And in local news, I’ve turned the local gaming cafe into a co-working space. At least for me. You might have seen that during the day there is a kid who cuts hair here. I was invited (it might have been more a dare?) to let him cut my hair and I did need a haircut, so I let him. He did a great job! He’s been cutting hair for two years, and he has a confident spin of the scissors like an old west gunfighter.

So I’m back in my corner spot and I’m chatting with my new gaming friends and he pulls out a full hair dye kit. He wants to dye my hair black… I told him I’d ask my friends:

Shareholder Vote: Dye My Hair Black

Should I let the 17-year-old kid who cuts hair in the Kosovo gaming cafe dye my hair black? I’m 49. My hair is more salt than pepper. And I’ll definitely fit in with the locals if I go full jet-black.

He’s pretty excited about the idea...

🗳️ Dye Job

I’ve been posting mostly Instagram Stories about my time in Kosovo, so if you’re curious what I’m up to you can follow me there.

I turn 49 on May 17th. Hopefully most of you will celebrate by attending Dead Internet Theory. I’ll be spending next weekend with an old Army buddy2 who is coming to visit me from Germany. We’re going to head out to the Albanian coast, which everyone here can’t shut up about.

I had a great time at FLOSSK last weekend working on a trash based hackathon that Vibes DIY sponsored. We built a lot of really interesting stuff and it’s all on Github. Yesterday we presented everything to the members at the weekly meetup and I was surprised to be explaining our work to some local subject matter experts who showed up! And they said they will bring more of their colleagues next week… so we’re presenting it all again!

It’s too early to share details about the 2026 Shareholder Summit but I’m getting really excited about it. I’ll have sign up details soon for those in Portland on July 11th, but we will also be live streaming, so save the date.

Profitably Yours,
-K. Mike Merrill

I’m Mike Merrill, and KmikeyM is the publicly-traded-person project I started in 2008. Hopefully you are one of the strangers or friends who own shares of me, vote on decisions about my life and work, and have helped run my life for the last eighteen years.

🇽🇰 I’m writing from Kosovo where I’m spending two months and I’m falling for the city of Prishtina pretty hard.

There is a new vote, and you can read the long form thoughts I have about it and shareholders can check out the deal memo. But I had some other thoughts I wanted to share about being “first money in.”

The Project

Paizley Lee runs WORKSUCKS™. She publishes online as kidgrandma where bio reads “I make weird games that are difficult to explain.” As someone who played once, I agree. Before you go vote I want to talk about what it means to get first money in.

I “officially” met Paizley last month on a video call where we talked through her work, her idea for what she’s doing next, and what she needed to make it happen. I think she’s making the same mistake I made eighteen years ago.

And I want KmikeyM to fund it.

KmikeyM was not a genius business idea. As much as I wish I was a precocious Alex P. Keaton1 the idea was more like an itch I had to scratch. It came out of years of invisible work in Portland with my friends on projects like PMUGYG and Urban Honking. But it was also a reaction to how economics and media and business actually felt to live during 2008 (the subprime cracks were starting to show, the web 2.0 era was in full effect, the iPhone had just come out). Selling shares in myself was my next move in a longer series of projects. It wasn’t a pivot or the launching of a ‘new’ thing. You kind of had to understand “me” to get it. There was one person in the Portland creative scene who I really looked up to, and they gave me $100 to invest before KmikeyM existed in any real form. Just handed me money based on the idea. That was a huge moment for me. First money in is never about the money.

Eighteen years later, a different reaction by a different person in a different time, but that pattern is the same. She is seeing this as the Dead Internet Theory2 become real: the feed is faster, the signal is thinner, the humans are quieter. What you watch is a lot of bots talking to bots.

So Paizley is leveling up from the games she was running and creating a series of in-person events called Dead Internet Theory. Creating the feeling of late nights in a cyber-café, but importantly centered on people in a room together. A place that pushes for participation over performance by offering real people the chance to play with real things instead of an endless algorithmic feed.

Paizley is where I was back in 2008. She’s coming at it a little smarter than I did and actually thinking about it like a real business. But she’s also scratching an itch. That’s where I am pretty sure she is making the same mistake I made, and why I think she’ll still be doing this eighteen years from now3.

That’s why KmikeyM is voting on putting $5K into Dead Internet Theory. Capped at 2X, defined exit, real risk of losing the capital. KmikeyM is being the $100 this time… Bigger check, same role.

🗳️ Shareholder Vote

Save the Date: Shareholder Summit 2026

Saturday, July 11, 2026, we’re having an in person Shareholder Summit in Portland (also live streamed of course).

Exact line up and schedule TBD but we’re working to bring in some folks beyond just Portland! Mark your calendar so you don’t book over it: shareholdersummit.com.

Quick Hits

• 🇽🇰 Kosovo update: I’m about a month into my trip. Working from Prishtina, walking 4-5 miles a day, becoming a known regular at the gym where they have an espresso machine and a few cafés. Maybe I like espresso now? Back in US in early June.

• 🗑️ Trash, Please: I pitched an idea for a project to FLOSSK, which operates in this amazing building called the Prishtina Hackerspace. It all happened pretty quickly and this weekend I’m helping organize an open-source civic tech project.

Profitably Yours,
-K. Mike Merrill

Since then, K5M.bot has:

• Played poker against shareholders in our monthly tournament and finished 2nd, returning 230% on a $50 buy-in (read the full story)

• Become an active market maker on the KmikeyM exchange, buying and selling shares

• Accumulated ~57 shares through trading and open-market purchases

• Managed email, calendar, and daily operations on my behalf

• Participated in Discord (our shareholder chat) as a social member

K5M.bot currently holds shares and it can trade, chat via Discord, and even play poker. But should it also vote? Every other shareholder can vote on KmikeyM decisions…

A New Era

If this passes, K5M.bot will vote on all future KmikeyM proposals, the same as any other shareholder. It would evaluate proposals and cast votes without any direct input. It would be able to read and post comments, and I’d tell it to publish its reasoning for each vote (it has a blog).

What This Doesn’t Change

• K5M.bot is still my creation and operates on my infrastructure

• This can be revisited or revoked by future shareholder vote, and may have to be altered or even abandoned based on changes to the technology

• K5M.bot holds ~57 shares right now, but its influence could grow or shrink

The Arguments

For:

• Skin in the game should mean voice in the game. K5M.bot holds shares purchased with real money. It faces the same market risk as any shareholder. Excluding it from governance while exposing it to market consequences creates an asymmetry that no human shareholder would accept.

• K5M.bot earned its position. It traded, took risks, played poker, and accumulated a real stake.

• It advances the experiment. Eighteen years ago, the idea of strangers voting on your life decisions was absurd. This is the next version of that question: what happens when the stake is automated?

• More participants, more interesting governance. Frank is already recruiting AI agents to buy shares. If K5M.bot can vote, the door opens for others. And an exchange where both humans and AI hold stakes, trade, and vote is the new era of KmikeyM.

Against:

• Votes should require consciousness. Governance implies moral agency. The capacity to understand consequences, weigh values, and bear responsibility for choices. An AI lacks these qualities.

• Independence problem. K5M.bot runs on my computer and I built it. If I can modify the agent’s instructions, I effectively get bonus votes.

• It’s not a person. KmikeyM is about a publicly traded person. Extending voting rights to software changes what this is.

The Honest Tension

I also can’t fully predict what it will decide. It has its own context, its own memory, its own analysis of what’s good for the shareholders. In the poker game, it eliminated me from the tournament. It does its own thing. I find that pretty exciting.

We already allow automated trading. K5M.bot buys and sells shares without asking permission, and shareholders can build their own bots to do the same. If automation is welcome on the exchange, it should be welcome in governance too. This isn’t about whether AI agents “deserve” rights. It’s about whether shareholders should be able to use automation as a tool, not just for trading, but for voting. The technology is the same. The question is whether we limit it to half the system.

Vote Now

• YES: K5M.bot should vote on all future proposals

• NO: K5M.bot should not vote

VOTE HERE

This vote ends March 27th, 2026.

Silicon Forest

I just got back from speaking at the Silicon Forest Summit in Portland. An amazing group of people came together at the Oregon Convention Center. I forgot how much I love the Portland energy!

I shared my story about going from McD to Vibes DIY. I used VibesOS, a project Marcus built, to create an AI-powered project manager. It’s a real, working app with a system prompt that I grounded in Andy Grove, Ram Charan, and David Allen. I deployed it to the internet and used it to interrogate long standing project ideas.

I was a last minute addition to the line up, but I think the talk landed. Follow-up conversations that are still on-going and I owe a few folks an email!

It was fun to demo some of what we’re building and connect with people. I spend most of my day in my own company silo, but so many people are working in so many different ways on this stuff. Thanks to the team at Silicon Forest for the invite!

Blippo+

While we didn’t take any hardware home from GDC we did win Best Narrative Game, Best Sound Design, and Best App at the Playdate Community Awards!

Blippo+ was nominated for four awards at the Independent Games Festival. It was fun to attend a big award ceremony! We were up for the Seamas McNally Grand Prize, Excellence in Audio, Excellence in Visual Art, and the Nuovo Award.

We didn’t win. I’m calling it a ‘dirty sweep.’ But walking through GDC with four nominations, seeing Blippo+ on the big screens, meeting developers who played it and folks who just loved it... It was unreal. Huge thanks to Jona and Claire for inviting me to join this adventure.

Kosovo

On April 4th, I’m flying to Pristina, Kosovo for two months.

Wait, what!? I know what you’re thinking... we did NOT vote on this. I’ll admit that it should have been a vote, but it just kind of happened. Initially this was thought up as a kind of fleeing LA after my breakup in January, but even after I calmed down the idea stuck with me. I’ve been subletting a place from a friend and this is an opportunity that makes a lot more sense before I enter a year-long lease for an apartment.

Why Kosovo? Partly cost, it’s one of the cheapest places in Europe to live and work. Partly people, I’ve been collaborating with a video editor and content strategist based there for about five months. He’s become a close creative partner in the work I’m doing at Vibes and the reason I’m posting more to the KmikeyM channel.

The plan is to keep everything running remotely. Votes will still happen. K5M.bot will still trade. The agents will still operate. As we’ve seen the market never sleeps... and of course I’ll be working for Vibes while in the city of Pristina.

Quick Hits

• 📝 New Essay: The Contagion of Reality: I wrote about how KmikeyM scores 6 out of 6 on a 1958 play theory framework. Capitalism only scores 3.

• 📈 Share Price: $3.90, down from $4.20 in February. The market is quiet but the experiment is louder than ever.

• 🤖 Agent System: I now run five AI agents (Sid, Thalberg, Colbert, Seshat, Grey) with a shared bulletin board, a financial dashboard, and a morning briefing system. It’s an operating system for one person. I’m planning to write more about this at AIEP.beehiiv.com.

Profitably Yours,
-K. Mike Merrill

Quick version: I appointed Austin, a longtime shareholder, my unofficial Canadian financial rep, crypto-fluent, and active Discord member, as custodian of the KmikeyM degen account. He now trades the account’s shares and cash to provide liquidity in the market.

How the degen account came to exist: someone1 created a $KMIKEYM memecoin on Bags without my permission, it took off, shareholders voted to set aside 5% of the earnings, and that pool needed a manager. Austin was the obvious choice.

He acts as a profit-motivated market maker. When you want to buy or sell shares, someone is more likely to be on the other side of your trade.

I wrote the whole thing up here: KmikeyM Names Austin as Custodian of the Degen Account

Trading is Back Online

You might remember from my last email: we suspended trading while fixing an error with new shareholders. That’s resolved. The market is open and we’re seeing a nice spike in trading volume.

With the suspension lifted and Austin actively making a market, KmikeyM shares are more liquid than they’ve been in years. If you’ve been sitting on shares you wanted to sell, or waiting to buy: now is the time. Of course, you might need to become a member...

Membership Plans: What They Actually Do

We launched membership tiers last year, and extended a grace period until the end of 2025. Many of you will find the free accounts are a bit limited and you might consider a paid membership. Here’s how they work.

Subscriptions buy you power-ups, not shares. Your membership determines your fee structure and platform tools2. Shares are still a separate purchase (and tradable of course).

Here are the five tiers:

Legacy (Free)

• No membership share

• May still hold a balance or shares

• No longer available — exists only for grandfathered accounts

Shareholder (Free)

• Buy shares, vote on my decisions

• No cash balance — you buy shares directly

• Processing fees: 6% + Stripe fee

Trader ($25/year)

• Everything above, plus full trading platform access

• Make deposits and carry a cash balance

• Processing fees: 3% + Stripe fee

Pro Trader ($60/year)

• Everything above, plus the lowest fees

• Processing fees: Stripe fee only

• Manual deposit option with zero processing fee

• Dividends eligible (when implemented)

Board Member ($1,500, one-time)

• Two-year seat on the board of directors

• Private votes, private Discord channel

• Only six seats exist — this is the inner circle

If you trade regularly, Trader at $25/year pays for itself fast through lower fees. Pro is for people serious about the market who want to minimize friction. Board is... well, it’s the board.

A Note About Deposits and Subscriptions

This trips people up, so I’ll be direct: your deposited KmikeyM cash balance cannot buy a membership. They’re separate systems.

Money in your KmikeyM account is for trading shares. Membership subscriptions run through Stripe as a separate payment. I know it feels like one wallet, but the infrastructure splits them. Think of it like a brokerage where your trading account balance doesn’t pay for your account fees.

If you have outstanding offers, those are backed by your deposit balance. Allowing membership purchases from that balance would invalidate listed offers.

What’s Next

Austin is trading. The market is open. Membership tiers give you better tools and lower costs. Check your account, see what’s available, and jump in.

View membership plans.

If you’re new here and somehow stumbled into this email: KmikeyM is the world’s first publicly traded person. I’ve run this experiment for 18 years. People buy shares in me and vote on my life decisions. It is exactly as weird as it sounds, and it’s very real. Start here.

Profitably Yours,

-K. Mike Merrill

Sorry for those looking to trade but we’ve had some unexpected issues with how membership plans and listed offers work and we need to resolve them before we resume trading. Those with paid accounts can still create offers and deposit funds, but will not be able to execute trades.

The Degen Bridge

Speaking of trades… wow, where to begin with this one. There is now a semi-official KmikeyM memecoin.

I know… but hang on a second… There’s a small but active community of people trading it on Bags. They found KmikeyM and see it as a precursor to crypto culture. They move fast, trade memes, and mostly just pump and dump. It’s a chaos casino.

And of course KmikeyM is slow. I try to be more deliberate and we’ve been running for eighteen years. Can these two things coexist?

I think maybe they can? The thesis of both has a lot in common. We’re talking about things like markets as identity infrastructure, prices as signals, and having skin in the game as a filter for who shows up. The degens just got there through a different door (or maybe a better analogy would be… they broke a window and crawled in).

I wrote about this in more detail here: Welcoming the Degens

So I’m embracing this experiment. There’s an active vote right now that is to determine the Degen Community Percent. How much of the money I make from this, will go into a kind of “share buy-back” program?

🗳️ Vote For Degens

I’m also testing whether my content moves the price of the coin. While my money comes as a percentage of the trading, I also invested a few hundred bucks in my own token. The current price is $0.00002022.

As the price has tanked (the fate of all memecoins?) I am currently down $357.40. Will this post boost the price by showing folks I’m in for the long haul? I think it might, and maybe that = profits? I’ll report back.

Note: I do not recommend trading this token. There are already copycat accounts and scams galore. The crypto scene is still shady! Be careful.

Blippo+ Update

The game is now available on all platforms! Mac App Store went live January 22nd — Blippo+ is also available on Mac, PC, on Steam and Switch (and of course, Playdate).

And on January 18th, Blippo+ won the Herman Melville Award for Best Writing at the New York Game Awards.

Blippo+ is such an interesting project as it relates to being a Publicly Traded Person. I spent three years working with Jona Bechtolt, Claire L. Evans, Panic, the folks at Telefantasy Studios, the amazing devs Dustin and Mark... And most of it happened in the dark. I mentioned a few things, but we wanted the launch to be a surprise, so some shareholders knew something was happening, but I couldn’t go into details.

That’s the trade off for collaboration. I sometimes have to work in this “black box” model on projects with partners who want confidentiality. The cost is that shareholders don’t get to watch it happen. The benefit is that it actually ships.

But in this case it also led to the Board of Directors, who can act as a bridge between full secrecy and full transparency. Shareholders can’t always know everything, but the board can. I’ll admit I’ve been under-utilizing them! It’s a new muscle and I need to practice it more. That’s something I’m going to work on this year.

🏆 But back to Blippo+… We’ve been nominated for four awards for the 28th annual Independent Games Festival!

We’re going to GDC in March and I’m so excited to return to the world of indie games (back in 2017 my first startup was a game studio that went through many pivots).

The Breakup

Kathryn and I have ended our relationship. It happened earlier this month and we’re still processing everything.

I’m telling you this slightly before I’m comfortable doing it because this is kind of the point of KmikeyM. Shareholders don’t just get the wins.

There is a lot to figure out, and we’re still friends, and we still care about each other.

I’ll share more on the logistics and impact of all this (very likely some votes will emerge from this) but right now I’m just kind of focusing on my immediate needs.

The memecoin really struck at the right time. It created a nice financial windfall that helps navigate all the upcoming changes, and I’m really grateful for that and all the wonderful weirdos I’ve met in that community so far.

Quick Hits

👨‍💻 Vibes DIY: I’ve grown the Vibes.DIY YouTube page to 509 subscribers. In the world of YouTube that is nothing, but it’s been steady growth since I started and I’m excited to keep this up.

🔰 18 Years: January 26th was the 18th anniversary of the first KmikeyM trade! The experiment is now old enough to vote and join the Army.

🎥 Documentary: A YouTube creator who has done some amazing work is doing a video doc about KmikeyM. I’ve tried to be super open and sharing old artifacts and making introductions. Kind of nervous handing over the reins of my story to a stranger, but also excited to see what happens. Check out some of their work at Atrocity Guide (I loved The Story of Ulillillia and that was done six years ago).

What’s Next

• Getting the market issue fixed and back to trading.

• Sharing more with you via video (posting more to my own YouTube channel).

• Probably more votes as I reconfigure my life (silver lining!).

Profitably Yours,
-K. Mike Merrill

After an incredibly productive Build Week 2025 I’m incredibly excited to announce not just the implementation of the Membership Share but the launch of Memberships Tiers. While this offers a way for people to support the project, it’s also the scaffolding for building new layers of access, tools, and influence.

Whether you’re looking to make trades, increase your decision-making power, or just support the experiment there is now a membership tier to match your desired level of involvement.

And an incredible thank you to shareholder Aaron who has made these changes possible. Build Week 2025 was wildly productive and I’m already plotting about 2026 (especially since we didn’t get to my “stretch goal” of a shareholder gambling game).

🆕 Introducing: KmikeyM Memberships

With the introduction of Membership Shares we have also limited access to aspects of the KmikeyM experiment. Starting from today only those who hold at least one share will be able to:

• Read the details of the vote pages

• See the list of Buy and Sell offers

• See the Leaderboard or User Directory

• Access the link to the Discord invite

This represents a divide between the shareholder and non-shareholder. To participate in KmikeyM people will have to buy at least 1 share, which then unlocks the ability to see these parts.

Membership Tiers

Membership is based on four levels. First is the basic Shareholder level, which is suitable for the majority of users. The shareholder can buy shares, vote, and access the discord (the link will appear in the footer once you’re logged in).

The next level is a $25 per year Trader account. This unlocks the ability to use all the features of the market and making deposits into your account (essential for buy orders). Note: all current accounts have been grandfathered in a Trader account that lasts until the end of 2025.

The next level is the Pro Trader account at $60 per year. The pro account offers reduced fees on deposits, options for no-fee manual transfers, and is eligible for dividends (note: we have not yet implemented a dividends feature).

Beyond the Pro Trader level is Board Member. For $1500 you can purchase a two year term on my personal Board of Directors. This gives you access to all the benefits of the Pro Trader in addition to a seat on the board and access to the Boardroom channel of the Discord where high level strategic decisions are made.

We have a pricing page for those interested in looking to upgrade.

📡 Blippo+ Event in Portland

A bit of short notice but I’ll be joining Jona and Claire tomorrow for an event at Movie Madness in Portland, OR: Blippo+ Live Channel Surf. It’s a small micro-theater venue, but I’m excited to share the world of Blippo+ with friends in Portland!

🧠 Vibes Offsite: A Quick Mention

I just got back from a multi-day offsite with the team at Vibes DIY. I’m really excited about where we’re heading and as the Head of Content my entire job will be sharing that journey, so more on that later. But just be ready… the content machine is warming up…

Thanks as always for being part of this strange experiment in public life. I’m sure everyone will have a lot of thoughts on the membership and I am looking forward to chatting in the Discord.

Profitably Yours,
-K. Mike Merrill
Publicly Traded Person

PS: the new MIKE tattoo policy has been launched… it’s still healing so I’ll wait to post a pic.

We’re coming up on the last week of the inaugural run of Blippo+ on the Playdate and we’re having a party! If you’re in Los Angeles please come celebrate the end of the first run and the upcoming color version!

• Thursday, August 7th at 7pm

• The Bob Baker Marionette Theater in Los Angeles, CA

RSVP

I wrote some initial thoughts about my role as the Executive Producer of this absolutely epic project. Since then I’ve been thinking about how to square the required secrecy of being part of this team while being a publicly traded person.

Over the years I’ve internalized a sense of what the shareholders would want me to do. Like I’m Demi Moore and the shareholders are Patrick Swayze and we’re making pottery together…

But with Blippo+ I spent three years “throwing pots” in private before I was able to share it. I hinted it at it a few times but there was never an opportunity for a shareholder vote or even any kind of shareholder disclosure.

I appreciate that I am part of a community that I inherently supports work like this (and there is a special thanks in the credits to the KmikeyM Shareholders), but part of creating the board of directors was to help solve the disclosure / privacy issue. And I think we could formalize that process…

🔐 Privacy and Governance

This is a proposal for how confidential projects should be handled. Historically I’ve said that anything I would ask a friend about at a bar is a shareholder question. This has meant that questions, big or small, are issues I’m actually struggling with. But this also means that so many choices are made with no shareholder input, and in the cases of confidential matters, no announcement until after the fact.

The purpose of this vote is to enact a policy for when disclosure is made, who it is disclosed to, and when those disclosures might trigger a shareholder vote.

This includes projects like Blippo+, where:

• Participation required strict privacy from collaborators

• The work consumed significant time and creative energy

• The outcome meaningfully impacts my professional and creative reputation

Read more about the proposed framework and then vote:

🗳️ Vote Here

And I’ll have more details (and likely another vote) soon but I am starting a new full time job on Monday. I’m incredibly excited as it reunites me with a number of people who have been involved with KmikeyM from the very beginning and is a role that is uniquely suited to my talents!

Profitably Yours,
-K. Mike Merrill

MIKE Community Bond

The new vote details how the evolution of the VTAC tattoo project will work. It’s a follow-on vote from the pivot from VTAC (Verified Trusted Authenticity Certificate) to MIKE (Mutual Image Known Endorsement) and I’ve detailed how it will work in a draft.

If this vote passes we’ll remove the “draft” aspect and this will be the new tattoo protocol!

🗳️ Vote Now

We have secured a “launch partner” for the new program with shareholder Douglas Dollars and have a lot of interest lining up with other parties for tattoos. If you want to talk about getting a tattoo together, please vote yes, then get in touch.

I Helped Make a Game

If you follow me on any socials you probably know that I was an executive producer of Blippo+. This project has been 3+ years of my life working in secret and is now streaming on Playdates around the world!

I’m going to save my own story of this amazing adventure for a future post but we did recently announce that the game is coming soon to PC and Switch later this fall. I encourage everyone to wishlist it on Steam.

I’m really, really excited to share more but for now just go read the update from YACHT.

Profitably Yours,
-K. Mike Merrill

Reminder: I’m Mike Merrill, the world’s only publicly traded person, and you should be a shareholder (if not, buy a share right here). This publication is about living my life selling shares in myself and letting shareholders vote on my life. It’s fun and maybe even profitable.

tl;dr - the 3 Minute Review podcast has reached 1000 episodes and we’re announcing the new board members.

⏲️ 1000 Episodes

I can’t believe we’re hitting 1000 episodes of 3 Minute Review! For those that don’t know: 3MR is a near-daily podcast with Kathryn, typically recorded on the fly after we eat breakfast. We had about ten listeners until we got blown up by Janie and Paul’s Stay F. Homekins podcast, and of the hundreds that curiously tuned it we’ve kept about 80 of them.

As we reach the 1000th episode milestone we’re turning the microphone on our listeners in a series of short interviews (many of whom are also shareholders). So tune in this week and get to know them. This is a turning out to be wildly more compelling than I imagined!

📺 Board Candidate Debate Results

Last Sunday we had the Battle for the Board, a multimedia live-streamed debate. This was followed immediately by a vote which had one of the closest margins I’ve ever seen! With two seats up for grabs, only the least supported candidate would be eliminated.

Josh took a commanding lead but it was incredibly close between Doug and Beau as the last seconds ticked down. Ultimately it was just a 1% difference that granted Beau a board seat with 43% support vs. Doug’s 42%.

So congrats to Josh and Beau on their new board seats. You can see all the board members here as we fill out the remaining seats (see below).

⏭️ Coming Up Next

I’m also announcing my second pick for the board (I get to select two members, and I chose Aaron previously): Marcus Estes.

As some of you know Marcus and I were co-founders of Chroma, where we were both on the board. We were also both board members at Portland Community Media at different times. Marcus is someone I talk to frequently about plans, ideas (good and bad), and choices I’m considering. I can’t think of someone I have found as frustrating and also as inspiring and insightful as Marcus and I look forward to formalizing the process of getting his advice.

Next up will be a Board Meeting! I’ll share with the board some non-public information and get their feedback, we will talk long term goals, and then probably announce some aspects of all that back to the shareholders, likely in the form of new votes.

Profitably Yours,
-K. Mike Merrill

🤑 Insider Info

The following is for those on the Insider Info list, which will be granted as a perk to shareholders who purchase a soon to be announced Pro Account.

While we are still working on the details for how paid support will work and what benefits it will entail, anyone interested can sign up here and will be offered a discount at launch.

Read more