john mccoy

director of marketing / marketing maven

In the beginning...

I was selling heavy equipment in the Central Valley in 1991 when a friend who worked at Angel Studios in LA set my brain on fire with a vision of Virtual Reality. "This MUST be part of my life," I declared. As I stood near the cheap motel in Los Banos with a cold brew in my hand, I stared into the dirty blood sunset with searing intent - my future could not come at me fast enough... The next day, I went out to buy the best book I could find on VR. I found one, written by some guy named Rheingold. I devoured the book, made lots of impassioned desciptions to mystified friends and family about my vision of the new world and, after lots of work, got my first job as the head of sales and marketing at multimedia studio Ikonic Interactive. Three years later, I had amassed solid experience in building and selling multimedia, paid some of my dues and founded my own consulting company.

Then suddenly...

I got a call early one morning from Randy in October, '95. "Ever heard of an author named Rheingold?" he asked. "He's got this idea for a virtual community - you need to meet with him right away!" This was too good to be true. After building a career from that magic conversation in my motel room, I found myself sitting face-to-face with the very man who inspired so much of my juice for a brave new business. A week later, I was hammering with Randy, with whom I had worked independently for a year, and Howard, whom I liked the moment I met him, to manifest the first broad strokes of a wild-eyed streak of inspiration.

And finally...

after a year of work on the business plan, raising money, building relationships and watching a righteous team converge to create a radical idea for the future of the Web, this whole chaotic stream of concepts is twitching to life. With your own membership in our community, you join a team of thinkers, creators and dreamers with the honest intent of helping build the future. I thank you very much! This crew ROCKS!