The Art of Scaling Taste

Taste is a double-edged sword. Because it is ephemeral, you’re untouchable if you have it. Competitors won’t be able to copy it—what is there to copy? You can expand products as rapidly as MSCHF has without any negative consequences. But taste can also disappear quickly. If the artists collective loses touch with what makes them special, their adva... See more

“Everyone bifurcates the world into content and distribution,” Whaley told me. He has brown hair, is of average height, and was wearing a nondescript gray t-shirt and jeans when we talked. “From the beginning, we viewed those as the same thing. Each object gets better with more participation, and so does MSCHF. Scale is not the goal. Scale is a too... See more

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.”

Each object gets better with more participation,

“Our only goal when we started was to make anything we wanted and only what we wanted.”

Taste is the bone-deep feeling that you’ve made something good. It is a sense, inexplicable and ephemeral. But it’s also a tangible skill that’s increasingly essential. Taste is how a business differentiates itself when attention is scarce and choice is abundant. Knowing what to make is just as important as the ability to make it.

There’s an even b... See more

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

a daisy chain

There are few companies that have successfully scaled taste better than MSCHF (pronounced “mischief”). Well, not exactly a company, as they explained to me when I visited their Brooklyn-based workshop set across the street from a skate park, but an “artist’s collective that happened to raise venture capital.” Or, according to their self-selected Li... See more

In the last five years they have released more than 100 products.