I started my own company back in 2006. The company, Figure 53, LLC, has been a labor of love since long before it was officially formed. Scraping together a few hours each night, and cramming 20 hours into the weekends, I slowly managed to make a product and…holy hell…even managed to sell a few copies. Designers started using it around the world, from high school productions to, most recently, the highly anticipated Broadway revival of South Pacific at Lincoln Center. In short, it’s been a hell of a ride. A ride that has brought me to today.
I’d like to introduce you to Figure 53’s first full-time employee:
Me.
Starting today, starting right now, I finally have the distinct delight and tremendous advantage of focusing entirely on working for my own company. Full time.
I can barely express how excited I am about this. But in all my excitement, I couldn’t spill the beans before today. Which meant I had to bite my blogging tongue when the following bit of awesomeness occurred:
Last Wednesday an unmarked package arrived in the mail. Inside was found the T-shirt you see below. No name. Black on black.

(You can see our model is gazing fiercely at the future, ready to strike stunning deals on international conference calls, followed by rewarding himself with extra vacation and a mid-afternoon nap.)
I eventually smoked out the responsible party: Jesse Kriss. Thanks buddy. It made my day.



12 Comments
Congratulations. I’m incredibly jealous.
Christopher Ashworth, you are amazing! Of course! Congratulations. xoxoxoxoxo
Congratulations, Mr. Sass. It’s well earned indeed.
Smashy! Congrats. I hope you make millions! You deserve it.
JK
Fantastic news!!!! This calls for great celebration!!!
Congrats Smashy! I’m so excited for you! It’s only going to get better from here!!
WHOOHOOOOOOO!
An auspicious moment, Chris, well worth celebrating. Congratulations! I’m sure Figure 53 will be a great success, especially now that you can *really* focus. But don’t forget to come up for air once in a while … All the best.
Chris, you are. (the man). No running a company required to prove that. But coolness nevertheless, you deserve picking the fruit of your hard work and endurance.
One piece of advice. Keep it a one-man-show. No need for the woes of managing high-maintenance monkies when you feel like the main responsible to pull things together. Let grad school be a reminder of that ;)
Killer shirt man. Though, it does look like Hanes ran out of T-Shirt models and had to settle for…. well you know.
You have earned this, hard work and all that ;)
Now keep this blog updated so the stalkerati will be “in the know”.
Hot Flaming Poop.
3 out of the last 4 shows I’ve worked on the sound designers were using QLab.
The fourth I introduced to QLab.
“I’m never going back,” she said.
I tip my hat to you and wish you the best of luck in all of your future work, based upon the picture it’s a good thing this worked out because modeling would have been a huge failure.