FAQ

Can you explain Heli­um for me?

Yes, take a look at this post.

Can you take a look at my set­up and tell me if it’s worth it or not to buy a miner?

Prob­a­bly, but there are no guar­an­tees when it comes to “worth it”. 

What is your background?

Start­ed off in the mil­i­tary and served as both a sol­dier and ath­lete. From there I took a small sail­boat from San Diego down through the Pana­ma Canal, then back up to Flori­da, then to Kingston, where I sold it. Drift­ed around a bit, tried out com­mu­ni­ty col­lege. The for­mal edu­ca­tion sys­tem was­n’t (and isn’t) for me. Went to Iraq to do con­tract secu­ri­ty work and chase the ele­phant. Came back to San Diego and start­ed a cloth­ing com­pa­ny with my wife, ran that for a few years. Got into Nord­strom, Fred Segal, and enough debt to go bank­rupt. I learned a lot about what not to do.

After the dust from the BK cleared, we start­ed and ran an ATM busi­ness on our own and an online cook­ie com­pa­ny called Paleo Treats with a friend. We sold the ATM busi­ness after a few years; it was prof­itable but monotonous.

PT did (and does) well, in 2015 earn­ing recog­ni­tion from FedEx as one of the top 10 small busi­ness­es in the coun­try. I sat on their Entre­pre­neur Advi­so­ry Board and helped shape some of their small busi­ness policy. 

I went back and worked for the Navy as an instruc­tor for a few years, then went off and worked on car­go ves­sels as part of an anti-pira­cy team. In between I picked up odd con­tract­ing jobs, from assess­ing the via­bil­i­ty of trav­el for HNW clients in remote loca­tions to work­ing as the inter­view­er for a mil­lion dol­lar Hol­ly­wood ad campaign.

I got into ultra run­ning and after 3 attempts com­plet­ed the Leadville 100 in 2015. That sat­is­fied the urge to run long dis­tance, and ampli­fied a love of the moun­tains and views. On a whim, I saw a movie about paraglid­ing and was hooked. 

In August 2020 I found Heli­um through a paraglid­ing Search & Res­cue effort in Neva­da. I began my jour­ney right as the Hotspot DIY/Alpha code pro­gram opened (long since closed) and start­ed to build and place hotspots, includ­ing remote moun­tain place­ments. I start­ed writ­ing about the lessons learned on this blog in order to help oth­er peo­ple step over some of the obsta­cles I’d had to get around.

Some­time in spring of 2021, as the blog posts were get­ting picked up on Red­dit, Dis­cord, Face­book, and the rest of the web, I began get­ting so many calls for help with hotspot deploy­ments that I start­ed a con­sult­ing com­pa­ny to man­age it, and Gris­tle King was born. By mid 2022 the Heli­um con­sult­ing busi­ness was more or less dead, but lots of new projects were start­ing in the DePIN space, and I want­ed to help them avoid mis­takes that Heli­um had made. I start­ed con­sult­ing for projects, even­tu­al­ly start­ing a sep­a­rate com­pa­ny just for that. That more or less bring us to today.