First, the context

A few days ago, Brian Sierakowski published an exit interview with Baltimore entrepreneur Paul Capestany. Paul (who, alas, I don’t personally know) is a smart fellow who recently decided to leave Baltimore to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams in San Francisco.

I’m grateful to both Paul and Brian for taking the time to do that interview. I think all of us in Baltimore periodically struggle with the question of why we’re here. It’s nothing but healthy for the growing Baltimore tech community to understand why some people feel the world beyond offers greener pastures.

This morning, as part of the conversation, my friend Mike Subelsky published his own take on the question: “Should we all move to Silicon Valley?”

Now, why I’m adding my two cents

After I read Mike’s post, I checked out the comments down at the bottom.

Down there in the comments, a person by the name of “bhalliburton” shared the following thoughts:

1) There is a difference between a small business start-up and a scalable start-up. (Stephen Blank terminology)

A scalable start-up has to target markets > $500m in size because it intends to become a >$100m revenue company in a few years time.

You can start a small business start-up (a business that feeds your family by serving a known customer with a known product) anywhere – it probably pays to start it in a geography where your customers are.

A scalable start-up needs to be in a place that maximizes your access to highly specialized talent and a place that makes you appealing in an acquisition.

I think the ecosystem for scalable start-ups in SF is simply extraordinary [...]

I don’t actually disagree with the core point of this comment. I think it’s framed in a rather patronizing way, but I don’t disagree that this specific kind of “scalable” start-up is probably going to have some kind of advantage in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, the context in which this advice is framed, patronizing as it is, is not unusual. I’m learning to ignore this attitude, because we clearly share different motivations, and that’s okay.

But.

After some solid arguments on the advantages of San Francisco for “scalable” start-ups, we arrive at the conclusion, which is simply this:

SF is the best place to start a tech company.

And on this point, I’m motivated to reply. ‘Cause that just ain’t true.

“If you want to be an actor, ya gotta be in Hollywood!”

Mike shared with me an early draft of his post, and it included this quote, which he had heard from another Baltimorean who chose to move west to Silicon Valley.

This quote, to me, pretty well summarizes the attitude that “the best place to start a tech company” is in San Francisco.

This quote also, as it turns out, epitomizes everything I’m trying to avoid in my artistic and entrepreneurial life.

The implication of that quote is there is only one kind of actor: Hollywood megastars, or people who aspire to be Hollywood megastars. It implicitly dismisses all other actors. They don’t even qualify for the name.

There will be (a few) Hollywood stars, and if you want to spend your life pursuing your 0.0000001% chance of being one, you’re probably ever-so-slightly statistically better off moving to Hollywood.

That’s not invalid, but jeebus, how stifling! Are we seriously idolizing a vision in which all actors live in Hollywood? That’s the path to success?

I think San Francisco is probably the Hollywood of certain kinds of tech companies.

And I think Figure 53 is almost certainly better off in Baltimore.

Moreover, I think it’s irresponsible to argue that one city in all the world is the place you should move to start a tech company.

bhalliburton implies that my vision of a tech company is cute but not worth the time of serious entrepreneurs.

I get really tired of that. 37signals gets really tired of that. Other awesome tech companies who are changing the world and making good money doing it, I would venture to guess, get really tired of that too.

If startup culture means fostering crowds of high-aiming, high-risk tech companies that absorb lots of money but rarely succeed, making Baltimore a hub for startup companies isn’t that interesting to me. The drive to cash out leaves me cold. I don’t know exactly what a Baltimore-specific tech culture could look like, but I’m totally okay if it doesn’t look like that.

I’m also totally okay if that’s the culture that some people love. That’s cool! I think those kinds of companies are important!

But let’s not needlessly count out a diversity of creative activity. There’s a lot of ways to succeed. Let’s celebrate, and pursue, all of them.

Reporting on the quick success of the application, The New York Times tells us:

The company will also announce that it has raised $800,000 in venture capital, the first step in moving along the path from building an app to running a profitable business.

The first step, eh? But what about the… wait, wait, hold up…

So far, Alphonso Labs has made enough money selling apps to run the business, hire six other employees and have some cash left over.

Ah, right. Okay, I think we have some terminology confusion here. Don’t worry, this jargon can be confusing, but we’ll soon set it straight.

See, in the business world “cash left over” is what we call “profit”.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “But Chris! How can you have profit before you have venture capital?! Venture capital is the first step to a profitable business!”

I know hon, I know. It’s okay. Take a deep breath. The world is not upside down. This is normal.

See, what Alphonso Labs did was (now stay with me here) they made a product people wanted (still with me?) and then they sold it to people. For money!

So, strictly speaking, the first step these gents took toward running a profitable business happened a little bit before someone gave ‘em 800 thou. It had something to do with making a good product, which had something to do with writing and designing and building something people wanted.

Or at least, that’s how the process has worked out for me. My company gets to enjoy this “cash left over” thing, and we didn’t have to go asking anyone for money to do it.

If I ever did need an extra 800,000, I have a feeling I might end up just getting a boring old bank loan. Probably wouldn’t get profiled in the New York Times because of it, but hey, me and my cash left over can live with that.

Edited at 5:54pm EST to add: Hey look, 37signals was annoyed by this too. Except it was Matt who wrote it up, not Jason.

I dig that.

Anyway, here’s the page for our conversation:

The competitive advantage of hiring artists, A conversation with Chris Ashworth

Despite the specificity of the title, we hit a bunch of topics in that hour of chatting. Listen in and hear me:

• railing against sick days
• pleading with businesses to question the rules of their workplace
• ranting about pricing your work
• wondering whether your art can be better instead of cheaper
• hollering “F permission”

and

• making my case for how Star Trek, positronic brains, human evolution and racism all relate to hiring.

So heeeeyyyeeeeeere I am. Top of the morning to you. I’ve got a date with the farmers’ market in about an hour, so let’s do this quickly, shall we?

Is your rage an innie or an outie?

Ha ha! Yes, it’s true! I’ve suckered you into reading another blog post about Outrageous Fortune. Oh, come on, you knew it was coming. Well, all you theater geeks knew it was coming.

Yes, back in December, I too, a C-list theater blogger, was offered a free copy of the ol’ O.F. In a bit of simple but effective marketing, I, along with every other far more worthy theater blog in existence, was given a chance to light up my little corner of the interweb with my own two tiny cents about this little bombshell of a book.

For those of you reading this from a position comfortably outside the bubble, here’s the skinny: the contents of Outraaaageous Fortióne are the scandalous topic of the whole darn theater world right now. If you read about theater on the Internet, you have read about this book. Isaac Butler even organized a team blogging effort to dissect the thing. (Currently in process.) It’s also leaking out into the broader media landscape, via outlets like the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.

So what we all really need right now is my take on it.

In which it is revealed I am a liar

Ha ha! I’m such a kidder! You need my opinion on this book about as much as you need the salary earned by an American playwright. Which is to say, I guess it could conceivably be useful for something, but the face value approaches zero in a suspiciously asymptotic manner.

So, as it turns out, this is not another blog post about Outrageous Fortune. Which is handy for me, since I haven’t actually read the thing.

Let me stress that

I have not read Outrageous Fortune. I want to be clear about that. I do not own a copy. I do not plan to own a copy.

And I’ve only barely managed to skim a handful of the ten thousand blog posts devoted to the book.

But this is the Internet, which never said “no” to someone who thought he had something to say.

And I do think I have one little, small thing to say.

It’s not even a snarky thing.

Oh, I admit it. I’ve been sorely tempted to snark about this book. Something along the lines of “NEWS FLASH: ARTISTS GET PAID SHIT.”

But I get that the point here is (probably) more subtle. (Again, remember: haven’t read the book.) I get that there’s a conversation going on here about the artistic ecosystem, and how in a team sport like theater, we’re shafting the playwrights even harder than we’re shafting everyone else, which is already a significant amount of shafting from the start. And I get that, if this is a conversation about the health of our national artistic ecosystem, this kind of exploitation of the fountainhead of our art form might be kind of like the global warming of theater: slow, steady, and ultimately devastating. Not to mention fucking unfair to all those playwrights.

Or is it?

Okay. Here’s the thing. And I say this with a heart full of love.

Getting shafted as an artist starts with you.

You signed up for this. I don’t know specifically why, but you did. You made a choice. And we need to start there. I’m not saying this pejoratively. I’m not saying this with the condescending tone of someone who thinks you made the wrong choice. I only want to stress very strongly that a choice was made.

Or, no, that’s not actually it. What I want to stress very strongly is the question: “You actually did make that choice, right? You’re not sitting here getting shafted under the impression that you had no other choice, right?”

Because in the full consciousness of that choice, we can legitimately and constructively talk about dealing with the results. We can recognize a powerful artistic system that some people subscribe to for the opportunity of its momentum, but which may need to be redirected before that momentum carries the system off a cliff. We can have that conversation, and it will be a conversation without whining, because we’ll know that the people in that system looked around, saw a universe of possibilities, and decided, yes, this system is where I can best spend my creative energy.

But what I see instead, over and over and over again, is something very different. I see people wandering across a landscape in the muddy, trampled path of the ones who went before, eyes staring feverishly forward, always forward, at the choices made by someone else.

Look left! Goddammit look left and see that field of flowers!

Roads work so damn well. They take you directly to a pre-determined destination. And that’s very often what you want.

But dammit, not always.

I only tell my own story because it’s the one I know the best.

Seven years ago I spent ten months in the Acting Apprentice Company at Actors Theatre of Louisville. And although I met some of my dearest friends there, I can’t really say it was an unmitigated joy. In ten months, we got two guaranteed days off: Christmas eve and Christmas day. (Although, in practice, we usually got Mondays free as well. And technically speaking, I actually didn’t really get Christmas eve or Christmas day off.) We got no free housing. We got no stipend. And we certainly had no time for a job on the side. We all lived on our meager savings and the generosity of our families, and many of us (myself included) got some extra help from food stamps.

At the end of that ten months comes the Next Big Step, in which the Apprentice Company organizes a showcase in New York to which they hope a million agents will come, and maybe one of them will be looking for you, and that will ease your transition into the great New York jungle where lucky actors will supplement their income with a lucrative soap commercial.

And I just. Could not. Do that. Wanted no part of that. None. I felt crushed by it from the very beginning. Getting crushed on the first step did not, it must be said, seem like a promising way to begin.

So I looked left, and over there to the left was this lovely green hill rising up toward a computer science degree. I didn’t really know what lay over the hill, or if the terrain beyond could curve back toward theater, but I did have some kind of base unformed instinct that a paycheck and health insurance was a lovely foundation on which to reach out toward theater from an as yet undetermined angle.

It took almost seven years to clear the brush on that path. It took a completely unexpected direction. And several times I found myself scared that I had really fundamentally trekked off to where I would never make direct contact with the artistic part of my life again. That was not a comfortable feeling.

But last summer, the path broke through: a theater company in Baltimore gave me a chance to make theater again. And you know what? It worked out. And I won’t claim that I’m especially good at it, but for whatever reason that initial chance has led to other chances. Maybe I’m not completely incompetent as an actor. But it can’t hurt that I also bring my own paycheck, my own health insurance, and my own completely flexible schedule.

Whatever the reason, I’m making art again. Art I’m fundamentally proud to be making. With people I truly respect. And I don’t have to give two flying farts about the average salary of actors in American theater, or how the hell can I afford health insurance, or how will I find the energy to work two jobs and still have something left to give to the creative process of making a play happen.

And that? That’s not just liberating. That is fucking fun.

Crap, this got long.

I’ve blasted way past my self-imposed time limit on writing this post. I need to get to the market and pick up some milk.

So here’s the deal.

My path is not necessarily your path.

And their path is not necessarily your path.

And I believe that intelligent people are saying intelligent things about a set of well-worn paths which have been no doubt thoughtfully mapped in this book Outrageous Fortune. And I think that’s cool.

But I also know, simply on the face of it, that I just don’t care about that path. I don’t have to care about that path. And I can accept that some people will care about that path, and I’m glad they do. And I wish them the best of luck.

I just hope, hope, hope that people don’t unthinkingly cede their fundamental power to create to a system that might kill it. Not without first looking left. And right. And up. And down.

And I’m excited, as I skim the ten thousand blog posts on this book, to see this basic idea bubbling in the soup.

What rules will you break today?

My life fundamentally changed the day I started working for myself. There was no company policy book. I was the company policy book. I was the system. No option was arbitrarily off the table.

I cannot stress this enough. This shift in perspective transformed everything. I’m convinced it is the secret source of power of the entrepreneur: knowing in your bones that the limits you encounter will be the ones that really exist. And that the definition of what it means for a limit to “really exist” is usually up for debate.

Rands recently said:

Unfortunately, progress is equal parts consideration and rage.

Rage can be good. Rage helps you break fake rules.

So I’m glad to be reading about the rage. I think we need it. All I ask is that we give our rage access to all constructive outlets.

And now, the Milk.

Or my wife is gonna kill me.

Hello world! I’m pissed.

Today a Senate panel rejected both proposals for a public option for health care.

As they did so, you could hear the health care industry breathe a collective sigh of perverted relief. It puts those douchebags one step closer to keeping their current business model: providing health care only for the healthy.

Because you know what? No health company will ever make money off my wife. Why? It’s not because she’s made herself unhealthy. She takes excellent care of herself. She exercises regularly. Eats right. Sees a doctor. She does everything right, and has for a long time. But for mysterious reasons no one understands, as a teenager her body stopped producing insulin. And because her body can’t do it for her anymore, she must cut her body open every day to test her blood and then inject an appropriate amount of artificially generated insulin. She does this many times a day, every day. Has done for years. And will do it for, most likely, the rest of her life. It’s not a perfect system, but it lets her live relatively normally. Without modern medicine she would have died long ago.

No company can make money off my wife’s health. Insulin, test strips, needles, insulin pumps, pump supplies, and doctor visits: they cost a lot of fucking money. And a pure free market system will leave her to die.

I mean, let’s not fucking beat around the bush here, right? I know they will leave her to die because I called them and asked. Two years ago I was trying to start working for myself full time. Tried and, initially, failed. Because there exists no private health coverage for someone with type 1 diabetes. After several calls, one nice lady was at least honest enough to put it bluntly: “Honey, no one is going to sell you a plan. No one.”

Shall I pull out that old political phrase everyone likes to use? Shall I? Shall I at least put some English on it? Sure thing. Can do. Here you go:

LET’S BE FUCKING CLEAR.

The free market would kill my wife. And the point of a public health option is that, presumably, we think my wife might actually be a nice person to have around. You don’t even have to love her to think that. She’s a highly educated, productive citizen, and a registered nurse. She works every day to save and care for the lives of others. She’s pretty fucking handy to have around.

When we’re talking about health care, we’re talking about a problem that the free market can’t solve. Can’t do it. Sorry. Can’t.

Do I think the public option is the only solution? No. Thank god, no. We could, for example, set some better ground rules for the private market. We could say:

1. You have to accept everyone who applies.
2. You have to offer your plans across the entire country.

Or something like that. The point is that those of us who are healthy need to shoulder some of the cost for those of us who are sick. And to all you pure-blooded libertarians out there I say: pack yourself a backpack, move to an unclaimed island, and best of fucking luck to you.

We need to fix health care. I love me my conservative friends, and, seriously, I genuinely respect your discomfort with a large government program. But. The government has got to get involved here. Somehow. The free market doesn’t cut it this time. And if you guys stand for nothing but tweaking the current system, I am telling you now: I take that very, very, personally. And it is not okay.

P.S.: By the way, I was eventually able to start working for myself full time. The result? My company saw massive growth and hired during the recession. It would have been nice to contribute that productivity to the American economy earlier, but hey, I wouldn’t want to get in the way of the profits of the fucking health care companies.

Robi is a unique human being. It’s really hard to describe the guy. When Robi looks at the world, he sees things you and I don’t see. I’ll give you an example in the form of a single web page:

http://www.robimookerjee.com/arsgratia/mustard.htm

Yeah, right? Crazy as hell. But also strangely revelatory.

He also once spent an idle moment sketching me a coat of arms. It’s not that I’d asked for a coat of arms, it’s just that this is the sort of thing Robi does in his spare time:

[Initial sketch for the arms of Duke Smashworth the Cammervoltaic, of the Space Duchy of Sass.]

As he described it:

Cito maturum, cito putridum: Quickly ripe, quickly rotten. A caution against wasteful and undue haste, a wise maxim for a Duchy so intimately involved with the politics of empire. Originated in reference to the Duchy’s renowned software-development caste, whose diligent and rigorous testing protocols are the stuff of legend. Not that they are slow, by any means. Rumour has it they once made the kessel subroutine run in less than twelve parsecs.

Anyway, Robi does a lot of stuff, and he does a lot of it very well. But the one thing he does better than anything is write. I mean, I know a lot of good writers, but Robi is the kind of luminous talent who proves to the world that there is such a thing as “talent”, and that you don’t have it.

The trouble with telling you this is that I can’t really support it with evidence; casual descriptions of Space Duchy’s aside, I don’t know of any public Robi writing I can show you.

I know it because I went to the same college, and that college has a private forum for students and alumni. On this forum Robi has quietly published dozens and dozens of stunning stories, essays, and unclassifiable compositions.

But the treasures are all locked behind a private wall, and Robi, despite the incessant pesterings of his college tribe, is not yet publicly published.

Well, Mr. Mookerjee, I’m calling you out: it’s time to get real. It’s time to get published. And no, I don’t care if you’ve already “tried” to get published. Whatever that idea means to you is wrong. I know this because you are not published.

Somewhere in this world is a company that will create high quality paper books fit for a man of discerning taste. That company probably has a web page. And if that company does not print-on-demand, but instead requires a traditional up-front payment for the run, then I direct your attention to several dozen rabid fans who would very likely contribute to the up-front costs. At least in the form of a pre-order. (And by the way, how did you get the power of leveraging several dozen rabid fans? By publishing your stuff free on a protected piece of the Internet. So: reconsider that no-blogging rule you’ve set for yourself.)

The age of needing a company to publish music, text, software, or other artwork is over, man. The barrier to “making” is now lower than at any other time in history. If you want your thing made, it’s your fault if it’s not.

The potential for superdelegates to play a critical role has some party leaders worried that the situation could lend the appearance that the nominee will be selected by insiders rather than by rank-and-file voters.

“Could lend the appearance”, eh? Damn straight it could lend the appearance. One might even say that is exactly what would happen.

I’m getting real nervous this is turning into a train wreck.

As in, “I know you’re having a rough day, but it’s time to leave the baggage at the rehearsal room door…let’s stay focused on the work, okay?”

It’s just pretentious. The only reason you do it is because you’re unsure that what you’re doing qualifies as work. Look, I know it sucks when other people don’t take you seriously. But that’s their problem, not yours. Stop overcompensating. No one else calls their work “the work”. It’s a feeble form of insecure navel-gazing, dressed up to look tough: “I really am working hard! See? It’s even called work!”

Plus, it’s generic and vague. If you can’t name what you’re doing more specifically than that, do you actually know what you’re doing?

I am trying to set up an account. But your system will not allow me to set up an account with my own name.

You have a record of a transaction that my wife made, and apparently since we share the same address you assume that any account coming from this address will be for her.

So when I try to create an account it requires that I confirm that previous transaction, but if I confirm that transaction you IGNORE the name that I provided for the account and use my wife’s name instead. And then I cannot change the name on the account after it is made.

How can I set up an account for me, under my name? Presumably I do not have to move to a separate house from my wife to be able to do this??

Although I have enough experience with your miserable support system to know that this email will probably be ignored entirely OR that you will eventually answer a DIFFERENT question that I did not ask after a long period of first ignoring me, nevertheless,

Thanks in advance,
Chris

2008-02-04 EDITED TO ADD: Yup. They just ignored me entirely.