All Good Things Must Start

It succeeds because the company was founded on a strong sense of taste, and its employees work hard to protect the original vision. That means pushing each other to make objects that test their creative abilities and earn enough revenue to ensure that the vision survives.

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

every good thing is a product of someone’s obsession

All this is to say is that for design, as for other fields, the road to greatness is often paved with obsession—an immoderate, unjustifiable surplus of care. Doing things that no-one asked for with a love that no-one could reasonably expect.