The Day We Decided to Kill Ourselves: A Primer on Drafting a Good Suicide Pact

Rose on a black background on a death article. Pretty deep for us isn’t it?

A light primer on business suicide pacts

So, before this whole “launch a mega business that’s going to change the world” thing started for us, we were just some people sitting with our figurative thumbs up our literal asses wondering how we go about joining forces for good to help this world. We had all kinds of ideas, but we settled on forming a business — mostly because gathering a group of the world’s greatest fighters isn’t tax advantaged. We started where most start: we consulted the culmination of human knowledge — the internet. We asked the world, “How do we form and run a business that will have the power to change the world in meaningful and positive ways, without letting the power go to our heads?” As it would happen, we would get inspiration from a 13 year-old cyber-bully from Dallas, Texas.

Kill Yourselves.
- EatinAss420

There the message sat. We pondered, opined, and ruminated on what wisdom this message contained. It came from the pinnacle collection of human knowledge — so it had to have some wisdom in it, right? And then it hit us like Chris Brown striking Rhianna (multiple times and very forcefully) — We should kill ourselves as a business. What happens if power and money corrupt us? Kill the business.

Our lawyer (who says we need to insert here that she is both not a lawyer and has not in any way, shape or form provided us legal advice) provided us with some really great legal advice. Essentially, the idea would be to draw up a business agreement now that would set forth a series of criteria that we deem as shitty business practices. Then, if we triggered enough of them, we’d “kill” the business. In addition, we figured we’d make it fun and attach points to it to gamify not being shitty.

A game where everyone’s a loser

The Anatomy of a Suicide Pact

1. The Why
   As explained above, we want to help and change the world in a positive way, and it worries us greatly that we won’t have the fortitude to withstand the pull of the kind of money, fame and power of the kind of business that we’re in. So, to keep it real and to protect the world if we take the greed route, we decided to create a business agreement to dissolve the business once we cross a threshold of shitty business things done in a year.
2. Parameters
   Our parameters for this suicide pact, to be henceforth known as SP, will essentially be a list of things that shitty businesses do. And since we don’t want to be a shitty business, we will try to avoid doing those shitty things. We might occasionally veer off the road, so we’re adding a point system to account for the severity of the grievance. Check out some of the following examples:
   
   • The use of a meaningless buzzword in the meeting: 1 point
   • Scheduling a lunch-time meeting: 5 points
   • Scheduling a lunch-time meeting AND not buying everyone lunch: 30 points.
   • Non-ironically calling our employees “Teammates” or “Intrapreneurs”: 5 points
   
   The inputs to this business-ending Rube Goldberg machine will be a list of events, values, processes, and probably buzzwords that form the foundation of everything we don’t want to be. The culmination of these inputs will result in a value. That value will be judged against the threshold.
3. The Threshold
   Full disclosure, we’re not entirely sure where the line is yet. We’ve got some more testing to do. But, there’s additional considerations and safeguards that we need to take into account so that we don’t mess up the execution.
   
   Some things we’ve already considered:
   • Making it tamper proof — both by us and those who would wish to do MUI harm.
   • Adding nuance. We’re wondering if we should be able to do something good to reduce the amount of suicide points we’ve accrued.
4. The Impact — preparing for a post-death world
   Well shit. It happened. The threshold was crossed. Let all 6 fans you still have know and inform the rest of the followers that probably hate you by this point that you’re ending it all. Mostly likely this announcement will come to thunderous applause.
   
   Some things we definitely want to cover as we dissolve:
   • An apology to the world
   • Paying all our employees out from the bottom up. It’s the C-suite that let the business cross the lines so fuck ‘em
   • Paying all the people that we owe money — because it’s the law or some shit
   • Taking whatever assets that we have left and making one last positive impact on the world like setting the world record for the longest slip-n-slide at a gigantic public party.
5. The Act — The last day
   We dumped all our funds, and made sure we did a little good before we left. The only thing left is to make an example of how businesses should continually strive for positive impact. We’re not a hundred percent sure how we’ll live our final day as a business, but you can expect it to be one the world will never forget.

As you can probably tell, we’re not ready to publish the SP yet, but for the sake of full transparency, and to show that we’re dedicated to our two point plan (and that we’ve put contingencies in place in case we go off-rails). Check our website for updates so you can check out the full suicide pact when it’s completed.

XOXO
Minimally Useful Industries