Minsoo and I founded a company. We called it Prospero Electronic Publishing.
The pitch was genuine: free publishing for amateur writers. Short stories, fiction, travel writing, essays, screenplays. All submissions considered. We had a domain — prosperopublishing.com. We had a mission statement. We had email: prospero@prosperopublishing.com.
What we did not have, as I noted in my journal in early 1998, was “an office, a contract, shares of stock, a telephone, yadda yadda.”
Minsoo was my co-founder from Pomona College days — brilliant, academic, more interested in ideas than infrastructure. By late 1997 he’d gone quiet. By December 1998 I was writing, “I haven’t heard from Minsoo in weeks, since he went to the hospital for tests. Is he dead? Or what???”
Meanwhile I owed the California Franchise Tax Board $2,200 for Prospero’s 1997 taxes. The company earned nothing. It also cost nothing. But the FTB didn’t care about that distinction.
I carried Prospero business cards in Santa Clara in December and handed one to a woman I met at a bar. It said I was president of an electronic publishing company. I was considering leaving cards in bookstores.
By 2002 I was writing INS letters for Minsoo’s employment visa, listing myself as President of Prospero Electronic Publishing, Minsoo as Editorial Assistant at $3,147/month. I don’t think we ever published anything.