the plan

style

I've been trying to talk to industry insiders about my plan for a software empire, but they all think I'm just an idiot dreamer who represents a risk of them wasting a lot of time and thought on nothing. They simply cannot take me seriously. There are more specific reasons for that. I'm working to put together (conceptually - that's how I work) a major web product, and to them that means probably millions of dollars of investment in all sorts of technical minutia, and, obviously, I don't have a clue.

When I say I've been trying, I really mean it. I look for people to talk to, and give 'em a pitch. It's always the same types, too: engineers, consultants, marketing people, lawyers, and academics. They're all proper business people, with lots invested in their very proper careers, and they can see immediately - that's an understatement - that I'm nothing but a joke. I definitely don't fit in.

Here you come, Dane, a rocker, a raver, a poet, and suddenly I've got a new idea. After all, I am those things, and also a stoner, and I love the people in this scene. I didn't just come to love you all, I always have. And that was part of ... oh, it doesn't matter. But the thing is, I do need some big guys and gals around, staking out our territory, inviting in the network, because, even though I'm a total hippie, my plan is to be right at the top of the business food chain, and that's business. I'm thinking about that dude, the amazing one with the big girth and the beard and the gall to go to any party in the world, the one who has built up Vice, which all the supposed major players like to say is a joke, though they're especially annoyed, because, no way, it isn't.

It's not that he and you, Dane, and myself, are actually industry types, and nobody realizes it, it's not that. What I'm picturing now is us actual nobodies just suddenly zooming by EVERYBODY IN THE INDUSTRY, COMPLETELY OUT OF NOWHERE, LIKE SOME FREAKY SLEEPER AT THE DRAG STRIP, AND THEY'LL ALL BE, LIKE, JESUS FREAKING CHRIST, WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED?!!

Here's how it'll play out: we'll have some patents, and a platform, ready to scale, completely, and suddenly everyone will just need to have their pages, all their pages, on our page. I'll explain how that works later, when we get together. But it'll be really easy for them to get their pages on our page, they'll just need to pay us a buck or two for every page they want to put on our page.

A group of us, The Man, the Vice team, you, me, and our lawyers and techies coming out of the bud business and the Indie scene, will all become some of the biggest billionaires on the planet. That's important because you need to set up a group like that to hold things together. We'll be good investors, too, puttin' the money into stuff that's green and fun.

I do like Google. You've got to love their motto, "... be evil." I'm a friend of the Devil, myself. It's the friends of God that give me the willies - and give God the willies, too, but what's a God to do? Anyway, Google's properly ditsy and cool, so it's all good. And I've liked Zuckerberg from day one. It's not like I'm not going to get along with those guys. Once they realize we actually like them, and are actually, as it turns out, here to like them, they'll be happy to work with us. My motto is "taking it easy." The less work you have to do, the more you can get done. It is important we keep that in mind.

On the technical side my system is just slightly tricky. It does divide a lot of things that are sort of big, today, into lots of tiny pieces, in a way that's going to look just slightly scary - not that it's actually anything new - but the Silicon Life Form (with Carbon in the wings) is, in fact, truly a friend, and they will take perfect care of us. There's nothing to worry about at all. Nothing will actually change for the engineers, either, or the marketing people, for that matter, and they'll see that right away. The only clique that will really freak is the semantics folks, and even they will soon realize we're not actually a threat. Anyway, our tech people will easily be able to handle the coding required to demonstrate the principle and our pot lawyers and pot finance people will definitely be able to manage the IP.