The real story behind LaunchLemur.
This is not a polished success story with a happy ending already waiting at the bottom of the page. It is the truth about two people who have both had difficult lives, found each other from opposite sides of the world, and are now doing everything they can to build a life together.
Some parts of our story are upsetting. We are not including them to exaggerate or to manipulate anyone. These things genuinely happened to us, and they explain why LaunchLemur exists, why so much of ourselves goes into it, and why your support would mean so much. We have been underdogs for most of our lives. We are not asking people to pretend otherwise.
Where your support goes.
100% of proceeds fund three milestones. £12.99 becomes about £7 after tax and fees — that £7 moves the bar. Donations of any amount go straight into the same fund — every penny moves the bar.
- ✈️Flights£5,000
- 💍Get married£25,000
- 🏠Our house£100,000
Jacky's story.
Hi, I'm Jacky.
I grew up in Mindanao in the Philippines. In 2016, a typhoon destroyed the home where my family and I lived. We lost our house and almost everything we had. After the typhoon, the government relocated my family to a relocation area.
My mum and the rest of my family remained in the province. I was the only person in my family who had received any real form of education, so the responsibility fell on me to go to the city, find work and help support them. I found work as a live-in maid, looking after elderly people.
The people I worked for did not treat me kindly. I was not allowed to take food from the fridge, even though I lived and worked inside their home. I was made to sleep on the floor in a damp garage or a small storage area that was more like a shoe cupboard than a bedroom. I was there to work and support my family, but I often felt as though I was not being treated like a person.
Throughout my life, I have also been bullied because I have darker skin. Colourism is a real problem in the Philippines, and people have made me feel ashamed or inferior because of the natural colour of my skin.
While I was living in that house, I became very unhappy and depressed. I felt trapped and alone. Sometimes I would livestream online simply to talk to people. It gave me somebody to speak to and made me feel less isolated.
That is where I met Max.
We began talking regularly and gradually became close. Max listened to me, cared about what was happening to me and supported me when I wanted to leave the house where I was working. With his support, I was eventually able to leave that situation and return to the province, where I could be closer to my friends and family.
Today, I am still doing what I can to help. I paint nails to earn some money for myself so that Max does not have to send me as much and can put more of what he has into building LaunchLemur and creating a future for us. My circumstances are still difficult, but Max has always tried to look after me as well as he can.
Max's story.
Hi, I'm Max.
My biological parents passed away when I was still a child. After losing them, I was placed into foster care. During that period, I experienced emotional abuse and neglect. Those experiences affected how I developed, how I understood relationships and how I learned to manage my emotions. They did not simply disappear when I grew older.
I was later adopted by loving parents and moved to East London. My adoptive parents were good people, but the area where I grew up was rough. Many of my friends lived on a council estate, and violence and gang-related crime were part of the environment around us. I became a victim of that violence. On one occasion, I was stabbed in the leg. On another occasion, somebody set me up to be robbed, and my jaw was broken during the attack.
After everything I had already experienced as a child, those incidents caused my mental health to deteriorate further. I became deeply depressed. I struggled to regulate my emotions and could not always control my anger or behaviour. Eventually, because of how unstable I had become and the way I was behaving, my adoptive parents asked me to leave. I became homeless.
I had to fight with the council to get help. I eventually lived in a mental-health hostel before finally being given a place of my own. Getting my own home gave me somewhere safe to live, but it did not suddenly fix everything. I was alone, I had very little education and I did not feel as though I had anybody beside me.
I have since been diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder, commonly known as CPTSD, as well as panic disorder. My CPTSD comes from experiencing repeated trauma, emotional abuse and neglect throughout my childhood and early life. My panic disorder developed after my trauma and mental health went untreated for many years.
These conditions affect my everyday life. I can experience severe panic attacks. I struggle to leave my home, function consistently in ordinary working environments and cope with the pressure of a traditional nine-to-five job. Getting a job is difficult, but keeping one while dealing with these conditions can be even harder. That is not an excuse I am using to avoid working. It is the reality of why I have tried to find another way to support myself and create a future.
How we found each other.
When Jacky and I met, we were both lonely in different ways. She was living in a house where she was being treated badly, far away from her family, using livestreams as a way to talk to people and escape the isolation she felt. I was living alone in my own place, dealing with the effects of my past, my CPTSD and my panic disorder.
We started talking online. Over time, we got to know each other properly. We became friends, and then we fell in love. Jacky became the person who accepted me for who I was. She understood that my mental-health conditions did not make me a bad person. She supported me emotionally, made me smile and gave me something to look forward to. I tried to do the same for her — I supported her when she wanted to leave the home where she had been working and return to her friends and family in the province. For the first time in a long time, both of us felt as though somebody was genuinely on our side.
Turning creativity into a way forward
Because a traditional working environment is difficult for me, I began looking for ways to earn money using the things I could do from home. I am a creative person. I enjoy building things, designing experiences and making things that other people can use and enjoy. I started creating games in Fortnite, and for a while those games did reasonably well. I finally felt as though I had discovered something I was good at and something I could turn into a real future.
The money I made from my games allowed me to travel to the Philippines and meet Jacky in person. The first time I visited, I stayed for approximately three weeks in Makati, Manila — the first time we had ever been physically together after getting to know each other online. Around a year later, I returned and stayed for approximately three months in Taguig, Manila. During that visit, we also travelled to Boracay together. Those were some of the happiest periods of my life. By the end of those three months, I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Jacky.
We decided that we wanted to build a future together. I returned home determined to work on my games, earn enough money and make that future possible. I worked tirelessly. I believed that if I kept creating, improving and putting in the hours, I would eventually earn enough to return to the Philippines permanently or find a way for us to live together. Unfortunately, it did not work out that way. The games stopped performing well. Despite the amount of work I put into them, they stopped producing enough money. I have now been unable to visit Jacky again for around two years.
Where we are now.
At the moment, I am in the United Kingdom and Jacky is in the Philippines. We love each other, but we cannot afford to live together. Jacky lives in extremely difficult financial circumstances. There are times when her meals consist mainly of rice, without the balanced nutrition that most people take for granted. I support her as well as I can, but I am currently on benefits and do not have a normal job. I have enough to maintain my own basic home and eat, but I do not have enough to create the life we need. Whenever possible, I would rather money go towards Jacky than towards me because her needs are greater.
The money raised through LaunchLemur is not intended to pay for luxuries, an expensive lifestyle or meaningless purchases. It would go towards supporting Jacky with essentials such as food and somewhere safe to live. It would help us pay for travel so that we can see each other again. It could help us obtain professional legal or immigration advice, apply for the correct visa and determine whether it is more realistic for Jacky to come to the United Kingdom or for me to move to the Philippines. Ultimately, our goal is to get married, live together and build a modest home and life in the Philippines. Hopefully, one day, we can have a family of our own. That is all we are trying to achieve.
The responsibility I feel
I feel an enormous responsibility to make this work. Jacky supports me emotionally. She is kind, caring and patient. She makes me happy and makes me smile, even when I feel as though I am failing. But I feel that the responsibility to find the money and create a way for us to be together is on me. As a man, not being able to go to the woman I love and provide a stable life for us is painful. It feels as though she is waiting for me while I repeatedly tell her that I am still trying.
I worry about how many years could pass. I worry that earning enough through an ordinary job could take ten or twenty years — that we could be approaching fifty by the time we finally have a realistic chance of living together. I feel guilty at the thought of Jacky spending the best years of her life waiting for me to solve this. She has never made me feel guilty. This fear comes from me because I love her and do not want to let her down.
Sometimes I wonder whether our happy ending will ever actually happen.
I do not want to pretend this story is already resolved, because it is not. At the moment, there is no happy ending. There are two people who love each other, live thousands of miles apart and do not have the money to change their situation. We only live once. All we want is the chance to spend that life together.
Why I created LaunchLemur.
LaunchLemur is my attempt to use the skills I do have to create that chance. I could have created a fundraising page and simply asked people to give us money, but I wanted to offer something useful in return. LaunchLemur is a customisable digital workspace where people can build their own setup using draggable widgets, tools and personalised pages. It is designed to help people be more productive, organised, creative or relaxed, depending on how they choose to use it. I am trying to take the creative ability I previously used to build games and apply it to something more dependable — something that can genuinely help people while also helping Jacky and me build a life together.
I am not part of a corporation. There is no large development team, marketing department, group of investors or social-media agency behind this. It is one person sitting behind a computer, building, fixing, designing and improving the product every day, with the emotional support of his girlfriend on the other side of the world.
Building this without a support network
I do not have a large social-media following. I do not have experience promoting a product or running major marketing campaigns. I also do not have a network of friends and family sharing everything I create. The truth is that I do not feel supported by the people around me. My friends do not regularly ask how LaunchLemur is progressing or whether I am coping. Some people have laughed at me for trying to build this. I do not have parents or relatives funding the project, introducing me to people or helping to spread the word. Most days, the only person encouraging me is Jacky.
Even she is working hard in her own way — painting nails to earn money for herself so that I can send her less and invest more into the project. That leaves me sitting at my computer for eight, ten or sometimes more hours, trying to make this work. I build new features. I fix problems. I change the design. I add widgets. I improve existing widgets. I rethink things that are not good enough. Then I wake up and do it again. I have often spent so much time improving the product that I have barely had time to promote it on social media. I am constantly hoping and praying that the work will eventually pay off.
Why I cannot rely on GoFundMe
GoFundMe and similar fundraising websites usually depend on having a network. People share a fundraiser with their family, their friends, their colleagues and their social-media followers. Those people donate and then share it again. I do not have that kind of support system. I do not have enough friends, family connections or online followers to put up a fundraising page and expect it to reach the people who might care.
That is one of the reasons LaunchLemur feels like the only realistic thing I can do. Instead of asking people to give us money and receive nothing in return, I am offering a real product that I have spent a huge amount of time building. You can support us and receive something useful. You can buy LaunchLemur and use it. You can help shape it by telling me what would make it more useful to you. And if somebody wants to donate without using the product, they can do that too — I will never pretend that support would not be welcome. The truth is that we are asking for help. We are asking for sympathy as well as a chance. I am not ashamed to admit that. People ask for help every day because sometimes human beings cannot overcome every situation alone. Of course, part of me wishes somebody could simply save us from this situation. It would mean I could stop worrying every day and finally go and live with the woman I love. I know that is unlikely. That is why I am still working.
My promise to everyone who supports us.
LaunchLemur is not a product I plan to release and then abandon. This is my central goal and the main thing I work on every day. I do not have another company or career competing for my attention. I am putting my time, creativity and energy into making this as good as I possibly can.
When someone buys LaunchLemur, they are not only purchasing what exists today. They are supporting the continued development of the product. I want to work directly with the people using it — to hear what they need, what they enjoy, what frustrates them and what would make the product genuinely useful in their lives. I will continue adding widgets, improving existing tools, fixing problems, expanding customisation and making the experience better.
I am doing this because I want to be with Jacky, but I also want to create something I can be proud of. Even if I eventually succeed and move to the Philippines, I can take my computer with me and continue working on LaunchLemur from there. Being reunited with Jacky would not be the end of LaunchLemur. It would allow me to continue building it from a happier and more stable place.
My fear if this does not work
I know I cannot continue indefinitely without something changing. I have given myself a limited amount of time to prove that this can become sustainable. If it does not work, I may have to force myself into a traditional nine-to-five job. I will do that if I have no other choice. But because of my CPTSD, panic disorder and panic attacks, I know how much I may struggle — and conventional employment may not create enough money for us to be together for many years anyway.
LaunchLemur is not me refusing to work. This is me working in the way I am currently capable of working.
It is a final, serious attempt to use what I can do rather than spending my life being defeated by what I cannot do.
We are asking for a shot.
Jacky and I have both spent much of our lives feeling like underdogs. She lost her family home in a typhoon, was relocated, left her family to work in the city, was treated badly as a live-in maid, slept in a damp storage area and was bullied because of the colour of her skin. I lost my biological parents as a child, experienced emotional abuse and neglect in foster care, became a victim of violent crime, was stabbed, had my jaw broken, struggled with depression and anger, became homeless and spent years living with untreated trauma. Neither of us had an easy beginning. Neither of us came from money. Neither of us has a powerful family, a large audience or influential people opening doors for us. But somehow, from opposite sides of the world, we found each other.
We are not asking for a mansion. We are not asking for luxury holidays, expensive cars or a celebrity lifestyle. We want to get married. We want a safe home. We want enough food. We want to wake up beside each other instead of through a phone screen. We want the possibility of having children and building the ordinary family life that so many people already have.
What your support would mean
Buying LaunchLemur would not just increase a number on a progress bar. It would move us one step closer to seeing each other again. It would help Jacky eat properly and live more securely. It would help pay for travel, immigration advice, visa costs, marriage and eventually a modest home in the Philippines. It would give me the chance to continue working in a way that I can sustain despite my mental-health conditions. Most importantly, it would give two people who have already spent much of their lives struggling the chance to finally build something peaceful together.
You are not required to buy anything. You are not required to donate. But even sharing our story could help. You could post LaunchLemur on social media, send it to somebody who might find the product useful or tell another person what I am trying to build and why. When you do not have a large group of friends or family helping you, every single person who shares your work matters. Every purchase matters. Every message of encouragement matters. Every person who gives us a chance matters.
I will not pretend that this is only a business story. It is personal. I want LaunchLemur to succeed because I believe it can be a genuinely good product, but I also want it to succeed because I desperately want to live with the woman I love. I am asking for help. I am asking for people to care. I am asking for sympathy, support and a chance to prove what I can build. But I am not asking while offering nothing in return. My side of the promise is that I will keep working. I will keep improving the product. I will listen to the people who use it. I will put in the hours.
This is not a perfect story. It is not finished. There is no guarantee that Jacky and I will get our happy ending. But I am not ready to give up on her, on myself or on the life we could have together.
We have spent our lives as underdogs. LaunchLemur is our attempt to finally change the ending.
— Max & Jacky
Help us change the ending.
Buy the workspace, donate any amount, or share our story with someone who would care. Every single one moves the bar.