KmikeyM

---

Kenneth Michael Merrill (born May 17, 1977) is an American entrepreneur, game designer, and conceptual businessman. Since January 26, 2008, under the moniker KmikeyM, he is the world’s first and only publicly traded human being.

Early life and education

Kenneth Michael Merrill was born in Fairbanks, the largest city in the Interior region of Alaska. He is the son of a state trooper, Kenneth Merrill, and Beverly, a homemaker. Between 1982 and 1987 he lived in the census-designated place of Coldfoot, in northern Alaska, which has a population of 10 and serves as a truck stop on the Dalton Highway.

In 1995, he enlisted in the United States Army. He performed basic training at Fort McClellan, a post near Anniston, Alabama. Later he worked on the base as a member of the Military Police Corps. His anarchic temperament was ill-suited for the rigid command structure of the Military and he quickly developed a method of enduring his daily routines via a game he created called The Over-Enthusiastic Soldier. In an interview with the online magazine Big Think, he explains the game:

“The stereo-typical Army sergeant yells as the stereo-typical Army private to "Drop and give me twenty!" after some minor infraction. I found myself receiving this corrective action often. After being late to formation I completed my twenty pushups and instead of getting up I remained in the pushup position and said, "Request permission to do another twenty." I can only assume my sergeant was beaming with pride as he thought I had so internalized this "corrective action" that I was inflicting more upon myself as I had seen the error of my ways. He granted me permission.

After completing another twenty I remained in the pushup position and said, "Request permission to do another ten." My sergeant was a bit flummoxed. He was losing control and he did not like it. He denied my request.

So I shifted tactics, "Five more for country?". No American soldier could possibly object to a request to do pushups for one's country! He agreed. "Four more for the MP Corps?" Yes. "Three more for 3rd Battalion?" Yes. "Two more for God?" and finally "One for my Mother?" I had mocked the idea of corrective action and totally undermined his authority and got some good laughs. The Army is a system of rules and ranks and cultural practices and Over-Enthusiastic Soldier worked to exploit all of these against each other.”

Merrill received an honorable discharge from the Army in 1998 and relocated to Portland, Oregon. He did not attend college.

KmikeyM project

In 2008, while working at the Portland-based software company Panic, Merrill became inspired by the European digital art collective Etoy and came up with the idea to divide himself into 100,000 shares and sell himself on the open market. His initial public offering was set at $1 per share.

According to a Wired magazine article from 2013, “Over the next 10 days, 12 of his friends and acquaintances bought 929 shares, and Merrill ended up with a handful of extra cash. He kept the remaining 99.1 percent of himself but promised that his shares would be nonvoting: He’d let his new stockholders decide what he should do with his life. In the ensuing months and years, 128 people bought shares of Merrill, and he fell victim to competing shareholder interests, stock price manipu­lation, and investors looking for short-term gains at the expense of his long-term well-being. He was overwhelmed by paperwork and blindsided by takeover interest. He found himself beholden to his shareholders in ways he had never imagined, ruining personal relationships along the way. Through it all, Merrill clung stubbornly to the belief that since an IPO had worked for Google and Amazon, it should work for an individual too.”

The KmikeyM slogan is, “Community through capitalism.” He has described his rule of thumb for determining the votes he puts up as, “Anything I’d ask my friends advice about.”

Merrill is controlled currently by more than 740 shareholders. Shares of himself have traded as high as $20, and as low as $3. His average share price is $6.55.

Notable KmikeyM votes

• July 12, 2008: Vasectomy. Rejected.
• February 18, 2009: Team YACHT. Approved.
• February 27, 2009: Wedding Officiate. Approved.
• January 26, 2010: A Vegetarian Diet. Approved.
• April 26, 2010: Republican Registration. Approved.
• October 21, 2012: Fully Fashioned. Approved.
• April 17, 2012: Shareholder Control of Romantic Relationships. Approved.
• June 1, 2013: General Relationship Agreement. Approved.
• May 20, 2014: Hawaii Proposal. Rejected.
• September 30, 2015: Understanding Jason Bateman. Approved.
• June 27, 2016: A Mike By Any Other Name. Rejected.
• November 9, 2016: Proposal Proposal. Approved.
• February 8, 2017: Crowdsourced Erotic Fanfic. Approved.
• May 16, 2017: Shareholder Approval Rating. Rejected.
• July 30, 2017: Computer and Internet Before Mattress. Rejected.
• November 21, 2017: Mutual Release and Non-Disparagement Agreement. Approved.

Personal life

Merrill resides in Los Angeles, California. He acts as Head of Research at Sandwich Video, a company that makes videos and television commercials, primarily for tech products. In April of 2018, on Doug Lussenhop’s podcast The Poundcast, Merrill confirmed he is in a relationship.

Film and television

On October 28, 2014, the industry website Deadline announced that Fox Searchlight had acquired the film rights to a 2013 Wired article about Merrill entitled Meet The Man Who Sold His Fate To Investors At $1 A Share. Jason Bateman was set to star in and direct IPO Man, based on the article. The project fell out of option in 2016.

References

The Atlantic Wired The Hustle Love and Radio The Poundcast Montag Playboy Today Vice Motherboard Vice Money

This article "KmikeyM" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:KmikeyM. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

---