It Seemed Like Such a Good Idea . . .
“Our intention was to build a live database of stuff that goes on in the underground,” says Manousos, now 26. “The whole point of the site was to spawn a community that would live on its own, that could ultimately pay for itself through licensing of content as well as services related to record labels and the artists.” In other words, he’d hoped to use Supersphere to draw in clients for a sort of consulting arm, which would teach labels and artists how to take advantage of the Internet. In a story I did on the company a year and a half ago, cofounder Jon Evans also told me the site was planning to attract advertisers.
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Manousos, who now splits his time between Chicago and San Francisco, says he’s confident about Supersphere’s future, even though he’s not investing heavily in it at the moment. “We’re a mouse in a nuclear war and that’s the way we want to stay,” he says. “Big animals don’t live through nuclear wars. The underground always lives through stuff, and that’s sort of the point. I think in the next six months to a year you’ll start to see stuff become more active again.”
Postscript
