Farewell, Breadpig!
After 3 and a half years, today is my last day at Breadpig.
I learned a dizzying amount helping our winged piggy friend find his bearings. When I joined Breadpig in mid-2010, the company was a wrapper for an enthusiastic and successful but scattered bundle of projects. Through trial and error, step and misstep, I saw the company through two major identity changes (“merchandiser” -> “publisher” -> “crowdfunding sidekick”), worked on crowdfunding campaigns that collectively raised over $2.5 million, and made a lot of spreadsheets for a lot of talented people along the way. It’s a funny thing: I’m more excited about Breadpig’s work than ever, but I’m also sure it’s time for me to move on. Now that Breadpig is (mostly) through its mucky adolescence, it needs a leader with a more singular focus and specific expertise.
In mid-2013, we lucked into hiring George Rohac, who previously worked on operations and business development for Oni Press while also helping an immense number of independent creators with their crowdfunding projects in his free time. Not only does he have an intuitive and practiced knack for putting crowdfunding campaigns together, he also shares Breadpig’s core values: helping independent creatives do their work better, promoting diversity through building better structures, and eating a lot of banh mi. In other words, I can’t think of a single person better equipped to run Breadpig. I mean, I once saw him attempt to identify the paper stock of a book at 1 AM in the middle of a party. This is a man born for this job.
As for me, I’ll stay on with Breadpig as an advisor/backseat driver for the foreseeable future. I’m also taking a month or two “off” from any full-time commitments, which means freelancing and giving a little more attention to my other projects. I want to continue thinking about building forward-looking systems and structures that redistribute power/wealth/access, nurturing and scaling robust communities (online and off), and getting past tech exceptionalism. More concretely, I’m also excited to work in larger teams, understand how to maneuver within big organizations, and just figuring out how to do the IRL grown-up thing better.
Finally, I owe the biggest thanks to Alexis. Four years ago when he sent me an instant message (yes, really) about working for Breadpig, I couldn’t have possibly imagined all the things that I would get to do as part of the job. It was an incredible opportunity to drop on someone as green as I was, but Alexis had the foresight and faith—more than I did in myself!—to know that it would all work out. I can only ever aspire to his enthusiasm for inspiring others and overflowing generosity, especially remarkable given his ridiculous workload. Aside from sharing advising responsibilities at Breadpig, I have no doubt that we’ll work on plenty of shenanigans in the future. Ohanian 2016!
