlanta for? I’m not doing it. I’ll wait till next time.” But they couldn’t find anyone else to do it so I negotiated that if they paid my domestic flights from Atlanta to New York, to see Simone, I’d do it and so that was what we agreed. I’d fly to Atlanta, drop off the drugs, go up to New York to see Simone for the weekend, and then come back and pick up the money and bring it back to the UK.
So I get off the plane at Atlanta… And what we didn’t know at that point was that the UK police had had us all under surveillance for six months…
Newnham: How many people were in this operation?
Jackson: Well, we’ll stick with the number which ended up in court which was nine. So nine of us ended up in the dock in the UK but they hadn’t worked out much of the US side of things.
A customs officer stopped me… and found a lot of ecstasy tablets.
Nenwham: Did you think this is game over?
Jackson: It was really surreal and no, I think a part of me genuinely thought for a long while there, that I was going to get a slap on the wrists and I was going to be sent home.
I was naive. To my mind, it wasn’t heroin or coke. It was ecstasy and ecstasy was everywhere in the 90s. I didn’t really think about it being illegal — of course it is and not only that, it’s a Class A drug — so it may as well have been heroin or cocaine because the punishment is exactly the same. But I remember thinking, “Bloody hell, I’m going to be late getting to New York now” but not thinking, “I’m going to get sent to prison for a very long time.”
Newnham: So when it dawned on you, how did you feel then?
Jackson: I’m surrounded by American accents, and surrounded with guys who have DA badges, and guns and it just felt like being in a movie. It was just so surreal. I was incredibly calm. The guy from the DA office said, “They call you Steady Eddie in London.” The DA said that considering I was looking at twenty plus years behind bars, I was pretty calm about it and I was because it just felt surreal; it felt like it was happening to someone else. And I also think, to a large degree it was out of my control what happened next, so if I couldn’t do anything about it, I was just going to go with the flow…
More of Duane’s story coming next week! He was kind enough to let me film our interview which will be released with the final extract. Sign up here to be the first to hear about it.
Finally, a quick note to say the format of these newsletters going forward will be interview only. There are lots of people doing curated tech news lists so my mission from here on in is to simply share the most inspiring stories of tech founders and innovators. I believe these stories share many lessons, all of which are useful to our own journeys.
If there is someone you think I should feature, please don’t hesitate to reach me on danielle@wemakeplay.com or on Twitter @daniellenewnham
Have a great week all and see you on the other side.
Danielle
A very sad story- has Duane watched any Shaun Attwood videos? He interviews a gentleman from the childcare system and his experience was horrific - daily brutality and rape and he says everyone was involved- dentists, teachers, social workers- he was never safe. He now has PTSD disorder- and more-