Creativity and madness
In Silicon Valley and elsewhere
A psychologist I know introduced me to the link between creativity and madness. She said that all creatives are considered mad at some point when they push the boundaries of conventional wisdom. Think of the trouble that Copernicus got into when he insisted that the Earth revolved around the sun at a time when the conventional wisdom was that the sun revolved around the earth. Or more recently think of the trouble that Sam Bankman-Fried got into because he didn’t believe that banking regulations applied to cryptocurrency. In the media, Sam Bankman-Fried is often referred to as SBF. I wonder if the media of Copernicus’s time had a three letter name for him like NCA (Nicolaus Copernicus the Astronomer) or NCP (Nicolaus Copernicus of Poland) since hyphenated last names were not the rage in those days.
Creativity and Madness is an organization that provides educational opportunities for mental health providers. I will share a story about a creative referred to as AOS who had a problem funding a project that he was passionate about. Before I tell you AOS’s story let me tell you a story of a creative in the visual Art’s that may be more familiar to you.
In a Creativity and Madness seminar about Picasso, we learned the story of his most famous painting. In the spring of 1937 Picasso was working on a commissioned painting for the Republican government of Spain. On Monday April 26, 1937, Hitler’s warplanes bombed the market in Guernica with the approval of the Spanish government. Picasso’s gut reaction to the madness of the bombing caused him to drop his original idea for the commissioned painting. Instead he created the anti-war painting, Guernica, for which he is best known.
Back to AOS’s funding problem. He was a creative, and his story from the early ’90s should resonate with anyone who has struggled to fund and run a startup in Silicon Valley. AOS came from modest means but he felt that his idea would work even though it flew in the face of conventional wisdom. He was relentless about finding and pitching anyone who had enough money to fund the venture. He did not have access to the VC’s of Silicon Valley, but he had access to wealthy people around him.
He pitched his idea to everyone who would take a meeting. His pitch was usually met with a comment like: “Your idea sounds interesting, we will confer with our advisors and get back to you”. Those advisors told their bosses that AOS’s idea was not feasible, or that the project would never pay off.
In January of ’92 one of the power couples he had previously pitched completed a major acquisition. In April of that year he met with the couple for the third time, and again the wife turned him down on the advice of her advisors, but something that AOS said in that meeting festered in the husband’s mind. I don’t know exactly what was said, but I suspect the couple pointed out how much debt they had incurred in closing their latest acquisition and, like any enthusiastic salesperson, AOS told them about the unlimited wealth they could amass if they were the first to fund his idea.
After sending AOS away the husband continued discussing the idea with his wife and was able to change her mind in the matter. The couple eventually agreed to provide the backing needed to fund the project. If his idea panned out AOS negotiated a deal that would net him 10% of all the proceeds from the project.
It took several months to assemble all the equipment and manpower needed to execute his plan, and the project was officially launched in August of that year. By October AOS had early results, but kept them under wraps until he could report them to his backers in person. His backers wanted proof that he could bring in the revenue he had projected, and agreed to provide additional funding so that he could develop his idea further. As often happens, once there is a proof of concept of a radical idea with rich rewords, the word gets out and competitors enter the market. The competition pointed out that AOS’s project would not produce the easy riches that he had promised, but would require significant additional resources to develop the market. This meant that the returns from the project would take longer to develop than had been promised.
As part of his operation AOS established a base on an island in the Caribbean and put his brothers in charge of the facility. His brothers were poor managers and the facility did not produce as expected. The situation got so bad that his backers sent out new management to take over the Caribbean operation. In a pre-view of the fall of SBF, what the new management found resulted in AOS being arrested and sent back home to face charges. I learned about this story in another Creativity and Madness seminar. It turned out that AOS’s successful funding round was pitched to the power couple while the were staying at an opulent palace in Spain. They went on to become extremely wealthy after their funding of AOS’s idea.
Things did not turn out as well for AOS. After his arrest and conviction it took him nearly 10 years to clear his name. Although he did work again, he lost his AOS title and passed away in ’05, four years after he was cleared of all charges.
It is unclear whether students 100 years from now will read about Sam Bankman-Fried in their history books. However, I believe that in 100 years they will still read about AOS, the Admiral of the Ocean Sea.
