About Charles

Hey, look at me. I’m important. AKA, a personal about page. Yeah, I know it’s long. Read the darker stuff if you’re in a hurry. Read the lighter stuff for the deeper, darker stuff.

Hi! My name is Charles Forman. I live in New York City. I make things that I want to exist in the world. I take pride in them. I try to put love into those things, with the idea that other people will feel that love on the other side.

Everything good I’ve ever done is something I wasn’t supposed to be able to do.

I’m an unassuming person. You won’t notice me at a party – if I’m even invited to one in the first place. You won’t meet me and walk away thinking, “That dude is going places.” And that’s OK, even though it makes me sad sometimes. Sometimes, I wish I could meet interesting people and talk about the nascent ideas I have. But no one ever takes me seriously until I’ve made something, and they see that it’s hot.

I hope that one day, you’ll play or use a thing I’ve made and it makes your day a little better. And some day, if just one person thinks I’ve made a meaningful impact on their life through something I’ve made, that would make me happy.

I’m working on a company, Wonder Unit. It’s a movie studio that develops stories and produces those stories into live-action movies. We want to tell fantastic stories with a theme of childlike wonder vs. cynicism. We are doing many things differently than a typical studio: we have small, tight knit teams, working with people that typically don’t have a voice, building technology that better helps develop our vision. Movies made a profound impact on the way I see the world as a young person, and I hope to create movies that make a profound impact on young people in the future.

Unapologetically, I don’t have any experience making movies. As a result, most people think this company is a bad idea. I can’t get most of my friends to even read my deck. My biggest ideas are bad ideas, until they’re successful – and then everyone that doubted me tells me they knew I could always do it. If creating a thing was easy, it wouldn’t be worth anything. And until then, this is a lonely time for me.

Regrettably, I do, as I have done many times in the past, spend a lot of time asking for permission. I want to meet the person that’s going to tell me I can do it, and show me how to do it. Unfortunately, this type of person doesn’t exist in almost any context, especially entertainment. There is no right way to do a thing. There is no special secret to breaking in. There is no person you have to meet to unlock your greatness. And no one really knows shit. You have to will a thing into existence and make sure that thing is bananas. And until then, you are nobody to anyone else. Yet - that doesn’t stop me from dreaming about the person that’s going to tell me I can do it, and show me how to do it. Sigh, I really wish I could turn that part of my brain off.

We were raising money for the studio, but I realized that raising money is a bad idea, at least right now. I haven’t made a movie before, and no one believes I can do it until they see me do it. Therefore, I have to spend more time working on smaller productions, practicing and gaining experience. So we are working on shooting a bunch of tests, specific scenes, and a trailer of one of the movies we are working on.

The first movie we are producing is called Explorers. It’s about young adults that get stuck in the underground tunnels of New York. When they are down there, they discover a forgotten secret. It is the envelope of a fantastic world hidden under our feet, but it’s really the story of 5 young adults that feel like they just don’t fit in this world. They’re each under pressure to be something they’re not. It’s a story everyone can identify with.

It’s very visual effects heavy, but we’ve come up with a way to do the VFX really cheaply. I’m really excited to prove that out.

I’ve been working on a storyboarding tool called Storyboarder. I’m pretty proud of it. It’s the most simple tool to visualize your story ideas. I feel like we’re innovating on a bunch of stuff. Lately, we’ve been working on a feature that allows you to storyboard without drawing. We built it to help develop stories ourselves, but we released it for free, and people really like it. 200,000 people use it and some pretty big movies and TV shows have been boarded with it. The greatest thing about it, is that people can direct their movies without a crew. This will democratize visual storytelling and filmmaking to people of all types. The next feature of Storyboarder will be truly revolutionary.

In the past…

I created a gaming company called OMGPOP. The company was sold to Zynga for $200 million. We made a mobile game called Draw Something. At the time, it was installed on 9 out of 10 iPhones. It was downloaded more than 200 million times. No one knows why it was a success. I produced 37 games, most of which were built around a real-time multiplayer game platform. I was really proud of OMGPOP. I built something really great. Although the sale of the company resulted in me becoming wealthy, I have a lot of regret about the company’s sale. When you raise money, you sign up for that life. The clock starts ticking. Always be growing the metrics. Hire business people who don’t do anything. Sell to the highest bidder. Anyways, the company was incredibly poorly managed after the sale and Zynga terminated OMGPOP and shut down the studio less than a year later. All the games that millions of people enjoyed playing are dead and can never be played again. I’m glad a few people got really rich and now they can buy their way into schools for their kids.

In the summer of 2006, I did Y Combinator. It was the third batch of Y Combinators. I didn’t know what Y Combinator was or who Paul Graham was. My roommate wanted me to help him pitch his business idea - he needed a co-founder. I thought, “Hey, free trip to California.” When we got there, Paul hated his business idea. Yet, he said, “Hey, you seem like smart guys, got any other ideas?” I used to come up with bad business ideas to tell people about in the unlikely event I was invited to a party, and the even more unlikely event that someone would ask me what I did. So I pitched Paul an idea I’ve had about an auction based dating site. Most dating sites don’t have any cost for messaging literally everyone. Therefore, people are spammed with tons of unwanted messages. Why not allow people to conduct a public auction? For a limited time, you can put yourself out there, and people can bid for your attention, using a limited virtual currency. At the end of the auction, the host can choose from the top 5 bidders and have direct communication. It was actually a good idea and Paul loved it. I really loved my experience at Y Combinator. I made friendships there that will last a lifetime.

At Y Combinator, we built the site and called it “iminlikewithyou.” It was pretty innovative for its time. The entire who’s who of the internet was on it. Our time on site average session was 2 hours. We used a virtual currency to incentivize people to do certain actions. We pioneered something really dumb sounding called “gamification” that other services would copy to increase engagement, and then social gaming would later become. We invented a novel feedback system that basically everyone uses today. Slack’s CTO met his wife on the site. And my overall design for the site was the inspiration for the way Facebook, an online dirty cum dumpster, looks today according to Chris Cox. I’m not trying to flex nuts. These are just objective truths, and you’re welcome.

In 2004, I lived in Korea for 2 years. I saw the future. Korea was coming off a huge financial depression from 1997 to 2002, which required a $51 billion bailout. Korea’s major focus was to become an economy of the future by focusing on internet infrastructure. In 2004, everyone had 100 megabit internet in their homes. There were homes that had dirt floors that had internet that was faster than 99% of households in the US. The result was a ton of new internet businesses, and internet games. I worked on a social network in Korea, founded by a woman, that was more interesting than many internet companies of today, 15 years later. Yet, the real innovation was in gaming. First, because Koreans were accustomed to pirating all their games, they created a new model of free to play games that were monetized through micro-transactions in the game using virtual currencies. Second, the games were targeted to everyone. Video games for women? Yes. It sounds funny, but that was an innovation and never done at scale before. Lastly, all the games had an online multiplayer component. While I was in Korea, I met the CEO of Yahoo Games. I told him that he should swiftly buy three specific companies and apply them to the American market. He told me that what works in Asia, won’t work in the US. Like every Yahoo CEO prior and since, he was one dumb motherfucker. I knew it was time for me to be out and try my own hand at applying everything I’d seen to the American market.

Prior to Korea, I lived in Japan for a year. In Chicago, I was dating a girl for a few years. I thought I was going to marry her. Then I found out she was cheating on me with 7 dudes. And before you even ask: No, not at the same time – although, now that I think about it, I don’t know that for sure. I thought my life was all figured out. I was going to marry this girl, probably have some kids, and wait to die. But it was actually the best thing that could have happened to me. I realized that if I didn’t leave Chicago, I’d never leave. So I moved to the opposite side of the world, to Tokyo. It was supposed to be the mecca of video game development. After about 3 months there, I really hated it. There was nothing new happening in Tokyo. It seemed like someone from the 90’s perverse idea of the future. There was an unwavering following of rules without question. The people were super passive aggressive. And there was a super thick culture of racism. The way the Japanese treated Chinese and Koreans was horrible. The CEO of a very large Japanese advertising agency once imparted some sage advice to me, “Never trust a Korean. They will be nice one minute, and the next attack you like a wild dog.” In high school, all the asian kids used to sit next to each other at lunch. Now I’m finding out that they’re all supposed to hate each other?

In 1999, in Chicago, I shared an office with two guys I met over IRC. I was making interactive installations and games, and they were building their t-shirt website company, Threadless. Threadless ended up becoming a huge multi-million dollar business. But we had other projects we would work on together. We had an online design community called “YayHooray.” It was super active. This was the first time I felt like the internet was becoming a living, breathing thing, and anyone had the ability to create things on the internet - not just big corporations. I have really fond memories of our time there together and I’m sorry about a bunch of stuff. I’m sorry I got Josh Davis’s password out of the database and used it to hack into his website and post as him for a week – even though, you have to admit it was pretty funny. I’m also sorry that I completely ghosted to move to Tokyo.

Hey, wanna hear a funny story? At the peak of iminlikewithyou, some short, loud mouthed, jersey-trash guy showed up at our tiny office unannounced. He said his name was Gary Vaynerchuk and that he wanted to help us become huge and make some money. He said that he had just been to Chicago, hanging out with Threadless, a huge online t-shirt company. He said he wanted to do a deal between us to make some money. He said he told the founders of Threadless about me and that they really wanted to meet me. And that’s when I knew Gary Vaynerchuk was and still is a fraud, a liar, and generally a bad person. I feel bad for these young impressionable people who feel insignificant in this world, and look up to this guy who spits useless and empty platitudes about “hustling” / “crushing it” and other rapey catch phrases that often directly contradict each other. His reach is disgusting and very symbolic of modern day reality-tv, Kardashian, Theranos, Fyre Festival, Trump American trash. Now you might be thinking, “Charles, what does this have to do with Charles?” I care a lot about what is fair in life. This world has demonstrated that life is not a meritocracy, cheaters win, and it’s cool to shit on the person beneath you. If you’re cool with that, I feel sorry for you. But until it’s the other way around, I will always call this shit out, for better or for worse. Does anyone wanna invite me to a party? Unlikely.

I learn by doing and making. I used to make graphical software demos and post them to a site called “setpixel”. I was interested in designing and implementing algorithms, computer graphics, generative design, computer vision, etc: creative development. I put the demos up open-source so that other people could learn. I also liked making home brew games for the Gameboy and the N64. One of my media art heroes, Golan Levin, included some of my demos in a book he wrote. I was super jazzed. But I quickly learned that if I wanted to make stuff I wanted to make, I’d need money.

I did commercial work to make money, used the money to make stuff I wanted to make, spent the money down, and repeated. I just hoped that someday the stuff I wanted to make would make money. I worked freelance for ad agencies. The money was easy, and the work was concise. I’m not money motivated. I’m internally motivated by the feeling I get when I make something I’m proud of. This world uses money to motivate people. It is the currency of control. Because I can not be controlled by money, I can not easily be controlled, and people are afraid of me because I stand for shit I believe in. Some people think I’m crazy. Maybe those people are jealous cowards.

I moved out of my house when I was 17. I moved to Chicago from the suburbs. I didn’t really have the money to live - but I had to get out. This was the first time I was in control of my life. But it was difficult, and I couldn’t always make ends meet. I’d pay rent instead of buying food and the opposite. It’s a really complicated feeling to not have enough and having too much pride to ask for help. It makes you feel like nobody. If you ever want to feel invisible, just ask a stranger in Chicago if you can have some money for a meal on Thanksgiving day. I can’t even imagine what it’s like for the people that haven’t had the upward mobility I’ve had.

When I was in high school, there was a class for the remedial kids called “the work program.” The program would pair dropout quality students with jobs in heating and air conditioning, auto repair, forklift driving, and data entry. They would give you half the day off of school to go to work. I took the class and got my own job working at Leo Burnett, an advertising agency in Chicago, doing website development. I wasn’t making a ton of money, but I was learning a ton and doing things that have never been done before. At that time, I thought everything was a system. If you know the system well enough, you can exploit it to make the system work for you. I hacked the system. As a result, I never went to college. Why would I go to college to learn something I was already knowing and practicing? I’d also be mired in debt. I feel bad for these kids, who aren’t old enough to make decisions about their future, who elect for a life-long prison sentence of debt.

My parents wouldn’t let me have video games or a computer. In hindsight, I’m glad they didn’t. I spent most of my time dreaming about what I would make whilst in front of a computer. I came up with tons of ideas, solved problems, and made games just walking around on the street. Once I was in front of a computer, I had to make my time count, and when my time was up, it just made me dream more. Limitations and focused idle time fuel creativity. Today, I see almost everyone spending their idle time scrolling through Instagram. They are being robbed of their ability to let their mind explore ideas and create. We are suffering a fundamental death of creativity.

My father was a real son of a bitch. He always thought he was smarter than everyone else. But he wasn’t smart enough to avoid getting locked into a loveless marriage by making me. When he would get home from work, I would hide, because he always had some sort of anger he wanted to take out on me. One time, he went too far, and I wanted my mother to take me to the hospital. I negotiated with her for two hours promising not to rat him out. You don’t have any control over your life when you’re a kid. Later in life, If you don’t feel good around your family, you don’t need to be around them. You have no obligation to your family, despite shitty movie platitudes and social pressures. All I’m saying is, if your father needs an expensive operation and you are the only one that can provide it for him, maybe donate that money to someone that actually needs it.

I grew up in Wood Dale, Illinois, just west of Chicago. There was a small forest preserve behind my house. I had a lot of adventures there by myself. It seemed like a great place to grow up. But, I went back for the first time in 20 years for my high school reunion. My friend was driving me through the town and all I could see were pay day loans, liquor stores, title loan shops, and pawn shops. I had never seen my home town as an adult. I asked my friend if we were white trash. She said, “Charles, we’re still white trash.”

For a kid that’s having a tough time, movies are really important. They’re an escape away from reality. Like any other kid growing up in the 80s, I really loved the fantastic worlds of movies like Goonies, The Never Ending Story, anything by Steven Spielberg, especially E.T., anything by Tim Burton, etc. But it wasn’t until I saw “Stand by Me” that I realized a movie can speak directly to you, without talking down to you, impact you emotionally, and allow you to fundamentally change your outlook on life. “Stand By Me” told me that even if you’re weird, especially if you’re weird, your unique point of view in this world is incredibly valuable – even if no one values it at the time. While your life as a kid might be tough, these experiences will shape what you become in the future – and if you choose, for the better. This was really important for me. I think it’s important to continue to tell these stories for people who need it most, especially right now.

I know this was really long, but I want to put myself out there in earnest, petty flaws and all. I want to meet future collaborators that want to make great things, put some love into those things, and maybe someday, make a meaningful impact on someone’s life. What do you think? If you just want to talk about making stuff, I’d love to talk to you. Text me at: 1-917-696-5465 or email me at [email protected].

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