> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.capsulecreators.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# The questions I couldn’t leave alone
- URL: https://www.capsulecreators.com/the-questions-i-couldnt-leave-alone/
- Published: 2026-08-14T15:04:29.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T07:23:29.000Z
- Description: I notice a lot and most of it ends up in a notebook. Every now and then I keep thinking about one until I want to see if I can turn it into something real. Our current Capsule Creators Originals.
- Author: Capsule Creators

#014

I’ve always had a lot of ideas. Some survive for a day, some get a domain name before I come to my senses, and every now and then there is one I keep coming back to because I think there is actually something there.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/80/7a/807af58c-2823-42b2-bb26-d075d097ff99/content/images/2026/08/Manual-3-1-1.png)

MANUAL started after my father died unexpectedly.

He had a business, and like so many people who have been doing something for years, he knew an enormous amount that nobody else had any reason to know while he was there. There were papers and notes, of course, but knowing where the information is and understanding what to do with it are two very different things.

I knew this wasn’t unusual. Every household and every business has its own version of it. One person knows who to call, where things are, which agreements have been made, how something is usually handled, which adviser knows the history, what still needs to happen and what really matters if someone else suddenly has to take over.

I started looking at what already existed and found plenty of solutions for death, emergencies, estate planning and storing important documents.

Useful things. But much heavier than what I had in mind, and usually built around something going seriously wrong.

What about simply being unavailable?

You could be in the hospital for a week. Abroad. Unable to work. Taking care of someone. Stepping away from your business for a while. There are plenty of situations in which somebody else needs to know what you know without anybody dying.

That was much closer to the thing I wanted to solve.

MANUAL grew from there.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/80/7a/807af58c-2823-42b2-bb26-d075d097ff99/content/images/2026/08/escargot-logo-nieuw-1.png)

Escargot came from years of looking at housing and wondering about a completely different thing.

We talk a lot about older homeowners and the houses they are supposedly going to leave. Children move out, the house becomes too large, and at some point there is an apartment waiting for them somewhere with a good balcony, an elevator and two bedrooms.

I understand the logic. I just kept wondering about the people who weren’t moving. Their children had left too. They had the same stairs and the same oversized house. They might even say that yes, eventually, they could see themselves living somewhere smaller.

And then they stayed exactly where they were.

And that, my friends, should be the real question. What was still working about the house? What had stopped working? Which rooms were actually being used? Had their daily lives changed while the house hadn’t? Did they want less space or simply less hassle? Were they ready for another home, or were we asking them a question they weren’t even asking themselves yet?

Eventually I wanted to make something that started there, before the real estate search and before somebody had decided that moving was the answer.

That became Escargot.

There are other ideas on my desk, in notebooks and in embarrassingly long lists on my phone. Most will probably stay there.

The ones that don’t end up here.

## Originals

**MANUAL**  
Practical continuity for the things other people depend on you to know.

**ESCARGOT**  
A closer look at the home you have before deciding what should come next.