2HousePlague

Even the word "blessed? is not enough to convey how I feel about the people I have met in this industry.

The non-Adult industrial world is filled with smart people who make a lot of money.

But, to be honest with you, money for its own sake is not so satisfying or interesting to me.

What has struck me most unexpectedly about the Captains of Adult I have been so fortunate to meet and befriend is that they are NOT the ?lawless bandits? we seem from the outside.

I think all of that may have been true once.

But, the industry today has come into the hands of a new generation ? they are both smarter, as regards the technology and the medium, and savvier, as regards the precarious position we are in, against the backdrop of the rest of the commerce universe.

To answer your question, my dear, dear friend, Scott, I had NO offers, not one ? but I had numerous conversations in place with numerous friends.

The kind of new opportunity I was looking for could not be sought on Monster.com, or even in the classifieds of our industry?s trades.

I was looking to find someone whose clarity of purpose and intensity of ambition were as great as my own.

I was also looking for someone who was as excited by the opportunity to improve the human condition in a networked world as they were by the enormity of the commercial opportunity.

I found all of that in Adam Small.

Adam and I met as rivals, insofar as his company is a threat to my former company.

But, as I have explained above, I don?t let my expectations control my perceptions.

Adam and I kept running into each other at conventions, and I think he was surprised, at first, by my desire to talk with him. I think he was even more surprised when I made it clear I wasn?t trying to draw him in to take things from him.

Though we never spoke for more than a few minutes, and only at conventions, we became friends.

This was possible only because we made it clear to each other that we both had the complexity and strength of character to BE friends, even though we had the jobs we had.

Long before I had directly experienced his intellect and his talents, I liked him and I respected him as a man.

As our dialogue became richer and more full of trust, of course I became aware of his genius, but even more striking was how similar our paths had been to get where we are.

Like me, Adam started in Finance. We both made a lot of money really young and realized it had to be about more than just money.

From Finance, I went to help turn IBM?s ship into the Internet opportunity.

Adam went to start his own Internet company, with both a sincere desire to SERVE and a winning BUSINESS MODEL.

We both succeeded in our respective objectives, then we both turned our interest on the same thing ? the nexus of Old School Blue Chip Business and the Uncharted Waters of Web-based revenue models. I went to work for AltaVista, Adam for Yahoo.

Inside each of those two companies was happening what was happening nowhere else in the world ? we were perfecting the art of alchemizing traffic into money.

In ultimate pursuit of that new, mysterious art, where we could we go but Adult?

And because it is in PERSONALS (in the models we will yet conceive and build for connecting people online) that the greatest power to effect change lies, we are both in personals.

And because it is through sex, and only through sex (and I mean the good healthy, get yours, I love you and all that you are! kind of sex) that we may lead the species into a greater acceptance of our differences, we are both working in SEX.

I hope I?ve made it abundantly clear, by the forthcomingness of all the answers I have given above, that I have nothing to hide.

My grandmother taught me: ?If you want to be trusted, you must begin by trusting.?

Tell me, is that FOOLISH in this industry?

I hope not ? because I intend to trust and collaborate and share, because the cake we are all about to be served is so large and so rich that to do anything but COLLABORATE to get it would be selfishness in its most costly and most stupid form.

Here is the only OFFER I received that appealed to me ? it?s called FRIENDSHIP.



Thanks, Adam ? you rock!



j-

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tada!