One of the pinnacles of human existence is to align our innate desire to create with our day-to-day labor.
So I was taken aback by the degree by which everyone at MSCHF embraced the capitalist nature of their enterprise. In this regard, our conversations sounded more like those I’d have with a startup than with an artist’s commune. During multiple visits with the leadership team, I heard the same Andy Warhol quote several times: “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.”
In early interviews with Whaley, he often talked about the internet being the magic ingredient to MSCHF: “Life is too short and the internet is too big to not make what you want.”
Anyone at MSCHF—from the four-person design team to the chief legal counsel, who practiced law with Obama in Chicago—can suggest what to build next. They’ll enter the idea into a Google document. A central brain trust of five people, consisting of Whaley and the four other founding members who joined in 2019 (including Wiesner), reviews the ideas once every month or two. The best ones have to fit a single criterion: “If we could make this tomorrow, we would.” The culled ideas go into another Google doc where they have to sit and marinate.
