TRUST SCIENCE! Will Doors, Start-up Visionary & Former GroßPharma Director/Investor
Excerpt from "COVIDsteria: An Oral History of America's Great Reset" - see https://covidsteria.substack.com/p/covidsteria-table-of-contents
After many emails with the lawyers of Will Doors, I interviewed the high-strung entrepreneur at his luxurious wine estate in California's Napa Valley. Despite the COVID amnesty in place, his lawyers had warned me to stay clear of asking about any sensitive topics. However, I am not sure if Doors had listened to any legal advice from his lawyers as he was surprisingly chatty and open with me. Then again, it was clear that Doors already had too much to drink - drink as in coffee rather than wine.
And although it was a crisp spring morning, I also thought it was rather odd how his burly security people, who seemed to be watching him more closely than his estate, all wore black uniforms and fur hats (of all things)...
I am not a medical doctor nor a scientist – although I once dissected a worm in high school biology! My background is in tech and Internet startups - as in the online gaming kind! I dropped out of Harvard to launch my first Internet startup centered on my highly addictive online multiplayer game called Hungry Crickets!
Who, other than a visionary genius like me could have foreseen that a game centered on hungry crickets trying to survive in the wilds of American suburbia would prove to be so popular with and addictive for Millenials! When I took Hungry Crickets public, I made my first billion!
After I cashed out, I did everything young super-rich techies were supposed to do with a huge pile of money! I bought a private jet to start jet-setting to Davos every year! I purchased a winery in Napa! I bought a 250-foot megayacht! I bought ugly-ass but expensive avant-garde artwork to be hip and have everyone think I am cultured! I had lots of naked pool parties with hired strippers! Not only did I buy some electric vehicles, but I also invested in the electric vehicle startup for some extra tax write-offs! That investment ended up making me a few billion more! I also traded my starter wife in for a hmmm... newer model! [He winks.]
That wife trade-in ended up costing me several hundred million! [He laughs.]
But getting the newer model was worth it for me! I also made sure to hire the best lawyers money could buy to write all the prenups for her and the next ones that followed! [He laughs harder.]
But frankly, I was getting a little bored! I mean, after a couple of junkets to Davos, one too many boring TED conferences to count, a few too many pool parties with naked strippers, and a couple of round-the-world cruises on my megayacht - I needed something more… [He shrugs.] Interesting to do with the rest of my life! I did not want to do tech or gaming again! After all, who could top Hungry Crickets! As for foundation or charity work or save the planet type of shit… [He lets out a long yawn.] Borrrrrrring! Crap like that is for nerds like Bill Gates and bored heiresses! [He laughs.]
Since I am Mr. New Ideas Man with a proven track record thanks to my Hungry Crickets startup success, what I wanted to do was revolutionize how a completely different industry operated!
So I teamed up with a couple of Wall Street buddies to form a hedge fund! We decided to invest in and take over companies in stodgy industries starting with pharma where I, Mr. New Ideas Man, could breathe new life into them by introducing innovation and new ways of thinking!
We took over a stodgy 100-year-old pharma company where I made myself their Chief Ideas Guru and a Director on their Board of Directors! My role as Chief Ideas Guru at this venture? To introduce BIG new ideas to them!
How was I going to accomplish this? By implementing my Pharma 21 plan and philosophy! This was my Pharma 21 elevator pitch: We combine the most innovative aspects of online gaming, aka my ultra-successful Hungry Crickets whole ecosystem gaming model that I used to revolutionize the online multiplayer gaming industry, with the successful software operating system business model! Then we add some Hollywood-style marketing, media, and social media buzz to form one big bundle of irresistible innovation to unlock value and blast a stodgy pharma company at galactic speed into the 21st century and beyond!
How was I going to achieve this? Just look at my Hungry Crickets venture and what made it such a resounding and profitable history-making smash success!
At first glance, Hungry Crickets is just a game centered on some hungry crickets! But Hungry Crickets is more than just a game about crickets! It was the first free online game with an entire money-making franchise or ecosystem built around a highly addictive game that, on the surface, looks free to play but is not so free to play once you dig deeper! [He winks.]