KmikeyM
A virtual, fully-functional stock market that acts as a decision making engine for K. Mike Merrill, the world's first publicly traded person.
73 posts
- 10/9/26Collaborators
My First Capture The Flag
Played my first Capture the Flag (hacking contest, not the game in the woods). I don’t know anything about security or code, but I know how to steer the LLM.
- 9/21/26Crypto
Skeptical Observer
In January someone made a cryptocurrency based on my life without asking me. I woke up to a DM from BigCrazyApe, “Yo Mike, there’s a KmikeyM coin on Bags. You might want to claim your earnings.” I…
- 9/16/26Business
Why 2008 Was the Perfect Year to Launch KmikeyM
I don’t remember where I was on September 15, 2008. My notebook skips the whole month. But I can tell you exactly what my shareholders voted on that September, because we did it in public and it is…
- 7/23/26Systems
Public Feedback, Private Repo
We’ve been testing making KmikeyM more agentic and wanted a way for people to tell us what’s broken, but w/o opening the GitHub repo…
- 6/10/26Votes
On-Camera Training with AC Dickson
Background AC Dickson (Andrew Dickson) is an artist and filmmaker and I have been a fan and a collaborator of his for about twenty. The piece that first hooked me was AC Dickson: eBay PowerSeller, a…
- 5/7/26CTRL ALTZ
Vote: $5K in Dead Internet Theory
Should the KmikeyM shareholder fund be deployed into someone else’s project? The proposal: $5K as first money in on Paizley Lee’s Dead Internet Theory, a series of in-person retro cyber-café-like…
- 4/27/26Snacker.News
Snacker.News Relaunch
After a confidential resolution process with Mondelēz Global LLC, Snacker.News is pleased to resume publication. We thank Mondelēz Global LLC for their patience throughout this process and acknowledge…
- 2/27/26Shareholders
The Sacred Appliance
Jona Bechtolt’s new installation is four microwaves spinning on a platter, each displaying video of something inside a microwave. It’s about the screen we all stopped watching, and why that might be…
- 1/25/26Crypto
Welcoming The Degens
Something Weird Happened A few weeks ago, someone created a token called $KMIKEYM on bags.fm. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t authorize it. I had nothing to do with it. It felt like a scam. People…
- 11/10/25Business
90 Days in “Heads Down Mode”
I’ve been focused on the startup work at Vibes DIY, learning more about AI-assisted coding and doing a lot of video production. It’s been 90 days and I’m starting to come out of “heads down mode.”
- 6/24/25Appearance
M.I.K.E. Community Bond Program
The MIKE trust protocol extends the KmikeyM community spirit through a new endorsement system. Benefits include reputation boosts from Mike, while violations result in endorsements being revoked.
- 6/17/25Appearance
Aesthetic Drift
My evolving style journey started with Brooks Brothers to enhance the KmikeyM image. Over time and through personal experiences, it shifted to more casual wear and a new relationship with my wardrobe.…
- 5/7/25Votes
One Pair of Sunglasses
I only get one pair of sunglasses. It’s either that, or I get contacts, or I suppose I could get rich and be able to afford many pairs. When you only get one pair, the question of which pair is more…
- 2/2/25KmikeyM
KmikeyM Quick Start Guide
Players earn shares, vote on proposals, and engage in strategic discussions within the community. Users can shape Mike Merrill’s life and projects, maximizing their influence through voting and active…
- 12/19/24Votes
To Smell or Not to Smell?
The overwhelming McRib aroma turns the restaurant into a strange BBQ laboratory, making any pleasant scent a rare oasis. Two co-workers stand out with their subtle, refreshing fragrances, offering…
- 11/10/24KmikeyM
Hamburger Mornings
In the dark hours of the morning in the shadow of Elysian Park, on the banks of the concrete Los Angeles river, it’s time to wake up and get ready for a shift at the hamburger restaurant.
- 10/14/24KmikeyM
Choose Your Own Case Study
Hamburger Business Review’s second season invites listeners to vote on the inaugural case study exploring McDonald’s sustainability efforts, addressing environmental impacts and corporate…
- 8/5/24KmikeyM
1000 Episodes
To celebrate reaching 1000 episodes of the 3 Minute Review podcast we turned the microphone on a few of our listeners. Getting to 1000 3 Minute Review started back in 2019 as a movie review podcast.…
- 4/14/24KmikeyM
The Board of Directors
This post will be updated as the board of directors is built out and defined. Last updated August 6, 2024. We will soon incorporate Membership Shares as approved by shareholder vote, and as part of…
- 2/23/24KmikeyM
How I’m Using ChatGPT
It took me a while to figure out how to use AI tools as something more than just a fun distraction. I mean, initially the fun distraction part was REALLY fun and REALLY distracting. I was building out…
- 2/20/24Mailing List
Build Week 2024
Last year we made a bunch of changes to the main page, to how you can buy shares, created new alerts, and started experimenting with Policy Votes. This year the focus is on building out features to…
- 2/17/24KmikeyM
Playing With Corporate Control
After the success of the Membership Shares proposal let’s look at how corporations use share classes to maintain total control of their companies. After looking at Meta and Alphabet I was curious how…
- 2/7/24KmikeyM
Membership Shares
Well, hello shareholders but mostly non-shareholders. I have 1,194 shareholders but there are 3,582 people subscribed to this list. I expect many of those people have created an account on KmikeyM,…
- 1/29/24Mailing List
New Policies For Shareholder Control
As part of an ever-refining attempt to perfect experiment with my own process as a publicly traded person I’m updating the Policy Votes! The idea behind Policy Votes is “always-on” votes that change…
- 1/1/24Reports
2024 Preview
📜 Introduction The main theme of 2024 is profitability. After a year of dipping into savings I need to make and save money. I’d ideally like to do this via projects that relate to KmikeyM, or at…
- 1/1/24KmikeyM
2023 Review
I started 2023 with a lot of excitement, and while I accomplished a lot I ended the year feeling a bit disappointed and reserved. It’s easy for me to make big plans and it’s a lot harder to look back…
- 12/29/23KmikeyM
2023 Fourth Quarter Review
So much reviewing in December! Monthly, quarterly, and annual. This is the Q4 review, and you can check out the other quarterly reviews here: These last three months of the year things really slowed…
- 12/10/23Finance
Mike Bucks
A friend wanted to encourage betting on the dice game threes during their birthday party. Knowing that betting on dice is more exciting and attractive when playing with physical currency I thought I’d…
- 10/3/23KmikeyM
2023 Third Quarter Review
Spent a big chunk of Q3 in Portland and wrapped season 1 of Hamburger Business Review. Overall it was a slow and steady quarter with a few weeks spent getting over COVID and feeling the impact of the…
- 9/14/23KmikeyM
What KmikeyM Is For
What is KmikeyM? Over the last 15 years it has evolved into a global community of people who are interested in the intersection of finance and personhood. That is, we recognize the awkward, almost…
- 8/1/23Reports
AAR: HBR Season 1
We’ve finished season 1 of Hamburger Business Review, a shareholder endorsed project (74%). Ten episodes of discussion about a Harvard Business School case study on McDonald’s. Closing the season I…
- 6/28/23KmikeyM
2023 Second Quarter Review
The year is half over, and while I knew this was going to be a quieter year for KmikeyM it still bothers me. KmikeyM has always pushed me to be public about my life and it’s weird to be working on…
- 6/1/23Votes
Super Hero Movies
In 2017 I realized that watching Agents of SHIELD was a form of procrastination. There is something about watching teamwork that I found both relaxing and rewarding, but I knew there was better…
- 4/15/23KmikeyM
2023 First Quarter Review
After three months of Agile Resolutions I’m pretty pleased with the progress being made in 2023. I’m still working on the balance between the fun of planning and the grind of doing the work and my…
- 3/16/23Votes
Policy Votes
In 2019 I read ‘How to Change Your Mind‘ by Michael Pollan after having a few low dosage mushroom experiences. It was fun! But a part of me wondered if this was a good idea, and more specifically if…
- 3/1/23KmikeyM
Payments & Deposits
During Build Week 2023 we created some new ways to buy shares. Shareholders and new users can now buy immediately, skipping the deposit step, and we’ve also added automatic monthly purchases with…
- 2/17/23KmikeyM
2023 Build Week
Build Week kicked off on Feb 17th with a live stream. We went through all the feature requests we’ve built up on Change Map and organized a list of what we expect we can accomplish. Video One:…
- 2/16/23KmikeyM
Thick Quest: Glendale
For the month of January Kathryn and I challenged ourselves to a Thick Quest. Thick Quest is a term used to describe the challenge of eating at all the restaurants on a street. It traces its origin to…
- 1/12/23KmikeyM
2023 Preview
Having finished the 2022 Review the next and much harder task is creating a 2023 Preview. It’s easy to go back and cherry pick the highlights of the last twelve months. It’s a lot harder to look ahead…
- 12/31/22Reports
2022 Review
At the end of every year I am thinking more about the coming year and all that I want to accomplish and what I didn’t quote finish. But actually taking the time to look back at 2022 I’m a surprised at…
- 11/19/22KmikeyM
DBA
Last month the shareholders decided I should not (yet) create a corporation. I was surprised, but I appreciate the expertise of my shareholders who voted to reduce complexity. I was also a little sad,…
- 8/31/22KmikeyM
Book Title Bounty
Kevin and I are working on the book proposal for KmikeyM, and while I’m biased, I will say that it’s going pretty well! We have an outline, a sample chapter that we are cleaning up, and our agent…
- 6/7/22Events
2022 Shareholder Summit
The 2022 Shareholder Summit was on June 11th, 2022. The event was a live series of fireside chats with various stakeholders. Fireside Chats Josh and Jed Josh is my oldest friend and has been a…
- 3/13/22KmikeyM
KmikeyM @ TEDxVienna
In October of 2021 I was able to go on stage at TEDxVienna and talk about how I became publicly traded. Thankfully they cut out the parts where I cried. I’ll write more on this later but I am excited…
- 7/5/21Votes
June Challenge: Wake Up At 5am
The June challenge was almost over, with the majority of votes going to “Keep fresh flowers in the house.” I was excited, Kathryn was excited, and I was already looking up the public hours for the…
- 6/22/21Roadshow
Shareholder Roadshow
When a company is going to IPO they will often do a “roadshow” and make presentations on why they are a great investment to institutional investors. As a publicly traded person I am adopting a more…
- 6/15/21Appearance
Livestream with Oh My Dollar!
✨ Special Edition Livestream with Lillian of Oh My Dollar! (and more) We’ll talk about what the market has been doing this year, how the stock market isn’t the economy, and how efficient markets…
- 5/31/21Votes
May Challenge: New Place Each Week
For the month of May the shareholders set a challenge of going to a new place each week*. This was a great challenge for coming out of the pandemic restrictions and pushing me to new routes and…
- 5/7/21KmikeyM
2021 Shareholder Conference
REGISTER NOW On Saturday, May 15th we held the 2021 Shareholder Conference. The theme of the talks this year was Speculation, a term that has been interpreted in a few different ways. This year we had…
- 11/1/20Votes
WATCHMIKE: Phase II Trials
The initial experiment is over! I posted 19 total votes. 3 are still pending, 10 were approved, and 6 were rejected. I’ve finished three of them, and am in the midst of five of them. My initial…
- 9/17/20Votes
WATCHMIKE: A TV Control Experiment
Update The WATCHMIKE remote control experiment is now live at weejee.io/watchmike Background On September 13th 2020 I posted a question to weejee about updating my rule on not watching superhero fare.…
- 4/8/20KmikeyM
How To KmikeyM
In 2008 I launched a market and sold shares in myself. I also asked my shareholders for advice, and they voted with the power of the shares they had bought, giving me a clear course of action whenever…
- 4/8/20KmikeyM
2020 Shareholder Conference
On Saturday, May 16th from 12:00PM – 2:00PM PT, KmikeyM we held the first annual K5M Shareholder Conference. A free and completely virtually video conference! This conference, known as K5M Con 2020,…
- 4/6/20KmikeyM
The Eleven Point Strategy Results
During the first week of the stay-at-home order I was refreshing the news and generally feeling down. Thankfully, by talking with Kathryn and writing my thoughts out I was able to detect my own…
- 3/24/20KmikeyM
The Publicly Traded Person is Down
I had a Zoom conversation with a few friends last week and we talked about feeling like we have all this time but no energy to do anything. This past weekend I was pretty depressed and it took me a…
- 1/30/20KmikeyM
How weejee Works
When we built KmikeyM I modeled the voting system on shareholder resolutions, which usually present an argument and allow shareholders to vote “For” or “Against”. One of the differences we’ve…
- 1/15/20KmikeyM
Uhh Yeah Dude Discuss KmikeyM
On episode 762 of Uhh Yeah Dude (one of my favorite podcasts) hosts Seth Romatelli and Jonathan Larroquette have discovered KmikeyM and discuss it after talking about Spencer Dinwiddie’s token sale. I…
- 12/21/19KmikeyM
3 Minute Review
A short three minute podcast that offers three perspectives. The idea was to design the process to be as easy as possible to make. There is minimal editing and production, but incremental changes are…
- 7/29/19Press & Awards
Mike Merrill to Executive Produce IPO Series with Amazon and Sony Pictures Television
Amazon is developing a series inspired by the true story of a man who sold shares of himself to investors, Variety has learned. In a competitive situation, Amazon has landed the project, titled…
- 6/30/19KmikeyM
Future Congress Keynote
The Future Congress Keynote I did in Wolfsburg Germany.
- 6/29/19Shareholders
K5M Dialup Clips
Recorded using Dialup Edited by Danielle Baskin Creative Commons music: Knife by CJ Aleezon Super Friendly by Kevin MacLeod Criticality by Pixelgipsy Garden Music by Kevin MacLeod Brittle Rille by…
- 6/12/19Shareholders
Teaser of Dialup Call
The first Dialup call was fantastic and I wanted to share a few snippets with you. I know that talking to a stranger on the phone is weird, but the first test of using this far exceeded any…
- 5/14/19KmikeyM
2019 Annual Report
The 2019 Annual Report is released in tandem with the annual shareholder approval rating vote. A few years ago I put up a vote for shareholder approval on my birthday. While the stock price reflects…
- 3/16/19Health + Fitness
Capitalism Weight Loss Program
Based on a shareholder proposal to incentivize my weight loss using a share buyback program as a financial penalty here is the plan to manage my weight and health. There is old adage that “abs are…
- 8/21/17KmikeyM
KmikeyM Launches Kickstarter for Ghostwritten Crowdsourced Fanfic
This will be a work of self-published ghostwritten crowdsourced crowd-funded faux-autobiographical erotic fan fiction. The ghostwriters have written a prologue and we’ve come up with the first set of…
- 7/1/17KmikeyM
The Publicly-Traded Person Moves To Los Angeles
Decisions with shareholder input, but without shareholder vote. I’m moving to Los Angeles. I accepted an offer to become the majordomo of Sandwich Video. While this would normally be a time for…
- 4/8/15KmikeyM
💀 How It Ends
One of the big differences in being a publicly traded person vs. a publicly traded company is that while a company can live forever I will die. My younger brother, and shareholder, is the beneficiary…
- 4/8/15KmikeyM
🗳️What is a “Shareholder Vote”
There are two ways that shareholders control me. First is by my stock price. Every morning when I wake up I say, ‘Alexa, play my flash briefing’ which includes the HBS Management tip of the day, the…
- 4/8/15KmikeyM
📉 How to Sell Shares
Selling shares is easy, but withdrawing funds is a manual process. Sell shares on the market Request funds (send email to ir@kmikeym.com) Funds will be sent via Venmo, Square Cash, or whatever…
- 4/8/15KmikeyM
📈 How To Buy Shares
Buying shares is easy, but it takes a number of small steps. You have to have an account, then deposit funds into your account, and then purchase from the market. Create an account Deposit funds Buy a…
- 4/8/15KmikeyM
🎮 How To Play
Itching to have some shares and start voting? There’s no better way to learn than to simply buy some shares and get started! And if you still have unanswered questions this section will help you catch…
- 4/8/15KmikeyM
📜 A Brief History Of Mike
Alaska Born Kenneth Michael Merrill in Fairbanks, Alaska on May 17th, 1977 Raised in Coldfoot, AK, population 10 Started public school: 5th grade in Soldotna, AK Graduated High School in Sitka, AK The…
- 3/29/13KmikeyM
The Critical FAQ
If you’ve ever received media attention you know how the internet will enable you to receive unsolicited critiques from strangers. While many people advise ignoring the comment section I like to…
Own a piece of Mike.
Shares trade at kmikeym.com. Shareholders vote on his decisions, and the votes are binding.