KmikeyM

After years of doing web-based projects, I’ve taken my commitment to collaboration (and my love of the business world) to the highest level. I’m selling shares in myself. Using a virtual, fully-functional stock market called KmikeyM.com, I’m inviting everyone to own a part of me and all my future projects. By buying shares in me, Mike Merrill, you not only fund my ideas, but you have a say in which ones I undertake. As our little economy grows, my stock price will become a kind of benchmark for my success; the higher the stock price, the more viable the worth of my projects. When Shareholder Questions come up, stock owners will be able to vote on significant choices in my life. The more shares you have, the more weight your vote has. You could be the only person voting to send me to night school, but with enough shares behind you, I’m going to enroll. Ostensibly, if we make the right choices, we both win. Sure, you might say that this is an incomplete way of measuring my success — or that a business model is not conducive to the execution of creative projects. I don’t see it this way. Business is a social science of managing people to organize and maintain collective productivity, and to accomplish particular creative and productive goals; after all, the etymology of the word “business” refers to the state of being busy. It’s not about generating profits, particularly, although that will likely happen: it’s about a group of people working towards the same goal. By using an adapted structure of the market economy, you and I have a ready-built mechanism for operations, accountability, and measuring success that is not only well documented but also easily understood.

The creators of shockingly good Mac software.