1k True Fans? Try 100 (2020)
Of course this poses other challenges. You&#x27;ll end up an &#x27;artist&#x27; of gilding toilet seats for rich and demanding &#x27;customers&#x27; who are very clear on what they want.<p>That ain&#x27;t me: my branding is aligned with what my actual values and heritage are, and it&#x27;s profoundly oriented towards the folks who have skills and dreams but no resources, and so I make open source software supporting &#x27;em.<p>I get excited when I can support a new platform like the new Raspberry Pi, not about thinking up stuff to excite about three of my audience who could throw me a hundred bucks a month. If I go over to serving only them I&#x27;ll be doing only as they direct, and they absolutely don&#x27;t have the vision to run my show and get anywhere worthwhile with it.<p>This doesn&#x27;t make the article worthless. I&#x27;ve been thinking very hard about how I can expand into hardware DIY and the article hints at possibilities there. I can try to come up with a DIY synth module that comes in under $20 for my primary base… or, apparently, if I can make the ultimate speaker cabinet using all my tricks and sell it to someone for $200, I could also execute it in the most sophisticated possible way, and sell it for $2000 to a superfan who is that kind of wealthy. The $20 guy can&#x27;t afford either, but the $2000 guy doesn&#x27;t need me to hold it to $200, they need me to make it special for them.<p>Risk of course is if the $2000 guy doesn&#x27;t exist or doesn&#x27;t show up. Trying to target only the wealthy is dangerous. They are as fickle as your attitude towards them is. There&#x27;s exactly one guy out there who randomly gave me $1000, and rather than demand a product, he wanted me to think about spherical harmonics in the belief that I might come up with something helpful in the field that interested him. I suspect there are guys out there who would likewise give me $1000 on the condition that I abandon what I do and start doing what they would do if they were me…