How Homestar Runner Does Money
Seriously.
If you’re the kind of Homestar Runner fan who still checks the website every few months to see if there’s any new stuff on it—and a bunch of new stuff went up this fall, ICYMI—you are going to love this in-depth look at how Homestar got homestarted:
Mike: For the first shirt we had [for sale], you needed to send a check to our parent’s house. So we sold a few dozen shirts by check only. Our dad was our accountant, so he started reviewing all that stuff. It wasn’t anything we intended to do full time.
Read the whole thing, because you’ll learn that the Brothers Chaps originally pitched Homestar Runner to Cartoon Network and got turned down—which, in the end, was probably better for what Homestar Runner eventually became. (Would we have gotten Strong Bad Emails or Teen Girl Squad if Cartoon Network had agreed to run a cartoon about “the Homestar Runner” playing sports against “the Strong Bad?”)
You’ll also learn that the Brothers Chaps’ father was the one who finally said “okay, you have to quit your jobs and go all-in on this.” They didn’t have a business plan, they didn’t have a sustainability model, but they made it work—and it changed all of our lives.
