One of the things that’s usually pretty good for getting me revved up and inspired in the creative world is gawking at other successful creative people, so the other day when I found myself with a scad of business work, I was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon this video from PAX Prime with likes of Mike & Jerry from Penny Arcade to help me pass the time!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtJfjzFPEnM
It’s kind of cool because unlike some of the other Q&As that they’ve done, this one was led by Robert Khoo, who’s best known as the business unicorn that lifted their comic to its destiny … and officially speaking, I guess you could say that he runs the company now, and it’s certainly no secret that under his leadership, they’ve done very, very well for themselves! And so in a way it’s inspiring for me to listen to these guys talk so candidly about how their business operates and some admittedly controversial happenings that they’ve seen over the years, and how they’ve grown with them as a result.
Admittedly one piece that also piqued my curiosity was the couple of questions that touched on money, both in how it has affected Mike & Jerry’s lives in addition to the bit on various companies bidding to buy out Penny Arcade there at the end. I’ve always assumed that by this point they’re both doing very well, but it seems a little weird to put an actual number on something that started out as a couple of guys drawing comic strips in their apartment in between playing video games. I think that’s what’s inspiring the most to me – simply to be able to see the entire arc of their success from the ground level back in the late ’90s to now being this huge, but still incredibly small business of little more than a dozen people who create the largest webcomic on the Internet and raise millions of dollars for charity and run the biggest gaming conventions in the world, among all of the other new projects that they have popping up all of the time.
It’s very cool to me to see something like that because it gives hope to the types of creative stuff that I’d like to do myself.
A few other videos of theirs that I enjoyed in this same marathon session…