# Founder Story: Austin, founder of Autonomic

*Adapted from Austin's own telling on autonomic.care. It's already in his voice, and
this is lightly framed for press. All true; nothing invented.*

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## The short version (for a pitch email or an "about the founder" box)

> Autonomic was built by Austin, a long-COVID patient of more than four years. After
> specialist visits in cardiology and neurology left him with no real answers, he
> started tracking his own physiology (HRV, blood pressure, sleep, the days he
> crashed) until the patterns surfaced and he found what genuinely helped.
> Autonomic is the app he built from that: a private, on-device recovery journal
> that measures instead of guesses. He's a solo founder, a long hauler, and a dad
> of six in South Carolina.

---

## The full version (for the press page / a feature interview)

For more than four years, I've been living with long COVID. It started with blood
pressure that spiked out of nowhere, a heart that raced the moment I stood up,
brain fog that swallowed whole days, and a long list of symptoms that never quite
fit together. I saw specialist after specialist in cardiology, neurology and
beyond, and kept leaving with the same thing: no real answers.

So I started tracking it myself: HRV, blood pressure, heart rate, sleep, what I
ate, the days I crashed. Slowly, patterns surfaced. I found small things that made
life more livable, and I got a little better. I'm not healed, and I won't pretend
otherwise. But over the two years I've used my own early version of Autonomic,
I've been able to see what genuinely helps and reach a far better place than I'd
been in for a long time.

I'm not a doctor. I'm not an expert. I'm just someone on this road, in South
Carolina, raising six kids, figuring out my own recovery one reading at a time.
Autonomic is the tool I built to make sense of it. If it helps you spot your own
patterns, find your own answers, and feel a little more in control of your journey
too, then it's done exactly what I hoped.

---

## The product/privacy bridge (for a reporter who needs the "so what")

Because Austin built Autonomic for himself first, it works the way a patient
actually needs: it captures real beat-to-beat HRV from a chest strap, an Apple
Watch, or a phone camera, and grades every reading against published medical
thresholds instead of a black-box score. And it keeps every byte on the device:
no account, no cloud, no backend, so the developer himself can't see, lose, or
sell user data. For an audience with real anxieties about who touches their health
information, that isn't a privacy *policy*; it's the architecture.

---

## Facts to keep straight when telling it
- **Patient-founder, solo.** Long hauler (4+ years), dad of six, South Carolina.
- **Never promise recovery.** His own line is honest: "I'm not healed, and I won't
  pretend otherwise." Say "see what's helping," never "get better."
- **The app is a journal and education tool, not a medical device.**
- The privacy claim is literally true and load-bearing: no account, no cloud, no
  backend, developer can't access user data.
