The Art of Scaling Taste

Hype is a flash in the pan. Narrative network effects are durable, long-lasting, and broadly applicable.

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.”

How do you become a 100-year company?

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?

If you’re disappointed by the mundane nature of this process, so was I. When I arrived at the office, I was half-expecting a bunch of artsy weirdos bedazzled with tattoos and attitude. Instead, I met a group of plainly dressed nice folks, mostly in their 20s and 30s, who worked hard at their craft but tried to keep the real world in sight. When I a... See more

“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.”

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

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 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.

Artists are not trained to think about distribution as part of their creative practice.”