[telecom] How One Man Turned Himself Into a Publicly Owned Company

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How One Man Turned Himself Into a Publicly Owned Company

Mike Merrill puts the "I" in IPO.

By Rob Walker The Atlantic MAR 20 2013

Mike Merrill was thinking of pumping up his workout regimen with mixed-martial-arts classes and boxing lessons. The scheme would involve seven and a half hours a week at various gyms-a big commitment. So he put the matter before his 160 shareholders. They, after all, had previously determined that he would not get a vasectomy, that he would register as a Republican, and that he and the woman he'd been dating could enter into a three-month "Relationship Agreement."

From microfinance to crowd-funding, tools that rely on the support of

large groups have grown familiar, bordering on overexposed. Merrill's approach to harvesting the power of the marketplace, however, is singular: he has essentially sold shares in his own life. Which raises two questions: Why on Earth would somebody offer others the right to vote on his basic life decisions? And, even more inexplicably, why would anybody pay for that right?

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