In this world, there is an abundance of products, and every industry becomes far more competitive.

How can a startup survive in this environment? The answer is deceptively simple: Have good taste.

Each drop is creative and rebellious, winking to the world that capitalism is a necessary joke. They do all of this with a team of 34 people, most of whom are generalists with no background in making physical goods.

One of the benefits of producing consistent creative work is that it comes with a narrative network effect: The more people who know and love the story of an object, the stronger the tie to that object becomes. For a brand like MSCHF, success might not always come from money—sometimes, it comes from products that reinforce how they want to articula... See more

Taste is the bone-deep feeling that you’ve made something good. It is a sense, inexplicable and ephemeral.

When I asked Whaley about the competitive advantage or vision for MSCHF, he bristled slightly and would only answer obliquely. “I have to think about MSCHF in a 100-year timeframe,” he told me. “Otherwise we are incentivized to take shortcuts.”

I think I understood what he meant. A century-long vision allows you to build something that mostly ignor... See more

learned how an object's inherent properties can make it grow quickly.

A century-long vision allows you to build something that mostly ignores short-lived fluctuations in public perception or personal feelings. With a vision of that duration, you can think outside of yourself. If you couple that with a hum-drum process of Google Sheets and brain-trust meetings, you can build something meaningful.

There is something bea... See more

The day I compromise what I write to satisfy the whims of some corporate overlord is the day that I quit writing for a career.

“Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.”