Sunday, March 15, 2009

Polyfidelity - scientific utopian community

Free Love and Selling Macs

Leander Kahney Email 04.23.02

During the late 1980s, the biggest dealer of Apple computers in Northern California wasn't a computer megastore. It was a free-love commune in San Francisco's hippie Haight-Ashbury district.

Founded in the 1970s, the Kerista commune had about 30 members who practiced "polyfidelity." Members would sleep with a different person each night, but only with someone in their group. Every day, the sleeping schedule was drawn up on a Mac.

The Kerista commune was not just promiscuous, it was extremely industrious.

In the span of about five years, the commune transformed a modest house-cleaning business into the biggest Macintosh dealership and consulting firm in Northern California. For three years in a row, the company, called Abacus, was featured in Inc. magazine's annual list of the fastest-growing enterprises in America.

At its height, Abacus generated $35 million in sales, employed 125 people, and serviced dozens of blue-chip corporations like Pacific Gas & Electric, United Airlines and Pacific Bell.

The company ran a pair of plush training centers in San Francisco's financial district and in Santa Clara. It operated three big repair facilities and a giant warehouse. It had consulting divisions for networking and publishing, and even ran a computer temp agency.

"It was a fascinating company that people couldn't put their fingers on, for good reason," said a former commune member who asked to be referred to by his commune name, Love. "It was run by flamboyant, hippie types, who tended to be young and good looking. But they were very good at evangelizing the Mac."

Kerista was founded as a scientific utopian community, according to another former member, "Sun," who was attracted by, among other things, the commune's sexual freedom.

"There were lots of guys who were into polyfidelity. That sounded good to me," she said, laughing.

Now in her 40s, Sun is an attractive woman with long brown hair. She lives in Boulder Creek, California, a rural enclave of Silicon Valley and home to a lot of "redwood nerds." She was disinherited from her wealthy family for joining Kerista.

The commune had four "families," or "Best Friend Identity Clusters." Commune members could sleep only with the six or seven other people in their cluster. There were equal numbers of men and women in each cluster. Everyone was in their 20s or 30s, except for the founder, known as Bro Jud, who was in his 60s.

There was also a "seduction squad": attractive girls who recruited new members at parties. Men were invited to sleep with them, but only if they first joined the commune, which meant having a vasectomy.

"The commune already had two kids," Sun said. "Like any family, we decided two is enough and no more kids. Too many diapers. The favorable form of contraception was vasectomy. You had to be really committed."

The commune rented about half-a-dozen buildings and apartments in the Haight. Everyone had a key to each apartment. "Everyone had a giant key ring," Sun said. "One woman had a 2-pound key ring."

Members donated their income to the communal purse. Everyone had $200 in their pocket at all times. If they spent any money, they had to submit a carefully categorized receipt to claim the money back.

"No one worried about money at all," Sun said. "It was all being accounted for on the community level. It seemed like an inexhaustible bank account. You made $15,000 a year, but you lived like you made $50,000. But we weren't extravagant. We lived comfortable middle-class lifestyles."

When Sun joined the commune, members were cleaning houses, fixing up gardens, and publishing a free advertising newsletter.

Sun introduced them to Macintosh computers. The reception was very enthusiastic and people immediately started small desktop publishing sideline businesses. Soon, the commune was offering publishing services and advice to other small businesses, and opened a computer-rental store on Frederick Street called Utopian Technology.

The commune's big break was getting a dealer's license from Apple, then the biggest personal computer maker in the world. Demonstrating its commitment to feminism, the commune had incorporated Abacus in the names of four female commune members: on paper, it was a women-owned business.

The head of sales, known as EvaWay, approached then-CEO John Sculley and told him Apple looked bad because it didn't have any women-owned dealers in its reseller network. Sculley agreed and lobbied to get them a license.

The commune bought about 10 Macs and quickly sold them. Business took off like a rocket. First year revenues were $1 million and quadrupled every year. The women-owned status of the company was a big bonus, helping to land so-called "preference" contracts with big corporations and government agencies.

"Not bad for a bunch of hippies," said EvaWay, who is now an executive at a Bay Area startup. "All we wanted to do was change the world."

Love attributed Abacus' success to its hippie business ethic: The commune wanted to help create a utopian technological society, so they made sure people knew how to use their new machines. The company had a motto: "Abacus: A vision with a business."

"All of our competitors were just dropping off boxes," said Love. "We had everything, training, support, repairs. We were a one-stop shop for business folks."

Love, now in his early 40s, still lives communally with three other adults in a house on the San Francisco peninsula. He works as an investment banker.

"We were total nerds," added Sun. "We were very cool nerds."

Eventually, Abacus also started selling Compaq computers. Ironically, the success of the business took its toll on the commune, which folded under the pressure of running such a fast-growing enterprise.

"We weren't professional managers," said Love. "There were many, many mistakes we made that created a business that did not run very efficiently."

While computer prices plummeted, Abacus found itself sitting on a huge inventory no one wanted.

The commune disbanded in 1991, and a year later Abacus merged with Ciber, a Denver corporation that was going around the country consolidating failing dealers.

The merger allowed 50 people to keep their jobs; some are still employed by Ciber. But there was no money: All the proceeds went to pay off debt.

"We went from being an artist community to a computer business," Sun said. "The whole culture changed. It became workaholic, yuppie cyberculture.

"(We were) like a mom and pop computer shop, but with 30 people as the mom and pop. There was no real management, and the majority of people wanted to do something else with the affluence the business bought them. It allowed them to do something else, like moving to Hawaii."

"It bought huge amounts of wealth into a tribal community, which had never been seen before," said Allan Lundell, Sun's partner and with her, the co-founder of Virtual World Studio. "This allowed them to build their dreams of a functional utopian culture and live in it." http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/commentary/cultofmac/2002/04/51866

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