It was the beginning of 2018 and I believed that I was on the cusp of "the next big thing."

After nine months of hard work, I had built a platform called Educo with TED Talk speakers to help them turn their content into step-by-step applications that people could use to take action on the advice from their talks.

The idea of helping individuals take action on expert advice had been a dream of mine for years – and finally it was about to become a reality.

It was not long, however, before my dream turned into a nightmare.