Long silent the holocron has been. Well over two years it is since Ben last recorded a chapter of this saga, in January 2024. Like a Jedi who set down his lightsaber and wandered from the Temple, he feels he has let himself down by depriving himself of the joy of writing. A shame it is, too: traction, he was beginning to find, and now that small following has surely drifted back into the Outer Rim.

That being said, idle this Padawan-turned-Knight has not been. Sat on his laurels, he has not.

Twice he has moved house. The first move ended a long exile: two years without a home of his own, sleeping on his Nan’s sofa, like a Jedi hiding out on a damp moon while the Empire held the galaxy. At last he claimed a room and a bed that were his. Short-lived the victory was. The landlord, it turned out, had sold him a chamber infested with bed bugs. YUK! And YUK, believe him he does, sells it lightly. A swarm out of a Mos Eisley cantina it felt like; no rest there was, and the search for shelter began again.

High and low around Sheffield he looked. Luck, he was not having. Then, as so often in this galaxy, the path opened somewhere unexpected. On holiday he went, back to Cornwall, where once he trained at university. There he found an annex of his own, well and truly out of the way of everything. A hermitage on Dagobah it is not, but peace of mind it gave him. Space to think. Space to turn again toward his tech entrepreneurial intentions.

Thanks to that quiet outpost, the product has moved forward. An MVP there now is, one that has survived two rounds of beta testing, like a prototype ship that has flown two trial runs through an asteroid field and still holds together. Ready it is to be shown to prospective clients. The crew has been strengthened: a chief of staff has come aboard, and in the final stages they are of bringing on chief advisors for technology and research. Mentors and masters, these will be; no Jedi builds a Rebellion alone. Pretty much at the stage they are of confirming whether the go-to-market strategy will work, or whether they must adopt a route similar to the competition. The exciting part this is. One more hurdle, and they are there.

Other fronts of the empire have not gone quiet. The cash-generating ones, they continue. Pinder’s Painters has gone from strength to strength. People it now employs, both office and site staff, and a constant stream of revenue it provides, capable of supporting Ben’s life. A reliable supply line it is, the sort that keeps a Rebel base fed while the bigger strike is planned. It does, however, take a great deal of his time, and that time it detracts from Open Research Shop. Hope he does that with this final push for investment into ORS, after a successful raise, he will be able to hand the painting business to someone else to manage, and go full time into ORS and implementing the go-to-market. The side quest completed, the main quest resumed.

After a long period away, this entrepreneur is ready to embrace the challenge. The Force, he will use, to push this next stage over the line. The saga continues. May it be with him.