I have spent the better part of my intellectually conscious life trying to algorithmically “beat the market.” (To be precise, I started around age seventeen; I am now twenty-five.) According to some very well-tested academic theories regarding markets, I am pursuing a fool’s-dream. I have continued to labor this long under the assumption that there is a pretty obvious selection problem when it comes to publishing findings that contradict financial orthodoxy: if you were to find a method that earned out-sized returns, I don’t believe academic prestige trumps monetary gains. It is my perception that people who end up as professors of finance are typically people who had the desire to study markets in order to profit from them, but who never found their holy grail. If they had found something spectacular, I don’t think the incentive to publish is very high. (There are exceptions, but nothing ground-breaking.)

After eight years, I have nothing concrete to show for my efforts. As a consequence of shifting needs, I have learned a lot of computer science (e.g. compiler design, algorithms, and some unnecessarily high number of languages). Obviously, this skill set is valuable, but I have no successful projects to use as credentials. Every few months, I find myself excited over the preliminary results of my increasingly sophisticated simulations, only to be disappointed a few short weeks later to find that I was simply wrong. This has happened so many times that I no longer grow excited when I see positive results — I’ve grown into a hardened, semi-depersonalized skeptic.

My latest iteration of development appears exceptionally promising, but I expect it to bear no fruits. I learn each time, and my understanding of markets (and complex systems in general) is approaching some level of refinement, but I have no way of estimating when I might cross the line into profitability; worse I may be approaching this level asymptotically, with my limitations acting as a ceiling just below my goal. I feel like a modern day Tantalus.

I recognize that “beating the market” algorithmically may be either impossible or simply out of my reach, but I soldier on because I still find it fascinating. I believe that, had I switched course years ago, writing off the project as foolish, I would have probably, or at least possibly, been wealthy by other means by now. (Every time I started pursuing a product development project, I found myself shifting back towards market soon after the initial new project euphoria had faded.) If I could offer advise to my younger self, prior to perusing this path, I’d probably say don’t make the attempt. I have neither ethical nor moral objections to profiting by speculation. I merely believe I could have acquired the satisfaction that comes from achievement a long time ago, instead of bearing the frustration that accompanies not achieving something in spite of my best efforts. Nonetheless, I will not stop trying. I’m not blind to the possibility that I am a smart fool, but I want this more than anything else. I’m not sure where I would draw the line, where I would finally say giving up is the proper thing to do. I hope I never have to make that decision. I hope success finally obliterates the need for that decision.

I’m not sure why I wrote this. To some degree, it might be a warning notice to those who are considering following this path. As I said, I find markets fascinating, but most people (my earlier self included) enter the fray believing it to be a sure and short path to riches; it’s not. There are far less risky paths to wealth, especially for entrepreneurial programmers.

Learning a new programming language is fun. Different languages take different approaches to solving problems — they follow different paradigms. Learning a new language feels a lot like exploring, and I like exploring.

Exposure to more than one language is a good thing. However, once you are familiar with the broad paradigms, there exists a danger of conflating learning new languages with learning new ways to solve problems. In my case I forgot that programming languages are tools. Learning new languages can be seen as acquiring new tools. Learning a set of very similar languages is of limited utility because your not actually gaining anything new. There is almost no marginal benefit. To make things less abstract, compare the promisculous language learner with a carpenter. Carpenters don’t seem to suffer from the same error of judgement. There might be several brands of hammers offering slightly different features, but they all pound nails into wood.

I still enjoy learning new languages, but I don’t do so with such fervent desperation anymore. I’ve ceased my semi-conscious search for the best one. Instead, I finally realized my time is best spent studying algorithms, learning new programming techniques, and contributing to existing projects. This is much more rewarding than implementing the same software in twenty-three languages.

P.S. This post is a follow up to Consumerism and Programming Polyglots. I wrote Consumerism and Programming Polyglots a while ago. When I reread it today, I was very dissatisfied. It hinted at what I wanted to say, but it was inarticulate — mostly because I didn’t understand what mistake I was making by learning languages promiscuously. I think I get it now. Six month from now, I’m sure I’ll identify an entirely new aspect of my miseducation.

P.P.S. I wrote the title down, remembering someone had said it to me once when critiquing another post, Back to PHP. I searched my email before publishing this post and discovered it was Zed Shaw. This was disheartening. It took me several months since my original post to come to a conclusion that was accurately summed up by his flippant response: “All this fetishizing of technology is kind of pointless.”

The title is scraped from the link text I used to describe an article I wrote in 2004, during my first semester of college. I think I did it to satisfy a creative writing class assignment, only it wasn’t particularly creative since it was true. Reading it now, I take particular pleasure in the bits about “violently opposing” government intrusions into the internet. (I miss youthful indignation, self-righteousness, and the joys of masquerading as a rebel.)

It is also poetic in a semi-tragic way that, within a few weeks after writing this and resolving to “make a lot of money while doing something truly worthwhile,” I was diagnosed with cancer. It’s been nearly six years, but it looks like I might soon start making good on that promise.

The following is copied verbatim from the internet archives of that article.

Sometime last year, I had started maintaining email correspondence with a number of people from a diverse set of professions. Whenever I had an idea or a question that I was unable to fully flesh out or answer myself, I would find someone who was an “expert” on the topic and email them. Initially, I received replies, but they were terse. Courtesy dictated that they answer — especially those at academic institutions – but they felt no obligation to continue the conversation.¹

As time progressed, my messages became more finely crafted. My questions were more specific and the background material was assembled with more clarity. I learned to write better.² The act of writing diligently was in and of itself helpful, and writing with a critical reader in mind imposed diligence. I now offered value to the recipient, whereas before I was at best a nuisance. My ideas and alleged insights were at least well-formed, albeit not always novel. The recipients began to answer out of interest instead of obligation. The correspondence ceased to be one-sided — now, I had conversations and debates. At the point when I started BCC’ing people, I realized it would simply be easier to continue in blog format. Instead of updating a few people with a follow up email, they could just revisit the post and look for edits or comments; instead of emailing the same group of people every time I had a new idea, they could just add me to their Google Reader.

Like many nerds, I have attempted to create many blogs. (A small set, limited only by those I can recall instantly, includes: JustLikeJesse, ChasingSparks, jbn, and JohnBNelson.) Previously, I started blogging motivated by either AdSense or vanity — I wanted either money or attention or both. My interest in blogging waned shortly after the ubiquitous “Hello, World!” post and immediately before I found anything interesting to say. This blog, PathDependent, is the only blog of mine that has not floundered after one week — and it’s the only one where money and fame were never motivators.

Assuming I write reasonably well, my blog posts get attention. Attention by itself is useless at best while attention with comments is very valuable. There are limits to what I see in my own writing and thought processes. An idea may have such appeal to me that I completely ignore very relevant, seemingly tangential details — or major mistakes. Commenters — especially those that I do not know and thus have no requirement of politeness given anonymous commenting — have become unit testers for my ideas. Without commenters — private or public — I would not maintain this blog.

I blog because it helps me learn.

Notes:

1. Looking back, many of the emails resembled a parent handling a child who persisted in recursive “but why?” conversations. I’m almost embarrased by some of the messages.
2. HackerNews is probably more responsible for improving my writing than anything else. Conversation threads with karma acts like a unit test framework for ideas expressed in English.
3. I am defining success in terms of how it helps me explore ideas. The metric I use to judge success is the number of email messages elicited by each post.  I usually get a handful per-post now. While my traffic stats are beyond my expectations, traffic is valuable only insofar as it improves the odds of good feedback.

The self-declared ‘Mystery‘ treats courtship as an interaction between a man and a finite automata, the woman. His eponymous method — the Mystery Method in promotional materials and MM to its adherents — essentially instructs adopters on how to crack a woman’s instinctual suitable-mate, pattern matching machinery to elicit (false-) positives.  The ad copy proclaims it to be a brilliant self-help book and it is often billed as a way for shy, nice guys to get girlfriends. Ostensibly it is — in practice it’s not. This book is not about getting girlfriends. It’s about substituting sexual frustrations caused by lack of sex with sexual gluttony.

If you are, or at least believe yourself to be, a good man, acquiring the tools to overcome your own social phobias and a woman’s strong, evolutionarily-endowed defences is both self-improvement and mutually advantageous. Unfortunately, I doubt that this group dominates his readers. Instead, I assume the majority of his customers are men lured into reading his books because doing so offers the promise of getting laid by any attractive woman that falls under their gaze. (Even in Neil Strause’s best-seller, The Game, some of the PUAs seemed border-line sociopathic.) The subtitle of the book is devoid the ethical girlfriend pretence: “How to Get Beautiful Women Into Bed.” The language used between the covers is more telling: women are (Hot Babe) HB7’s, HB8’s, HB9’s, and HB10’s. People buy it because they want to turn the fantasy world of pornography into their reality.

I am not saying this book is without value. On the contrary, I find no fault in the efficacy of his methods in the context of cracking women nor do I think his ideas on “social dynamics” are erroneous. From an evolutionary perspective, his narrative is plausible, even probable. After years of what appears to be meticulous study, he impressively reverse-engineered women. Unfortunately, the few good, albeit shy, men admitted into his realm, if they are astute readers, are probably perverted by their education. The original goal of finding a girlfriend turns to an addiction of cracking women — to “The Game.”

Mystery might counter that this is justified because it is natural. It is merely the product of evolution. If it wasn’t his readers, it would be the guy who is naturally manipulative or happened to accidentally posses or learn social procedures that get him laid. However, something viewed as natural or an artifact of evolution (or history) is neither moral nor beyond morality. Society enforces certain protocols to correct some of our biological quirks and inadequacies. As Mystery says, “the human being is an out-dated model.” Thankfully, our ability to share knowledge and socialize has supplemented our operating systems. Cracking our biological systems violates our socially constructed protocols. It is blatant manipulation. He admits his theories are based on a woman’s evolutionary drive to find a man that ensures her survival, while in the next breath he explains how this can help you get between her legs. ”Hacking” (i.e. in the colloquial sense that pisses off proper hackers) was cool at age 13; hacking is not cool at age 25 — it’s criminal.

I find no fault in youthful promiscuity. Oscar Wilde could have written a novel about my college years. It was part of my development as a person and I have (almost) no regrets. However, I always had some recognition as to the vapid nature of what I was doing. Mystery and his pickup hucksters want to nullify that socialized feeling, feeling themselves justified by our selfish genes and tribal heritage. Do there techniques work? Sure, but at a heavy cost. Years later, you might finding yourself watching The Blue Lagoon on Starz at 3:00am, realizing that you haven’t felt the feelings that the movie depicted — intimacy with consequence — since before “correcting” yourself.

…And you’ll realize you made a mistake.

P.S. I suppose it seems hypocritical of me to lambast Mystery and his cohorts. I have obviously read their material. However, I consider myself to be a hacker: I enjoy learning for the sake of learning. Whether it be an exposition on syntax-directed translation or pre-Raphaelite painters, I am curious. It could be correctly observed that understanding leads to, or is tangled with, exploration and exploration can lead to exploitation and corruption. I offer no counter-argument. In my case, I only hope that the temptation is attenuated due to previous experiences (i.e. college promiscuity) and increasing maturity.

P.P.S. I should also point out that I think Mystery — the media superstar of the pick-up artists — actually seems like a good guy. Sadly, I think he may be condemning himself to the second circle of hell, figuratively speaking. I think he genuinely believes that he is helping shy but good men in his workshops. I just think his readers — and best students — are probably predominately horny assholes turned oversexed assholes. Adverse selection is a bitch.

Yesterday, in a leisurely scotch drinking session at my neighbors house, the conversation shifted to recent reads. Both husband and wife are avid readers, the former exclusively non-fiction, the latter mostly fiction. I asked him why he only read non-fiction, and he suggested that fiction was a waste of his time — he read to learn, not for “mere” entertainment. I used to think this way; I no longer do. If anything, my time spent reading fiction now exceeds time spent reading non-fiction. (Although, admittedly, I read less non-fiction now because in certain areas, I have achieved a semblance of expertise. Consequently, experimentation dominates my learning method.)

Obviously, fiction can inspire. Reading a good book with a plot that is relatable is not only entertaining, but often is motivating. Granting motivation, fiction can be a useful productivity tool. However, more importantly, fiction guides your personality. In the process of identifying with characters, fiction moves from a passive medium to an active one. You actively speculate as to what you would do in an identical situation and compare it against the character’s actions. The comparison is a process of judgement; it’s supervised learning, with a dead tree as the teacher.

Fiction allows you to be part of situations that are unlikely to happen otherwise. You can experience thousands of years worth of events by reading fiction. Yes, it is true that what happens to you in real-life — with it’s finality and incompariably richer stimulation – out-weighs that of a book. However, the course altering moments in life are infrequent. Fiction provides a means of accelerating your “personal growth.”

What follows is a list of characters that have become integrated as part of my self. I am not a summation of them; I have pieced together certain traints from them. Most of which were selected because I already had such a quality; many of which were selected because I found them admirable. (The later being more important.) Yes, my family, friends, and experiences have contributed more to who I am, but the following contributions were not negligible.

I am Morpheus.
I am Drago.
I am Lord Finkle-McGraw.
I am Hardin.
I am Francisco; I am Galt; I am Rearden.
I am Roark. I am Wynand.
I am Will Parry; I am Lord Asreil.
I am Ender.
I am Gray.
I am Guy Montag.
I am Mustapha Mond.
I am Simon.
I am Winston Smith.
I am Bruce Wayne.
I am Adrian Veidt; I am the Comedian.

I am the product of my parents, my friends, my life, my experiences…and my teachers.

For most of my life, I have avoided dating and relationships. In high school, this was a consequence of my inability to play the necessary games. (Although, I attributed it to hopeless romanticism, the justification of choice for most awkward teenagers.) In college, I learned to play the games — very well. However, I continued to not date. The adage, “why buy the cow if the milk is for free” applied. I enjoyed college.

Towards the end of college, I started to think differently. I wanted to form relationships of the non-casual variety. Many people I know date merely to be in a relationship. They are not necessarily wild about their partner, they just prefer not to be alone. This doesn’t interest me. In my case, I would date only if I found someone great. I think (very) highly of myself; I would have to think highly of the girl I would date as well. And that is just the beginning of the criteria. Physical attraction and emotional compatibility are not minor issues. Such girls are rare, but they have graced my path before.

As mentioned previously on my blog, I had a rare type of cancer for which there is still no cure. I was treated surgically to remove the macro-tumor, but microscopic remnants undoubtedly remain and, after enough doubling, it will reassert a claim on my health. Things are not likely to end well. Given this, I arrived at my dating conundrum. If I was to find a girl that I respected; a girl that I was attracted to; a girl whose company I enjoyed; a girl that I wanted to invest my time and emotions in…what happens when I get sick again? I initiated steps to nullify the Chordoma threat, and others subsequently (greatly) exceeded my efforts, but as of right now, I think the probability of tragedy exceeds that of happily ever after. This introduces my paradox, my Catch-22. The purpose of dating such a girl as the one sketched above is to allow myself to be swept along the currents, hoping to arrive at a place of deep love. (I wasn’t trying to be poetic; the preceding statement was as precise a summary on the progression of relationships as I could give.) If this point came — if I grew to love her deeply — I would want to protect her from harm and suffering. However, given Chordoma, her suffering would likely be a result of my sickness and death. Her suffering would be deeply emotional. Furthermore, as it is in a woman’s best interest to find a man in her youth — for obvious reasons — it would continue to weigh on her for a long time. Ergo, the best way to protect my as of yet unidentified and pursued love, is to never pursue her.

I realized this years ago but it is growing more difficult to maintain my restraint. For one, it’s easy to not pursue women romantically when you are young, dumb, and…in college. I might have justified my Dorian Gray phase as a consequence of this realization, but truthfully it wasn’t. I was enjoying myself in the way that a geek turned college man-whore would. Now, however, I am less interested in the simple pleasures (in isolation, at least.) Over the past year or so, I’ve started dating a few women, only to realize I was being selfish. I think I wanted the intimacy of a relationship, without the woman’s investment. This was stupid because it’s not a possibility.

To a small degree, I’m writing this hoping that someone will point out an obvious flaw. I’ve thought of some, but they are weak. I assume people smarter than myself have offered similar arguments; I’d like to read them. However, for the most part, I wrote it to solidify my resolve and understanding. That’s why I write most of my blog posts and accounts for my readership of about six people.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to do what I consider the rational course of action: try to fund a cure.

P.S. I have previously  discussed my dating catch-22 with other people who had/have Chordoma; it was not pleasant. Most are deeply offended so I no longer bring it up with them. If someone from that world happens to read this post and is offended or saddened, I’m sorry. It’s not my intention.

Coffee is delicious and caffeine is a wonder drug. On a mild day, I drink three cups. (Mild days are not a consequence of self-control. Like myself, my roommate works from home and he is also a voracious consumer of caffeinated substances. Mild days are the product of him consuming caffeine faster than me and me being to lazy to put on a new pot.) On a typical day, I drink five cups. On a severe day, I drink an unknown amount; after seven or eight I’m not a good beverage accountant. I like coffee.

However, I am currently in the middle of a peak in coffee consumption and a valley in productivity. It is not a new relationship to me nor to most people. Caffeine is a boon to my productivity during boring aspects of a project. Without caffeine, the boring elements induce stress, frustration, and a desire to watch Big Bang Theory. With caffeine and a bit of Di.FM, I can glide through boring jobs that would typically be filled with much friction.

Unfortunately, once safely outside of the badlands, I continue to drink coffee — I need my mana. Even though the new focus of my attention is interesting — or, at least, challenging — I instinctually cling to caffeine. My brain, with it’s absurd insistence of linearity and cause and effect, thinks that caffeine acts not only as a floor to my productivity but is a multiplier.

Sadly, this process spirals out of control. Positive feedback without a dampening force is not great. After using caffeine to pleasantly power through a dull zone, then play in an interesting zone, I eventually land back in a dull zone…only this time the caffeine is functionally useless. At this point, my tolerance has been elevated by unnecessarily prolonged exposure and that pumped up feeling associated with short bouts of high-usage is not their to save me. Taking more doesn’t provide this feeling. In fact, at higher levels it just gets me more flustered and, ironically, causes me to be tired. I watch Big Bang Theory.

The solution is very obvious: keep caffeine consumption low during the interesting bits and raise it when my interest is flagging. The goal is to maintain a steady-state of productivity; the goal is to reduce volatility; the goal is to avoid the crash. Productivity crashes are not paid for by productivity booms.

Note: I write things down and make them public to solidify my ideas and enforce a modicum of quality. This post will probably not be read. It merely states the obvious in an non-novel way. (Then again, things that state things that are both obvious and non-original have been getting attention lately.) Regardless, it’s a lesson that needs to be reinforced in my mind. So what if most people who can dress themselves never needed to be taught something they considered obvious.

P.S. I not only misspelled every occurance of the word caffeine in this article, but I did so with no less than four variations. Stellar.

Notice: I am a die-hard capitalist and a quasi-libertarian. This is not a post from some “proto-typical non-conformist with a vaguely leftist doctrine of beliefs.” This was written by a guy who enjoys Ayn Rand.

In freshman year of high school, I made a lot of money spamming. Some of this success can be attributed to being lucky and being a teenage boy. Teenage boys basically have an option on life. If they do something really risky and it pays off, they get the rewards. If they do something really risky and it ends very badly — well, boys will be boys. It’s a pleasant asymmetry (for the teenage boy.) However, a significant portion of my success as a spammer can be attributed to a simple fact: writing a spammer was very interesting. It was challenging. It was a perpetual game of cat and mouse. Money was more of a collateral benefit than a primary motivation. Majorska vodka is not expensive.

Immediately after college, I had a minor existential crisis. This is not uncommon. College was great. College afforded me a ridiculous amount of free time to pursue my intellectual interests. This is not because college was rigorous; this was because college was not rigorous. I learn best independently. Going to college on my parent’s dime allowed me to spend practically all my time playing in areas that I found fascinating. The conclusion of my undergraduate career brought with it the termination of my favored learning style.

I was not happy. In order to reacquire my intellectual freedom, I did what any irrational, over-confident fool would do: I tried starting an online dating website. I wanted enough money so that I could sit in front of my computer and in my reading chair for a few years. I wanted to continue exploring. Writing an online dating website was not interesting. It was not challenging. It was not a game. My motivations were purely monetary. It was a project for cash — a means to an end. The result? It did not solve any of my problems. When I finally realized that the project was a bad idea, I sold it for about $35,000 on nine months of work. Considering the project’s purpose: FAIL!

Presently, I will be undertaking yet another web development project titled Fundify. My motivations for Fundify are not financial (at least, not in the typical sense.)  This project must be done and I am capable of doing it. The reward for me: it may help save my life. This is a (perhaps too) strong motivation. Since I have not yet left my job (another week probably), I have not been coding it yet; I dislike the after 9-5 job context switching. Instead, I have been planning the project to a degree that is unusual for me. Running a project Monte-Carlo simulator in my head for two weeks is a new experience.

My initial instinct was to release Fundify as an open-source application. It is a product for empowering the fund-raising arm of small-medium size non-profit organizations — specifically a small non-profit that has the potential to greatly benefit me. (I really like me.) An open-source project seemed like a particularly good fit. However, the simulator that is my brain was quick to point out that charging a nominal fee for hosting and maintaining this product would be just as beneficial to the non-profit organizations as an open-source product…while making me money. Finding a developer to install the software, set up an SSL certificate, and create a merchant account all take time. The goal of Fundify is to minimize time spent fund-raising by non-profit organizations. They have better things to do. Paying, say, $50 a month might actually be cheaper than spending time finding a volunteer developer.

Given this conclusion, I started to enumerate all of the responsibilities associated with running a business around this product. My motivation depleted — quickly. This is roughly the time I finally learned my lesson: money isn’t everything. If I were to build a business around Fundify, the set of mundane tasks would (significantly) overwhelm the set of interesting problems to solve. For me, costs({Legal Issues, Client Obligations, Heightened Security Concerns, Banking Issues}) > benefits({Money Earned, Testing my Fund-raising Hypothesis, Raising Funds for My Cause}). I’d rather burn through my savings building Fundify while dealing with the interesting bits than earn money for my labors while adding mundane responsibilities. Money isn’t everything. (I wonder what else my mother was right about.)

To be clear, I still want a bank-vault sized pile of money but I have accurately recognized why I want it. I don’t really care about a big house and a fancy car. I might someday; I don’t right now. My cramped apartment is sufficient. What I really want is the financial freedom to sit in a quiet room by myself and explore my ideas. Money provides this opportunity more than an academic career. The latter still imposes constraints that I am unwilling to bear. Maybe it’s a symptom of Peter Pan syndrome. (Although, if it is, I am sure it is very common amongst g33ks.) I prefer to think that being unconstrained can allow for long jumps versus incremental improvements while searching for novel solutions to problems I find interesting. An equally plausible explanation: I prefer no responsibilities. That does sound like Peter Pan syndrome.

In 2004, I was diagnosed with a very rare type of cancer. Following my surgery and an extended period of reading the academic literature on the disease, it became obvious that I was not cured.  Worse than that, there was little active research that had the potential to cure, or at least manage, Chordoma. Being an insufferable libertarian, I opted to start a 501(c)(3) organization, The Chordoma Research Foundation, with the sole purpose of aggregating funds and awarding grants to researchers.

At the time, (as a result of well-hidden bug,) I believed I would soon have access to a lot of money. Consequently, I formed the Chordoma Research Foundation as a funnel through which I could increase my donor potential (i.e. receive tax deductions.) I was largely uninterested in developing a proper full-fledged not-for-profit effort. I understood how research worked; the need for interdisciplinary facilitation; and the importance of starting projects sooner rather than later. I just wasn’t motivated. If my big payday came, I could buy research. Money opens doors. If I could spend my time doing what I had a passion for while being able to pay for research myself, it would have been ideal. My big payday did not come (and has not come – yet.)

Happily, pure dumb luck intervened. My parents, fueled by desperation coupled with a bit of good old fashioned common sense, decided to send a letter to our family and friends explaining our compelling need for research. The concise version:  please give us money so our son has a chance of not dying before his thirtieth birthday. It raised tens of thousands of dollars – quickly.

Inspired by the success of this campaign, I envisioned a web-app that could replicate this success across many people affected by Chordoma. Unfortunately, it was a pretty uninteresting project. Web development is not intellectually stimulating. My potential big payday project was (enjoyably) intellectually exhausting. The brief inspiration and motivation I experienced after my parent’s campaign was insufficient. Instead of building my web application, I only designed a simple website explaining the cause to other people with Chordoma.

Serendipity intervened — again. By this point, my small website for a very rare disease was receiving about three phone calls per day – a not insignificant amount. Initially, this produced mostly friendships (shout out to Bill Dorland, Michael Torrey, and a collection of other friends who do not have URL end-points.)  Soon, it yielded more tangible rewards. One day in August, while stuck in traffic heading to a Counting Crows concert, Simone Sommer called me. Her son, Josh, had gone through roughly the same experience as me and she also found the current state of research to be unacceptable. She wanted to be involved. To be precise Dr. Simone Sommer – a credential that, shockingly, opens doors in the medical community – wanted to be very involved.

Over the next few months and after many extended phone calls with both Josh and Simone, it became clear that they were willing to do all the things I knew had to be done but was uninterested in doing. More than that, Simone’s M.D. and Josh’s proximity to Duke – which housed one of the few researchers who was making headway into Chodoma research – meant they could do it better than I could. I (happily) passed the torch to them while I pursued my big payday (which is still, as of 2009, yet to arrive). They established the Chordoma Foundation. I dissolved my foundation and folded my assets into theirs.

For a while, I played a minimal ongoing role in Chordoma community. I continued to speak with a lot of patients, but only because I had already established relationships with them. I continued to follow papers on Chordoma – and discuss them at length with Josh – but that was mostly to satisfy my perpetual curiosity. (I am a if the plane is about to crash, I want to be in the cockpit type guy.) My father sits on the Chordoma Foundation’s board. I do not. My mother coordinates community outreach. I do not. However, late last fall, it became clear that they had reached the point at which money was the primary bottleneck. Earlier, the Chordoma Foundation had hosted a fantastically successful international, inter-disciplinary research conference. Cross-pollination of ideas occurred. Research was proposed…and, undertaken. Interest was piqued. Now, the low hanging fruits were gone. Now, there were calls for money. I was compelled to develop a prototype.

Initially, it worked well, although I am not convinced it raised money above what would have been raised anyway. It did help by connecting many people to each other, acting as an ad-hoc, emergent support group. This might not have translated directly into money, but it obviously was beneficial to the community.

Why didn’t it work as well as I expected? It was a sh*tty implementation! I hacked it together in four weeks in anticipation of the Thanksgiving fundraising season. We even launched it two days prior to Thanksgiving. It’s not really shocking that an idea only half-conceived was not fully-successful. Fundraising was not attributed in real-time; was not always accurate; and the feedback mechanisms employed were noisy. Additionally, one of the most important features, coaching (i.e. nudging) was never included. Unfortunately, disinterest asserted itself…again. I halted further development and took an internship in DC. Fundify was not yet to be.

Fast forward one year – present day. I just quit my job in order to properly build Fundify. This time, I am motivated. The project has not become interesting. It merely ceased to be something I can push off any longer. All paths are now dependent on larger grants being awarded. Larger grants require money. Enter, Fundify.

Stay tuned.