My Time as the Leader of a Secret Society
The summer of 2010 was a very ordinary summer for the unsuspecting kids of San Jose. It was a few years before the crippling drought began, and for many of the kids in our neighborhood, it was the year between 7th and 8th grade. A summer full of confusion and hormones. I was one of those wacky teens who wanted to do something in an endless summer. Clearly, a perfect time to start a secret society.
Launch Operations
The plan was simple enough, get the boys in my neighborhood to organize ourselves into a group. What I realized was that teamwork isn’t the forte of preteen boys. I needed a source of control, and that came in the form of my neighbor.
My neighbor, Kevin, was a boy a year older than us. He always hung out with us and taught us the ways of being “street”. He wasn’t a very kind boy at 14, but neither were we. He was older and bigger than us too, so we were well intimidated by his harmless butt-slapping antics.
He was a perfect leader my organization.
So I pitched him the “variety club” that would later be known as Munga Tiki. The name didn’t mean anything, but it sounded mysterious and cool. Kevin enjoyed the idea of having a new thing to do, so he obliged. The final thing to do was get the others on board. That ended up being simple too, we just told them they couldn’t.
Growth Hacking
For the first week our organization had been nothing more than 5 guys. One of them, my 10-year old brother, who was dragged into it last minute. We desired growth; not global brand awareness, but rather more people to play basketball with.
The first idea we had was to bring in younger members. My brother, a seemingly meek and small 5th grader was our key. He was a very popular kid at our school, so we decided to promote him to the role of group president as to encourage him to bring in a few younger members.
My brothers recruiting practices worked. We pulled in five new members — an amazing 100% growth rate! (VCs were knocking at my door).
Full Stack Development
For Munga Tiki to be a successful organization, we needed to organize. I took the initiative to “build” our website. A simple forum with a few colored usernames and ranks did the trick. I was pretty immersed in it too, I even created summaries of our weekly meetings.
Things were going well for our little operation. Even when Kevin and I were no longer the president and vice president, we were the regulatory body that governed everything else. One of the most extreme examples of our assertion of power was assigning physical and written exams for current members and potential recruits.
The role of President, although essentially picked by us two, was an elected position. We had many elected positions ranging from the obligatory Vice President to the oh-so-sought after Secretary of Health. Our society was nothing to mess with.
Market Competition
The middle of May was a turbulent time for our organization. Our Vice President, one of my brother’s friends, had unexpectedly quit our club. We were in a panic, especially since he didn’t live in our neighborhood. Word from my brother told us that the former VP had joined a different secret club.
Feeling betrayed, our group devised many schemes to take out our former VP and his new club. Luckily they never came to fruition, but we did end up having peace talks in the school yard. The unofficial Munga Tiki-CPwer Wolfs Summit occurred sometime at the end of that week. Rumors about the meeting were spread all throughout the middle school gossip scene. We had ambassadors and third parties monitoring everything.
Exit Strategies
By the end of June it became clear to everyone in Munga Tiki that our club wasn’t going to last. Meetings were too long, inspections too frequent, and there was a huge power struggle between the elected leaders (my brother) and those appointed (me). There wasn’t any real fighting. Everyone seemed to have given up on the idea of Munga Tiki by then. We found a new addiction, MapleStory.
Autopsy Report
Summers passed and we slowly forgot about the secret society known as Munga Tiki. It was a fun experiment into our teenage leadership skills and a warning to avoid giving 13-year olds too much power.
Being only 5 years old, most of the content we published under Munga Tiki still remains online, just waiting for a future employer to see. :)
Thanks to @john_blakeway and Maura for proofreading :)
